Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Suicide can be defined as the extreme form of passive revolt against unconquerable oppression. Therefore the ever-increasing numbers of farmers’ suicide suggest that they are under such oppression, which seems to them as unconquerable.
When an individual commits suicide it may be attributed to unconquerable oppression perpetrated upon him or her by another individual or group of individuals. But when a class of people commits suicide, the oppressor cannot but be the State.
State is a power that becomes the instrument of oppression only when it falls in the hands of persons who possess it not by virtue of self-less sacrifice for the people but by being the facilitators of private industry. State then runs by State terrorism.
As far as Orissa is concerned, the State-power lies in the hands of the Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh at the center and Chief Minister Navin Patnaik in the State.
None of these two has any record of sacrifice for the people. But both of them are facilitators of private industry even of foreign origin and foreign interest. No wonder, with them at the helms of affairs, the farmers have been committing suicide in ever-increasing numbers.
Instead of embracing suicidal death as the extreme form of passive revolt against oppression, whosoever oppose oppression actively, these two functionaries notwithstanding their difference in political attires, become one in condemning them as extremists, terrorists or Naxals and unleash State terrorism to push them into homicidal deaths.
The syndrome is so serious that a man like K.P.S.Gill who is known as an eager exterminator of extremists / insurgents in the country has in a recent interview to Tehelka disapproved “Operation Green Hunt” – the latest form of State terrorism – being unleashed against people that are considered active voice of the oppressed.
It is time, all of the Indians that are not exploiters, must get united to decide as to which method of revolt against oppression is desirable: passive revolt that leads to suicide or active revolt that ensures emancipation.
Emancipation is possible only when plutocracy that has replaced democracy is removed.