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. 15 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 ICSSR Data Access Scheme for PhD Scholars EPW Research Foundation Applications are invited from PhD students in universities and colleges for one year access to EPWRF India Time Series (EPWRFITS) for use in their doctoral research. This is to promote Social Science Research through Online Time Series Data Services. 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For further details about the modules the prospective applicant can access a demo version after a student’s free registration. Please visit website www.epwrfits.in. Address for sending applications and any query: The Director, EPW Research Foundation, C-212, Akurli Industrial Estate, Akurli Road, Kandivili (East), Mumbai-400 101, INDIA. Phone : 022 - 2885 4995 / 96 FAX : 022 - 2887 3038 Email : [email protected] Website: www.epwrf.in and www.epwrfits.in 16 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. 17
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