Bastar: The Naxal Story (Hindi; 2024) Director: Sudipto Sen
This is supposed to be inspired by actual events. That part may be accurate, but the problem is that this part of Indian history has been ongoing for so long that the moviemaker took the liberty of cutting and pasting events that happened at different times in India's history.
For the record, there was a rebellion in 1910 when the British were eyeing the minerals in Central India. Come to think of it, that may be when the word 'thug' came into the English language. Tribal people who resisted British invasion were labelled as carnivorous people worshipping a blood-thirsty form of Kaali named Thugeesewari. The tribals donned machetes for farming but were labelled as armed resistance forces instead.
In the late 60s, when the Communist Party of India split after the Sino-Soviet split, a group of them had the idea of a peasant revolution changing the status quo. This group came to be named Maoist (after Chairman Mao). In 1967, in Naxalbari, tribal people fought with armed forces for land, aided by radical left-wing Maoists. After that, they came to be called Naxalites. In the region's most remote areas, in the spine of India, cutting up to 10 states, the Naxalites took charge with their own brand of justice, local panchayat, and control of amenities.
Naxalite activities have been going sporadically. Occasionally, news of skirmishes along this 'red corridor' emerges.
In 2010, 76 Indian Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed in Dantewada district in Chattisgarh. This was sort of the starting point for the movie. Before that incident, an advaasi (tribal person) was hacked to death for hoisting the Indian flag. The vendetta against the Naxalite leader spurred the widow to join forces with the police to fight the terrorists.
In the background is a trial in which the State Government is accused of forming a paramilitary vigilante force named Salwa Judum under the auspices of the ruling party. The accusers were concerned social activists and academics. The movie insinuates that the leftists of the world have united and are having a stronghold and working in tandem with academicians, Bollywood, writers, politicians, and even the judiciary. There is a not-so-veiled reference to Arundathi Roy as a leftist sympathiser.
The silver lining behind the above incident is that things have improved since then. Violence has de-escalated, infrastructure has improved, and tourism has increased by many folds.
Sometime last week, a submersible (a titanium-carbon fibre-made mini-submarine, christened Titan) commissioned to investigate the remains of the Titanic went into trouble. A catastrophic implosion is said to have instantaneously killed the five aboard. Each had sent about $250 000 to get 40,000 ft below sea level to catch a glimpse of the ill-fated ship. The dead ranged from wealthy businessmen to adventure explorers. A few days later, a Greek boat carrying hundreds of refugees from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Palestine submerged off the coast of Libya.
The papers went agape with moving stories of economic refugees picking up the pieces and risking their lives for a better life in Europe. At the same time, the mass media has also been accused of paying more attention to the five victims of the Titanic sub rather than the refugee boat accident that swallowed more than a hundred lives.
Critics assert that life is precious, whether the victim is rich or poor, educated or otherwise. Unfortunately, life does not work like that. It is pretty naive to insist that a homeless vagabond should be accorded the same level of treatment as the CEO of a multinational company. At the risk of sounding unkind, the reality is that the latter will contribute back to society, whereas the former will just sponge its resources. But hey, he could have a veteran, a professional who had fallen from grace or whatnot. But such is life.
The communists and the religious will insist that all men are created equal, but in reality, some animals are more equal than others. When the shove comes to the push, hierarchy does exist.
For example, when a destitute in Saint Theresa’s sanatorium has chest pain, she is offered prayers and paracetamol. When Mother Theresa herself has chest discomfort, an appointment at Harley Street Cardiology Clinic is made for her immediately.
Looking at the two maritime mishaps above, one refers to the failure of mankind’s engineering marvel. All the years of research, experimentation and trial runs have led to this. The Titanic, another engineering, supposed proof of an unsinkable oceanliner, went down tamely on its maiden voyage. Just when the researchers thought they could have a peek into what could have gone wrong, now this. Naturally, a post-mortem of the failure of human endeavours excites many.
Conversely, the refugee crisis denotes political failure. We deserve the government we choose. If millions of people within a vicinity cannot agree on how they want the country to be, they should not be playing victimhood. Politics is what people decide for themselves. Others cannot meddle. The rest of the world has enough problems, and now, the refugee crisis. The experience of many developed countries with the waves of immigrants over the last twenty years could have been anything but pleasing. Refugees, upon acceptance, have abused the system. Many of their siblings have yet to really integrate into the system. Some are hellbent on biting the hands that fed them. The host countries have never been the same since.
It is understandable why one news presides over the other in importance.
