In India, A Letter For Mr. Kumar  

Dear Mr. Kumar,

First, let me say that I admire your chutzpah. And your luck. This is your moment. As a journalist, I was taught that, often, the medium is the message. And in you, at this moment at least, some television cameras have found the message. We understand the power of the visual to grip a moment, and who can deny that from the column inches and the footage time, you have swept up the moment?

Enjoy this moment. The attention of the media is fickle. You only have to look at the long career of the man who you have been attacking to become this moment to see that. No one understands that the media is a fickle beast better than the prime minister.

There is another thing you will swiftly realise — no matter how good your intention, sometimes the best laid plans go awry. For instance, could you have predicted that the day after you rousing-ly said you would not ‘witch hunt’ your opponents in JNU, your brethren would throw the belongings of a young woman student from her room onto the street all because she is a member of the ABVP? Perhaps her attackers saw in this young woman a reflection of the goddess they hate, the one they call ‘sex worker’, even though tribal students in JNU have fought to worship the goddess. I am sure you remember the pamphlet below.

I think not. But such is life Mr. Kumar. Our speeches instil hope that this raucous land let down — our ‘followers’, in true Twitter-style, refuse to quietly follow. They ‘unfollow’.

You have said many things Mr. Kumar about the poor. You told us that the farmer on the field is your father and the soldier on the battle-front is your brother. This, then, Mr. Kumar, raises the question, since they are doing their duty, how do you propose to help them?

For instance, a man called Popatrao Pawar, using the same system you abuse, has transformed a village in the heart of Vidharbha, whose farmer suicides you and your co-travellers so like to use a data weapons, using simple tools like water harvesting and dairy farming. The village now has the highest number of rupee millionaires in India, Mr. Kumar. Perhaps you hate the word millionaire. But do go meet these villagers sometime. It might be educative.

A few days before your speech, I spoke to a man called Subhas Palekar. Have you heard of him? An elderly man now, he has spent his whole life teaching an indigenous form of farming called zero budget spiritual farming which has brought prosperity to four million farmers across the country. Palekar has a challenge — no one who uses his farming methods is impoverished or ever contemplates suicide.

We are being told that you are a ‘revolutionary’, Mr. Kumar. We are being told, once again, that a ‘revolution’ is upon us. And yet, those who so desperately want the revolution to come, cannot see that it is already upon us. It is being brought alive and unravelled every day by millions of Subhas Palekars and Popotrao Pawars.

It is being fuelled by a young woman from Nagaland, Temsutula Imsong, who has now spent months and months in Kashi, cleaning the ghats one by one with a small team of volunteers.

What, if I may have the temerity to ask you, Mr. Kumar, is the one revolutionary thing that you have done? You shouted slogans. A foolish government mechanism arrested you. This was latched onto by the opponents of the government and in this political battle, you have become a momentary media star. A young man who speaks bravely of his family which has a monthly earning of only Rs. 3,000 and yet was represented in court by senior politician-lawyers who charge crores of rupees for their work. Who paid them, Mr. Kumar? And why? And if they did it for free — why? Are we really naive enough to believe that lawyers who were top ranking cabinet ministers till recently work for free? For ‘freedom’?

I respect your slogans, Mr. Kumar, and I have argued that arresting you only gave you unnecessary publicity. As you said, and I cannot agree more with you, ‘ where the fight is ideological, one should not give individuals needless publicity’.

In your speech you spoke of the policeman who did not understand your ‘lal salaam’. You said you built a camaraderie of poverty with him while you were in prison. You are not the first wannabe politician who spoke about ‘prison conditions’ from the time they are in prison — and yet, India’s much needed police reforms continue to be stalled.

Since you learnt so much about the police, allow me to guide your eyes towards the state of Bengal, my home state, where the party you will be campaigning for in the upcoming state elections, the CPI (M), brutally used the police, and its own cadre, young men like you, to brutalise countless people in Singur and Nandigram. Which, since you understand villages so well, are also villages.

The Geneva-based researcher Rohit Ticku has done the primary data, Mr. Kumar, the same primary data that you mentioned in your speech, about which political parties have committed most violence in India and guess what? Those who scream lal salaam come out right on top, they are number one, way above everyone else. Perhaps ‘lal’ is red, the colour of blood. How can one ‘salaam’ or salute it without spilling some?

You know what I think is happening, Mr. Kumar? The elite (and almost-elite, and even the so-called middle class)in Delhi, the biggest beneficiaries of economic liberalization, which you so hate, and which has pulled out millions of people from poverty in the last twenty five years, want to feel good about themselves. It feels good to be ‘on the side of the poor’ without actually ever doing anything for the poor. The best way is to cheer on someone else — especially if that person is young and poor — who is also not doing anything for the poor but is shouting loud slogans about how much they care about the poor. This is a nice little circuit. It is like eating chocolate. It feels good.

But if these people, they who cheer you, ever realise what the ideological aims of your ‘revolution’ really is, ever understand what the D-S-U f your dear friend Umar Khalid actually celebrates, trust me you will see the cameras and the columns turn on your faster than you can say lal. Forget salaam.

Why bother, though, with such nuances at the moment? This is the moment when you can speak of ‘never letting a Hitler rise’ in India but will never be asked by journalists the most obvious follow-up question — what about Stalin, and Mao? Trust me Mr Kumar, the day you raise a slogan against Maowad — as opposed to the other M-wad — Sitaram Yechury will unfriend you.

You see, the thing is, Mr. Kumar, it feels really good to talk about revolution wearing Fab India, in Khan Market, or zipping away on the Delhi Metro which money from hard-working, intense Japanese capitalism paid for. But the day you explain to your echo chamber that the ‘structural inequality’ that you wish to dismantle begins with the breaking of the ‘structure’ called India, well, that day Mr. Kumar is when you will start losing ‘followers’.

Originally posted at Hindol Sengupta’s personal blog and reproduced here with permission.