In Memoriam. A.R. Desai
16 April 1916 -12 November 1994 by Kunal Chattopadhyay
The heart attack which carried away Akshaykumar Ramanlal Desai at the age of 79 meant an incomparable loss for the revolutionary Marxist movement in India. A.R. Desai came to politics over half a century ago. He was one of the minority of Indian intellectuals who rejected the myth of Soviet "socialism." He joined the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the biggest component of the divided anti-Stalinist left. As a leading theoretician of the RSP, and member of the central committee for many years, he argued for a Trotskyist perspective. Many of his most important articles, like "A positive Programme for the Indian Revolution" were published in the RSP theoretical journal, The Call. The RSP developed in a centrist direction, ending up as a "critical" junior partner in the CPI (M) led Left Front government in West Bengal. A.R. Desai resisted this drift to the right, and finally resigned from the Party in 1979.Over 60 years old, A.R. had no intention of letting up in his activities. He became a loyal activist of the Indian Section of the Fourth International (though he never became a member). A.R. Desai was one of the towering intellectuals of the left. Like D.D. Kosambi, Desai's pioneering Marxist studies of the Indian reality, published as The Social Background to Indian Nationalism, and its sequel, Recent Trends in Indian Nationalism, broke away from the procrustean bed of Stalinist orthodoxy. They explained how the Indian bourgeoisie and bourgeois nationalism were on the one hand, relatively strong and able to hegemonise the working people and yet, on the other hand, why capitalist development in India would not lead to an abolition of backwardness. The whole thrust of both books was that the only way forward for the working class and all the oppressed and exploited was permanent revolution. Yet they were so lucid and free of jargon that they have been translated into practically every major Indian languages, and serve as standard university text books. I remember a reputed sociologist becoming furious when I made this observation at a memorial meeting in Calcutta. He rejected my "slur of Trotskyism on A.R. Desai, and sought to defend the man by showing how his writings were relevant for analysing Indian reality. This was a measure of A.R. Desai's success. He was not a proponent of that sterile "Marxist" style which presents quotes from Marx, Engels and one's canonical choice of subsequent leaders as substitutes for empirical data and solid logic. A.R. Desai's prolific writings have left a number of works which are of lasting value to activists and academics alike. For over a decade he brought out Patkar, a Gujerati journal which published Marxist ideas and analysis in a form accessible to workers and the petty bourgeois. He was also the prime mover in the establishment of the C.G. Shah Memorial Trust, which has published Mandel, Mihir Desai, A.R. Desai, Wilfred d Costa, Colin Gonzales, Nilinjan Dutta, Soma Marik and other activist-thinkers in a size and price affordable to the Indian militant. The Trust will continue its efforts to become a research centre to help our activist groups. Under Desai's leadership, the Trust also published a number of resolutions of the World Congress of the Fourth International, and of course the documents of its Indian section the Inquilabi Communist Sngathan including Communalism in India and The Rajiv Era A.R. Desai was committed to anti-communal and democratic rights work. He was willing to go anywhere and campaign anytime for the causes he believed in. His confidence in Trotskyist politics made him open to all currents. It was not his nature to assume that leftists holding different views were to be treated as the next-of-kin of class enemies. All found in him an alert person willing to work together if required and to listen to their views in all seriousness. He leaves behind him his wife, feminist author Neera Desai, and his son Mihir. He also leaves behind him a lifetime of work for the revolutionary communist movement, for
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International Viewpoint #264 MARCH 1995
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Religious fundamentalism has very little to do with religion. Traditional Moslem discrimination against women in Algeria used to be on the decline, and feminists organised openly to improve girls' access to schools and to sport, and women's equality with men in terms of family and labour law. The present regression in that country is the result of massive rejection of the corrupt and antidemocratic 'socialist' National Liberation Front (FLN) which has governed the country since independence from France. By .. sinked austs against the repressing protests against the programme, the F.L.N enabled the fundamentalists to pose as the protectors of the poor. Our correspondents' reports on the French (Catholic) and North American (Protestant) extreme right shows the mobilising power Women and fundamentalism of Christian fundamentalism too. The U.S. religious right is shifting the focus of its attacks from abortion to homosexuality in a conscious search for voters and funds, while French National Front is considering down-playing their opposition to abortion rather than alienate a section of women voters. All this should warn us that fundamentalism is anything but archaic. It is much more a political movement of the extreme right kind, which uses religious sentiments and arguments to establish a particular kind of political regime in this world, not the next. The antidote to fundamentalism is not simply education and the preaching of tolerance. The Wesi nas nothind to teach the South ir this respect. The way to stop fundamentalists enslaving people in Algeria, or controlling media and education in North America, is to build an alternative project for the transformation of society.