Great Turmoil, Considerable Possibilities

Bernard Dmello

he evocative title of the book, Is the Torch Passing? seems to suggest that a decisive historic breakthrough is in the making in China and India. The author, Robert Weil, is known in radical circles for his previous book Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of Market Socialism (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1996; published in India by Cornerstone Publications, Kharagpur), which tells the story of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping used the results of the earlier socialist period to successfully build capitalism. In his latest book, Is the Torch Passing? he throws light on the great turmoil in China and India, and optimistically, the great possibilities these upheavals are throwing up. Part I has four chapters on China the rst, viewing the cultural revolution in historical perspective; the second, Chinese working class resistance; the third, the young, migrant workers of Shenzhen, especially those working for Foxconn, and the fourth, about the struggle for socialism, the lessons from the past and the prospects for the future. Part II has three chapters and an epilogue. The rst, about the difference it makes when the old state and social order are overthrown, which is a preliminary contrast of India and China. The second, hoping for the coming together of the toiling people of China and India in the course of their respective struggles, covers a whole lot of worker struggles, as also the possibility of the Maoist movement in India extending into the plains areas. The third, about the Maoist movement in India, covers the Lalgarh uprising in some detail. The epilogue discusses the setback in Lalgarh while in the conclusion the author places his hopes in revolutionary unity, the toiling masses of China and India joining forces.
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book reviews
Is the Torch Passing? Resistance and Revolution in China and India by Robert Weil (Kolkata: Setu Prakashani), 2013; pp 336, Rs 395.

Although India gained Independence from Britain in 1947, and China put an end to a century of imperialist domination in 1949, China was fortunate in that it did not have the caste and communal divisions that India has, and it was never fully colonised. Moreover, the movement in India was a struggle for national independence, not a social revolution. But India did end the feudal role of the princely estates and the stranglehold of large landlords, and thus, the transfer of power can be seen as one to a rising class of the Indian bourgeoisie. Importantly, and this is the main difference between China and India, Mao united the movement for national liberation with revolutionary transformation. The land reform in China brought an end to the rule political and social, as well as economic of the landlords, and advanced further, to the creation of the communes. The industrial working class was provided not only guaranteed jobs, but medical clinics, schools, old age pensions, recreational facilities and housing for their employees, the so-called iron rice bowl. The outcomes were that income distribution and the provision of services became much more equal, and this in turn resulted in a rapid and dramatic improvement in demographics. Of course, a combination of severe natural disasters and overly rigid implementation of certain policies, excessive procurement of foodgrains as a result of exaggerated reporting of foodgrain output during the Great Leap Forward (1958-61) led to famine conditions and excess deaths, but Weil argues that from the 1940s to the 1970s,
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loss of life from the social conditions of Indian capitalism exceeded several times those of Chinese socialism (p 118). The capitalist roaders in the CCP took power at a time when the working classes, despite the gains they had made in the socialist period, were weary of the social conict and violence in the course of the long struggles that accompanied the winning of such rights. Beginning around the 1970s, and especially from the 1990s onwards, the paths of China and India began once again to converge, a process that has continued down to this day. With the forced dismantling of the communes, the collective basis for rural life was shattered. The special economic zones (SEZs), the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the unprotected peasant migrants, those employed now numbering over 200 million constituting the new working class, the growing number of millionaires and billionaires and the new middle class (resembling their peers in the rich nations) have changed the face of China. But what needs to be stressed is the fact that the head start was provided by the socialist revolution in terms of better health, education, infrastructure development and social egalitarianism. It was socialism that laid the basis for the greatest ever surge of capitalist industrialisation in world history that China has witnessed since the 1990s, this under the leadership of a party that claims to be building socialism with Chinese characteristics. But in India, among the Maoist revolutionaries, those who are organising the wretched of the Indian earth, the lesson of Chinas development has not been lost they look to the socialist revolution under the leadership of Mao, the one that preceded the current capitalist market system. And here, although the Cultural Revolution (CR) suffered a severe setback, they are eager to learn from the lessons it offers for the building of socialism. The Cultural Revolution As we know, the CR dissolved in chaos, factionalism, and senseless violence (p 13). But it did generate newer levels of both consciousness and democratisation,
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which extended into all the personal relationships of women to men, children to parents, students to teachers, workers to managers, and of the people to party and state authorities, as the work of Han Dongping and Mobo C F Gao, cited by the author, reveals. The right to rebel must have had a lasting effect on the consciousness of the working classes for there are signs that suggest that it can still be seen today (p 15). Of course, what the Chinese working classes achieved during the CR to a certain extent, democratic control and collective social power collapsed, and virtually every one of the advances that had been made was quickly turned into its opposite, as China took the capitalist road. ...On the surface, little is left of the revolutionary era, which after 30 plus years seems only a dim forgotten memory (p 17). Yet, Weil argues,
a full review of the experience of the Cultural Revolution shows that it too must be looked back upon in a similar manner to that of the Paris Commune, as a failed attempt that nevertheless has left behind a critical legacy on which not only the working classes in China, but socialists both there and around the world, will build in the future (p 17) ... (W)hat had happened during

