Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
But for conceitedness Navin should be able to read the writings on the wall.
He is no more enjoying the confidence of the people. Any delay in dissolving the Assembly will only help the BJP to grab Orissa, because spangled with American agents, Congress will not be able to gather support in Orissa and thus there will be no alternative to BJP, notwithstanding vested-interest votes BJD may bag in ensuing elections for the urban bodies.
Navin has stopped the twenty BJP rebels from voting against him by using the central leadership of the communal party. But communal conflicts in Orissa have not stopped. As seen in Jeypore, communal hatred has engulfed students even.
Communalism is not a law and order issue by origin. So law and order authorities – the police and the courts – cannot extinguish communal fire. Chief minister Navin Patnaik’s sophomoric litany that law will take its own course will not apply to communalism.
Communalism is not born out of criminality. So law and order implementation authorities cannot eliminate it.
Communalism is born out of religious nationality. Religious nationality cannot be neutralized as long as all religions are not banned.
In a country like India where leaders play populist politics, religions cannot be banned and hence religious nationality will grow more aggressively and in corresponding malignancy, communal conflicts too.
Acting on a litigation to end communal conflicts in Orissa, the judiciary seems to have expressed deep concern leading to issuance of certain direction to the government for restoration of peace. It is sad to note that the judiciary at this juncture has no ability to extinguish communal fire. Why, let me say.
Despite brilliant brains and expertise in acquiring power, every human being is a born victim of a sense of insecurity. So it needs a collective identity to feel secured. This collective identity is nationality. This is why there is not a single person in the world who does not belong to a nationality. Sense of insecurity makes highly educated and well-placed persons join the nationality of countries to where they migrate. Some of these migrated persons have even dual nationalities. So, there is none sans nationality in the human society. Nationality is the base that a human being cannot discard.
Nationality has two interlinked but separately distinguishable spheres: political and cultural. When political nationality looses its relevance, persons seek security under cultural nationality.
In India, specifically in Orissa, political nationality has lost its relevance day by day due to increase in economic inequality and decrease in social security amongst the people as the state power has constantly and consistently stood with the exploiters of the land’s natural and human resources in nonchalant disregard to disadvantage of the working class, marginal and small farmers, landless jungle-dwellers, small traders and autonomous social forces like the craftsmen.
Political leaders are so treacherous that the country has already been pushed into American hegemony as witnessed in the matter of the nuke deal that erstwhile party in power – BJP – had initiated and the party currently in power –the Congress – has precipitated.
Therefore peoples’ faith in politicians has severely declined leading to decline in political nationality.
This decline has got pervert expression in regional and sub-regional chauvinism as witnessed in bifurcation of original provinces. UP-Uttarakhand, MP-Chhatisgarh or Bihar-Jharkhand bifurcations are instances that were caused by regional chauvinism than by administrative necessities. Bifurcation of Orissa’s thirteen original districts to thirty is an instance of populist politicians siding with sub-regional chauvinism. There are instances when sub-regional chauvinism has precipitated internecine quarrels amongst local innocents over finalization of the locations district headquarters.
All these factors, often overlooked, are behind loss of relevance of political nationalism in our soil.
Against this backdrop, cultural nationality is getting stronger amongst the economically exploited people. Cultural nationalism is in applicability religious nationalism.
The exploiters are using religious revivalists to use religious nationalism to their own advantage. They are profusely patronizing religious revivalism, as is seen in high concentration of wealth in the hands of so-called god-men.
The only work the god-men do is aimed to generate amongst the exploited people a sense of self-hatred by prompting them to hold their supposedly sinful previous birth responsible for their present suffering.
Because of these god-men peoples fail to see the mischief of exploiters and looters of their exchequer. And, in their sub-conscious, political nationality gets further weaker.
Such a development being totally detrimental to democracy, conscious political activists have been trying to educate the ignorant peoples in matter of their economic and constitutional rights. It is a shame that these activists, who are campaigning for reduction of economic inequality so that faith in political nationality no more falters, are being termed as leftist terrorists and prosecuted against by the state, sometimes ending in encounter deaths. Media under grip of plutocracy is actively collaborating with the perpetrators of state terrorism against the pro-people activists and there are instances when judiciary has preferred not to be less harsh in the name of law and order. Under such circumstances, majority of our people fail to feel the benevolence of political nationality. They rather feel that they are victims of exploitive supremacy of the political state and hence political nationality has lost its meaning to them.
