Editorial Viewpoint
Rebel with a cause
Every once in a while the public image of the Parsis/Iranis as a fun loving, easygoing, mercantile people receives a jolt. Some years ago it was Jairuz Banaji causing an uproar at a Confederation of Indian Industries meet in January 2003 at which Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi spoke. Banaji’s allegation, “You (Modi) have blood on your hands” was to highlight Modi’s connivance in the massacre of Muslims in retaliation for the loss of Hindu lives in a fire on the Sabarmati Express in February 2002 at Godhra in Gujarat state.
Now we have the story on the front pages of the national Press and prime time television news of Maoist/Naxalite ideologue Kobad Ghandy being arrested in Delhi on September 20, 2009. Nearly the entire media referred to him as the offspring of an affluent Parsi family who attended the prestigious Doon School in North India and studied for his Chartered Accountant certification in England. Though none of the newspapers specifically stated the charges under which the 62-year-old was detained by the police, they mentioned that the ailing Communist was “a politburo member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist)” party.
Though the Naxalites believe in using violent means to foster social change, many of the newspaper write-ups were surprisingly favorable to Ghandy. “Kobad is a very enlightened and learned person. He is fighting against an unjust system,” stated college friend and lawyer Susan Gonzalves in an interview with Mid Day (September 24, 2009).
Journalist Jatin Desai recalled his association with Ghandy from 1977 to 1979 in an interview with The Indian Express, September 24, 2009: “Kobad was extraordinarily intelligent and well read. We used to gather on the Bombay University campus and sit near Rajabai Tower because we could not afford meetings at restaurants... Kobad was passionate but he did not propagate violence aggressively.”
The same article carried a quote from writer and activist Asghar Ali Engineer who recalled Ghandy as “very soft-spoken and a thorough gentleman. I can’t believe he led violent operations.” Dr Ritu Divan, professor of economics at Bombay University, said Ghandy “was not bossy but his logic was spot on. He was known for his vision and sense of humor.” Ghandy’s mother-in-law Kumud Shanbaug, 84, told The Express, “We would communicate with Anuradha and Kobad once a year after they went underground. In fact I did not even know that she was suffering from malaria before I got news of her death. I never opposed her decisions and I am proud of both of them.”
Gandhy’s wife Anuradha, a student of Elphinstone College, was described as “bubbly, vivacious, the belle of the ball” by freelance journalist Jyoti Punwani who edited the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights publication Adhikaar Raksha along with the Gandhys (Mid Day, September 24, 2009). “He was among the three who signed as witness to my marriage,” she noted in an article in The Times of India (September 23, 2009).
But though the name of their organization carried the word “democratic” it was anything but democratic. They believed in a Maoist-like communist state quite unmindful of the immense toll such an entity places on its subjects. The Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung was responsible for more deaths than even mass murderers like Adolf Hitler of Germany or Joseph Stalin of Russia. The ultimate goal of these ruthless dictators was not a classless society that philosophers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels advocated and envisioned but a state where the rulers had absolute power and the citizens none.
With the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — which former US President Ronald Reagan once referred to as “The Evil Empire” — and the fall of the odious Berlin Wall that the Soviets in conjunction with their sycophant East German allies built to restrict the flight of their citizens to the free West, many fellow travelers and leftist sympathizers became disillusioned with communism. They saw it as another form of dictatorship, as ruthless as any military, fascist or fundamentalist managed state.
But that realization is not shared by all. When some of the Indian communist parties hold their conventions one sees giant posters or cutouts of psychopaths like Stalin, Mao and Vladimir Lenin (his crimes being lesser because he died a few years after the Russian revolution of 1917). Even the massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy supporters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 did not shame them into revaluing their ideological beliefs.
The 1960s and 70s were a time of great social and political turmoil. The Civil Rights movement in America, the opposition to the war in Vietnam, the women’s liberation movement, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War, all caused dissension. Radical movements such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization hijacked and blew up passenger jetliners; the Red Army Faction in Germany (the Baader-Meinhof gang) unleashed a reign of terror. In India, the Naxalite movement started in Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal in 1967. In 1975 the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared her infamous Emergency that sheared the country of its civil liberties and gagged the Press.
It is easy at times like these to see why impressionable and passionate young people would be swayed by militant and socialistic rhetoric. There is embedded in the psyches of many an awe and admiration for authoritarianism. Even today people point to China and note how a communist government unmindful of human rights has provided a better standard of living than democratic India. Of what purpose are civil liberties, they argue, if people go to bed hungry?
But dictatorships in countries such as Burma, Sudan and even Pakistan — with its on and off flirtation with military dictators — fare far worse than us. So why did Kobad Ghandy like many other socially conscious individuals not pursue reforms through democratic means? When asked in a BBC interview three days prior to his arrest whether the Naxals would ever participate in mainstream politics he responded, “No. Because we believe a democracy which respects people cannot be established in this country under the given system.” Sounds familiar?
Perhaps for the same reason so many Parsis/Iranis in Bombay and elsewhere oppose universal adult franchise in the election of trustees to the Bombay Parsi Punchayet. They believe that people who are unschooled or do not pay taxes because their incomes are low or are beneficiaries of charity, should not be given the vote. Others are in a better position to improve the lot of the disadvantaged, they argue. But if you disempower the weakest sections of society what other recourse do they have than to tread the path towards radicalism?
