Re-reading Marx on India

Ajith

Much has already been written about Marx’s writings on India. Is there need for more? Going by the Introduction and Appreciation seen in a new collection, the answer can only be an emphatic yes.[i]
Given the history of invasions of the Indian sub-continent by various forces and the empires they established, Marx raised an important question – what distinguished British rule from them? His answer was the civilisational ‘superiority’ of British colonialism.[ii] Superiority is a loaded term. Our contemporary critical sense, enriched by the insights of Edward Said and many others, calls for a closer look. But that cannot negate historical progress and the superior capabilities of any new social system compared to earlier ones; in all respects, including the appropriation of their knowledge. This was as true of the incorporation of tribal societies in the Indian sub-continent into caste-feudalism as it was for colonialism. The ‘superior civilisation’ of the British was evidently a product of its capitalist nature and in this respect the decisive difference noted by Marx, its inflicting a ‘misery of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind’ can’t be denied.[iii] This refutes the charge of Orientalism and exposes a basic flaw in this whole stream of reading. But that can’t be a plea for avoiding critical reading itself.
The fashion of blaming the faulty and biased source materials Marx had to rely on and passing by an examination of how he used them or how they influenced him is certainly not Marxian. Marx was critical in his use of that material, but not completely so. This was influenced not only by the paucity of additional inputs but also by the Enlightmentalist milieu of that period. Explicit traces of this influence can be seen, for example, in Marx’s views on the ‘Hindu’ religion, where he correctly criticises it for subjecting humans (the “sovereign of nature”) to a brutalising worship of nature.[iv] This characterisation of ‘Hindu’ (properly speaking Brahmanic) religion obviously does great injustice to its sophisticated philosophical thinking and misses the intriguing paradox of its co-existence with animism in a single belief system. We can attribute this to faulty information. But can the supposedly sovereign role assigned to human beings avoid critical correction? It even violates Marx’s own views on the nature-human metabolism.[v] Yet another example is where he reasons that the state’s running of irrigation systems in Asian countries, unlike private enterprise in medieval Europe, was necessitated by ‘civilisation … (being) … too low to call into life voluntary association’ apart from the vastness of territory.[vi] Low in civilisation, yet high enough to develop technology and organisation for such enterprises?
So what does this say about ‘historical superiority’? We need to be critical about the ‘absolute’ quality usually vested in it. It has to be tempered with the recognition that what is surpassed as inferior may well contain some superior aspects. The relativeness of ‘superiority’ to the future as well as to the past, given by class, gender, racial and various other biases accompanying it, must never be ignored. ………….

Pakistan: behind the assault on the Red Mosque

Pakistan: behind the assault on the Red Mosque – and what it tells us about today’s world

A World to Win News Service.

On 10 July, after an armed standoff, the Pakistani army assaulted the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) in the capital city of Islamabad. The room-to-room fighting lasted 36 hours. Although most of the people inside chose to leave (1-2,000, according to varying news accounts), about a hundred were reported killed. Their identity and the circumstances of their death have not yet been disclosed.

The government of Pervez Musharraf began putting pressure on the Red Mosque in January when it declared that the mosque’s religious school (madrassa) for women had been constructed illegally. In response, students at the men’s and women’s schools challenged the regime’s Islamic credentials. They tried to forcibly impose what they considered an Islamic way of life in this relatively secular city, and especially the area around the mosque, the heart of the capital and site of many government and military buildings. Squadrons of burqa-clad young women armed with lathis (long sticks) rampaged through stores and stalls selling music and films and made bonfires of “un-Islamic” books. They kidnapped and allegedly tortured Chinese women working in a massage parlour. They also denounced women running in marathons as equivalent to prostitution.

This went on for six months, with no action on Musharraf’s part. Then, suddenly, on 3 July, he sent troops to the mosque. Firing from inside the complex killed 16 soldiers, including a senior officer. The mosque leaders announced that if soldiers entered the building suicide bombers would blow up everyone. The assault came a week later.

In its wake, the army moved a division into an area in the country’s northwest run by local Islamic fundamentalists linked to the Red Mosque. The Pakistani army has half a million men, and a single division is not enough soldiers to conquer the area by force, but it is enough to make a dramatic show of authority and set up serious roadblocks. As soon as military convoys moved in, they came under attack. A suicide bomber drove into an army column in North Waziristan 14 July. The next day a convoy in the Swat Valley of North West Frontier Province to the north was ambushed. Armed and unarmed protestors seized the region’s roads, including the Silk Road leading to China…………..

Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities

by Noam Chomsky

Regrettably, there are all too many candidates that qualify as imminent and very serious crises. Several should be high on everyone’s agenda of concern, because they pose literal threats to human survival: the increasing likelihood of a terminal nuclear war, and environmental disaster, which may not be too far removed. However, I would like to focus on narrower issues, those that are of greatest concern in the West right now. I will be speaking primarily of the United States, which I know best, and it is the most important case because of its enormous power. But as far as I can ascertain, Europe is not very different.

The area of greatest concern is the Middle East. There is nothing novel about that. I often have to arrange talks years in advance. If I am asked for a title, I suggest “The Current Crisis in the Middle East.” It has yet to fail. There’s a good reason: the huge energy resources of the region were recognized by Washington sixty years ago as a “stupendous source of strategic power,” the “strategically most important area of the world,” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”1 Control over this stupendous prize has been a primary goal of U.S. policy ever since, and threats to it have naturally aroused enormous concern.

For years it was pretended that the threat was from the Russians, the routine pretext for violence and subversion all over the world. In the case of the Middle East, we do not have to consider this pretext, since it was officially abandoned. When the Berlin Wall fell, the first Bush administration released a new National Security Strategy, explaining that everything would go as before but within a new rhetorical framework. The massive military system is still necessary, but now because of the “technological sophistication of third world powers”—which at least comes closer to the truth—the primary threat, worldwide, has been indigenous nationalism. The official document explained further that the United States would maintain its intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where “the threat to our interests” that required intervention “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door,” contrary to decades of fabrication.2 As is normal, all of this passed without comment.  …………..

Fidel Castro:Reflections

by Fidel Castro Ruz

Another Argument for the Manifesto

Why did I once claim, in one of my reflections, that Bush had authorized or ordered my death?

That phrase may appear ambiguous and vague. Perhaps it would be more accurate, though even more confusing, to say that he both authorized and ordered my death. Allow me to explain immediately:

The denunciation surrounding his plan to assassinate me was made before he snatched an electoral victory from his opponent through fraud.

As early as August 5, 2000, I denounced these plans in Pinar del Rio, before a vast congregation of combative citizens who had gathered there for the traditional July 26 festivities, held in that province, in Villa Clara and Ciudad de La Habana in recognition of their merits that year.

Attempts to identify those responsible for the hundreds of plans to assassinate me meet with a shroud of secrecy. All direct and indirect means have been used to bring about my removal. Following Nixon’s morally forced renunciation Ford forbade the participation of government employees in assassination schemes.

I am convinced that Carter, bound by ethical convictions of a religious nature, would never have ordered any such action against me. He was the only U.S. president who had a gesture of friendship towards Cuba in several important areas, including the establishment of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba………..