11-18-2005, 10:40 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Marxist window opens to jihad
Balbir K Punj
A day after 500 well-armed Naxalites raided Jehanabad jail in Bihar and freed 389 prisoners including fellow insurgents, students of ultra-Marxist AISA jeered at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling him an American agent while he was addressing them at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. They responded by waving black flags at him.
The left and right halves of devil's factory - the Marxist brain - seem to be in perfect synergy. One half refuses to recognise the state, sovereignty, law and order and indulges in guerrilla warfare. The other half has successfully woven itself into the Indian establishment and tried to wreck the system from within. One destroys openly, the other through sleaze and intrigues.
The Naxalites, in a giant blood stained pamphlet that they left behind, claimed their 'Operation Jailbreak' was conducted to coincide with the Russian Revolution of 1917. They are not only mistaken about the date on which it occurred (Russian Revolution took place on November 7 not 13) but ahead by one century.
The cost of USSR's suicidal experiment with Communism in the 20th century is still being remitted by Russia in the 21st century. The blood-letting heralded by Lenin and continued by Stalin led to wanton destruction of life. Its impact was so profound that even today's Russia is a 'state withering away', losing half a million lives every year. China escaped the fate of the Soviet Union by reinventing itself under Deng Xiaoping. Today, China is offering help to India to crush the Naxalites.
But Naxalites of Bihar are more honest than armchair communists of JNU. They are wedded to their guns, lead a hard pressed existence and often on the periphery of society. Poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment and a caste-ridden society of Bihar is the hard reality for them.
Many of them are not educated although they are indoctrinated with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Their cadres perhaps do not even know where Germany is, the country where Marx was born, or Russia where the 1917 Revolution took place, or for that matter the location of China. I am sure many of them don't know that the USSR no longer exists and that Deng Xiaoping has reoriented Mao's China.
But the same cannot be said of the JNU Marxists, who are mostly students and teachers of liberal arts like history, sociology, political science, philosophy, economics. Their learning has little market value but is of much cost to the Government.
JNU has productive and constructive wings as well like Centre for Biotechnology, School of Physical Sciences, and Special Centre for Molecular Medicine, centre for environmental studies. It also has school for language, literature and culture. But it has a reputation of being a bastion of Marxist thought. JNU was established by the Indira Gandhi in name of her father to gather Communists from all over the country and give them a forum. It was reflective of the Congress outsourcing its think tank to the Leftists, a policy started by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Why was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hooted as an American agent by the students of AISA in JNU? No matter what their ideological differences, all including the Prime Minister have a right to put forward his views. The AISA boys and girls are, after all, students of an academic institution. But perhaps it is too much ask even that much courtesy from the Leftists. History shows they are not only intolerant but utterly abusive towards their opponents.
The readers have not forgotten another shameful incident that took place in JNU in May 2000 while an Indo-Pakistan mushaira was being held. It was 'secular' brigade's attempt at encouraging Indo-Pakistan bonhomie after the bitter Kargil War was over in 1999.
When a Pakistani poet made a scathing though ridiculous remark that India was the aggressor in Kargil, two self-respecting jawans of Army, present at the function, vehemently protested. At this a group of students of JNU, who were actually Muslims from the Leftist camp, attacked the jawans. Had it not been for providential intervention from the rest of the gathering, they would have certainly blinded the jawans. The incident made headlines and highlighted the anti-national aspect of Marxist jihadis.
Is the case qualitatively different now? Will the Government reshape its defence policy on the advice of AISA students by calling off the Indo-American joint air exercise at Kalaikunda? Will these embarrassing specimens of Indians who will not shed a drop of sweat for the defence of India, now frame the country's defence policy? Had such an incident taken place in the Communist China, how would have the authorities reacted? They might have bombed a part of the university. It would have been considered an anti-national act. Genteel Prime Minister Manmohan Singh responded to the students' outrage with eulogistic remarks about JNU, 'the centre of excellence' and spoke about the necessity of freedom of expression.
The Chinese Government had responded to a students' demonstration, albeit for a nationalistic cause, with a massacre. In the Tiananmen Square incident that occurred in Beijing in May 1989, 50,000 students went on demonstration protesting against China's economic instability and political corruption. The demonstration was crushed with guns and tanks, smothering the voice of hundreds of Chinese youth.
The event attracted universal condemnation across the world. But PRC's inhuman action found an apologist in JNU in form of Mr Sitaram Yechuri. He showed some videotapes in his alma mater JNU and explained that Tiananmen Square was actually a conspiracy of capitalist America to destabilise China.
