PRAGOTI

Pls don't hang them....hanging would bring end to their misery in few seconds. These brutes deserve similar and more suffering than they gave the brave girl. Their both hands and one leg should be chopped, their eye should be donated to needy poor girls. They should be forced to live a vegetative life or rest of their life. This should set a strong example for our society.... Pls spread this message tote. Right forum /organisation .... I care for me country

In a country like India where for every other thing some act is passed it may be for promotion, fdi, reservation etc. but there is no act passed for the safety of women. It has been mentioned that citizen of India has 6 fundamental rights : 1) Right to equality; 2) Right to freedom; 3) Right against exploitation; 4) Right to freedom of religion; 5) Cultural and Educational rights and 6) Right to constitutional remedies. girls are neither safe in Delhi and nor in any parts of the country. what about (3) Right against exploitation? Girls are exploited and abused here and there; every hour we hear the news regarding such incident. there is no rights made for the protection of girls. if any such incident happens people just blame girls. "Men should not forget that if they are in this earth this is because of female".
The culprits should not be hanged or given capital punishment. Because hanging anyone is one time death. They and their family members should be given such punishment as they did with girl. This incident is very shame for the country.

The Delhi now has become the Impotent...they should leave this case for Public and let public decide the punishment....and punisment should be equatl to that pain what they have give to that girl. Just make them Impotent and cut one leg and one hand...they should also feel the pain......Hanging is not the solution..atleast they should be alive to feel the pain.

1. State agencies should stop 'blaming the victim'
2. Women’s helplines: Emergency numbers like 1091 should be monitored by women
3. Monitoring: CCTV’s in rape prone areas in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon.
4. make rape a Non Bailable offence

Bibekjyoti

At least some one has come up with a sensible charter of demands amidst the huge uproar! Keep up the fight JNUSU. We are with you.

you are welcome to read and brood over the "vast and complicated social dynamic" of the soviet union, as much as you like. but can you contest the view that democracy and peoples' empowerment were casualties in the USSR? if you are rejecting this offhand as succumbing to western propaganda, it only shows your own ignorance and blinkers. and if you suffer from no illusion regarding any kind of private property please start a campaign to eradicate and expropriate all forms of private property from tomorrow...we will all come and join.

Dear Mr Debu Mukerjee,

Thanks for showing me my place . I admit that I don't have the theoretical or practical credentials that you demand for making comments on Pragoti . I will not dare to do it again . I am also sorry that I forced you to take another look at a CPI(M) document.

But that you keep such close track of my shallow and snide comments is really scary . Can almost feel your breath down my neck . I would like to believe you are just a fake name not a real person .

Finally , I find it more honorable to err with the party on everything from English spelling to 21st century socialism , than be proved right on anything outside it. Cant help it at my age .

Love
NMK

mr. kutty, while elaborating on your position on the "central contradiction" you are only quoting from a document of a political party as if it is a gospel, which all followers of the marxist faith must necessarily adhere to. moreover, you are doing it in such a blind manner that even a typing mistake in the original sentence is reproduced (it should be "conjuncture" and not "conjecture"). so much for your rigour.

the relevant passage that you quote mentions: "the central contradiction of this period of transition remains between imperialism and socialism". why is "this period" a period of "transition"? transition from what and to where? where in the world is such a transition taking place currently? and why does the imperialism/socialism contradiction "remains" rather than "is", "central"? can you provide explanations to these questions? or do you believe that it is true because it is mentioned the gospel.

you'd perhaps know better, how to run state governments in west bengal, kerala and tripura. i am not competent to comment on that because i am not a member or supporter of the cpim. one would have thought that following singur and nandigram, there would be a rethink on the hypocritical emphasis on "large private capital and foreign capital in selected areas", but that is a different matter. prasenjitda's article is on a socialist alternative, where he emphasises the need for planning, giving the public sector the dominant role in major industries and encouraging small industries and cooperatives. for me, that is a good starting point to think about socialism in this neoliberal era. your disdain towards this vision only shows that you are not willing to engage with or encourage any thinking which goes beyond "Innumerable Party Resolutions to date", which by the way has not led to much progress in establishing socialism in india.

on a more personal note, your credentials either as an academic or as a participant in the indian communist movement are unknown, other than your self-made claims. apart from some comments against select left intellectuals in pragoti, especially prabhat patnaik, one hardly finds any meaningful contribution from your side. the demand for an undefined quantum of "rigor, History and Context in intellectual discourse" coming from someone who is incapable of writing anything original is quite striking. have you ever written anything on marxism, capitalism, imperialism, socialism etc.? it seems you neither understand any theory nor are you engaged in any struggle in practise; the only original thing you are capable of is making shallow and snide remarks. please refrain from making further "great" kicks and save yourself as well as the readers from more misery.

