SACW - 25 April 2015 | Bangladesh: Enforce Labor Law in Garment Factories / Pakistan: Sufism as counter terrorism is Mindless; Nuclear Safety / India: Nehru and the Indian Working Class; Public Interest Litigation Hoax / Socialist Car? / Charter of Free Media

Harsh Kapoor aiindex at gmail.com
Fri Apr 24 13:35:54 EDT 2015 

South Asia Citizens Wire - 25 April 2015 - No. 2854 
[since 1996]
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Contents:
1. World Charter of Free Media, Tunis, March 2015
2. Using Sufism to counter religious terrorism is not the solution to Pakistan's problems - and it's risky | Bina Shah
3. Bangladesh: Enforce Labor Law in Garment Factories and End Mistreatment of Unions | Human Rights Watch
4. Bangladesh: Rana Plaza - Victims of Fashion | a film by Fuad Chowdhury
5. Pakistan: Mirror, mirror | Nazish Brohi
6. Pakistan: Citizens Protest Karachi Nuclear Plant Safety - online media reports and clippings
7. M.N.Roy's First Meeting With Lenin (1920)
8. India: Replacement of History as Social Science, by "History" as Fantasy and Myth | edit, The Hindu
9. India: Government's actions against Greenpeace India are an attack on Democracy - Letter of solidarity from members of civil society
10. Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Working Class: A Historical Review | Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
11. Hedgewar - Golwalkar Banaam Dr. Ambedkar - a booklet in Hindi | Subhas Gatade
12. The Public Interest Litigation Hoax in India: its Adverse Impact on the Poor and Working Class | Shobha Aggarwal
13. India: PIL as an Industry | Shobha Aggarwal
14. India: Photos from the Delhi sit-in by social movements on issues of Land, food security, jobs and pensions
15. India's Poverty is Social Violence | Harsh Mander
16. Book Review: Bhattacharjee on Mary Louise Becker, 'The All-India Muslim League, 1906-1947'
17. Ishtiaq Ahmed, Yasser Lalif Hamdani exchange on the Venkat Dhulipala’s book, ’Creating a New Medina’
18. Cartooning Culture in India: An interview with Rita Khanduri [audio]
19. India: Citizens for Democracy Complaint against provocative statements to incite attacks against the Christian community
20. India: Cow Slaughter ban for Scientific Animal Husbandry or for Cultural Nationalist State?
by Irfan Engineer
21. When poetry is held unlawful . . . JTSA in solidarity with artists and poets of Kabir Kala Manch
22. Nishat Zaidi’s Review of Chawla, ’Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition’
23. India: Why liberals must support a common civil code | Ramachandra Guha
24. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - India: Modi Media Mystery (Mihir Sharma)
 - India: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh mulls building 120 cow homes connected to residential colonies and to hold cow knowledge tests
 - Siddharth Singh reviews Michael Walzer's The Paradox of Liberation
 - India - Maharashtra: MIM's foray in Maharashtra hinterland
 - India: Modi’s deafening silence on activist assassinations (Prachi Patankar )
 - Bajrang Dal activists vandalize India-Pakistan trade fair in Kanpur
 - India - NDTV programme: We The People - Beef and the 'bone' of contention
 - India: Scoring beef, underscoring banal Hindutva: The limits of MTV’s activism
 - India: Congress attempts soft Hindutva with Rahul's Kedarnath trip
 - India - Gujarat: Convicted in Naroda Patiya Case Babu Bajrangi to get a Three Month Bail
 - India: The opinion survey that led to a fatwa - What it reveals about sharia law and Muslim women (Ajaz Ashraf)
 - UK: Screenings of Indian film Nanak Shah Fakir cancelled after mass Sikh protest
 - India: Church attacks not illegal says Hindu Mahasabha
 - India: Stay off ‘convent’ schools, Hindu outfit urges parents (Prakash Kamat)
 - India: Color Coding of Communal Politics (Ram Puniyani)
 - India: Role of Social Activists in Democracy (Amulya Ganguli)
 - India: Claiming Ambedkar, Trashing the Constitution - Parivar's crass hypocrisy (Praful Bidwai) 

::: FULL TEXT :::
25. Pakistan, the Saudis’ Indispensable Nuclear Partner | Pervez Hoodbhoy
26. Nepal: Nearing a deal | Om Astha Rai
27. India: An elevation to lift the Left? | Srinivasan Ramani
28. The Socialist Car? Or the Car in Socialist Europe? | Zachary Doleshal

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1. WORLD CHARTER OF FREE MEDIA, TUNIS, March 2015
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http://sacw.net/article11089.html

