Calcutta Notebook
S R

Stalwarts at the A K Gopalan Bhavan, headquarters of Communist Party of India (Marxist), have at long last apparently learnt that death penalty is at variance with the Marxist temper. Party's central committee in a communique after its meeting on 13 May, disclosed that it ticked off "a note presented by the Polit Bureau" on the abolition of the death penalty. "In India, the death penalty, as it is in practice is arbitrarily implemented. It is inhuman and after execution irreversible. Instead of capital punishment, the Party wants in the 'rarest of rare' cases and most heinous crimes, life imprisonment to be extended for the entire life of the person convicted with no scope for remission", it stated.

But it is not known as yet whether the turn-about reflects a genuine desire to return to Marx, giving up the position, held by Lenin-Trotsky (later enthusiastically imitated by Stalin for his climb to supreme authority and also by Mao and Ho-Chi Minh as also their successors and Castro too). Death penalty was abolished in Russia during the rule of provisional revolutionary government of Kerensky but reintroduced during the Lenin period. They ignored –inexplicably or opportunistically–Marx's categorical opposition to capital punishment in a commentary in New York Daily Tribune (18 mid-February 1853)," Is there not a necessity for deeply reflecting upon an alteration of the system that breeds these crimes, instead of glorifying the hangman who executes a lot of criminals to make room for the supply of new ones," he bluntly but consciously stated.

Victor Serge (real name : Victor Lvovich Kibalchich), an anarchist-turned Bolshevik–joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolshevik) and inducted in the international secretariat of Communist International's secretariat during Lenin's time–wrote in his Memoirs of a Revolutionary (published first in French, Memoires d'un revolutionnaire, 1901-1941, but it was published much later but in Paris in 1951) death penalty was 'reintroduced and the Cheka (secret police for repression of dissenters and enemies-SR) were given enlarged powers" in early 1921. Interestingly enough, "In the middle of 1920, Dzerzhinsky (chief of Cheka) with the approval of Lenin and Trotsky wrote "Serge, recommended the abolition of death sentences throughout the country, except in districts where there were military operations." No less capricious, irritable and brutal' than Hitler. "Of the 139 members and candidates of the party's central committee who were elected at the Seventeenth Congress, 98 persons, i.e., 70 percent were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-38). What was the composition of the delegates to the Seventeenth Congress? It is known that 80 percent of the voting participants of the Seventeenth Congress joined the party during the years of conspiracy before the Revolution and during the civil war: this means before 1921.... The same fate met not only with the CC members but also with the majority of delegates to the Seventeenth Congress. Of 1,966 delegates with either voting or advisory rights, 1108 persons were arrested on charges of revolutionary crimes, i.e., decidedly more than a majority. This very fact shows how absurd, wild and contrary to common sense were the charges of counter-revolutionary crimes made out, as we see, against a majority of participants at the Seventeenth Congress." Nikita Sergeivich Khruschev, divulged it in the controversial secret speech. It couldn't happen but for the statutory power to execute by the state, the very existence of which–oxymoron like 'socialist state' and 'commune state' smuggled into Marx's writings by Lenin, such executions would not happen.

Introduction and implementation of death penalties by parties, set up during the Comintern era, is a brazen travesty of Marx. Among those who vehemently opposed were David Borisovich Riazanov, the greatest Marx scholar of the 20th Century, and Rosa Luxemburg.

Rabindranath in his essay on Nationalism squarely indicted death penalty : "Man in his fullness is not powerful, but perfect. Therefore, to turn him into mere power, you have to curtail his soul as much as possible. When we are fully human, we cannot fly at one another's throats; our instincts of social life, our traditions of moral ideals stand in the way. If you want me to take to butchering human beings, you must break up that wholeness of my humanity through some discipline which makes my will dead, my thoughts numb, my movements automatic, and then from the dissolution of the complex personal man will come out that abstraction, that destructive force, which has no relation to human truth, and therefore can be easily brutal or mechanical.''

Even Mahatma Gandhi opposed death penalty. It is a canard that he asked the Viceroy Lord Irwin to hang Bhagat Singh. Rather he wrote to the Viceroy, "Execution is an irretrievable act. If you think there is the slightest chance of error of judgment, I would urge you to suspend for further review an act that is beyond recall. Gandhiji famously indicted the "evil of capital punishment that it gives no opportunity to such a man to reform himself" (Collected Works of M K Gandhi, Vol. 45, p.200).

But the CPI(M) general secretary and 'ideologue' Prakash Karat did not think along this line. Otherwise even after reading Holy Family, he would have raised the demand years ago. After all CPI(M) politbureau members excepting Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee lack the guts to criticize Stalin.

The sudden ire against capital punishment are two documents. One, letter to Karat, the day after the execution of Afzal Guru 'in utter secrecy' by Satya Sivaraman and Manusha Shethy. "The entire legal proceedings against Afzal were shot through with contradictions, fabrications and travesties of legal procedure. The Supreme Court bench that finally sentenced him to death did so to 'appease the national conscience' despite inadequate evidence of his role in the Parliament attack case". The letter exposed the PB member Sitaram Yechury who said unashamedly, "I think, the law of the land with all its provisions has finally been completed as far as the Afzal Guru case and the attack on the Indian Parliament is concerned. The issue which had been lingering for the past 11 years has finally completed its due course". Italics in original. Did Yechury 'appease the national conscience', and joining the UPA in harnessing the 'Hindu vote'?", they wrote. "If the Congress is fast becoming the B Team of the communal Hindutva brigade should the CPI(M) try to become the C Team? Has your Party learnt nothing from the defeats it has suffered due to similar unprincipled stands it has taken in the past? Are we being completely delusional in expecting a Party named with grand terms like 'Communist' and 'Marxist' to take a stand different from that of political formations taking the nation fast forward towards all out Fascism?", they added.

The other is a statement by the Democratic Students Federation in its website (nlog). "Afzal Guru's mercy petition to the President of India had been filed way back in 2006. Many more mercy petitions are still pending before the President, where sentencing has occurred before 2006. The way this particular case has been singled out clearly shows that the President of India acted in accordance with the dictates of the Congress-led government for petty political gains by playing to the jingoist gallery. Only recently the Law Minister had said that Afzal Guru was one among the 28 convicts on death row and other mercy petitions were still pending before the President and that this case cannot be singled out as per the due process of law set out in the Constitution. So why was this procedure bypassed in a matter of days? This double speak on the part of the government clearly betrays the political motives behind the decision and points towards a dubious role being played by the President, which raises questions of constitutional propriety.

There has also been a vulgar "celebration of death" by the right-wing forces led by the RSS-ABVP-BJP, which betray a fascistic and barbaric mindset unbecoming of a civilized and democratic society. The DSF condemns the jingoistic politics of the right wing, and calls upon all the progressive and democratic sections to reject this politics of hate and divisiveness.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 48, June 9-15, 2013

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