LET US MOVE FORWARD
with their majestic memories inspiring
our hearts and guiding our minds but certainly not in a copycat/fatuous manner.
Venerate our veterans we must, especially the heroic martyrs like Bhagat Singh,
Chandrasekhar Azad, Surya Sen, et al, but in our efforts to build a socialist democracy we should be
ingenious and innovative even if that means non-agreement with any or much that
has been said or done by them. It is to be noted that those pioneers themselves
differed considerably on what has to be done subsequent to the end of the
foreign rule though all of them were one in their enthusiasm to end that rule.
Whereas the Kakori conspiracy case veteran Manmathnath Gupta had become a sort
of an independent Marxist in course of time, his own brother, another veteran
freedom fighter, Manmohan Gupta was a decidedly anti-Marxian socialist as
regards the ways and means to build post-independent India. Whereas the still
earlier Sachindranath Sanyal of the Bandi
Jiwan fame was a sort of an Indianized socialist revolutionary seeking to
harmonize the philosophies of the ancient Indian Rishis and the modern materialist
Karl Marx, his younger brother Jitendranath Sanyal was chums with Bhagat Singh
– a national anarchist turned Marxist socialist. Of course, not many know about
the transformation of the dedicated nationalist revolutionary Bhagat Singh from
his earlier Vaillant-following anarchist bent to the later Leninist trend. In this
context we respect, though not concur with, the criticism of Bhagat Singh by
Dr. Koenraad Elst that we have published in this issue. Revere but criticize,
admire but contrast, and always think and act creatively is our spirited
suggestion in this regard. That a variety of socialism established or tried to
be built in about one-third of the world, called ‘state socialism’, failed and
is now shunned by right-thinking humanists and democrats for its oppressive perversions
doesn’t mean that the ideal/ideology of socialism itself failed. Subsequent to
the recent crisis in world economy ever since the 2008 meltdown, even stalwart
pro-capitalist scholars are acknowledging the merits of Marx and his prognosis,
and some even query: ‘Marx has come
back!?’ If we understand that socialism itself is an evolving ideology
basically aiming at a social transformation beneficial to all human beings and
the environs, then we don’t think there need be much hesitation in welcoming it;
but at the same time, though steadfast, we must also be pragmatic and flexible
enough in our struggles to achieve it. §§§