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2. USING SUFISM TO COUNTER RELIGIOUS TERRORISM IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO PAKISTAN'S PROBLEMS - AND IT'S RISKY | Bina Shah
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Using Sufism as a tool in a game of ideologies will only result in more attacks of this nature. Far better to let the Sufi saints rest in blissful ignorance of what the state might make of their legacy.
http://www.sacw.net/article11107.html

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3. BANGLADESH: ENFORCE LABOR LAW IN GARMENT FACTORIES AND END MISTREATMENT OF UNIONS | Human Rights Watch
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Human Rights Watch called on the Bangladesh government, factory owners, and Western retailers to ensure respect for workers' rights and end the unlawful targeting of labor leaders by factory owners and supervisors. The 78-page report, ‘“Whoever Raises Their Head, Suffers the Most': Workers' Rights in Bangladesh's Garment Factories,” is based on interviews with more than 160 workers from 44 factories. [. . . ]
http://www.sacw.net/article11102.html

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4. BANGLADESH: RANA PLAZA - VICTIMS OF FASHION | A FILM BY FUAD CHOWDHURY
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http://www.sacw.net/article11111.html

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5. PAKISTAN: MIRROR, MIRROR
by Nazish Brohi
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The Pakistani passport, I was told during a recent argument on nationalism, is our identity in the world. Appropriate then, that it depicts the national predicament. On the cover, embossed in gold, is the emblem of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
http://www.sacw.net/article11099.html

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6. PAKISTAN: CITIZENS PROTEST KARACHI NUCLEAR PLANT SAFETY - online media reports and clippings
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The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) came under severe criticism at a press conference on Thursday at the Karachi Press Club where speakers highlighted their concerns on the proposed nuclear power plants and described the entire process of holding a public hearing on the project’s Environment Impact Assessment Report (EIA) as farce.
http://www.sacw.net/article11112.html

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7. M.N.ROY'S FIRST MEETING WITH LENIN (1920)
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. . . Lenin invited M.N.Roy to attend the second Congress of the Communist International to be held in Moscow in July-August, 1920. 
http://www.sacw.net/article11101.html

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8. INDIA: REPLACEMENT OF HISTORY AS SOCIAL SCIENCE, BY "HISTORY" AS FANTASY AND MYTH | editorial, The Hindu
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History, they say, is always written by the winners. But could this be by even winners of elections?
http://www.sacw.net/article11093.html

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9. INDIA: GOVERNMENT'S ACTIONS AGAINST GREENPEACE INDIA ARE AN ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY - Letter of solidarity from members of civil society
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The move by the central government to freeze Greenpeace India's bank accounts and block sources of funds, is a blatant violation of the constitutional rights to freedom of expression and association. It also seems to be an attempt to warn civil society that dissent regarding development policies and priorities will not be tolerated, even when these are proving to be ecologically unsustainable and socially unjust. These are dangerous signs for the future of democracy in India.
http://www.sacw.net/article11091.html

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10. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND THE INDIAN WORKING CLASS: A HISTORICAL REVIEW | SABYASACHI BHATTACHARYA
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There is surprisingly little work by historians on Jawaharlal Nehru's relations with India's labour movements. This historical survey of his positions, actions and relations vis-à-vis working class politics identifies a clear break in 1947; the earlier Nehru was far more actively engaged with labour issues than the Prime Minister Nehru. The article ends by suggesting possible ways to understand Nehru's engagement with working class issues both before and after independence.
http://www.sacw.net/article11090.html

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11. HEDGEWAR - GOLWALKAR BANAAM DR. AMBEDKAR - A BOOKLET IN HINDI
by Subhas Gatade
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http://www.sacw.net/article11092.html

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12. THE PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION HOAX IN INDIA: ITS ADVERSE IMPACT ON THE POOR AND WORKING CLASS
by Shobha Aggarwal
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In Public Interest Litigation (PIL) cases hundreds of thousands of poor people in India have been adversely affected to the extent of losing their livelihood, homes and even Constitutional guaranties all in the name of ‘public interest'; even though PIL in India derives its legitimacy as an instrument to provide justice to the underprivileged and the downtrodden. Why have things come to such a pass? The most important reason appears to be that in PILs the principles of natural justice are not followed.
http://www.sacw.net/article11105.html

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13. INDIA: PIL AS AN INDUSTRY
by Shobha Aggarwal
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When I joined Campus Law Centre, Delhi University after completing B.A, (Hons). Philosophy from St. Stephen's College in 1984, I was much mesmerized by Public Interest Litigations (PILs). At that time I thought that after becoming a lawyer I would only do PIL work as some present day PIL stalwarts – then just beginners – tried to indoctrinate us into the PIL realm. 
http://www.sacw.net/article11110.html