Mr Yechuri is also loath to admitting that China was the aggressor in 1962. Once on a television programme Aap Ki Adalat (Zee TV) he skirted the issue every time the question was put to him. He said that it would not be in 'national interest' to argue over the issue since it had 'international ramifications' (China vs India - Who's Yechuri batting for?, The Indian Express, February 28, 1997).
The Marxists are a prop to the UPA Government although they seem unhappy with its policy on all matters. At one time they disappeared from the Coordination Committee but returned after a hiatus. Now they have threatened to withdraw support to the UPA Government on a strange issue. The Government was wrong, according to them, in voting at International Atomic Energy Association against Iran's nuclear programme. They perceive this as a fallout of American pressure, whereas in reality, except for Venezuela, all other concerned countries had either voted against Iran or abstained.
The Marxist point of view did not dither for a moment even when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a mullah by training, declared at a convention in Tehran that Israel should be wiped off the map. It is natural to infer that Iran, an oil and gas rich country, is bereft of any policy aimed at peaceful use of nuclear energy and only wants to use it against Israel.
Iran has been a theocracy since Islamic Revolution of 1979. Its Leftists have either been butchered or they have fled the country. Its nuclear programme is shrouded in mystery. But Marxists are overzealous to see that Iran's nuclear programme is not throttled. Are they actually jihadi mercenaries who sometimes batted for the erstwhile USSR, at other times for China and now for Islamic theocracies?
Why are Marxists, for whom 'independent foreign policy' is the latest signature tune, so keen to see Iran's nuclear programme in its place? Are not these the same people who criticised Pokhran-II in the vilest of terms? They dubbed it as Hindutva chauvinism which would spur an arms race in the subcontinent.
Will not Iran's acquiring a nuclear weapon disturb the strategic balance in West Asia? It is sure to lead to a war with Israel. But when it comes to India the Marxists are against even a peaceful nuclear programme if it is developed with the help of the US. India badly needs a phase in nuclear development programme for its energy security. That, however, is a non-issue for the Marxists. Marxism now seems an extension counter to Islamists.
(The writer, a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of BJP's think-tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
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Balbir K Punj
A day after 500 well-armed Naxalites raided Jehanabad jail in Bihar and freed 389 prisoners including fellow insurgents, students of ultra-Marxist AISA jeered at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling him an American agent while he was addressing them at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. They responded by waving black flags at him.
The left and right halves of devil's factory - the Marxist brain - seem to be in perfect synergy. One half refuses to recognise the state, sovereignty, law and order and indulges in guerrilla warfare. The other half has successfully woven itself into the Indian establishment and tried to wreck the system from within. One destroys openly, the other through sleaze and intrigues.
The Naxalites, in a giant blood stained pamphlet that they left behind, claimed their 'Operation Jailbreak' was conducted to coincide with the Russian Revolution of 1917. They are not only mistaken about the date on which it occurred (Russian Revolution took place on November 7 not 13) but ahead by one century.
The cost of USSR's suicidal experiment with Communism in the 20th century is still being remitted by Russia in the 21st century. The blood-letting heralded by Lenin and continued by Stalin led to wanton destruction of life. Its impact was so profound that even today's Russia is a 'state withering away', losing half a million lives every year. China escaped the fate of the Soviet Union by reinventing itself under Deng Xiaoping. Today, China is offering help to India to crush the Naxalites.
But Naxalites of Bihar are more honest than armchair communists of JNU. They are wedded to their guns, lead a hard pressed existence and often on the periphery of society. Poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment and a caste-ridden society of Bihar is the hard reality for them.
Many of them are not educated although they are indoctrinated with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Their cadres perhaps do not even know where Germany is, the country where Marx was born, or Russia where the 1917 Revolution took place, or for that matter the location of China. I am sure many of them don't know that the USSR no longer exists and that Deng Xiaoping has reoriented Mao's China.
But the same cannot be said of the JNU Marxists, who are mostly students and teachers of liberal arts like history, sociology, political science, philosophy, economics. Their learning has little market value but is of much cost to the Government.
JNU has productive and constructive wings as well like Centre for Biotechnology, School of Physical Sciences, and Special Centre for Molecular Medicine, centre for environmental studies. It also has school for language, literature and culture. But it has a reputation of being a bastion of Marxist thought. JNU was established by the Indira Gandhi in name of her father to gather Communists from all over the country and give them a forum. It was reflective of the Congress outsourcing its think tank to the Leftists, a policy started by Jawaharlal Nehru.