While we condemn the methods Ghandy and his Naxalite associates resort to, we have to admire him, his wife and others for the personal sacrifice they make for the cause of assisting the weakest sectors of society. Let us hope their example motivates others to lend a hand, albeit within the framework of the country’s constitution.
Now we have the story on the front pages of the national Press and prime time television news of Maoist/Naxalite ideologue Kobad Ghandy being arrested in Delhi on September 20, 2009. Nearly the entire media referred to him as the offspring of an affluent Parsi family who attended the prestigious Doon School in North India and studied for his Chartered Accountant certification in England. Though none of the newspapers specifically stated the charges under which the 62-year-old was detained by the police, they mentioned that the ailing Communist was “a politburo member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist)” party.
Though the Naxalites believe in using violent means to foster social change, many of the newspaper write-ups were surprisingly favorable to Ghandy. “Kobad is a very enlightened and learned person. He is fighting against an unjust system,” stated college friend and lawyer Susan Gonzalves in an interview with Mid Day (September 24, 2009).
Journalist Jatin Desai recalled his association with Ghandy from 1977 to 1979 in an interview with The Indian Express, September 24, 2009: “Kobad was extraordinarily intelligent and well read. We used to gather on the Bombay University campus and sit near Rajabai Tower because we could not afford meetings at restaurants... Kobad was passionate but he did not propagate violence aggressively.”
The same article carried a quote from writer and activist Asghar Ali Engineer who recalled Ghandy as “very soft-spoken and a thorough gentleman. I can’t believe he led violent operations.” Dr Ritu Divan, professor of economics at Bombay University, said Ghandy “was not bossy but his logic was spot on. He was known for his vision and sense of humor.” Ghandy’s mother-in-law Kumud Shanbaug, 84, told The Express, “We would communicate with Anuradha and Kobad once a year after they went underground. In fact I did not even know that she was suffering from malaria before I got news of her death. I never opposed her decisions and I am proud of both of them.”
Gandhy’s wife Anuradha, a student of Elphinstone College, was described as “bubbly, vivacious, the belle of the ball” by freelance journalist Jyoti Punwani who edited the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights publication Adhikaar Raksha along with the Gandhys (Mid Day, September 24, 2009). “He was among the three who signed as witness to my marriage,” she noted in an article in The Times of India (September 23, 2009).
But though the name of their organization carried the word “democratic” it was anything but democratic. They believed in a Maoist-like communist state quite unmindful of the immense toll such an entity places on its subjects. The Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung was responsible for more deaths than even mass murderers like Adolf Hitler of Germany or Joseph Stalin of Russia. The ultimate goal of these ruthless dictators was not a classless society that philosophers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels advocated and envisioned but a state where the rulers had absolute power and the citizens none.
With the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — which former US President Ronald Reagan once referred to as “The Evil Empire” — and the fall of the odious Berlin Wall that the Soviets in conjunction with their sycophant East German allies built to restrict the flight of their citizens to the free West, many fellow travelers and leftist sympathizers became disillusioned with communism. They saw it as another form of dictatorship, as ruthless as any military, fascist or fundamentalist managed state.
But that realization is not shared by all. When some of the Indian communist parties hold their conventions one sees giant posters or cutouts of psychopaths like Stalin, Mao and Vladimir Lenin (his crimes being lesser because he died a few years after the Russian revolution of 1917). Even the massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy supporters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 did not shame them into revaluing their ideological beliefs.
The 1960s and 70s were a time of great social and political turmoil. The Civil Rights movement in America, the opposition to the war in Vietnam, the women’s liberation movement, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War, all caused dissension. Radical movements such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization hijacked and blew up passenger jetliners; the Red Army Faction in Germany (the Baader-Meinhof gang) unleashed a reign of terror. In India, the Naxalite movement started in Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal in 1967. In 1975 the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared her infamous Emergency that sheared the country of its civil liberties and gagged the Press.
It is easy at times like these to see why impressionable and passionate young people would be swayed by militant and socialistic rhetoric. There is embedded in the psyches of many an awe and admiration for authoritarianism. Even today people point to China and note how a communist government unmindful of human rights has provided a better standard of living than democratic India. Of what purpose are civil liberties, they argue, if people go to bed hungry?
But dictatorships in countries such as Burma, Sudan and even Pakistan — with its on and off flirtation with military dictators — fare far worse than us. So why did Kobad Ghandy like many other socially conscious individuals not pursue reforms through democratic means? When asked in a BBC interview three days prior to his arrest whether the Naxals would ever participate in mainstream politics he responded, “No. Because we believe a democracy which respects people cannot be established in this country under the given system.” Sounds familiar?
Perhaps for the same reason so many Parsis/Iranis in Bombay and elsewhere oppose universal adult franchise in the election of trustees to the Bombay Parsi Punchayet. They believe that people who are unschooled or do not pay taxes because their incomes are low or are beneficiaries of charity, should not be given the vote. Others are in a better position to improve the lot of the disadvantaged, they argue. But if you disempower the weakest sections of society what other recourse do they have than to tread the path towards radicalism?
While we condemn the methods Ghandy and his Naxalite associates resort to, we have to admire him, his wife and others for the personal sacrifice they make for the cause of assisting the weakest sectors of society. Let us hope their example motivates others to lend a hand, albeit within the framework of the country’s constitution.
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