the Cultural Revolution should be seen not as a defeat, but as a setback (p 18).

This leaves me pondering. Could the CR be viewed as a failed attempt to take the political process in the direction of realising the principles of the Paris Commune? It seems to have failed very badly, for it did not even put in place democratic institutions to secure the accountability of the leaders of the party and the postrevolutionary state to the people. But, at its core, did not the CR embody a communitarian idea of socialism? Surely, it was a ght to preserve the communes and the communitarian ways of life therein, but it did not succeed in reining in the privileges and abuse of power of the Red capitalist class in the party and the postrevolutionary state. And, Mao, who was leading the CR, backed off when the very existence of the party was threatened. Why? We might never know. Chinas New Working Class But let us get back to the present great turmoil, this time to Shenzhen, just over the border from Hong Kong, Chinas rst SEZ, and within this workshop of the world to one of the largest enterprises

in the SEZ, that of the Taiwanese multinational Foxconn (is the trade name; Apple Inc is its most important client), whose young, rural migrant workers can give us at least a glimpse of the distinctive character of Chinas new working class. The author draws attention to the spate of worker suicides at Foxconns facilities in China in the spring of 2010 ((i)n death these workers gained the attention denied them in life) in the setting of strict corporate control over the workers in both plant and dormitory, and within the larger context of Apple and Foxconns drive to capture as much of the value of the products they could, in the process of cost reduction, putting aside Apples labour standards and Chinas labour laws, with the ofcial union afliated to the All China Federation of Trade Unions failing to stand by the workers side. More generally speaking, the very high intensity and duration of work [the phenomenon of guolaosi (overworkdeath)], the cheating on overtime and other payments, the strict regulation at both the factory and the dormitory, the dire working and living conditions, the denial of hukou (longer-term residential rights), the

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absence of family, the abuses of the security personnel, the workers desperate bid to defend their dignity, the hope that they will ultimately win the right to bargain with their employers on an equal footing, the wildcat strikes and labour protests, all these aspects of life and work are dening the character of Chinas new working class. It is time then to get to India. The Lalgarh Uprising At the heart of the matter on India, in the authors view, is the fact that in the worlds largest democracy one is also witnessing the worlds largest revolution (p 174). The rise and spread of the Maoistled insurgency is covered. The Maoist movement has linked the demands of the peasantry to a struggle for state power (p 178). But, over time, (l)earning from the inability to protect their strongholds in the urban and main farming areas in the plains, the Maoist cadre adopted a strategy of guerrilla warfare deep inside the forests. The author argues that enclave development is now a mainstay of contemporary Indian economic policy, the SEZs and the memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with large enterprises being the characteristic forms it is taking. Even the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M)-led Government of West Bengal adopted this enclave mode of capitalist development. The partys degeneration after more than 30 years in ofce is in a fashion similar to that of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional in Mexico (p 196). This takes the account to the uprisings in Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh. What kind of support did the CPI (Maoist) provide to the struggle in Singur, as the author claims (p 199), I am left guessing. And, in Nandigram too, but here the author species the Maoists role:
The CPI (Maoist) sent its cadre to assist [the] Nandigram [struggle], and many of those forced out of the region sought shelter 30 miles to the west, where its guerrilla army had a strong base. ... The Maoists ... offered both an alliance not resting on legislative politics, and armed forces to back it up.