Why was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hooted as an American agent by the students of AISA in JNU? No matter what their ideological differences, all including the Prime Minister have a right to put forward his views. The AISA boys and girls are, after all, students of an academic institution. But perhaps it is too much ask even that much courtesy from the Leftists. History shows they are not only intolerant but utterly abusive towards their opponents.
The readers have not forgotten another shameful incident that took place in JNU in May 2000 while an Indo-Pakistan mushaira was being held. It was 'secular' brigade's attempt at encouraging Indo-Pakistan bonhomie after the bitter Kargil War was over in 1999.
When a Pakistani poet made a scathing though ridiculous remark that India was the aggressor in Kargil, two self-respecting jawans of Army, present at the function, vehemently protested. At this a group of students of JNU, who were actually Muslims from the Leftist camp, attacked the jawans. Had it not been for providential intervention from the rest of the gathering, they would have certainly blinded the jawans. The incident made headlines and highlighted the anti-national aspect of Marxist jihadis.
Is the case qualitatively different now? Will the Government reshape its defence policy on the advice of AISA students by calling off the Indo-American joint air exercise at Kalaikunda? Will these embarrassing specimens of Indians who will not shed a drop of sweat for the defence of India, now frame the country's defence policy? Had such an incident taken place in the Communist China, how would have the authorities reacted? They might have bombed a part of the university. It would have been considered an anti-national act. Genteel Prime Minister Manmohan Singh responded to the students' outrage with eulogistic remarks about JNU, 'the centre of excellence' and spoke about the necessity of freedom of expression.
The Chinese Government had responded to a students' demonstration, albeit for a nationalistic cause, with a massacre. In the Tiananmen Square incident that occurred in Beijing in May 1989, 50,000 students went on demonstration protesting against China's economic instability and political corruption. The demonstration was crushed with guns and tanks, smothering the voice of hundreds of Chinese youth.
The event attracted universal condemnation across the world. But PRC's inhuman action found an apologist in JNU in form of Mr Sitaram Yechuri. He showed some videotapes in his alma mater JNU and explained that Tiananmen Square was actually a conspiracy of capitalist America to destabilise China.
Mr Yechuri is also loath to admitting that China was the aggressor in 1962. Once on a television programme Aap Ki Adalat (Zee TV) he skirted the issue every time the question was put to him. He said that it would not be in 'national interest' to argue over the issue since it had 'international ramifications' (China vs India - Who's Yechuri batting for?, The Indian Express, February 28, 1997).
The Marxists are a prop to the UPA Government although they seem unhappy with its policy on all matters. At one time they disappeared from the Coordination Committee but returned after a hiatus. Now they have threatened to withdraw support to the UPA Government on a strange issue. The Government was wrong, according to them, in voting at International Atomic Energy Association against Iran's nuclear programme. They perceive this as a fallout of American pressure, whereas in reality, except for Venezuela, all other concerned countries had either voted against Iran or abstained.
The Marxist point of view did not dither for a moment even when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a mullah by training, declared at a convention in Tehran that Israel should be wiped off the map. It is natural to infer that Iran, an oil and gas rich country, is bereft of any policy aimed at peaceful use of nuclear energy and only wants to use it against Israel.
Iran has been a theocracy since Islamic Revolution of 1979. Its Leftists have either been butchered or they have fled the country. Its nuclear programme is shrouded in mystery. But Marxists are overzealous to see that Iran's nuclear programme is not throttled. Are they actually jihadi mercenaries who sometimes batted for the erstwhile USSR, at other times for China and now for Islamic theocracies?
Why are Marxists, for whom 'independent foreign policy' is the latest signature tune, so keen to see Iran's nuclear programme in its place? Are not these the same people who criticised Pokhran-II in the vilest of terms? They dubbed it as Hindutva chauvinism which would spur an arms race in the subcontinent.
Will not Iran's acquiring a nuclear weapon disturb the strategic balance in West Asia? It is sure to lead to a war with Israel. But when it comes to India the Marxists are against even a peaceful nuclear programme if it is developed with the help of the US. India badly needs a phase in nuclear development programme for its energy security. That, however, is a non-issue for the Marxists. Marxism now seems an extension counter to Islamists.
(The writer, a Rajya Sabha MP and convener of BJP's think-tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
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