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14. INDIA: PHOTOS FROM THE DELHI SIT-IN BY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ON ISSUES OF LAND, FOOD SECURITY, JOBS AND PENSIONS
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A two-day dharna, on 23 and 24 April 2015, was called at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, by the Right to Food Campaign, the National Alliance of People's Movements, the Pension Parishad and the National Campaign for People's Right to Information. The aim was to draw attention to the fact that "the politics of this Government undermines the poor and pro-people policies and is out to attack people's rights and natural resources ...."
http://www.sacw.net/article11108.html

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15. INDIA'S POVERTY IS SOCIAL VIOLENCE
by Harsh Mander
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There are many exiles faced by India's poor. They are exiled from the consciences of the people of privilege and wealth. They are exiled from our cinema, television and newspapers. They are exiled from the priorities of public expenditure and governments. They are exiled from debates in Parliament and offices.
http://www.sacw.net/article11094.html

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16. BOOK REVIEW: BHATTACHARJEE ON MARY LOUISE BECKER, 'THE ALL-INDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE, 1906-1947'
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In this “pilot study” of the national movement that led to the formation of Pakistan in 1947, Becker explores the understudied “primary ingredients” of the movement (p. vii). At the very outset Becker argues that “effective, purposeful leadership” acted as a “a sine qua non” for the modern Pakistani nation (p. vii). This leadership, one of the ingredients, coordinated the other two, an integrated community and a peculiar set of circumstances, to make their successful bid for Pakistan.
http://www.sacw.net/article11096.html

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17. ISHTIAQ AHMED, YASSER LALIF HAMDANI EXCHANGE ON THE VENKAT DHULIPALA’S BOOK, ’CREATING A NEW MEDINA’
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[Debate in Daily Times on New historical research on Partition. A review of Venkat Dhulipala’s book, Creating a New Medina, by Prof Ishtiaq Ahmed appeared in Daily Times on 7 april, and a response to it by Mr Yasser Latif Hamdani on 13 April, followed by a rejoinder by Ishtiaq Ahmed on 21 April 2015. ]
http://www.sacw.net/article11114.html

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18. CARTOONING CULTURE IN INDIA: AN INTERVIEW WITH RITA KHANDURI [AUDIO]
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Ritu Gairola Khanduri, on history of cartoons, from colonial to current times, and about various aspects of Indian society from the state, to political society to modernity.
http://www.sacw.net/article11098.html

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19. INDIA: CITIZENS FOR DEMOCRACY COMPLAINT AGAINST PROVOCATIVE STATEMENTS TO INCITE ATTACKS AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
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http://www.sacw.net/article11097.html

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20. INDIA: COW SLAUGHTER BAN FOR SCIENTIFIC ANIMAL HUSBANDRY OR FOR CULTURAL NATIONALIST STATE?
by Irfan Engineer
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. . . the campaign by the Hindu nationalist organizations for cow protection is merely instrumental to achieve their political objective, establish cultural hegemony of the upper caste and declare the hierarchical and feudal culture privileging the upper caste as the national culture.
http://www.sacw.net/article11104.html

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21. WHEN POETRY IS HELD UNLAWFUL . . . JTSA IN SOLIDARITY WITH ARTISTS AND POETS OF KABIR KALA MANCH
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On April 10, 2015 Bombay High court refused bail to Sachin Mali, Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor of Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), who have remained in jail for two years without a trial. They are not charged with committing violence, or possessing weapons or contraband; it was their singing and their songs that were found unlawful.
http://www.sacw.net/article11103.html

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22. NISHAT ZAIDI’S REVIEW OF CHAWLA, ’HOME, UPROOTED: ORAL HISTORIES OF INDIA’S PARTITION’
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The moment of the end of the colonial regime and the birth of two nations, India and Pakistan, was also the moment of the Partition of the subcontinent in which millions were dislocated, displaced, and rendered homeless . .
http://www.sacw.net/article11081.html

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23. INDIA: WHY LIBERALS MUST SUPPORT A COMMON CIVIL CODE | Ramachandra Guha
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Many liberals seem to oppose a common civil code merely because the BJP claims to support it. This knee-jerk reaction is unfortunate. For a principled liberal position would be in favour of a common law to regulate the social practices of marriage, divorce, succession, inheritance, and adoption, this based on the best practices of all laws anywhere in the world, the judgment and selection done from the point of view of gender equality.
http://www.sacw.net/article11083.html

