brihaspati wrote:Rudradevji, yes I think we discussed this awhile back.
But while agreeing with you about the possibility, I am now thinking that probably we will have to grapple with the same questions and methodology we have been discussing in several threads about IM. I am partly within the position of Shivji that "convincing" is possible, but I also feel additionally that we will need a tremendous amount of "pressure" and ruthlessness to wean them away from their current path.
Coming to think over it, I have the feeling that in fact similar methods will appear to be needed in both IM and ICOM, for probably the essential dynamics of both are very similar (not necessarily the same agenda), as the pscyhology and power relations are very similar. We have the ideologues at the top, who claim to be the arbitors of an ideology that can explain everything and provide guidance for everything. It poses a "devil" who has to be relentlessly fought. It poses continuous struggle, both ideological and military to replace existing state power. It divides society into two antagonistic classes primarily, and looks upon the state machinery as a repressive apparatus that should be used to impose the "new" ideology. It sees nothing wrong in the fusion of ideology, political power, and military power in the same core authority to which all must submit. It poses a small vanguard swelled mostly by selection rather than election.
I personally have already mentioned before that I mourn the loss of many youth whom I have seen being lost to this "cause" in the later '90s as a loss to Indian society as a whole. In one institution I could "recruit" 12 for the "moderates" out of a class of 48, whereas 2 went over to the "extreme". Had excellent relations with the latter until left all of it behind, and I would still give up all 12 to get those "two". Both "liquidated" as far as I know now. From many such "classes", I have a pretty good picture of what attracts them, and this is what agonizes me even years after. I would rather have the ICOM leadership and ideologues "liquidated", eliminated completely so that they cannot carry out their own traditional elite search for power behind the mask of ideological sophistry. I have seen the corruption, the ideological as well as material dishonesty in both moderate and extreme ICOM leadership - from very close quarters - and nothing good for the nation can come from them.
The weights that shopkeepers use for weighing get eroded by excessive use - and the sly shopkeeper uses that eroded weight to filch his buyer. The Indian communist ideology is like that eroded weight, which is used by the peddlers of communist dreams to filch from the lives of eager young Indians.
Just like the IM theologians they have to be eliminated, exposed and destroyed first before you can think of weaning their followers.
Brihaspatiji, I think we're in broad agreement on the matter. However, in terms of approach, I do think there are a few different methodologies available (of which some may be more practical under the present circumstances than others).
It is from observing the nature of these organizations... Islamist, Communist, Evangelical, or any flavor of politico-ideological power structure in the Abrahamic tradition...that I arrive at this conclusion. I have come up with a set of (rude-looking) pictures to explain my model for such power structures in graphic terms, and present them for analysis and comment here. Hopefully it will communicate the idea better than words.
First, a brief explanation of the model as I've visualized it. It's three-dimensional, and so we need two orthographic (and mutually perpendicular) views to conceive its entire form.
Accordingly, in each of these images is a Projection (or top) view and an Elevation (or frontal/head-on) view of the power structure model.
Intensity of colour represents the degree of ideological commitment. Thus in the above example of Indian Communist organizational structure, the deepest red is found in two places: in the Politburo or leadership, and in the fringe element of the Naxals. From the center going outwards, the deep red of maximum ideological commitment gradually fades to the white of indifference.
In the Projection view, in the top part of the diagram, the center represents the point of maximum investment in the status-quo... or its center-of-gravity. This is the point occupied by those parties who have the most to gain from the status quo remaining as it presently is, and the most to lose from its being disturbed. Thus, the supreme leadership (which I have labeled "Politburo" for convenience) resides in the center.
Radiating outwards, at decreasing levels of ideological commitment, are the groups which have a decreasing level of investment in the status quo. The senior party cadres, then the regular party workers.