debu mukherjee
kolkata

My dear Nakul.
I have gone through your article very carefully just now. It is an
excellent piece analyzing the problem dispassionately. I agree with
you that the real problem in South Asia is misogyny. Assertion of
khaps, as currently stated by you, is a recent phenomenon. In the
course of modernization the old structure of the village society is
cracking up posing new challenges to the age old customs and
traditions. For instance, bhaichara(brotherhood) is the the
fundamental constituent responsible for social bondage. All male and
female members of a khap are supposed to be tied by blood relationship
and are supposed to be brothers and sisters. Hence any kind of sexual
relations between male and female belonging to a khap is taken as an
incest. Now in the wake of modernization- advanced means of transport
and communications, network of educational institutions, exposure of
the youth to media, both electronic and print. etc. there is greater
communion between the two sexes now. So the concept of bhaichara has
become a myth and illicit relation between two sexes in the villages
is common now. So much so, there is such relationship in the two sexes
of the same family tree too. So long it remains behind the scene, it
is ignored. Once there is an attempt to give it a marital shape, it is
taken as a threat to the age old social construct and a threat to the
hegemony of the village elders.
Then assertion of khap as you have correctly said reflects community
consolidation, especially in case of Jats whose old age hold on rural
life in the khap belt around Delhi, where Jats are a substantial
force, is now under challenge by the socially mobile Dalits and other
weaker sections.
My understanding of the khap elders is that they do not enjoy much of
social support. Earlier khap had representation of numerous castes,
with Jas being the dominant, now it is completely a Jat phenomenon.
Higher castes and weaker sections are no longer a part of it. Women
too have no role in it. So its support base is confined to a section
of Jats only. Media is also responsible for providing legitimacy to
khap by giving uncritical publicity to it which is often magnified.
Then this outmoded social formation is being given legitimacy, not by
individuals like Naveen jindal only. All the mainstream political
parties do so, barring the left organizations. Its roots lies in the
fear complex gripping these parties. These parties have no political
ideology worth the name.Hence the phenomenon of Aya Rams and Gaya
Rams. The leaders suffer from from deep sense of insecurity to such
an extent that they are afraid of their own shadows. So they do not
want to take any risk of losing votes, though khap elders do not
control any significant vote bank.In Rajasthan too caste councils used
to issue all kinds of fatwas. The state High Court and the state Human
Rights Commision took note of this and gave a direction to the state
govt. to apply a check on the illegal decisions of the caste councils.
The state govt. issued a circular to all DMs and Sps. in the state to
keep these caste councils under surveillance and haul up caste elders
under the National Security Act and the Goonda Act if they issue any
illegal fatwa. After this the fatwabazi has come to stop. In Haryana,
it is other way round. All the major political parties in the state
support these khap eldders.
All said and done, yours isa laudable attempt. Continue it.

what progress has the non-"western", non-"academic" marxism that you believe in made in the past three decades? india has not one but scores of communist parties, all acting in the name of the working class and Lenin. why have they failed to make any advance anywhere, let alone make the working class revolution? what according to you is the "prime social contradiction" in today's world? please spell out. and isn't it better to side with the struggling people in nandigram or kudankulam rather than becoming agents of Salim or nuclear power producing corporations? apart from snide remarks, do you have any substantive argument to offer against planning, public sector, cooperatives and small scale industries?

humbug is no substitute for argumentation. as long as the indian left is guided by a pretentious know-it-all approach like yours, its future would remain to be bleak.

The main part of the film apart from portraying immense sacrifices, sufferings, hardships and anti-imperialist centiment that these revolutionaries had is that it is about living and winning and that is where it is different from an earlier film by Asutosh Gorwarikar. By this, I mean that the revolutionary movement did not end with the demise of leaders like Masterda and Nirmal Sen or arrests and subsequent deportations of Ganesh Ghosh and Ananta Singh. The film shows that it was the communists that had carried forward the legacy of revolutionary movement in India. It depicts transformations in political thinking towards mass politics among Masterda's surviving followers who initially perceived anti-imperialist struggle along the lines of individual heroism and assassinations to an arduous path of mobilising people against colonial exploitation. Participation of Masterda's followers in Tebhaga and other peasant movements in Bengal is an example of this political transformation. I think that this is a big achievement of this film. There are many Bangla films (and probably few Hindi films) that deals with individual heroism but I do not remember any among those that had thrown light on this aspect.

Lastly, as far as my knowledge goes, I think Masterda or his associates like Ganesh Ghosh and Ananta Singh were not in any way associated with Yugantar group, at least during the Chattagram raid, because there was an element of Hindu revivalism in these groups which these people were opposed to. In fact, all of them were proclaimed atheists. One can consult Manini Chatterjee's book in this respect. They were highly motivated by the achievements of Irish revolutionaries in their struggle against British imperialism.

Lack of Muslims in this group probably was an indication of their lack of organisational work at the ground level. The movement lacked active people's participation and was overwhelmingly dependent on sacrifice, courage and individual acts of heroism. This is precisely the shortcoming that thesurviving members of Chattagram group identified and recitified later on. Tebhaga movement, in which many among them had participated under the leadership of the Communist Party, along with thousands of Muslim peasants across Bengal and due to which the Muslim League in East Bengal had to give in to the demands of land reform in their party documents in an independent and Muslim majority state of East Pakistan, was an example of this transformation.

Please add these names ... endorsed via email

Chirashree Das Gupta Associate Professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Robert Rahman Raman
Avinash Paliwal King's College London
Kaustubh Deka CPS, JNU
Kopal Pokal JNU
Manish Kumar
Smita Pandey Down to Earth; Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi
abdul rahman JNU
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