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24. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/
 - India: Modi Media Mystery (Mihir Sharma)
 - India: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh mulls building 120 cow homes connected to residential colonies and to hold cow knowledge tests
 - Siddharth Singh reviews Michael Walzer's The Paradox of Liberation
 - India - Maharashtra: MIM's foray in Maharashtra hinterland
 - India: Modi’s deafening silence on activist assassinations (Prachi Patankar )
 - Bajrang Dal activists vandalize India-Pakistan trade fair in Kanpur
 - India - NDTV programme: We The People - Beef and the 'bone' of contention
 - India: Scoring beef, underscoring banal Hindutva: The limits of MTV’s activism
 - India: Congress attempts soft Hindutva with Rahul's Kedarnath trip
 - India - Gujarat: Convicted in Naroda Patiya Case Babu Bajrangi to get a Three Month Bail
 - India: The opinion survey that led to a fatwa - What it reveals about sharia law and Muslim women (Ajaz Ashraf)
 - UK: Screenings of Indian film Nanak Shah Fakir cancelled after mass Sikh protest
 - India: Church attacks not illegal says Hindu Mahasabha
 - India: Stay off ‘convent’ schools, Hindu outfit urges parents (Prakash Kamat)
 - India: Color Coding of Communal Politics (Ram Puniyani)
 - India: Role of Social Activists in Democracy (Amulya Ganguli)
 - India: Claiming Ambedkar, Trashing the Constitution - Parivar's crass hypocrisy (Praful Bidwai) 
and More ...
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/
 
::: FULL TEXT :::
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25. PAKISTAN, THE SAUDIS’ INDISPENSABLE NUCLEAR PARTNER
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/opinion/toward-a-saudi-pakistani-rift.html?ref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani Parliament, even while stating its commitment to protect the territory of Saudi Arabia, recently adopted a resolution not to join the Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. Many Pakistanis are worn out by the Taliban insurgency at home and oppose intervention abroad, especially to fight an enemy whose name they are hearing for the first time and risk worsening relations with its backer, Iran.

The foreign affairs minister of the United Arab Emirates, Anwar Gargash, blasted the decision as “contradictory and dangerous and unexpected,” accusing Pakistan of advancing Iran’s interests rather than those of its own Persian Gulf allies. Pakistan was choosing neutrality in an “existential confrontation,” he said, and it would pay the price.

Pakistan’s federal interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, responded that it was “unacceptable” for a friendly country to be “leveling threats.” But Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, beholden to Saudi Arabia’s rulers for his safety after the 1999 coup that deposed him, is now under great pressure. Millions of Pakistanis work in the Persian Gulf, sending back vast remittances. Many of Pakistan’s politicians and generals have major investments in the region, and some have a deep affinity for Wahhabism. Rich Arabs in Pakistan are treated like royalty, allowed to flout hunting and environmental protection laws.

Small surprise then that some members of the Pakistani government have scurried to Riyadh to offer explanations. Or that some backpedaling has begun. Last week, the Pakistani military agreed to commit naval vessels to help enforce an arms embargo against the Houthis. This, however, will not undo the damage: The recent deterioration of Pakistan’s ties with its Arab benefactors, even if it turns out to be temporary, is unprecedented.

For Saudi Arabia, the Pakistani Parliament’s surprising assertion of independence was especially worrisome because it came on the heels of the American-backed preliminary nuclear deal with Iran. The kingdom has long feared rapprochement between Iran and the United States, as well as the development of Iran’s nuclear program. The influential former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal, has described Iran as a “paper tiger, but one with steel claws.” According to documents disclosed by WikiLeaks, the late King Abdullah repeatedly urged Washington to attack Iran and “cut off the head of the snake.” And now under the recent nuclear agreement, which is to be finalized by the end of June, Iran’s breakout time — the time it would need to build a nuclear weapon if it actually set out to — would be just one year.

This development undermines Saudi Arabia’s longstanding nuclear strategy. In the 1970s, partly to extend its influence, partly in the name of Muslim solidarity, it began bankrolling Pakistan’s nuclear program. In gratitude, the Pakistani government renamed the city of Lyallpur as Faisalabad, after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. When Pakistan seemed to dither after India tested five nuclear bombs in May 1998, the Saudi government pledged to give it 50,000 barrels of oil a day for free. Pakistan soon tested six of its own bombs. Later, the Saudi defense minister at the time, Prince Sultan, visited the secret nuclear and missile facilities at the Kahuta complex near Islamabad, which had been off-limits even to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, by her account.

 In exchange for its largesse, Saudi Arabia has received Pakistani military assistance in the form of soldiers, expertise and ballistic missiles. Pakistani pilots flew Saudi combat jets against South Yemen in the late 1960s. The Pakistan Air Force helped the Royal Saudi Air Force in its early years. Today Saudi officers train at Pakistan’s national defense colleges.

