Jallianwala in Beijing: Looking Back in History
Sukla Sen
MAINSTREAM, VOL XLVII, NO 34, AUGUST 8, 2009
Remembering the Massacre
Sunday 16 August 2009, by Subrata Sen
The editor deserves compliments for the sincere remembrance of the
Tiananmen massacre in the June 6, 2009 issue of Mainstream.
Indignation and outrage felt by both S.C. and N.C. twenty years ago
still touch the heart. This is in such sharp contrast with the ‘line’
of a section of the so-called Left in this country. Your effort have
inspired the writer to fish out a copy of an after-edit, published by
the Nagpur Times (July 17, 1989). I hope you will be able to print it
(after correcting some obvious printer’s devil), as a supplement to
your efforts.
Tailpiece: Basing himself on a dubious report by a BBC correspondent,
Prof Ravi M. Bakaya has informed the readers of Mainstream that the
tragic events at Tiananmen Square is no longer the focus of public
attention (March 12, 2005). What can one say to diehard Gulagists like
Prof Bakaya? Where angels fear to tread? The Gulagists’ long march to
Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh commenced in the Soviet Union in the
twenties. The Moscow Trials were its first conspicuous landmark. The
Tiananmen massacre was another amongst many. There is no running away
from History.
Subrata Sen
13 Lendra Park, Nagpur 440 010
http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1563.html
MAINSTREAM, VOL XLVII, NO 34, AUGUST 8, 2009
Jallianwala in Beijing
Sunday 16 August 2009, by Subrata Sen
An Indian cultural delegation got unwittingly caught up in the recent
turmoil inBeijing. As the Army cracked down, the delegation had to be
hurriedly evacuated. Talking to the Indian press, playwright Vijay
Tendulkar and novelist U.R. Anantamurthy, the two most prominent
members of the delegation, described the Tienanmen incident as worse
than Jallianwala Bagh. One can hardly disagree.
The butchery beggars description and was, in the initial stages, seen
alive on television in Japan, the United States and Western Europe.
Tanks mowed down students, women with babies in arms and even the
babies in arms were shot down in cold blood. Western journalists on
the spot put the death toll at three thousand. The authorities would,
however, concede only three hundred, claiming half of them to be
Armymen. Students’ and workers’ organisations that sprang up
spontaneously during the agitation have been banned. Their leaders are
being hunted. Borders have been sealed and ports and airports are
being watched to prevent escape. Thousands have been arrested. At
least seventeen people have been tried, sentenced and executed with
astonishing speed. State controlled TV has telecast pictures of
prisoners being pilloried.
Enigma of Zhao Ziang
Through the crisis, the fate of Zhao Ziang, the General Secretary of
the Chinese Communist Party, reportedly a moderate in sympathy with
the students’ demand for democratisation remained a puzzle. Quite
early he was reported to have resigned or been removed. There were
rumours about Zhao being under house arrest. The Chinese Government
promptly denied the rumours. Anyway, Zhao has not been seen in public
for nearly a month and has now been stripped of all posts, both party
and the government.
For once, the reactions of the Indian Stalinists have been varied.
Mohit Sen of the Dange group has promptly denounced the imposition of
the martial law. Better late than never. Remembering that Sen and
Dange had no difficulty in supporting the imposition of the martial
law in Poland or judicial murder of Imre Nagy, one cannot possibly say
more. Having criticised the hypocrisy of the Western countries, the
CPI prefers to maintain a discreet silence. The CPI-M apparently
possesses the virtue of consistency in ample measure. Their
Polit-Bureau has promptly dubbed the students as American stooges on
the indisputable ground that they had no concrete programme and the
coincidence between their agitation and Gorbachev’s China visit was no
accident.
Most Naxalite groups, who claim that capitalism has been restored in
China after the death of Mao, have condemned the repression. At the
same time, they describe the agitation as a struggle between two
groups of “capitalist roaders”. Blissfully unaware that the current
rulers put the death toll in Mao’s Cultural Revolution at twenty
million or more, they compare the situation unfavourably with the
halcyon days of their Chairman. Their argument seems to be: kangaroo
courts, frame-up trials, Gulags and genocide are all de rigueur under
socialism/new democracy; but democratic rights must be fought for in
the capitalist order.
Unsure Justice Krishna Iyer
Possibly the most curious reaction has come from Justice V.R. Krishna
Iyer, who has made a rather successful transition from an admirer of
Stalin to a sentinel for human rights. Meeting the press at Nagpur, he
unequivocally condemned the Tienanmen massacre, irrespective of
whether the death toll is three hundred or three thousand. Yet he was
not sure whether the students were not wittingly or unwittingly
working as agents of destabilisation.
There is no dearth of reason for discounting the government propaganda
fromBeijing. The simplest, yet most persuasive, is the fact that the
Stalin School of Falsification has been assiduously and indefatigably
spreading similar canards for half-a-century. They started in the late
thirties with the canard that Trotsky, Zinoviey, Bukharin, virtually
every leader of the Bolshevik Party, was an agent of Gestapo and
Mikado. In 1948, they followed it up with the canard that Josip Broz
Tito was an American stooge.
In 1957-58 they were spreading the canard that Imre Nagy was an
American stooge who attempted to restore capitalism in Hungary. In
1968, they were telling the world that Alexandar Dubeck was an
American stooge, trying to destabilise Czechoslovakia. Only the other
day, they were telling us that Lech Walesa and Solidarity were
American stooges, trying to destabilise Poland. Justice Krishna Iyer
is both old and erudite enough to be aware of all these.
Bureaucracy
In the cacophony, an obvious aspect of the situation seem to have
escaped the notice of observers. All through the crisis,
decision-making at the government level was monopolised by just six
men, supremo Deng Xiao Ping and five members of the Standing Committee
of the Polit-Bureau of the CPC. Only after the peace of the grave was
brutally enforced, the Central Committee of the CPC and the Standing
Committee of the People’s Congress met to post facto endorse the fait
accompli. No doubt some time in the future a Congress of the CPC and
Plenum of the People’s Congress will meet to do the same.
Time has obviously come to remember and remind that Marx, Engels and
Lenin advocated dictatorship of the proletariat and not dictatorship
over the proletariat, be it the dictatorship of the Party or Party
Leadership or the Leader. Understandably, Marx and Engels were loathe
to speculate on the nature of government in the socialist state of the
future. Nonetheless, whenever faced with the poser, they invariably
pointed at the experience of the Paris Commune. In State and
Revolution and other writings, Lenin faithfully followed the masters.
As every student of history knows, Paris Commune was an ideal example
of what, in current American jargon, is being called the participatory
democracy.
(Courtesy: Nagpur Times, July 17, 1989)
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Peace Is Doable