No other country in the world is spending so much of its time and energy on trivialities as India. Ever since independence came, India’s “ruling class”, constituting about 10 per cent of its population, has been indulging in one game after another to befool the masses. This game has been helping the ruling class to relentlessly continue its game of exploitation of the masses while it amassed more and more wealth – their children migrating to the more luxurious Western capitalist world.
While caste atrocities on the untouchables, persecution of the tribals and minorities increased leaps and bounds, poverty and exploitation multiplied many-fold. Socially, culturally and economically India has become a stagnant society. A sick nation. Nay. The sickest country in the world.
One of the latest national farces to sidetrack the attention of the masses is the gatecrash from the Cong (U) to the ruling Cong-I. The “national press” has been giving daily front-page headlines for over a month. Apart from the news, it has been carrying editorials, articles, comments, statements as if Y. B. Chavan’s “home- coming” is going to change the very face of India. Millions of words must have been wasted on this Chavan rope trick. But Chavan is joining the ruling party because political power, always held by his Maratha musclemen in Maharashtra, has passed out of this dominant, land-owning caste group. That is all. An ideological coating is given to this “home coming – which is essentially a self-preservation act. But the Congo (U) has started “suspending” the “deserters” as if political parties in India are so much concerned with ideology, Rats fleeing the Cong. U sinking boat have issued statements giving it an ideological justification. It is all a farce. Those taking Indian politics seriously will go mad. The very founder of the Indian Communist party S. A Dange, was expelled as the chairman of the CPI, and he joined another party which was kept ready for him by his daughter. We have now three communist parties and 12 or so Naxalite groups. One Marxist doesn’t like the other. When communists themselves can behave like this what to speak of bourgeois parties? Janata is split into pro-RSS group of BJP headed by Vajpayee, a splinter Janata headed by Chandrasekhar. Bahuguna and Chandrajit Yadav have formed their own parties. Jagivan Ram joined Cong. U and he is there for the time being. Charan Singh is in Lok Dal heading his Jat group. Joker Raj Narain has his one-man party. As we go on, we actually lose count of these parties. It is all chaotic. A mad house. Politics has no meaning in India. It is no longer the last refuge of the scoundrel but the first refuge itself.
It is well-known that the Indian press is full of political news and speeches of ministers and other political pindaris. We can’t blame the press because it publishes what the readers want. Apart from this, the capitalist – controlled press is also interested in this game of divide and rule. And the newspaper-reading population, particularly the English knowing lot, cannot swallow its morning breakfast unless it is accompanied by a heavy dosage of politics. That is why the newspapers vie with each other in giving political coverage-entertaining the readers.
But what is the result? The innocent masses get completely fooled. Whether it is the Cong. I or U, they continue to remain in grinding poverty. The persecuted minorities of India have not found any solution to their problems from the different political changes that have taken place in India. And political changes have been quite plenty – some of them spectacular.
Therefore, while Dalits and the other persecuted minorities are not a party to these political see-saw game, the conscious lot among them can certainly play a role by educating and impressing upon their less fortunate comrades not to get fooled by these periodic political gimmicks of the ruling class. Whether U and I come together or whether Janata is back to power, the persecuted minorities can hardly get any relief. What they need is social and economic change and not cosmetic change of U and I coming together. We call upon our Dalit comrades to beware of this game of the ruling class periodically producing a fresh rabbit from its hat. It is all old wine in new bottle. Let us not be satisfied by changes in mere form. We want changes in the content as well. Beware of this national farce.