The Saudi government has taken the quid pro quo to imply certain nuclear benefits as well, including, if need be, the delivery at short notice of some of the nuclear weapons it has helped pay for. Some Pakistani warheads are said to have been earmarked for that purpose and reportedly are stocked at the Minhas air force base in Kamra, near Islamabad. (Pakistan, which has as many as 120 nuclear warheads, denies this, and to my knowledge, there is no precedent for a nuclear country transferring weapons to a non-nuclear one.)

The Saudis have also come to expect that they fall under the nuclear protection of Pakistan, much like, say, Japan is covered by the United States’s nuclear umbrella. Pakistan’s nuclear forces were developed to target India, but they can strike farther, as was recently demonstrated by the successful test launch of the Shaheen-3 missile, which has a range of 2,750 kilometers.

But with Pakistan now reluctant to openly support Saudi policy in Yemen, the Saudi government is starting to worry about its reliability as a nuclear partner. And so even as it pressures Pakistan back into line, it is pursuing other nuclear options.

In March, it signed an agreement with South Korea “to assess the potential” for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia. It plans to build 16 nuclear-power reactors over the next 20 years, with the first reactor expected to be on line in 2022, according to the World Nuclear Association. It insists on having a full civilian fuel cycle, leaving open the possibility of reprocessing weapon-grade plutonium from nuclear waste.

Given Saudi Arabia’s continuing scientific and technical limitations, despite major investments in education, this massive project is likely to bring in an international work force. Pakistan’s nuclear expertise would be especially welcome. Having conducted nuclear activities for several decades and under difficult circumstances, its scientists know how to procure the hard-to-get items needed in a weapons program. And they are fellow Sunnis.

Except that now Saudi Arabia, which is too rich to be ignored yet too weak to defend itself, has reason to fear that Pakistan, its indispensable nuclear partner, might no longer simply follow its diktats.

Pervez Hoodbhoy is a professor of physics and mathematics. He teaches at Forman Christian College in Lahore and Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.


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26. NEPAL: NEARING A DEAL
by Om Astha Rai
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(Nepali Times - 24 April 2015)

As Nepal marked the ninth anniversary of Democracy Day without a new constitution on Friday, many asked a question through social media: will the seemingly-endless constitution writing process be completed before the tenth anniversary of the victory of a people’s uprising on 24 April, 2006.

Given how political parties have wasted time – inching closer to an agreement and then backtracking – since the first Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in 2008, a new constitution before the next Democracy Day does not look certain. But the way political parties are narrowing down their differences over the key contents of the new constitution has raised some hope. If a new constitution before the next Democracy Day is not certain, it is not unlikely, either.

Particularly after the UCPN (Maoist) Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal convinced the 30-party opposition alliance to call off their three-day strike on 7 April and reached an understanding with the ruling NC-UML to forward the sorted-out issues to the CA’s Constitution Drafting Committee on 20 April, a breakthrough looks plausible. Both ruling and opposition leaders are now hopeful about reaching a consensus on federalism – the major bone of contention.

“We have intensified formal and informal talks, which is important to break the deadlock,” UCPN (Maoist) leader Top Bahadur Rayamajhi told Nepali Times. “Ruling parties are no longer rigid about using their numerical strength in the CA and we have also distanced ourselves from street protests.”

Sources say Dahal has prepared a new proposal on creating and naming new federal provinces and will present it to the ruling coalition after Prime Minister Sushil Koirala returns from Jakarta, Indonesia. Dahal is now persuading the opposition alliance to endorse his proposal, which sources say has divided the country into eight federal provinces reflecting ethnic identity.

Sources say Dahal’s proposal is just a face-saving and he will agree to join the government and pass the new constitution even if the NC and the UML reject it. In that case, Dahal will press for keeping his proposal in the annex of the new constitution. Once Dahal agrees to pass the new constitution by writing a note of dissent on federalism, the constitution writing process can be completed.

Prem Bahadur Singh, spokesperson of the UCPN (Maosit)-led opposition alliance, says: “We are hopeful because we are now divided over just names and demarcation of federal provinces.”

At a press conference in Kathmandu on Friday, NC leader Dilendra Prasad Badu said the dispute over names and demarcation of federal provinces would not halt the constitution writing process. “This issue can be sorted out by forming a commission to demarcate provinces and allowing peoples of new provinces to name their states,” he said.

Some political leaders also claim that they are so close to an agreement that people need not wait for the next Democracy Day to have a new constitution. They say the new constitution will be promulgated before or on the coming Republic Day on 28 May. Given how political parties have backpedaled after reaching closer to an agreement in the past, it is also likely that people will have to wait longer for a new constitution.

