CAN BENGAL'S DURGA BECOME LAKSHMI?

Long after it became history elsewhere, communism has fallen in its last bastion. “Hindu” West Bengal has, at long, long last, freed itself of another foreign yoke, one that it had enthusiastically embraced three decades after India had freed itself of a colonial one, and one it had all but surrendered to. It had to take Bengal’s own Ma Durga to appear in flesh and blood to slay this alien Mahishasur who had not only terrorised ordinary Bengalis for the better part of three decades but had also ensured that the state fell back along all parameters of development to become one of the poorest, though still intellectually pretentious, states of India.

Shorn of sophisticated and sometimes unintelligible jargon, there is much in common between communism and ‘Ladenism’. Both promise utopia but in practice deliver hell. Across the world, communism went horribly wrong, as it had to, because of the explosive marriage of an uncompromising ideology with the absolute power of the ruling dictatorship. As a result, it morphed into an almost fanatical religion, with a revealed text whose interpreters dictated the rigid path to be followed, without deviation, to reach the promised materialistic paradise – minus the sex -- on earth itself. To achieve their objective, communist ‘jihadis,’ as it were, destroyed or took control of all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and, of course, the family. Non-believers were simply eliminated in cold blood. The net result was a hell that had to fail. Had the elusive heaven been promised in the unseen world beyond, communism would almost certainly have been alive and killing today.

It is worth digressing a little more to put in perspective some of the horrors that communism unleashed in its run of almost nine decades in different parts of the world before it collapsed, in most cases dramatically and in a few, particularly China, almost imperceptibly. According to some estimates, communists murdered close to 110,000,000 people, several times more than the 38,000,000 killed in wars fought in the 20th Century. The Soviet Union heads the list of communist mass murderers, apparently killing nearly 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself was responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000, were due to forced labor in gulag. Communist China, which during Mao’s Cultural Revolution alone saw over 10,000,000 murdered, is the second on the list. By far, the most deadly of all was the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia who killed some 2,000,000 people between April 1975 and December 1978, out of a population of just around 7,000,000.

The communist heaven-turned-hell may not have manifested in all its ugliness in West Bengal, but that is only because it had to remain subservient to democracy as it was unable to extend its rule over the whole of India. But, despite this fundamental and, for India, fortunate limitation, wherever and whenever it could, it did show its ugly, dangerous, intolerant fangs. It is no secret that had it not been for the passive acceptance of brutal intimidation by the cadres and scientific rigging by them during elections, communists would not have been able to rule the state for 34 years. In fact had Mamata Banerjee not appeared in the ferocious Warrior-Goddess mode that she did to fight them relentlessly for 15 long years, docile Bengalis who, in my view, have a fundamental weakness in their collective psyche, would have continued to suffer while their “intellectual” gas bags would have kept producing tons of copy-pasted garbage divorced from them and their painful reality.

That is one reason why not only are leading communist ideologues not contrite about what they have done to their people and their land, but are actually confident of making a come back five years down the line, un-chastened, unchanged. Much like some of us who, no matter what happens, trust Pakistan more than we do our some of our own, they remain detached from reality and continue to repose faith in a dead ideology that has caused unprecedented human suffering almost wherever it has been in command. Their cockiness may not be entirely misplaced.

After taking over as Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee walked to her office in Writer’s Building along with thousands of ordinary men and women, powerfully symbolising the return of power to the people in the real sense of the word. A supporter even held a placard saying that this was West Bengal’s second freedom, the first being in 1947. Dramatic scenes and scary expectations of a people for long oppressed and effectively voiceless, democracy notwithstanding.

Mamata now faces an even bigger battle than the one she has fought long and hard to emerge victorious. She is untested yet as an administrator and as a leader in power. Her record thus far, coupled with her dalliance with the Maoists and fundamentalists, not only does not inspire confidence but gives rise to serious misgivings. If she fails to deliver something substantial, sustainable and tactile, Bengalis may, without as much as a murmur, fall prey to rogues again. So much they seem to have been broken in spirit. I wonder whether she realises that the victory she has achieved is not ordinary, that the heavy weights of history and expectations rest on her frail but tough shoulders. If she can carry them and emerge triumphant, Bengalis will have something real to cheer about and be proud of after a long time.

Can she make the transition that Winston Churchill failed to? Can she win the war of peace and prosperity that she has to fight now? Can she visibly demonstrate to the people of Bengal that she has indeed saved them from the deathly clutches of Mahishasur? Can Bengal’s Durga become Lakshmi?
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BYPOLLS: MANY SURPRISES, MORE IN STORE

In the recent bypolls in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, Mayawati and Mamata have emerged triumphant. While Mamata Banerjee was expected to do reasonably well, many believed that the Congress would put up a very good show in UP.