the Singur and Nandigram movements, the Peoples Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) was open to anyone, but only if they joined as individuals, not as members of political parties (p 203). In his assessment of the Lalgarh uprising the author quotes the CPI (Maoist) general secretary, Ganapathy:
Their [the masses of Lalgarh] upsurge was beyond our expectations. In fact, it was the common people, with the assistance of advanced elements inuenced by revolutionary politics, who played a crucial role in the formulation of tactics. They formed their own organisation, put forth their charter of demands, worked out various novel forms of struggle, and stood steadfast in the struggle despite the brutal attacks by the police and the social-fascist Harmad gangs (p 205).

Nevertheless, Weil is full of revolutionary optimism when he goes on to say:

The CPI (Maoist) may adhere to its declared path of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, ...but may simultaneously be opening up a new fourth stage in that progression, one that is more closely geared to the 21st century (p 221).

He sees a solution to the challenge of revolution in India in a unity of struggle that rests on simultaneous uprisings in a wide range of geographic and social settings, that is, many Dantewadas, Lalgarhs all over the country (p 223). And, he hails the critical leaps forward by the Maoists in their approaches, in practice, to the indigenous peoples question, ecological degradation, and the womens question. Rounding Off What is the basis of Weils revolutionary optimism? Surely it lies in the courage, the staying power and the perseverance of the people in the course of their struggles in India and in China. I have a few quibbles, one or two of which I will take up in the limited space I now have left. On page 39 the author states: Though China lacks the vast slums so typical of the global South, the dismal housing of these migrant labourers in some ways resembles those same conditions. I would rather put it this way: Even though China has witnessed over the last three decades a rapidity of urbanisation unprecedented in world history, with some 400 million new urban inhabitants, yet there are no slums. Why? The reason, I think, has a lot to do with aspects of the value system of the post-Maoist leadership of the CCP, rooted in Maoism, which have not been discarded as yet. The leaders, even in the post-Maoist period, despite many of their failures, seem to have retained the moral commitment to provide a oor under which the income and living conditions of the least advantaged should not be allowed to fall, and a minimum level of social security. The living conditions of the vast pool of 400 million new urban residents in China, in no way do they seem to resemble say those of the precarious two-thirds of the residents of Mumbai, where I live. The employers of the young rural migrant workers in China have been forced to provide the latter with housing, and
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He then asks:
(I)s Lalgarh a new Indian Hunan, opening a further stage in the Maoist revolutionary struggle? ...Is the strategy of Chinese communists in the 1920s still viable for Indian Maoists in the 2010s? (p 206).

I nd it difcult to accept the authors claim that the peasant revolution that Mao found in Hunan and the Lalgarh uprising are surprisingly similar, even at times down to their smallest details. For one, it needs to be emphasised that the Maoists had already completed 10 years of underground work (the long, patient organisational work that precedes the ring of the rst shots, as Ho Chi Minh would have put it) amongst ordinary adivasis and moolvasis in the Lalgarh and surrounding blocks of the district of West Midnapore in West Bengal before they lit a prairie re (detonated a landmine that narrowly missed its target the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee) on 2 November 2008 there, sparking off the Lalgarh uprising. Not many on the revolutionary left in India would share the authors optimism when he says that Lalgarh is a new Indian Hunan that holds the prospect of repeating the Chinese model (p 210). For, as he goes on:
The Indian Maoists have still not been able to secure a long-term liberation base area... (like the) long-lasting (Chinese Maoist) stronghold in Yanan in Shaanxi province from 1935-47. [So] they have had their Hunan but they have not yet found their Yanan (p 211).
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The Lalgarh uprising is covered in greater detail, including tactics. For instance, in order to avoid the internal divisions and factionalism that weakened
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public lands have been made available for the purpose. Land in China, it must be remembered, is not yet a commodity as it is under capitalism. Another quibble I have is about some of the international comparisons made, for instance, on page 254, referring to the Maoist areas of inuence and the Operation Green Hunt of the Indian state against the Maoists over there, the