Om Astha Rai

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27. INDIA: AN ELEVATION TO LIFT THE LEFT? | Srinivasan Ramani
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(The Hindu, 22 April 2015)

The new CPI(M) general secretary, Sitaram Yechury, must realise that mere electoral alliances with regional parties will prove to be a fruitless exercise without a stronger emphasis on Left unity and engagement with social movements

The elevation of Sitaram Yechury to the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is at a time when the party (and other forces of the Left) are in dire need of new direction and inspiration. The new leadership of the CPI(M) will be carrying a difficult burden to revive the prospects of a depleted Left and support from a largely sceptical electorate. The 21st Party Congress of the CPI(M) was held at a time when the party had registered new electoral lows — even in its strongholds — and is, perhaps, at its weakest political position since its inception in 1964. This is in stark contrast to the period when Mr. Yechury’s predecessor, Prakash Karat, took on the role of general secretary 10 years ago. Incidentally, both leaders cut their teeth in student politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and are ex-presidents of the JNU Students Union.

Within a year after Mr. Karat became the first general secretary who wasn’t a founder-member in 2005, the party was at its strongest parliamentary position. The Left parties, combined, had more than 60 MPs in the Lok Sabha, in power in their strongholds and initially leveraged these positions adroitly to influence policy in welfarist directions, as they extended support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). At the centre, the Left managed to punch above its weight and even steered a few landmark pieces of legislation such as the Forest Rights Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. It is another matter that the party could not utilise these “achievements” to translate into support, bogged down as it was by events that had hampered it in its strongholds. It must also be said that tactical blunders — such as withdrawing support to the UPA over the nuclear deal at a wrong juncture — did not help it either.

Decline in strongholds

In the States where the Left was in power, especially West Bengal and Kerala, troubles of varying kinds began to brew only months after its coming to or retaining power. Buoyed by a strong mandate that was won on the slogan of industrialisation, the Left Front government sought to pursue “big ticket” projects in a hurry. The “reform zeal” of the then West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was contrasted with the “obstructionist” emphasis of the CPI(M)’s central leadership. There seemed a disconnect between what the party was preaching at the Centre — the fight against “neoliberalism” — and what the West Bengal government was seeking to do in the State — fostering capitalist development through incentivisation. Much has been written about the land acquisition issue that hastened the government’s downfall in the State and this need not be repeated. But the victory in 2006 in West Bengal had also papered over serious issues with the Left Front and in particular the CPI(M)’s rule in the State. The party had, over its long tenure, turned into a machine that combined a set of progressive leaders with others who were willing to get their hands dirty in electoral mobilisation, issuing contracts, and “managing” support. Over time, a large set of self-seekers had found a place in the party — that seemingly was going to be in power for a long time — and it was this set of careerists at the middle and lower rungs of the party who defected to the opposition at the first instance of the Left Front losing power.

The image of the party, as a pro-poor force, had also taken a beating following the Nandigram and Singur incidents and a wholesale defection of the rural support base to the Trinamool ensued. Since 2009, the Left Front has only seen a cascading decline in vote shares at every level of elections. This was partially because the CPI(M) could not mobilise enough support as an oppositional force against the Trinamool Congress due to a moribund leadership that had little experience being out of power. And the latter had taken the strong-arm, violent tactics of voter and candidate intimidation to even greater heights. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the once mighty CPI(M) in West Bengal is in a shambles, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is emerging as a stronger opposition force to the Trinamool Congress. In Kerala, on the other hand, the CPI(M) and its allies have managed to retain a steady support base, but a long-standing saga of factionalism and reliance on an overly-militant leadership from North Kerala has contributed to dents in its image and restricted its prospective growth. All said, the CPI(M)’s journey to relevance as a major national force will depend on how it manages to overcome the hurdles it has posed for itself in its strongholds in Kerala and West Bengal.

The State units of the CPI(M) have been loath to admit these frailties, let alone work upon them. The party leadership in West Bengal has insisted that the break in relations with the Congress at the centre (over the nuclear deal) was the main reason for the drastic loss of support for the party. This lazy excuse had allowed it to imagine that mere electoral rearrangement — a joint coalition with the Congress against the Trinamool — would be enough for revival. Combined with the rise of the BJP and the party’s organisational tepidity, it is not a surprise as to why the CPI(M) continues to flounder in the State despite the Trinamool government’s unfavourable image.

Lack of a positive voice

Yet, the decline in the fortunes of the CPI(M) and the Left as a whole since 2005 is not merely due to parochial factors. The Central leadership had emphasised the need to grow in other parts of the country particularly in North India. But the lack of an adequate organisation, or enough imagination to formulate specific strategies of mobilisation that are relevant to these areas, has resulted in the further enfeeblement of its presence.