The "Rahul Wave" created in some sections of the media after the Lok Sabha elections in May this year has almost evaporated in UP within six months. Mayawati, who was humbled then, has perhaps surprised even herself by bagging nine out of 11 seats. This despite - perhaps because of - the intense media campaign against her statue-building spree. That this victory has come on top of her winning three of the four seats for which elections were held in August, makes the blip in May stand out even more. The Congress has wrested two seats and lost two that it had held earlier, while the SP and the BJP have drawn a blank.

In keeping with dynastic tradition, Rahul Gandhi is being given all the credit for the defeat of Mulayam Yadav's daughter-in-law in his home turf, Firozabad. What is being conveniently overlooked is that it is the BSP, not the Congress, that has won the Bharthana seat vacated by Mulayam Yadav's son. Both these results underline the fact that the SP has been routed in its fortress. This is a least expected body blow that Mulayam Yadav will find hard to take. For various reasons, the balance of political power appears to be shifting decisively away from him.

The BJP, thanks to the total vacuum of credible leadership in the state and its comatose central High Command led by Rajnath Singh - perhaps the worst leader the party has thrown up in UP - has been humiliatingly routed. Not only has it failed to win a single seat, it has lost security deposits in all constituencies barring its erstwhile stronghold Lucknow West, and Jhansi. How much more punishment its failed top leaders and strategists are going to inflict on the party before they are removed is a question that needs to be openly debated in the party.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is continuing her triumphant march that began in the Lok Sabha elections, by winning all the seven seats her party contested. But shockingly, the CPM has failed to win a single seat. Just three years back, the Left Front had stormed back to power with a three-fourths majority. But, thanks to Singur and Nandigram, the Left is, suddenly being wiped out in a manner that no one would have dreamt of a couple of years back. Cumulative failures of the past two decades are beginning to hurt and haunt the communists, ironically because of the reforms they belatedly initiated to undo the colossal and almost irreparable damage they inflicted upon the society and the state during their long and uninterrupted rein.

These results have tempted most analysts to write off the SP and BJP in UP, and the Left in West Bengal. That may well happen if things continue the way the are. Can anything swing things dramatically again?

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is benefitting from the anger against the communists. The Marxist onslaught has, among other things, created such a leadership vacuum in the state that there is no other leader behind whom its people can rally against them. Is she really the alternative that voters are looking for? Will she be able to take the state forward or will she plunge it into even greater inertia and violence? Given her track record, it is almost a given that things will get only worse if and when she gets into the saddle. But even before that happens, just as the communists are paying for a couple of mistakes, Mamata might just hurt herself badly; a small slip is all it will take for voters to go back to the commies or a progressive break-away faction led by someone with the kind of vision that the many great leaders and thinkers of Bengal had once shown to the whole of India.

In UP, can the Mulayam Yadav dynasty really be written off because of the Firozabad defeat? Can it also be safely assumed that those who have deserted the BJP will not hurry back to it again? If the Congress is seen to be courting Muslims in a divisive manner and pandering to the mullahs who are now openly rejecting secularism, things can change overnight with one wrong decision, provided there is a good leader to exploit it without engaging in mindless communal provocation. It may be recalled that one reason for the BJP holding the gains it had made in UP was the no-nonsense and decisive leadership shown by Kalyan Singh as Chief Minister, something that the state had perhaps never seen before in the long years of Congress rule. May be that is one reason why Mayawati is holding her own, despite serious corruption charges - there is no honest and effective counterfoil available in any other party today. May be that is one reason why brand Gandhi has failed to work for decades in its home state. If the Congress can find and project a new, credible alternative, who knows what might happen! Or if, following the example of kings of yore who treated their marriages as political, even military, force multipliers, Rahul Gandhi marries a dalit girl from the state, it is more than likely Mayawati may never recover.

It may be recalled that in the couple of years preceding the Lok Sabha elections this year, the Congress had lost the assembly elections in most states that went to the polls. But in the final round that mattered the most, it delivered an unexpected knock-out punch to the BJP. The many surprises in these bypolls also suggest that no political party can take anything for granted based on past electoral results. If anything, they should expect to be surprised in future.

Given our fundamentally flawed and society-dividing model of democracy, a few slip-ups and a slight re-alignment of political and social combinations is all it takes to upset all calculations and projections and produce unexpected results that, as we saw in the recent Maharashtra elections, can hide unacceptable failures. No wonder independent India has produced so few great leaders of the calibre and integrity that the freedom struggle threw up.

This is the age of Mayas, Mamatas and dynasties.