Further out are the general public, consisting of the urban classes and rural masses. Of these, the urban classes may not share in communist ideology, but may still have made some investment in the status quo in the sense of "kharcha-pani" connections with party figures to facilitate their daily business. Furthest out are the rural masses, who couldn't care less about the ideology, and for whom one dispensation is as good or as bad as any other... hence their substantial distance from the status quo center-of-gravity.
Outside the rural masses are a ring of peripheral (or fringe) members, the Naxals, who are ideologically very strongly motivated... hence, deep red once again. However, they are very far from the center of gravity of the status quo. In fact, they have abandoned life within the system and organized with the sole motivation of changing the status quo. In this they may retain the backing of the center to some degree, or it may be that the center once backed them to achieve specific purpose and later abandoned them.
Now looking at the bottom part of the image, we see the Elevation (or frontal) view of the same structure. The heights of various elements here represent their level of authority in its hierarchy. As expected, looking at the center, the Politburo is on top; then the cadres, followed by regular workers, and finally the general public. The fringe members, or Naxals in this case, surround the hierarchy. To either side, at the very fringes, we see that their authority tails upwards until it equals or even exceeds that of the Politburo. This represents the autonomy from central authority which fringe actors eventually develop, the further they are from the status-quo center.
The second image represents the sort of challenge which I believe you are contemplating when you advocate mounting an assault on the ideology first, as here:
The Indian communist ideology is like that eroded weight, which is used by the peddlers of communist dreams to filch from the lives of eager young Indians. Just like the IM theologians they have to be eliminated, exposed and destroyed first before you can think of weaning their followers.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from your phrasing it appears as if you favour something like this:
A direct, frontal assault that penetrates all the way to the ideological core and leadership of Indian Communism, ensconced at the center of its status-quo structure, decapitating the credibility (or more) of those at the very top of its hierarchy.
Certainly that's one way to do it, and it may work. However, it's a process very demanding of organizational energy, coordination and so on. The problem with such frontal assaults, historically, has been the resilience of the target... the energy of the attack is often dissipated long before one penetrates or even arrives at the target's core, because it is absorbed by various peripheral rings/hierarchical tiers along the way in. Many times in history, various Abrahamic ideological power structures have attempted to mount these sorts of attacks on each other. While they succeeded in some instances, as with the Spanish Reconquista, they more often failed, as with the Crusades.
Even if the assault finds its way to its intended mark, the associated energy cost is often so great that no energy is left to reshape and reconstruct the decapitated structure in a desirable form. America's regime change in Iraq, and the aftermath, would be the most relevant example of this in recent times.
I propose that there is another way. It is the manner in which rural activists such as Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati have been able to influence Communist power structures, at the fringes, by operating on a grass-roots level at the same peripheral zones inhabited by the Naxals themselves. In fact, it targets the fringes as opposed to the center. As a method it is not dissimilar to those employed by Gandhiji when turning the freedom struggle into a mass movement.
I've attempted to illustrate it like this:
We see a grass-roots challenge by workers seeking to effect social transformation at the same level, and often in the same theatres where the Naxals are active. The Naxals are ideologically motivated, and yet very distant from the centre-of-gravity of the Communist ideological power structure, by virtue of having rejected the status quo. They are also autonomous of that power structure's hierarchy by virtue of having established an existence outside the system.
Both these features make them vulnerable to transformation, at a micro-level, by grass-roots workers of a competing ideology working in the same theatres. Not only this,
but the Naxals' own commitment to placing ideological principles above status-quo comforts would make them far more effective amplifiers of a new, transformative ideology than the mere general public (who are relatively indifferent to ideology of any kind).
In the above illustration I've labeled the transformed section of Naxals as "M2", in reference to the group of Hindu Naxals who split away from the Orissa Dalams in retaliation against the missionary-sponsored assassination of Swami Laxmanananda. I believe that this is an experiment that can, and perhaps is, being replicated at various regions throughout the "red corridor".