Naturally, therefore, religious nationality has gained ground and religious revivalists have emerged as societal arbitrators. Through pervert interpretation of secularism, the plutocratic state is protecting and patronizing these religious revivalists, who taking advantage of decline in political nationalism are tactfully using religious nationalism to usurp state power that further strengthens plutocracy.
But plutocracy under the present phenomenon called globalization has two internecine components that we can call national capitalism and international capitalism. In our country national capitalism has its ally in Hindu religious nationalism and international capitalism has its ally in Christian religious nationalism.
Political outfit of the Hindu religious nationalism is BJP that had so far been in rivalry with the religion of Muslims in Pakistani context. The Hindu religious nationalists thus engaged against Muslims have failed to notice how sharply the Christians have built up their religious nationalism in India, specifically in the belt of Hindu lower castes.
The Christian tactics of retaining Hindu names has helped it proceed as silently as predators move to engulf their preys.
Ever since Sonia entered into Nehru’s daughter’s family, Congress infested with sycophants of this particular family, has shown support for Christians by hoodwinking Indians in the name of secularism. Dismissal of J.B.Patnaik’s government a short while before elections in strong display of disapproval of alleged Hindu atrocities on Christian conversionists in Orissa is a pointer to this.
With Sonia as its supreme boss, congress now stands as political muscles of Christians even as international capitalism metamorphosed in USA trade design in India has got the Sonia led Congress as its strongest stooge.
So rivalry in Orissa’s soil between Hindu religious revivalists and Christian religious conversionists culminated in propagated annihilation of Christian conversionist Graham Stains in Mayurbhanj and proven annihilation of Hindu counter-conversionist Laxmanananda in Kandhamal is in fact the manifestation of rivalry between the two types of capitalism in their competition to grab the Indian soil and its resources for exploitation by the true beneficiaries thereof, the private profiteers.
Unless the state resurrects political nationalism and banns private wealth accumulation, the foul game that national capitalism and international capitalism now play on our soil in the name of religion cannot be stopped and/or eradicated.
What will happen?
With political nationalism dwindled, peoples will madly rush into religious nationalism and wherever whichever religion has the majority support-base will grab political power.
Indian Christians can never go against their life springs flowing in the foreign lands and conscious children of Indian soil will never like foreign hegemony. So, Sonia’s Congress will fail politically and even though BJP is the other side of the ongoing economic offense against the country, it being the political outfit of the users of Hindu religion that comprise majority of Indians at the moment, will rise more vigorously, specifically in Orissa.
I believe, BJP has studied this phenomenon clearly and hence has cleverly been instigating communal conflicts. Courts may issue wishful directions to dissuade communalism but unless religions are banned, religious nationalism cannot be stopped from growing and then in a state like Orissa where Hindus form the majority, who can stop BJP usurping power?
Chief Minister Navin Patnaik should pause and cogitate.
He should stop use of state terror against political activists who are trying to give the downtrodden working class the voice they need for their economic rights and instead of working for POSCOs and Jindals, should work for restoration of faith of the peoples of this state in political nationalism.
As I understand, when a novice in politics, he could not but fall in the trap of Subas Pani & Co of the IAS syndicate that has pushed him into the labyrinth of POSCO and other minegrabbers’ network from where he does not know how to escape. I understand, he is surrounded by sophomoric political hoodlums that have entered into BJD in shameless display of sycophancy and have ruined peoples’ faith in political nationalism.
But despite all his failings, he has shown matchless political guts in risking wrath of colleagues by dismissing ministers on ground of corruption. No other Chief Minister so far in Orissa had embarrassed so many senior IAS and IPS officers by subjecting them to vigilance raids and compelling them to suffer ignominy of enforced idleness. So, he may be kept under trial for a fresh term in hope against hope that peoples’ magnanimity may prompt him to correct the wrongs he has committed by siding with national and international industries to the detriment of farmers of Orissa.
If he dissolves the Assembly and terminates his alliance with BJP, the communalist party of traders and seeks a fresh mandate, I am sure, he will win, as peoples of Orissa will not opt for Congress, the party of American lobbyists. But if he does not do this, I am afraid, BJP will proceed to further flare up communal nationalism by posthumous use of Laxmanananda and eventually grab Orissa. If that happens, it would be the start of a sad phase in Orissa’s life.