The Sivakumar family, by default, has come to be known as the first family of Kollywood. Of late, their production company has been churning out movies that dare to question the status quo in their state. With their clout and close association with the state's ruling party, DMK, they are often accused of pandering to the party's political agenda. Political analysts familiar with the Indian political scenarios are quick to highlight such glaring examples. (More of it later!)
The real Judge Chandru with his celluloid representation.
We have seen countless movies painting cops in a bad light, showcasing their inefficiencies and manipulative skills in 'fixing' cases. It is not all fiction. In fact, the truth is stranger than fiction. Ask Judge K. Chandru. He has thousands of such issues and more examples in his illustrious career. This movie is a dramatisation of one such case, which happened as late as 1993. Viewers who have seen this movie would agree that some of the scenes depicted in this film are pretty brutal, unbelievable that a human being, what more a public servant who promised to protect the nation, would resort to such inhumane form of torture on a fellow kind. Surprisingly, when K. Chandru was interviewed on a Youtube channel on this matter, he revealed that police brutality was even worse, much worse than was depicted on screen.
Parvathi (portrayed as Sengani), a woman scorned by police brutality.
Judge Chandru, a Madras High Court judge, has the unenviable reputation of having presided over 96,000 verdicts in his career. On average, he would listen to 96 cases a day! As a lawyer, he worked on many human rights cases, fighting pro bono for the oppressed population.
Watching the film reminded me of the too many police lock-up custodial deaths that have happened in Malaysia. Much of the media hype surrounding many of these cases 'die' a natural death without anything concrete happening afterwards. The coroner here will accept the cause of death healthy male of early 30s as 'pulmonary oedema' as perfectly normal with no one kicking up dirt. Perhaps we need a firebrand lawyer like K Chandru here.
In 1993, a tribal lady was troubled after the police apprehended her husband and relatives for theft. They allegedly escaped detection and were at large. When she demanded to know what had happened to her husband, as she had witnessed him being tortured, she was given the run-around. No lawyers were willing to help her. Through the comrades of the Communist Party, she was introduced to lawyer Chandru. The lawyer petitioned for a habeas corpus writ at the courts.
As the story goes on, we can see how pressures from the top force the downline police officers to speed up the closure of cases by falsely fixing men from the tribal community. To get their conviction, the police beat them to pulp and creatively devised torture tactics to achieve their goals. Perhaps the mindset of the uniformed body is such that orders must be followed contributed to this. Blind obedience is expected from the subordinates, not the prick from their inner mind of mindfulness! The feudal mentality of subservience and not questioning the independence of the police need to be re-assessed.
There is no secret to K. Chandru's political leanings, even as a judge. He had been an active member of the Marxist Communist Party of India. After Kerala and West Bengal, Tamil Nadu has the most robust network of the communist movement. It shares a cordial relationship with the similarly atheist-minded DMK, which won the Tamil Nadu elections recently. With a name like Stalin, one cannot be faulted for assuming his political leanings.
This movie got a hail of praise from the Chief Minister, MK Stalin. Images of Karl Marx, Ambedkar and Periyar, and proud hoisting of 'hammer and sickle' red flags do not hide the ideology discussed in the film. If one were to scrutinise the story, there were some subtle changes in the name and caste of some characters. It may not be due to cinematographic licence, but perhaps to put forward some self-serving political agendas. The name of the brutal sub-inspector who led the brutality had been changed from Anthony (a Christian name) to Gurumurthy (suggestive of a Vanniyar caste), and the tribal group had been identified as Irular instead of Kurumbar. I wonder why?
The difference between Capitalism in the West and Communism in the East of Europe arose because Capitalist societies retained philosophical persuasions and political pluralism as expressed in a parliamentary democracy, a free press and free trade unions. Communist societies, on the other hand, froze Marxist philosophy into a closed system of orthodoxy. This led to heresy-hunting, which in due course reduced Marxism to the status of a Semitic creed like Christianity and Islam. Bertrand Russell was not far wrong when he identified Communism as a Christian heresy. It has acquired all the characteristic features of the Christian Church such as the only saviour, the only Revelation, the only Pope, the only priesthood, the only baptism, and the only sacraments. Communist regimes could not help becoming totalitarian enemies of human freedom.
The initial success of the Bolshevik Revolution is evidenced by the advancements in living conditions and headway in science, technology and space exploration. Buried in the rubble of development was the loss of human lives in the name of dissidence and the rebel yell for freedom.
For quite a while, Capitalism portrayed itself as the saviour of Mankind after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Greed drove economies, and everyone was happy. Nobody realised that unregulated Capitalism was the harbinger of many unrests that were to ensue. Vulture Capitalism left a trail of destruction and the widening of the gap between the haves and have nots. What started as compassionate capitalism which replaced despotic regimes and feudalistic autocrats ended up as cutthroat capitalism. The weak remained suppressed under any economic modality.
