COMMENTARY
Suppressing Dissent
in Maharashtra
Murder of Govind Pansare
Maya Pandit
Govind Pansare fought against
the right-wing agenda to
appropriate the syncretic political
and cultural traditions of
Maharashtra. This seemed to have
earned him the ire of divisive
forces and political opponents.
The author wishes to acknowledge the
inputs of Uday Narkar and Sharad Navare for
this article.
Maya Pandit ([email protected]) is with
the EFL University, Hyderabad.
Economic & Political Weekly
EPW
febrUARY 28, 2015
C
omrade Govind Pansare along
with his wife Uma Pansare were
shot at close range at 9.30 in the
morning on 16 February 2015, in front
of his house when he was returning
from his morning walk. A bullet went
through the soft tissues of his neck,
another through his armpit, past the
lungs and a third injured his knee. His
wife also sustained severe injuries in
her skull. After a struggle for a few days
he died in hospital while his wife has
been discharged.
The attack, the second major one in a
series of attacks on dissenting voices
from the secular, rationalist, left, democratic movement, in Maharashtra has
once again shaken the foundations of
our polity.
Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead in
a similar way in Pune in the early hours
of morning, while he was going for
his morning walk. The police have no
clue of the murder so far, leave alone
nabbing the culprits.
vol l no 9
The state of utter lawlessness and
anarchy that prevails in Maharashtra has
come to the fore once again. The attack
shows that violence against secular and
democratic people who fight for justice
of workers, minorities, women and other
marginalised groups has risen under the
present dispensation. It appears that the
conscience keepers of society are being
silenced so that a reign of terror can
be unleashed to drown their voices once
for all.
Narendra Dabholkar had invited the
ire of saffron forces because of his active
struggle to get the Maharashtra Eradication of Black Magic and Evil and Aghori
Practices Bill, 2005 passed in the Maharashtra assembly. Similarly, Pansare had
been at the forefront of the left democratic and secular movement in Western
Maharashtra for a long time.
Do Activists Pose a
Political Threat?
Do these attacks signify that the left
democratic forces pose a political threat
to the ruling powers? It was a Congress
government headed by Prithviraj Chavan
in Maharashtra which was in office when
Narendra Dabholkar was killed, and now it
is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Maharashtra led by Devendra
Fadnavis. But neither Dabholkar nor
Pansare could be considered a direct
political threat to the ruling powers.
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COMMENTARY
Then why are these well-planned
attacks taking place and who is carrying
them out? Is it because of the strong
stand Pansare had taken on the economic
policy issues of liberalisation and privatisation, or is it because of the challenge he
posed to communalism, religious fundamentalism and irrational politics of hatred whipped by right-wing politics? His
work might provide some answers.
Political Life of Pansare
Pansare had been a general secretary
of the Communist Party of India (CPI).
He was the strategist of the party and
as a veteran communist was involved
with diverse forms of agitational politics.
He had helped organise many workers
in the trade union movements, written
innumerable booklets to educate workers about their rights to work, decent
wages, food and civic amenities. Most
recently, he was also one of the chief architects and leaders of the anti-toll agitation in Kolhapur. Along with veteran
leaders like N D Patil and others, he had
been instrumental in getting the toll
collection stalled. The agitation was
symptomatic of his struggle against the
anti-people privatisation policies of
the government.
Both Dabholkar and Pansare were
crusaders against the right-wing politics.
Dabholkar through his rationalist association “Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti,” had been wedging a war
against superstitious practices and exploitation of people under the guise of religion by priests, and against fundamentalist politics and other communal forces, including the jat panchayats. As an
ardent follower of Mahatma Phule, Shahu Maharaj and Ambedkar, Pansare’s
work was aimed at educating people,
making them aware of injustice and oppression and enthusing them with the
confidence that they can change the
world around them through resistance
and agitational politics. He was the true
heir of the legacy of the radical reformist
tradition in Maharashtra, consistently
raising his voice against social oppression
of the marginalised, regulation and control
of media and culture, as well as oppressive
dictates of the fanatic leaders. That seems
to have been perceived as a threat.
Pansare’s ‘Who Was Shivaji?’
His small booklet on Shivaji called
Shivaji Kon Hota? (Who Was Shivaji?),
sold more than two lakh copies in both
Marathi and in its English translation.
The book debunked several myths carefully built up by cultural nationalists
right from the 19th century in the public
consciousness, endorsed later by activists
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febrUARY 28, 2015
vol l no 9
EPW
Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY
one was in Sawantwadi in the Konkan
region of Maharashtra) and trying to
bring people together in order to make
them rethink our literary and cultural
traditions of resistance and revolt
against the ideologies of caste, class, patriarchy and religion.
