'The Left Won't Survive In India'

'Our Left is squeamish about democracy. They are so mechanical they have only dogma.'

"It came in the newspapers that I was expelled from the party. My lawyers in Hyderabad asked me not to get depressed. I told them nothing of that sort. My attachment is not to all this. My attachment is to the future to youngsters. If we have done anything wrong, then hopefully the young will do better than us," Kobad Ghandy, a sympathiser of the Communist movement for half a century including its radical wing, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), tells Rediff.com Senior Contributor Neeta Kolhatkar in the concluding part of a multi-part interview.

• Part I of the Kobad Ghandy Interview: 'I got support in all jail authorities except Tihar'
• Part II of the Kobad Ghandy Interview: 'Dons Are More Decent Than Politicians'

This very concept of freedom and happiness that you have developed has been rejected by your party. You have been severely criticised and they even called for your boycott. Why is that?
Is it non-Marxist to be free and happy? There was a call to expel you.

They said what is this mystical happiness?

I've written on the challenges before the Left and Communists, both internationally and at the national level.

It is quite an elaborate paper on these concepts.

There wrote against me, but I haven't read it.

I am told there were personal attacks in it, some 100 pages they have written.

I have no patience for it, but yes, they have written something. You should ask them (laughs).

They probably look at it mechanically.

They talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat and they talk about freedom? Marx spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is mechanical thinking. The proletariat is a class and I am talking about freedom starting from an individual level.

I'm saying right at the elementary level we ourselves are not free at the individual level.

Marx spoke of crippled monstrosity, an excellent word.

I don't know how Marx used it in those days, but that's exactly what we have among these Leftists.

What are our principles and what are we doing? How are we behaving?

Many have become hypocrites, some have become alienated. How are we going to make others free when we ourselves are not free? We are caught up in so many complexes and hypocrisies.

You can see it from far. It is more prevalent among the urban types.

What is the future of Marxism in India?

It won't survive because our Indian Marxists are not thinking hard about it.

I have written five articles on COVID-19 and a critique on The Great Reset, a book written by Josh Bersin. Not one Leftist in the world has written about it.

The lockdown and the impact it has had on society and how the pandemic was used to introduce the great reset.

All of which have been harmful. The Leftists supported the lockdown and were quiet about it.

I had also supported it initially. Then as I enhanced my reading about it, I began criticising it.

I also wrote on the origin of the virus, on corona capitalism and then I wrote about the lockdown policies and finally, I wrote, Is the Left right? I attacked the Monthly Review, the great Leftist magazine of America because they supported the lockdown.

On the other hand, the Indian Left has not written a word though they supported it passively.

Now these Indian Leftists have written 100 pages on my Fractured Freedom, but not one word on my articles on corona and other subjects which were written much after the book.

They are hypocritical about it. Now to make them squirmier, I have written on 75 years of freedom.

I have used the economic data and taken forward the whole brain drain theory of Dadabhai Navroji and R C Dutt which was well written by Shashi Tharoor in his Era of Darkness. In that he said one Barron mentioned eight percent of GDP was going abroad in colonial times.

In my calculation, the drain in 2000 was 12 percent of our GDP and today it is 17 percent of GDP.

How can a country grow with such a huge drain of wealth? Not one Leftist is talking about it.

In my paper, I say that the main issue must be Swadeshi, which the BJP and RSS only talk about, but don't do anything about it.

Swadeshi and democracy -- that which is not just electoral democracy, but that which is from the primary level and is anti-Brahmanical.

Our Left is squeamish about democracy. They are so mechanical they have only dogma.

I have tried to explain in my paper that Marxism is a scientific ideology of dialectical and historical materialism.

You have to use that methodology to interpret society and understand the present situation.

Then understand the corona situation and with yourself, understanding your relationship, the man-woman relations, etc.

Everything has to be understood in that context, using that tool. But no, they won't implement it.

Man-woman relations are practically feudal in their approach.