We finally realise that the world has all the resources to fulfil our needs but not our greed. No one economic system can sustain our wellbeing forever. It is innate within to take shortcuts and find ways to beat the system. We get lazy and cut corners.
Despite earning the unenviable reputation of having killed off over 20 million people during his reign, including more than a million the Gulags, Stalin still have a place in the heart of many Russians. His feat of decimating the Nazi Army singlehandedly, after being left to fend for themselves by the Allied Forces in the Second World War, hails him as the favourite leader. In a poll in conjunction with the Centennial Celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution, 51% of respondents voted favourably towards Josef Stalin as a real Russian leader. Putin has been compared positively to Stalin in meting actions against 'outlaw' former Soviet states like Ukraine.
Stalin and his band of yeomen
The 'Death of Stalin' is a satirical piece on the set-up of 1953 Soviet Russia surrounding the time of the demise of their supreme leader. It tells about the grudgingly subservient people in the inner circle of the Politburo. Secretly each has power ambitions but does not dare to state the obvious for fear of joining the scores of people sent regularly to face the firing squad for alleged treason. Before the body is cold, they are scurrying around in an attempt to shore up their positions like in a court suddenly in need of a king. The inner circle of Stalin's 'comrades-in-arms' include Georgy Malenkov, Stalin's likely successor and deputy premier; Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's influential chief of the secret police; Nikita Khrushchev, whom Stalin had summoned to Moscow to balance the power dynamics of Malenkov and Beria; and Nikolai Bulganin, Stalin's defence minister.
At the end of the day, even though the film opened to rave reviews in film festivals, it left with a bit of bad after taste. There were historical inaccuracies in the timeline of events that were shown in this supposedly historical movie. It ended up neither being a comedy act nor one which highlighted the horrors of Stalinism.
The movie is banned in Russia and many of the former colonies of Soviet Russia for denigrating Russia's WW2 war heroes and being disrespectful of their history.
Breaking India - Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines (2011) Authors: Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan
When Europeans reached the shores of India for the first time, they were mesmerised. It was the era of romanticism. The Europeans just could not have enough of India's exotic mysticism, wealth and knowledge. We all know what happened afterwards.
To become the masters to the hosts who welcomed them into their abode, they had to dig deep their bag of trick to break India up. They invented the now well-known 'divide and rule' strategy. Unfortunately, even 300 years later, these breaking India forces are still at it to create divisions amongst its people to push forward their self-serving agendas.
In the 1870s, as the British advanced deep into the periphery, they encountered resistance from the tribal people who were just protecting their land. The invaders quickly created a narrative about heartless local robbers who strangled their victims with kerchiefs. They were named Thuggees based on their diety. The British passed enactment to legalise tribal genocide. Long story short, they not only appropriated their lands but made 'thug' an English word.
The Europeans justified their atrocities on natives by revisiting the story of Noah and his sons. The white-skinned conquerers are the Descendents of Japheth, Shem's went to Asia and the Middle East while the dark-skinned cursed Ham's downlines were sent to Africa and probably to Southern part of India. Japheth's enlightened sons need to educate cursed Ham's people.
The scholars of the time also sold the idea of the existence of a big landmass named Lemuria or Kumari Kandam which connected Africa, India and Australia. Even though it was never proven, they claim that this land housed an advanced civilisation which spread as far as Persia. The advancing tribes of uncultured Aryans from the North pushed them down south. They also shoved Hinduism down their throats to make them subservient to the Aryan descendants.
In the late 19th century, pseudo-scientist delved into dubious experimentations and fashionable non-sciences to convince the people of South India and the tribal people that they were different from the rest of India. They were Dravidians, a great race suppressed by the Northerners and the evil Brahmins. The now-defunct 'Nasal Index' was used by Herbert Risley to prove his two-race theory and implementation of the caste system in Indian society. This was mentioned in Rig Veda, it seems. This 'discovery' was shown to support Max Muller's Aryan migration/ invasion theory. The Aryans from the Caucasus migrated down south to downgrade after marriages with the local while the wave of Aryans who went off to start the Greek and Germanic civilisations reached great heights. And the arrival of Europeans to the Indian shores is a time of reconnection.
See how this propagation of Aryan race created problems the world over. In Europe, it went on to Hitler, WW2 and devastation. In South India, it created the Dravidian movements that go on till today. In a way, it helped to flare the animosity between the Aryan-Buddhist-Singhalese and the Non-Aryan Jaffenese Tamils.