Sensitive to the issue of the right to
expression and its blatant suffocation by
the fundamentalist forces, he went on to
expostulate on the cultural politics of
silencing dissenting voices with examples
such as Murugan in Tami Nadu. He had
been active even at the age of 80 and
had taken up the issues of suppression of
dissent through organising a network of
rallies, conventions, theatre workshops,
through which people and especially
youngsters have been coming together
to think, argue and take up a position
against right-wing forces. He had always
made an appeal to thought, intelligence
and rationality as against the Hindutva
attempts to incite venomous hatred and
whip up communal frenzy against the
marginalised in the society. He had been
the man behind whom common people
rallied whenever there was a spate of
communal violence not only in and
around Kolhapur but in all of Maharashtra
and around the country. And it is this
work of his that had been attracting the
ire of a lot of people flushed with rightwing ideologies and monetary power.
He had been receiving several threats
to his life.
in the saffron brigade. This small but
very powerful book reached thousands
of people and earned him the ire of
several right-wing forces such as the
Bajrang Dal, the Vishva Hindu Parishad
(VHP), etc. The book came at a time when
both Bhagat Singh and Shivaji were being
appropriated by the fundamentalist
right-wing forces as part of their “rewrite
history” campaign.
Pansare demonstrated with historical
evidence and a fluent ease of expression
that Shivaji was a king of the people who
worked tirelessly for his poor rayat,
farmers and that he was not a protector
of Brahmins and cows, but of farmers,
women, shudratishudras and even Muslims. He demonstrated how Shivaji’s
policies helped agriculture, farming and
even tree plantation. Pansare literally
wrenched Shivaji out of the tight clutch
of the saffron brigade, just as Bhagat
Singh was wrenched free from them by
Shiv Varma and others through their
writings. This caused a festering wound
among the activists of the right wing
which saw the saffron groups erupting
now and then with venomous outbursts
against Pansare.
He had successfully organised an agitation against a yajna being conducted
in Kolhapur where hundreds of kilos of
grain and ghee were going to be burnt.
After Dabholkar’s heinous assassination,
he had organised a “Vivek Jagruti” programme through which he aimed at
waking up people’s rationality. When his
fans and workers decided to celebrate
his 75th birthday, he firmly rejected their
plan of offering him a monetary gift
and asked people to write small booklets instead, biographies of 150 activists
all over Maharashtra and these books
indeed were published.
He also decided to deliver 100 lectures
each in colleges on the work of Phule,
Shahu Maharaj and Ambedkar. He also
went on to establish the Shramik Pratishthan, an academy of varied cultural programmes such as film shows, lecture
series, publication projects through
which he had been constantly wedging
a battle against the Hindutva forces.
He had been organising the Comrade
Annabhau Sathe Sahitya Sammelanas
for the last six years (the most recent
The most recent example of this hatred
was when an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad (ABVP) activist in a seminar in
Shivaji University got so incensed that
he threatened him with foul language.
Pansare had spoken about Gandhi’s
assassination by Nathuram Godse and
publicly questioned the propriety of
erecting statues and temples for Nathuram Godse, the assassin of the Father
of the Nation. The ABVP activist claimed
that Godse was a true patriot, that he
would challenge Pansare in court for
speaking against a true patriot. Pansare
very calmly asked him to go ahead with
his plan, so that he could make his statement in the court of law and that would
have a wider appeal.
Economic & Political Weekly
vol l no 9
EPW
febrUARY 28, 2015
Threats To His Life
Why have we reached a stage where
the spirit of debate and discussion is
being throttled? It is true that like all the
other places, Maharashtra has also had
its share of divisive forces. Maharashtra
after all is the birthplace of Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). What is disturbing, however, is that the disease of
intolerance has seeped so deep into the
blood that the dissenter does not have
a right to speak and now not even a
right to live.
Verbal attacks and occasional physical
attacks on secular and democratic people
engaging in criticising the hegemonic
power structures have always been taking
place in our society. But that was a
fringe element. What is frightening is
that this fringe is now becoming the
centre. That is the tradition that is being
systematically nurtured and cultivated
as the most dominant form of regulation and control of dissent by the rightwing political forces.
Rise of the Lumpen Element
The pressures of a global market always
work better when they join forces with
the dominant ideologies of religion, class,
caste and patriarchy in order to discipline
and punish dissent. The Ganesh festival
and Durga pujas now would be impossible
to imagine without corporate support. It
is not surprising then that people such as
Pansare are sought to be eliminated
because they are raising their voices against
these very exploitative ideologies and
practices of the market-driven economic
policies and divisive communal politics.
This cannot happen without political
support and protection of the right-wing
organisations. Increasing pauperisation
and poverty have also made it easy to
wield power both through the lumpen
element and the so-called intellectuals of
the right. The lumpen element is increasingly available in the market for sale to
the merchants of communal politics.
If they kill people like Dabholkar and
Pansare, will they be able to stem the
flow of dissent? The rot is spreading and
the sooner we stem it the better, otherwise the Constitution will be a hollow
rhetoric, dissent will be dead and this
does not augur well for the country and
the polity.
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