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…………..