In Africa, the Hamitic mythology condones slavery and categorised communities to races which eventually spurred the genocide in Rwanda.
In 'God's Country'
One of Jesus' disciples, St Thomas, is said to have reached the Malabar shores in 52AD. Others attribute a Syrian, Thomas of Cana, to be the first evangelist. He was martyred during one of his conversion stints when he was speared by a local tribesman.
Robert Caldwell, a bishop and a grammarian, proposed a racial divide along with linguistics. The South Indian languages were etymologically different from Sanskrit, further sub classifying Indians by class, race and caste by profiling.
According to the authors, Christian missionaries have been active in the conversion ever since the first missionaries touched. They have found many ingenious ways to connect with the locals. They dress like them, live with them and be the first to be by their side when they are wronged or go through a calamity. They receive substantial international financial support from the Southern Baptist Churches in the US, the Lutheran Churches, many philanthropic foundations like The Ford Foundation, Pew Trust, Carnegie Trust and many more. Under the guise of humanitarian aid, they are active in the conversion of the members in the fringe of society. Through their scholarship programmes, they have created local firebrand leaders who have no qualms discrediting their motherland to serve their masters. They form the Fifth Column who subversively weaken the nation from within.
Many of the scholars have reinterpreted Hindu text and appropriated them to fit the Biblical events. Many historical dates had been altered to make it appear that Christianity predated Hindu philosophy. They try to impress the unassuming congregation that the earlier Tamil scriptures were actually inspired by Christianity and its teachings. They claim that the Kural written by Valluvar and Saiva Siddhanta is based on Christian teachings. It is claimed that idolatry is a Hinduism construct and that Dravidians were not idol worshippers. The bashing continues subtly through media and films.
John Allen Chau, an evangelist
Killed by Sentinelese tribe in North Sentinel, near Andaman.
It is said that the atheistic nature of Tamil Nadu politics was inspired by this Brahmin bashing trend that was prevailing in the mid 20th century when Periyar took Tamil Nadu out of the Congress Party. It continues to date.
The authors bring to light how seemingly opposing forces, as there are seen elsewhere, unite with the single aim to control India. Maoists, Marxists, Urban Naxalites, leftists, intellectuals, Communists, Jihadis aligned with Islam and Christian evangelists all have no qualms in setting aside their differences to fight their common enemy, the Hindutva movement, which has arisen to put back its forgotten history and facts in the right place.
As it stands today, India has to be wary against many internal centrifugal and external forces who are intertwined with each other to balkanise the country. They depict India as an opposed of freedom and a fascist state filled with horrors of Hindu savagery blurred between Islamic terrorism and violation by India against Muslims, Christians and Dalits. What is the purpose of all these? They are of two folds. One is for political control to obtain a chaotic country with cheap labour. Secondly, there is a dire theological need to pulverise the last pagan civilisation standing to replace it with a monotheistic religion.
Author: Ian Johnson When 9-11 attacks came about, investigations traced the perpetrators of sleeper cells spending a time of their lifetimes in Germany. These terrorist group did not spring up just before attacks on the American soil. They, in fact, have a very long past, going as far back as the Bolshevik revolution. When Communist Soviet took over the predominantly Muslim lands in the Caucasus, collectively known as Western Turkestan, the area was filled with adrenaline-filled Muslim fighters who wanted to liberate their lands from their godless rulers. They were collectively known as the Prometheans, the mythical Greek hero who defied Zeus to save humanity. This golden opportunity was grasped by Wehrmacht, the unified WW2 German Army to aid in their attack of Russia. As is common knowledge, many Muslim scholars, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, soar at the thought of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1, decided to pour their support on the side of the AxisPower. Betting on the wrong horse, they lost more than just their homeland. Many of the Muslim freedom fighters ended up as refugees in Germany. By 1950s, West Germany, especially places like Munich, had undergone an economic transformation. The miracle of German tenacity and engineering marvel saw industrial giants like Siemen and financial titans like Allianz proving their strength. Many Turkish immigrants soon start coming into West Germany. After WW2, communism became the bogeyman, and there was an urgent need to keep activities behind the Iron Curtain under check. Many of these ex-Soviet Muslims became the eyes and the ears of the CIA and West Germany. They were rolled in the CIA-sponsored propaganda Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe as well as many of its espionage work. Along the way, the CIA decided to use Islam as their weapon to go after the non-believer Communists. They are said to create ruckus in Mekkah during a Haj season to highlight injustices against Muslims in the Soviet Union. At the 1955 Bandung Conference, their members also created an embarrassing moment for the Soviets.
