PRAGOTI

The opinions expressed by Aniket Alam reflect how far he has moved from his roots. His equating the US with China, which despite all its problems continues to be a state dominated and regulated economy, and with Russia which is justifiably defending its own national interests against American MNC's encroaching on its hydrocarbon resources within its own territory (Siberia is a part of Russia isn't it?) by nationalizing them, betrays total ignorance. It is indeed pathetic that a former President of the SFI JNU Unit would expose such ideological and political naivete. Aniket has said: "They (i.e. Russia/China etc.) do not provide any alternative to the USA in terms of ideology, ethics, economic organisation or social justice. They just want to combat the hegemony of the pre-eminent power so that they can exercise their own power in exactly the same manner". Does Aniket support the tactics adopted by the Socialist states to combine in a United Front against Fascism alongwith capitalist countries like the US and Britain during the WW II, despite so many differences? The USSR under Stalin allied with the US and Britain despite no commonality in "ideology, ethics, economic organisation or social justice" in order to defeat the monster of fascism. US imperialism in today's world represents such a monster against which we have to form a broad united front. Aniket's views run counter to such an understanding. SFI JNU distances itself from this sectarian approach and laments the fact that a former leader of our organisation is espousing such views which are harmful for the Left movement of the country.

Roshan Kishore
Secretary
SFI-JNU Unit

What Aniket Alam has displayed is not moralism but pure humbug. Underlying his puritanical sermons is deeprooted cynicism and abysmal ignorance. When the US was threatening Iran over the nuclear issue Aniket was educating us about the vices of the fundamentalist regime in Iran. During the elections in Pakistan he warned us about the impending fascist takeover of the country by the Islamists. Such ridiculous assessments of course fell flat when the fundamentalists were marginalised by the electorate. Notwithstanding such a gaffe Aniket started a tirade against China over the Tibet issue coinciding with the anti-China hype by the Western media. Once that subsided, he took up cudgels on behalf of Georgia, conveniently hiding the fact that it was the American poodle Sakaashvili who had attacked South Ossetia, and demonising Russia for its counter-offensive. Then comes this marvel on the futility of a multi-polar world. One wonders whether Aniket is realizing that in the process he is increasingly sounding as a US State Department spokesperson. I sincerely hope that Aniket does not go the same way as Jack Straw, who was once a self-proclaimed Marxist and later went on to become a crucial architect of the "war on terror" as Tony Blair's Foreign Secretary.

An inspiring article and very moving too. Keep'em coming!

I have been reading Aniket's Alam's writings for some time now and it seems to be highly irritating. He seems to be in a constantly moralizing mode: just as Prabhat Patnaik somewhere called "messianic moralism". In other words if you are condemning everything under the sun, you are in effect condemning nothing. Everyone knows that in the absence of a Socialist world today, most countries in the world are capitalist. Any challenge to US imperialism therefore has to take the shape of inter-capitalist or inter-imperialist rivalry. Those who are interested in eventually going beyond capitalism, have to reckon with this real world situation. Aniket Alam is fully off the mark in equating EU and Japan with Russia and China because the former are subordinate allies of the US whereas the latter are potential rivals. Just because Russia is capitalist and China is not a pursuing a very convincing Socialist model does not mean we become cynical about whatever resistance they put up to the US. The future of democratisation of the world order is inconceivable without further intensification of the rivalry between US on the one hand and Russia-China on the other. In that sense multi-polarity, far from being an opium of the masses, is an achievable objective which needs to be fought for. By spreading cynicism about multi-polarity Aniket Alam is willy nilly strengthening those who aspire for the perpetuation of US hegemony and unilateralism in world affairs. One wonders why a person who does not seem to have the rudimentary idea of contemporary imperialism and indulges in such childish sermonizing is provided space in pragoti which i find to be an otherwise good website carrying very insightful material.

being anti-communal and extending solidarity to minorities and opposing xenophobia are suspicious acts. in this sense, even i was 'suspect'. and so they killed me...

Mr/Miss anonymous.....as anonymous as SKJRC. the important constituents of this SKJRC are TMC (an old ally of the BJP) and SUCI ( a so called communist party)!!! such is the (self-contradictory, confused) character of SKJRC. a rainbow-organisation, devoid of any ideology (or a peaceful coexistence of communalism and 'communism'...eh...mr/miss anonymous?), only with a common anti-people anti CPI(M) agenda. the nature of this same alliance's "democratic" movement in singur and nandigram is as follows: first day of violence in nandigram, samerun bibi (a woman and a muslim) was attacked; sankar samanta- he was hacked to three pieces......indeed a democratic movement!! thousands of poor farmers, labourers, fishermen/women....children... evicted out of their homes- their only crime is that they are CPI(M) supporters. indeed SUCI and naxalites are pro-poor!!! what a theorisation...eh...mr/miss anonymous?

"..prescripts of capitalist globalisation..." mr/miss anonymous, there is something as "communist globalisation" too or what? setting up of "capital intensive" factory is globalisation? what an anonymous theory; never heard of such one. then setting up of heavy industries under mahalanobis plan was also globalisation? then india started globalisation from 1960's. this is what didi is teaching to SUCI and naxalites in SKJRC, anonymous?

dear sir,
well written article. the art of linking science to the human nature is excellent. I didnt know that sita is so deep into the filed of science as well
tikender

While science cannot be left only to scientists, and while all humanity has an interest in understanding fundamental questions about the world we live in, I feel that a big obstacle to the popularization of science is the huge amount of pseudo-scientific gibberish that floats around feeding on people's desire for mystery and the distance that contemporary science has moved away from rough commonsense.

It is unfortunate that a person of the eminence of Sitaram Yechury has fallen into the same trap. While the question of man-nature dialectic and the materialist viewpoint he raises are of great importance, charlatans like Dan Brown or Capra can only mislead. Others have commented on Nataraja, let me give a link to what CERN says about Brown:
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

Marxists classics on the philosophy of science like the 'Dialectics of Nature' or 'Materialism and Empiro-Criticism', whatever else be their shortcomings, were a result of a serious study of the science of their day. Let us stick to that tradition.

It is a subject of psedo scientist who always refer the shiva dance with the spin of an electron. The concept of SPIN of electron has come into effect after the Bohr's theory faces some problem in explaining some phenemona. It is the practice of our pseudo scientists who alway compare the scientific achievement with their mythological faith. This concept came somewhere in 1930s and we had the myth of Shiva dance much before that. Why don't those scientists relating the dance with spin predicted that the Bohr's hypothesis would face a kind of problem which Shiva dance would offer satisfactory explantion. I am surprised to find out how Sitaram is comparing it with dialectical unity between zero and infinity. Infinity refers to a large quntity in science and it cannot be considered as negation of zero or oppsite of zero.

This is the US presidential determination letter by the US president to the US congress on the 123 agreement.

The article is extremely well written. It draws from various science authors to highlight the philosophical importance of the ongoing experiment which every marxist must acknowledge as an important step in understanding the dialectics of nature. The results from the experiment should be continuously followed by all materilaists as it has the potential to tie up more than one loose end in the formation of the Universe which the rightist conservative forces try to exploit. However one cannot fail to notice the "Nataraja" view of the author where he tries to find new dialectics in ancient indian scriptures. I hope such baseless views do not become fodder for the communal forces which "fight" to take India to its "glorious past".