author says that, in effect ... one-third of India (has been turned) into a free re zone like Afghanistan or Gaza. It certainly requires one to investigate the guerrilla zones more closely to say things like that, and those zones in India do not cover even a tenth of one-third of this vast country. Nevertheless, with a book that highlights the great turmoil in India and China, and the great possibilities

that are unfolding as a result, I would have little hesitation in endorsing what Pao-yu Ching, professor of economics, Marygrove College, Detroit, Michigan, says on the back-cover: Anyone who is seriously concerned about the future of these two great nations should read: Is the Torch Passing?
Email: bernard@epw.in.

A Panegyric for the Brahmans

Anirudh Deshpande
We can only say, folly is an illness for which there is no medicine, and the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs [and] no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreignerThink of Socrates when he opposed the crowd of his nation and died faithful to the truth. The Hindus had no men of this stamp both capable and willing to bring [the] sciences to a classical perfection. Al-Biruni 1

Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present by Kaushik Roy (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press), 2012; pp 288, Rs 995 (hardcover).

ince the emergence of the linguistic and cultural turns in the social sciences during the 1970s and 1980s it has become fashionable in the intellectual circles of Europe, America and India to rediscover an India located outside the historical contexts made by conventional and Marxist historiography. Following this, the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the beginning of the fullscale United States-led Western war on Islamist terror since 2001 has fuelled the study of, and search for allies against Islam among the ruling elites in the West. Hindu-Strategic Doctrine? Globalised India, which has a large Muslim population and a history of Muslim rule and cultural inuence, has an important strategic function allotted to it in the new world order that has evolved post2001. Negotiating with Islam and nding appropriate state-centred strategies,

possibly with widespread intellectual and social concurrence, is of prime concern to the community of strategic thinkers in contemporary Western establishments. Individuals and institutions aligned with the West in countries like India, where the polity has distinctly shifted rightwards in the decades of globalisation, which began in the mid-1980s, often nd themselves posing the same questions that excite the so-called think tanks in the West. Thus, the strategic culture approach, which underscores the conception of the volume under review, has come to dominate a great deal of thought within the military policy institutions of America, Europe and India in the recent past. According to the submissions of this military approach to historical analysis, Indias strategic culture has historically been conditioned by Hindu strategic thought which seems to have metamorphosed into moderate Hinduism in independent India (p 265). The purpose of this book is to establish the existence of a productive political and military Hindu-strategic doctrine in precolonial India with reference to some selected normative political texts produced by brahmans in ancient and early-medieval India. Towards this end the author has adopted a frankly stated top-down elitist approach to the subject in deance of

the vernacular and micro studies which have highlighted the hitherto ignored or under-examined aspects of Indian history since the emergence of subaltern studies in the 1980s. Hence, several popular and indigenous military practices extant in precolonial India either nd no place in this volume or are recounted only in passing. The fact that these peasant and tribal practices never reached the levels of normative theoretical abstractions fancied by the self-appointed and highly subjective brahman custodians of Hindu strategic thought in India should have been noted by the author, whose reputation rests almost exclusively on a set of conventional texts on Indian military history. Much more could be written on this here but I refrain from doing so because of the limits imposed on this narrative by the book review genre. It will sufce to say that the book under review might be read for the critical potential it does not exploit, but it will certainly be noticed for not projecting a new imagination of Indian military history. Moderate Hinduism Let us begin with the end. The thesis of moderate Hinduism is problematic to say the least. It is unlikely that thousands of Indian citizens in Kashmir, the northeastern states, and in the immense forest tracts of south-central India will nd this description of the Indian state helpful in dening their experience of a police state. The bloodthirsty mobs let loose on the Indian minorities in 1984 and 2002 were certainly not motivated by a moderate form of Hinduism. How moderate Hinduism, by which this book means a religion forged by the great ancient Indian brahman acharyas among other things, has been in India since the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992, is an uncomfortable
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