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Letters

Dual Power in Dandakaranya
Both D’Mello and Navlakha deserve praise for their unwearying fight to knock down attempts by devotees of abstract and dogmatic non-violence, and rescue the real intentions of Maoists from the fog of slander and calumny [Frontier, Vol 45, No 52, July 7-13, 2013]. But in all humility the strategy and theoretical outlook of the Maoists do not seem to have brought them closer to the broad masses outside their base areas. Rather they seem to have got themselves isolated and more or less trapped. The Indian state does not care how many of its jawans perish, but is determined to crush the Maoists.

Since the broad masses of India are disenchanted with the so-called ‘political class’ it is not impossible for the Maoists to organise among them and build a cushion against their armed campaign against the Maoists. There is room for democratic struggle outside the frame of bourgeois democracy, for which innovative methods may be tried. Since a one-sided stress on armed struggle, relevant in the region where they have their base areas, but confusing in many other regions, may prove ruinous, a more flexible and comprehensive approach is the need of the hour.

A democratic alliance of different classes not all of whom prefer armed struggle at the moment, must be formed in the country to start a strenuous and unyielding movement until the final hour when most contradictions mature and an army of steel confronts the enemy. This is not indefinite postponement but the demand of real circumstances. This movement must work on different fronts with different methods but with the aim of changing society. The first step is to mitigate fratricidal contradictions among the masses, which is not as easy as the Maoists think. An international perspective applicable and relevant to India must be thought out and practiced so that the alliance survives.
Hiren Gohain, Guwahati

‘Fascism’
This has reference to the article of Garga Chatterjee (GC) 'Bengal’s Slide into Fascism' in Vol 45 : no 46 [June 2-8, 2013].

In his article GC has contested the notion of Vijay Prashad's article in the Counterpunch. But in this way GC has trapped himself in a state-centric vision of fascism. In spite of the 'honesty and repentance of past-crimes' becoming 'an integral part of political praxis of the opposition', i.e. CPI(M) and its left front, the danger of fascism will remain in the operation of the future governments. People cannot forget the past fascist rule of 'Indira-autocracy', as coined by some left groups in the seventies. Can anyone forget the long repressive regime of Congress in West Bengal? Can ever the political praxis of a party in governmental power rid itself from fascism?

In truth fascism is not only a phenomenon of the state and some governments. It is a social phenomenon. As Michel Foucault questioned long ago in his preface to the Anti-oedipus, 'How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behaviour?
Jiten Nandy, Kolkata

Frontier
Vol. 46, No. 6, Aug 18-24, 2013

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