Schematic representation of the Mosque
The idea of having a mosque was drummed in by the Muslim community of Germany to garner more support to this end. Somehow, there soon came to be a tussle for leadership as members of the Muslim Brotherhood gained a stronghold in the Munich Mosque donation collection and construction. The Muslim Brotherhood movement, known for its doublespeak, saying one thing to one party and denying it to another, managed to hoodwink the Americans into believing that they could speak for the general world Muslim population. In reality, they advocated a rather conservative and domineering form of Islam; a kind which tends to control all aspects of day-to-day living and has no reservations against terrorism or killing of its enemies.
Munich Mosque
The Munich Mosque was finally opened in 1973.
The Muslim Brotherhood, with the cooperation of the US intelligence agencies, managed to outmanoeuvre the ex-Nazi soldiers to control the mosque. As time went, The Muslim Brotherhood gained more traction in the world politics. The conservative, arch-Catholic city in Bavaria soon became a centre of radical Islam.
Fools, Frauds and Firebrands, Thinkers of the New Left Roger Scruton (2015, reprint) I was always under the impression that the input from the academics and intellectuals is the one that is propelling the world forward in the right direction; averts hegemony by a certain group and tries to create a sort of utopia where fairness and justice is handed to all. With a single stroke of his pen, the author puts all these thoughts to the bin. He paints them all as troublemakers, who promised utopia but what they offer instead is dystopia, mayhem and destruction.
For a start, he defines the leftist as the group of people traditionally seated to the left to King Louis XVI, the despotic monarch whose reign ended with the 1789 French Revolution. The members of the Estate and Generals usually were placed to the left while the nobelties occupied the right. Of course, it is all perspective which is right or left depending on whether you are an audience in apalace or looking from the monarch's end.
It is a tough book to read. With the many name dropping and verbosity of the writer, he steamrolls most modern thinkers, if not all, as frauds. They speak in unintelligible speeches using meaningless jargon like in Orwell's 1984 Newspeak. They justify their assertions with absurd mathematic formulas.
The author systematically destroys intelligensias from France (Lacan, Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, Sartre, Camus) Germany (Hegel, Heidegger, Habermas, Althusser), USA (Galbraith, Dworkin), Italy (Gramsci), British (Thompson, the Fabians) and the representatives from the former communist block (Lukás, Žižek). Even though communism has proven to have failed, these people are actually promoting communist ideology in a new approach where capitalism (the burgeious ideology) is portrayed as the bad guy out to destroy man's freedom and liberty. They failed to realise that these are very same idea as the right wingers (read: democratic process) have been trying to do over the centuries - to find law and order in society, to propel the human race to a higher level and the promise of a better future.
He praises the philosophers of the yesteryears, the Greeks thinkers and later ones like Spinoza and Kant. The conservative side of politics has had something going. Unfortunately many misfortunes happened along the way and Man wanting to look at other ways of doing things have embarked on the leftist agenda. Even though, their economic models have repeatedly shown dismal results, they are hellbent to come out with yet other strategies to put forward their scheme!
A nice perspective of view from the other side.
Excerpt From: Roger Scruton. “Fools, Frauds and Firebrands.” iBooks. “Whether it be the Palestinian intifada, the IRA, the Venezuelan Chavistas, the French sans-papiers, or the Occupy movement – whatever the radical cause, it is the attack on the ‘System’ that matters. The alternative is ‘unnameable in the language of the system’. Didn’t Paul Cohen prove the point?
As in 1789, as in 1917, as in the Long March of Mao, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the work of destruction feeds on itself. The Event is ‘the void at the heart of the actual’. Fidelity to the Event means commitment to nothing. The windbaggery of Žižek and the nonsemes of Badiou serve one purpose, which is to turn attention away from the actual world, from real people and from ordinary moral and political reasoning. They exist in order to promote a single and absolute cause, the cause that admits of no criticism and no compromise, and which offers redemption to all who espouse it. And what is that cause? The answer is there on every page of these fatuous writings: Nothing. ” “Leftist Newspeak is a powerful tool, not only because it wipes away the face of our social world, but also because it describes a supposed reality that underlies the genial appearance and also explains that appearance away as a deception. ” “That feature of ideology has long been apparent. But exactly the same goal of hiding reality behind inviolable screens of words can be found in the mathemes of Lacan and Badiou, in the litanies of Deleuze and Guattari, and in the rhetorical questions of Žižek as he patrols the world in search of those who still possess the risible belief in the Big Other and who have not yet discovered that they don’t ex-sist.”