The CPI(M) has been forever late in trying to innovate its political tactics to reach out to a changing India. The emphasis on “negation” — resistance, obstruction and dependence upon statism — has not helped fulfil its aims to set an alternative agenda. The Left parties will be better off seeking to promote an alternative agenda of comprehensive, welfare-driven growth, by emphasising universal health care, social security and state support and struggling for them rather than only offering resistance to the model of development espoused by the BJP and even the Congress. There are exceptions of course, in the manner in which the party has taken up issues of the marginalised in proactive ways — such as the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front for example. But largely, despite espousing progressive and even Left-liberal values (for example, the CPI(M) is the first party to openly take a position against capital punishment and its legislators were at the forefront of the Section 66A annulment discourse), it is seen as a party that does not stand for something, but is only opposed to many things. This is especially so among the youth and the middle classes. The latter in particular and the CPI(M) seem to share a mutual derision, even if the party’s leadership mostly comprises leaders from the very same section.

Even the urban poor, a humongous category that should be the ideal constituency for the Left, seems to have been bypassed by it. The Left’s emphasis on mobilisational tactics being limited to the workplace — organising the poor as labourers, craftsmen, public sector employees, etc, rather than urban residents who lack amenities, access to essential supplies and who live precariously due to inflation and job insecurity — is another factor that has limited its reach. The urban poor prefer to be mobilised by sectional and patronage-dispensing parties because of the lack of an alternative. The electoral success of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi — by reaching out to the urban poor as a mobilising category through the distinct lack of sectional appeals related to caste or region — perhaps holds some lessons for the Left parties. Of course, the AAP’s organisational failures are a reason why it has not matured as a progressive political party but that is not germane to the discussion here. India’s Left parties can also look up to the influences of the “new left forces” in Latin America and Europe, where the rise of radical Left parties has been aided by new strategies of mobilisation and organisational building.

Left unity

The easy claim made by critics for the weakness of the Left in India is that the goals that it espouses — socialism and comprehensive welfare driven economics — are passé. This is not true. While the Left parties have certainly declined, social movements have pushed for and achieved the implementation of welfare policies that do not flow from the neoliberal form of development. Left parties in Latin America have sought to rethink socialism as a process rather than a stage of development and have formed united fronts with social movements to bring about substantial changes in the economy, with large public support.

Mr. Yechury’s remarks after his promotion suggest that the CPI(M) will look to revive organisationally and is seeking to renew its support base, even while venturing to form programmatic (and even electoral) alliances with secular and like-minded parties to take on its primary enemy, the BJP. One hopes that the CPI(M) realises that without a stronger emphasis on Left unity and engagement with social movements to set a positive, progressive agenda, mere electoral alliances with regional parties and programmatic tie-ups with the Congress will prove to be a fruitless exercise for the party.

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28. THE SOCIALIST CAR? OR THE CAR IN SOCIALIST EUROPE?
by Zachary Doleshal
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(H-German - February 2015)

 Lewis H. Siegelbaum, ed. The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. vii + 242 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-4991-8; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8014-7738-6.

Reviewed by Zachary Doleshal (Sam Houston State University)
Published on H-German (February, 2015)
Commissioned by Shannon Nagy

The Socialist Car? Or the Car in Socialist Europe?

Sixty-two years ago, Simone de Beauvoir observed that asking what is a woman is to ask what man is not. The implication was, of course, that woman was understood as the "other" sex, the aberration from the male. The contributors to The Socialist Car: Automobility in the Eastern Bloc take on a similar problem as they try to disentangle socialist automobility from its Western, normalized, counterpart. Defining a "second world" car culture, however, appears to be no easy task, as the diversity of the Eastern Bloc takes the authors through a variety of experiences that often seem incongruent with the concept of a shared automobility across the bloc. Certainly, editor and eminent Soviet historian Lewis Siegelbaum, the major architect behind the conceptualization of a "socialist car," sees the complexity of the project in that "the Eastern Bloc’s version of automobility both replicated and departed from Western standards" (p. 13). Siegelbaum recognizes the departures common among those behind the Iron Curtain, such as spot fines, dismissal of seatbelts, and self-maintenance, as strong enough to have created a world for the socialist car. In addition to Siegelbaum’s compelling and lucid argument for a socialist automobility are the findings of the other contributors. Their assessments leave any meaningful definition of socialist automobility very much in doubt, at least for this reviewer.  

On the one hand, contributors’ compelling explorations into the car system(s) of the Eastern Bloc convincingly demonstrate certain themes of a socialist automobility. Eli Rubin’s fascinating conceptualization of the Trabant in "Understanding the Car in the Context of a System" and Briggitte Le Normand’s study of the urban planners of Belgrade in "Between Urban Planner, Market, and Motorist," provide evidence of an experience marked by shortages, corruption, and a general failure of the state to meet the demands of a car-hungry people. Indeed, in nearly all of the eleven chapters, alternative ideas about ways to use the automobile--chiefly car sharing--meet with failure in the face of public interest, shortage of funds, or shoddy design.

