ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Sumanta BanerjeeSubscribe to Sumanta Banerjee

Nationalism and Power Politics

Nationalism and Power Politics Sumanta Banerjee THE edge of militant nationalism among South-East Asian countries has more often been directed against each other than their common enemy

Left Unity through Academic Eyes

THE publication of the speeches and papers of the K Damodaran Memorial Seminar, brought together within the cavers of this book, could not have been more timely. Although the seminar was held more than a year ago (the editor fails to mention the date and venue of the seminar) at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in memory of the well-known Marxist intellectual K Damodaran, who died in 1976, the question of unity among Leftists discussed at the seminar is back in the forefront today in the context of the present political situation at the Centre.

AGRICULTURE- People s Participation becomes Modish

Source : Medical Officers, Chubwa and Nahortoli estates. For Nahortoli the figured are for calendar years.
figured are for calendar years.
that Finlay had special responsibilities. Conditions there, they claimed, were probably the worst in the world. A report for the UK Overseas Development Ministry in 1977 had described a situation of declines in real wages since 1977, labour lines 'considerably short of international standards', 'almost non-existent' latrines, 'low nutritional standards' and a workforce apathetic because of its ignorance and malnutrition. While the report does not specify that Finlay's estates had all these features it does not .specifically exclude them either. Sir Colin's only response was to claim that "our native workers overseas . choose to work for the company on the open market, which proves they are happy and eager with their lot". The fact of course is that there really is no 'open market' on tea AGRICULTURE estates, with their ethnically distinctive populations. In Kenya the situation is different, in that most workers are temporarily migrant, leaving families behind and returning each year. Here it is more difficult to specify company responsibilities and the extent to which they are neglected.

PHILIPPINES-Rule of Family under Martial Law

January 6, 1979 PHILIPPINES Rule of Family under Martial Law Sumanta Banerjee AT the National Press Club in Manila, an official of the US embassy in the Philippines is introduced to the guests as a CIA agent; the remark is greeted by laughter in which the American also joins.

Timeless Emergency

Timeless Emergency Sumanta Banerjee Indira Gandhi's India: A Political System Reappraised edited by Henry C Hart; Westview Press, Colorado, USA, 1976; pp 313, $ 7.50. THIS book stands out in sharp contrast censorship".

PANTNAGAR-Miniature Green Revolution Society

PANTNAGAR Miniature Green Revolution Society Sumanta Banerjee WHILE the March 1977 experience of ousting an authoritarian regime from power has given our people a newfound courage to assert their rights, for the ruling classes it has reinforced the need to suppress such assertion by ruthless violence. The massacre of, farm labourers at the G B Pant University of Agriculture at Pantnagar on April 13 was a sequel to the tussle between the long-suppressed grievances of the labourers seeking new outlets of protest on the one hand and the determination of the authorities to put them down by the old methods of terror on the other.

Devaluation of Marxism by Leftist Academicians

Academicians THE controversy over the text-books on Indian history which broke out soon after the new ruling party came to power at the Centre and which has led to debates in newspaper columns and conferences in Delhi and other places, unfolds important lessons for Leftist intellectuals in India. It sheds a murky light not only on the current communal offensive against attempts at a secular interpretation of the past, * also on the intellectual dishonesty opportunist careerism of a section of the so-called Leftist academicians

LABOUR-Anti-Worker Offensive in Haryana


their detention and after taking an oath before the Loknayak have been free to enjoy their ill-gotten gains and even resume their activities.
A historical review of these laws reveals that such laws have been primarily directed at preventing political parties, mass organisations and individuals from carrying on their democratic and political activities in support of the exploited sections of society.

IRAN-The Shah Visit

January 28-February 4, 1978 IRAN The Shah Visit Sumanta Banerjee AS India unrolls the red carpet for the visit of the Shah of Iran, we are reminded of the Freudian theory that a defensive striving against ideas which can awaken painful feelings can lead to forgetting. In the ease of Iran, the world appears to he consigning to oblivion not only the recent past, but a very disagreeable present.

Violence of the Rich

January 7, 1978 ries were done to death in the Sahar block.
One day in 1971, the Master came to Arrah, to see his fellow teacher. "I know brother", he said to him "that I am going to die one of these days. But I will die partly satisfied. For one change that our movement has brought about is that the landlords do not dare now to touch the women of the poor. And that is not a small change." The Master had summed up the achievement of the naxalite movement. Ending social oppression had become the movement's first milestone. The harijan had to force his acceptability as a man.

POLITICAL PRISONERS-Pledges Unredeemed, Promises Broken

November 19, 1977 POLITICAL PRISONERS Pledges Unredeemed, Promises Broken Sumanta Banerjee THE endeavours of the ruling parties at the Centre and the states to deliver the political prisoners from jails appear to be quite tortuous. The Janata and the other non-Congress parties who fought the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were unanimous in their pledge to release all political prisoners immediately on assuming office. The pledge is yet to be redeemed in its totality.

The Left of the Subcontinent

Sumanta Banerjee IN India, the different groups of the CPI(M-L) which launched rural guerilla struggles during 1967 to 1974, are now at the crossroads. Although they correctly chose the landless and poor peasantry as the motive force for any future revolutionary change in India, their failure to sustain a liberated zone depreciated the hope of a viable alternative power structure, and their indifference to mass movements deprived them of a nation-wide organised base. While the pro-Moscow Communists, blinded by their infatuation with Indira Gandhi's 'progressive policies' and paranoic fear of 'Right reactionary conspiracies', allowed the spontaneous anti-Congress mass upsurge to go by, the handful of pro-Peking Communists who survived the repression of 1972-74 remained confined to their narrow and isolated ideological grooves and were unable to take up the enormous responsibility of leading the masses. The parliamentary alternative has once again scored a point, and the system has succeeded in mollifying the forces of social unrest and channel them into electoral politics.

Pages

Back to Top