Ashis Nandy inadvertently exposed atrocious leftist bigotry

Ashis Nandy inadvertently exposed atrocious leftist bigotry

Rajeev Srinivasan on the startling oppression of the disadvantaged by the Communists

It has been a few weeks since Ashis Nandy made a statement that was roundly condemned by all. Although it made headlines at the time, we have moved on, as there are, daily, other, new atrocities to sensationalize (so far as the media is concerned) and to be aggravated about (so far as the public is concerned) – for example the abrupt cave-in to Italy about the marines who jumped bail.

What has surprised me is that two dramatic events – the massive attacks on Hindus (many temples burnt, and other atrocities undoubtedly have taken place) in Bangladesh that are going on, and the torching of 200 Hindu homes in West Bengal’s Canning area, have not received any publicity at all. The leftist-run media has simply ignored the carnage. This, compared to the hue and cry about Ashis Nandy’s statement, made me wonder about underlying prejudices: milady doth protest too much, indeed.

A glance at Google Trends shows that ‘Ashis Nandy’ as a search term had a huge peak in January and then it died down in about a week’s time. Everyone has found something new. But Nandy’s statement, which I reproduce verbatim below, should not so easily be forgotten. I personally think Nandy should be congratulated for his candor, not condemned. For, here is a lifelong leftist laying bare a dirty little secret that all of us should be cognizant of. What he actually said is the following:

It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the OBCs and the Scheduled Castes and now increasingly Scheduled Tribes and as long as this is the case, Indian republic will survive. And I give an example, one of the states with least amount of corruption is the state of West Bengal where when the CPM was there. And I want to propose to you, draw your attention to the fact that in the last 100 years nobody from the OBCs, the backward classes and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes have come anywhere near power in West Bengal. It is an absolutely clean state.

(Verbatim transcript of the relevant section, from Outlook India at http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?283737 )

The part that got the attention is, for convenience, what I shall call Part A: “most of the corrupt come from the OBCs and the SCs and now increasingly STs”. Now this may or may not be true, and it may depend on which state you are talking about. For instance, in Kerala, this may not be true, as the powers that be are either Christian or Muslim or deracinated Communists. But it may well be true in Dravida-Kazhagam Tamil Nadu. Yet, while I am not convinced that OBC/SC/ST are any more venal than the so-called upper castes, I concede he may be right.

That Nandy said something rude about the so-called lower castes (although he claims he was misquoted) should not be surprising, as this is par for the course for a leftist ‘intellectual’. Besides, Nandy is – I believe – a Serampore Christian; Christians tend to be contemptuous of ‘lower-castes’, although they claim, unconvincingly, that they are beyond caste. Note that Christians parade their prize ‘Hindu Brahmin’ converts; and ill-treat Harijan converts.

Let us analyze Part A briefly. What the man is saying, prima facie, is that ‘lower-caste’ people are inherently more corrupt, although he adds a baffling claim about how the Indian republic is safe so long as this is true. That seems to imply that corruption is the natural state of the Indian republic, which may well be true. There are some who say that the Indian constitution is a flawed document, and surely a republic based on such a constitution could be inherently corrupt.

There is also an argument that parallels the statement about how a woman needs to be twice as good as a man to be considered half as good. Things are not easy for those from the ‘lower castes’, as they do face a certain amount of discrimination and reduced expectations about their capacity to deliver. So unless a ‘lower caste’ person is twice as corrupt or ruthless, they may not get ahead.

But the really interesting thoughts come from Part B. Strangely, there was no storm of protest from the usual suspects over this statement because, I suspect, it is verifiably true. Nandy is saying that in the past 100 years, no OBC/SC/ST has had a shot at power in Bengal.

Let me rephrase that in context: despite the fact that for a large part of the last 100 years, (West) Bengal has been ruled by Communists and other leftists, the self-proclaimed messiahs of the oppressed, no OBC or SC/ST has been anywhere near power.

Now that is a truly explosive statement. In other words, Ashis Nandy, a sociologist and a leftist himself, in stating baldly, in so many words, that the Communists are die-hard casteists!

That is the dirty little secret of the leftists: extreme bigotry and contempt for the subaltern. This has been nicely demonstrated in Kerala. The backbone of the Communists in Kerala are OBC Ezhavas, especially from Malabar. However, even though Communists first came to power as long ago as 1957, they never made an Ezhava a Chief Minister until V S Achuthanandan in 2006, and that too only under protest. The party bosses once got him defeated in a safe seat, and in 2006 they openly pushed forward a Muslim to checkmate VS’s appointment as CM, after projecting him during the election as the CM candidate, which played a large part in their win in the first place.

If you consider that Ezhavas are numerous, well-organized and relatively well-off, and this is what is done to them, we can imagine what is done to less assertive SC/ST groups. According to the Communists, the OBC/SC/ST’s role is to be their hewers of wood and carriers of water, never leaders.

There were other highly qualified Ezhava candidates in those fifty years from 1957 to 2006, including two women: one, the stalwart theoretician K R Gowri, the tallest leader among the Communists; and the other, Susheela Gopalan, the wife of their deified leader A K Gopalan, after whom AKG Bhavans are named. Once they even projected Gowri as the CM candidate, but when they won, rejected her on ‘health’ grounds. This is risible considering she is still active in politics twenty years later: she finally quit the party in frustration, formed another party and has been elected several times again.

Let me mention in passing that this, and other evidence (including the harrowing tales told by women cadres who desert the Communists in the Red Corridor because of sexual and other oppression) suggests that the oft-heard-crying-crocodile-tears-about-womens’-rights Communists are actually misogynists by and large.

But that need not detain us here. Back to Part B of Nandy’s statement:in the last 100 years nobody from the OBCs, the backward classes and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes have come anywhere near power in West Bengal.

Let us savor that delicious statement once more.

So if you believe Nandy – and he should know, as an insider – the vast sea of humanity called the common man, or pothujanam in Malayalam, or aam admi in Hindi, is despised and oppressed by the leftists of India! We shouldn’t be surprised, because the leftists are utter hypocrites.

I had heard this also – I am not sure if it is true -- in the context of Bengal: that the reason West Bengal Communists are not bothered about systematic oppression, including slaughter, of Hindus in Bangladesh is because of caste. The Communist leaders in West Bengal appear to be high-caste (to my untrained eye, all those Banerjees and Mukherjees and Chatterjees and Boses are high-caste, and I am willing to be corrected if I am wrong); the Hindus being massacred in Bangladesh are low-caste. Therefore kind-hearted West Bengal Communists, whose hearts bleed daily for Muslims in India, simply ignore the much worse plight of the Hindus of Bangladesh.

Anyway, I have observed this mind-set in an Indian woman brought up in a Communist household. She casually announced her father’s casteism, as though it were a credit. Furthermore, she is a racist, and often airs her view that Indians are inferior to whites. Communist brainwashing runs deep.

Unfortunately, there are many like her who believe the utter nonsense peddled by the Communists. So long as this garbage is considered serious and not a bad joke, there is no chance that India will progress. The first thing to do would be to stop funding a certain university, the ground-zero of this virus; then maybe endemic casteism – and many other ills -- will diminish in India.

1450 words, 9 Mar 2013