Ultimately, the grass-roots level challenge should lead to an outward-in transformation of the communist power structure, eroding the hierarchy that the top echelons of the leadership stand upon. The very rings and tiers that insulate them against a frontal assault would be leached away by the competing ideology, and precipitate their collapse.
It should be noted that the grass-roots challengers themselves, while functioning at the level of the fringe periphery, would not themselves be vulnerable to the same sort of ideological plasticity as the Naxals coming under their influence. That's because of the fundamental differences between the nature of Abrahamic ideological power structures (such as Communism), and Indic ones such as those represented by "ghar-wapasi" activists .
It is my belief that
the essential fluidity and pluripotency of Indic power structures, paradoxically, provides an immunity from ideological erosion that applies to the fringes as much as to the core... quite in contrast the ossified rigidity of Abrahamic orthodoxies. But more on that some other time!
Finally, to address your observation about the similar dynamics of Indian Communist and Islamist power structures. You're certainly correct in saying that there are basic similarities. In the next illustration I've represented the same three-dimensional model as applied to an Islamic power structure, Pakistan (though with changes in the identity of specific elements and a few allowances for environmental differences, you could very well apply it to Indian Islamists as well).
As expected, the Pak Army/ ISI occupy the central region in the Status Quo projection (with maximum investment in maintaining status quo), and the topmost position in the Hierarchy elevation. Around and below them are Sarkari Tanzeems, Sarkari Taliban (like the Mullah Omars and Haqqanis), and the general public of Urban Classes and Rural Masses.
At the fringes are a classic example of peripheral ideologues... the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Created by the center at first to fufill a function (achieving Afghan strategic depth) on the periphery of the system, they were motivated by an ideology so intense that it inspired them to eschew the status-quo in favour of living on the fringes and fighting a jihad. However, they were eventually abandoned by the center and have now assumed a substantial degree of autonomy. Many purist jihadis, ultimately, end up in that fringe circle... Osama Bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" would occupy the fringe circle in a diagram where the KSA establishment occupies the center.
However, to your observation that the same methods could be employed against the Communists and the Islamists... I don't believe it will be as easy to apply a "grass-roots undermining" approach to the Islamists as with the "M2-ization" of the Naxals. This is largely because the Islamist power structures have been "threatened" by such peripheral erosion, numerous times over the millenium of their Indian experience... and have therefore evolved mechanisms to counter it.
Here is a final illustration to demonstrate this, in the Pakistan example.
Throughout the largely-white space of "general public" indifference, are interspersed multiple local centers of ideological nucleation (the green circles marked "M"). These represent various decentralized institutions like Madrassahs, Islamist social-activism bodies, local mosques and so on. Their purpose is two fold. First, they keep the general public constantly under the influence of Islamist ideology despite their relative lack of investment in the status quo, serving as a means to quickly motivated the masses with the idea that "Islam is under attack". Second, they act as buffers for the defense of the ideological power structure against peripheral erosion as we've seen in the Naxal/M2 instance. It is the development of such centers of ideological nucleation that kept Islamism alive as a political force in the subcontinent despite the Indic resurgence of 1650 onwards. But this development comes at a price to the system.
The danger posed by the existence of these centers of nucleation to the organizational power structure itself, is seen in the "Elevation" part of this last diagram. Being imbued with divine authority, these institutions... Madrassas, Tanzeems or whatever... rise to claim the highest convenient position in any temporal hierarchy. Because of this tendency, there is a risk that some of them may become powerful enough to erode the authority of the central leadership itself. This may explain what we saw in the Lal Masjid incident where LM jihadis were challenging the authority of the Musharraf government directly.
JMT.
But I know I am treading on controversy here, for this fundamental thread of unity was mostly found among what we would term the "majority community".
I wrote "we" without thinking, as for me, such thoughts are meant to be collective thoughts and shared by many. Discussing practical implementation perhaps will be walking on the razor's edge of "politics" - banned fro this forum.