They thought Anu (Shanbhag Ghandy, his late wife) and I were mavericks but they didn't dare say anything.

Having said all of this, I do feel there is hope in the new generation of Communists. I don't have any hope in the old regime. They are completely dead.

There are some who can set new ideas, but it has to come from the new generation. They can't be so dogmatic and must be open to change.

Do you have any regrets? You have written you felt you wanted to spend more time with Anu in her last stages.

People ask, but I don't have any regrets.

Since I had so much experience I can now write what I feel and I am not apologetic about it.

Otherwise, I would have been on the defensive if I was bitter. Even after the criticism from the Left, the boycotts and such. It came in the newspapers that I was expelled from the party. My lawyers in Hyderabad asked me not to get depressed.

I told them nothing of that sort. My attachment is not to all this.

My attachment is to the future to youngsters.

If we have done anything wrong, then hopefully the young will do better than us.

I did feel in her last stages I should have given her more time.

In fact, I had made a decision in my mind, but it was too late, by then she died.

She had various ailments and very bad arthritis.

In those days there was no knee replacement or it was not so common. Otherwise, we had spent a lot of time together.

We have been seeing the jail authorities deliberately delaying treating political prisoners. Right from Father Stan Swamy, then Pandu Narote, now there is Prashant Rahi. Why even you have written in your book about how you suffered.
Why do the authorities resist giving treatment to political prisoners? Is it deliberate?

It is deliberate in a way. But then it is also like what we see even outside jails, everything is corrupt.

If you have that kind of money to throw around, even you can get the best of medical attention.

The prisons are extremely corrupt up north, even in Maharashtra I'm told.

In South India, it was much better. In Andhra, I experienced, while I've heard about Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

In Andhra, the officers also were decent people.

In Jharkhand too I have seen good officers. Even in Hyderabad, I got good medical treatment.

Tihar also I got good medical treatment because basically, I got good judges. They specified it in their orders. Maybe, I don't see that sort of due diligence being done in the Bhima Koregaon case.

Now it seems more vicious and personal out here. Despite the fact the state and jail authorities were under a non-BJP government till a while ago.

One thing is there -- they are portraying Naxals as terrorists in their circles and the jail authorities are also cruel.

Their bosses tell them things and these men don't seem to take a different approach.

Most importantly, they are corrupt.

In the Bilkis Bano case, the question of the revision of arrested accused and releasing them, it made me angry.

First, it was 14 years for life imprisonment and some laws changed after a Supreme Court decision.

It said the board has to sit after the arrested criminals completed 14 years of imprisonment.

This board has to sit every three months and they decide who to release and the number of prisoners to be released.

All those who had money would be released while others, mostly poor, languished for 30-40 years.

It was political. In Tihar I remember the prisoners hated (then Delhi chief minister) Sheila Dixit because she met the board only once a year and hardly released anyone.

I don't think (current Delhi CM Arvind) Kejriwal is any better. But things are different in the South.

There, after 9-10 years, prisoners are released from jail. That's how it should be and not arbitrary as we are seeing today.

This is not reflected in any of the articles which mentioned the release of the rape accused in the Bilkis Bano case. It is an arbitrary decision.

In all the prisons you were imprisoned, did the jail authorities know who a Parsi is and that you were a Parsi?

Interestingly, only in the Gujarat jail they knew what a Parsi is (laughs).

They would ask me, a Parsi and a Naxal? You are in jail? There I was given very good treatment.

You see, in jails, we had to fill in 'caste' in our forms at the time of entry.

They'd ask what caste I belonged to and I'd say I don't believe in caste. But they would insist.

I was forced to write and I ended up writing Parsi. None of them understood it.

They were only concerned with filling that section and they would not bother.

Even in Andhra people don't know who a Parsi is.

Only in Surat, because that's where the Parsis first landed so that's why they may have heard.

Though it is Modi's heartland I still get respect when I go for my court dates.

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com