Yet, the contributors’ essays do much to undermine the concept of a socialist car through careful attention to local contexts. Instead of a clearly drawn socialist car, we see in Valentina Fava’s "The Elusive People’s Car" how postwar Czechoslovak technicians did not really change their approach to production and relied heavily on Western technology. Fava finds differences in marketing and distribution, but not manufacturing. The aforementioned Rubin, though, sees the Trabant as "a microcosm of the socialist planned economy and its southeastern German industrial heartland" (p. 125). Rubin conceives of the iconic East German car as quintessentially socialist, as it was a piece to a larger system of movement (Bewegungssystem). The Trabant's plastic body and two-stroke engine came from the specific political and historical context of East Germany. At least at Marzahn, the utopian housing settlement in far northeast Berlin that Rubin investigates here, the Trabant was "a manifestation of the various mechanisms at work in the socialist planned economy" (p. 138). Also looking at East Germany, Kurt Möser identifies "tinkering" as one of the key characteristics of GDR (German Democratic Republic) car culture. He finds that the key difference with the West was that modifications came "from below, not by a Sloanistic industry" (p. 169).

Conversely, Mariusz Jastrzab’s "Cars as Favors in People’s Poland" fascinatingly illustrates the ways Polish officials used cars to create patronage networks "and to earn dollars on car exports" (p. 46). Instead of trying to find a way to fit the car into a socialist model, Polish officials and a car-hungry public largely embraced Western conceptions of car use. Like Jastrzab, Gyorgy Péteri’s excellent essay, "Alternative Modernity: Everyday Practices of Elite Mobility, 1956-1980," demonstrates the corruption in the distribution model of the socialist car. Péteri though, goes further than any of the other contributors in showing the razor-thin acceptance of a distinctly socialist use of the car by highlighting the cold reception to Khruschev’s conception of public automobiles among elite Hungarian Party members. Furthermore, Péteri illustrates that conceptions of how to use and design the car were thoroughly Western. Péteri’s insights into Hungary therefore particularly cloud the idea of a socialist car.

The conception of a socialist car gets even fuzzier when former Yugoslavia is included. While this is certainly not surprising given nonaligned socialism, Le Normand finds that urban planners at least initially backed a socialist notion of automobility. Yet, Le Normand argues, the motorists who "embraced a more autonomous, individualistic notion of the automobile" won out, which meant that Belgrade became a city where "the logic of the market overruled official notions of the common good" (p. 103). Le Normand admits that this outcome was unique to Yugoslavia.

This leaves us with the question, did the socialist car system differ enough from the West, and have enough in common among cultures in the East, that we may conceptualize of it as its own way of automobility? Luminita Gatejel certainly thinks so. Her essay "The Common Heritage of the Socialist Car Culture" makes a strong argument that car culture, at least in the three countries under her purview, the GDR, Romania, and the Soviet Union, "was both genuine and socialist" (p. 156). Her argument rests on the idea that the "paradoxes and complications that mass motorization brought about in the Eastern Bloc countries" are what defines the socialist car (p. 155). This is certainly what Siegelbaum has in mind with this collection, "that understanding is derived from the notion … that what the Eastern Bloc ideologues aspired to was an 'alternative modernity'" (p. 6). Yet, as Fava’s, Péteri’s, Le Normand’s, and Jastrzab’s essays illustrate, the state planners’ notions of an alternative modernity were often compromised by their own personal desires. What seems to define socialist automobility then, is the states’ inability to meet demand, official corruption, and makeshift mechanics. These appear to have been widely variable depending on the gender of the driver--as Corinna Kuhr-Korolev illustrates in her chapter "Women and Cars in Soviet and Russian Society"--the status of the driver, and the location of the driver within the Eastern Bloc. Perhaps Siegelbaum’s conceptualization hoped for a Beauvorian resolution between the Western and socialist versions of automobility and that soon "recognizing each other as subject, each will remain an other for the other."[1] Instead, this reviewer found the diversity of essays in this collection to present a kaleidoscopic picture resistant to notions of a singular automobility.

Though the definition of a socialist car may be stretched thinly over the diverse landscape of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe in this collection, the attempt to follow such a definition is certainly rewarding. The essays are of a high standard and together provide us with an excellent resource for car cultures under twentieth-century socialist regimes. Of particular interest for H-German, Rubin’s essay on the Trabant is worth the admission ticket alone. Hopefully, a monograph will come of it. In sum, this would make an excellent addition to any reading list concerned with modern Eastern Europe, material culture, and automobility.

Note

[1]. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1989), 767.


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