Opinion Commies hate rule of law

Opinion
Commies hate rule of law
By Ravi Shanker Kapoor

Who'safraid of the rule of law? If this question is posed to a typical Left-leaning intellectual-and nine out of ten intellectuals are Left-leaning-the response will come in a long list: the ?communal? Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ?fascist? Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), and other usual suspects. You will never get the correct answer, which is: unrepentant communists.

That the communists are afraid of the rule of law became amply evident on June 19. It was the day when the Kolkata police acted tough against the roguish leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The police action was provoked by an assault on a government official. Those who were at the wrong end of the baton included Amitava Nandi, MP, and Joykrishna Ghosh, a close aide of former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu.

What was the reaction of Mr Basu? You might think that Mr Basu would have felt ashamed that his associate was involved in such wrongdoing. Surely, you haven'ttaken into account the craftiness of dialectical materialism, for the veteran comrade was pained, and not ashamed, by the events. He was quoted in Kolkata-based The Telegraph (June 20): ?At the end of my career, it pains me to see our men being beaten up by police under our government. What'sthis?? (emphasis added). Notice Mr Basu'spain. Also notice how he equates the party with the government-our men and our government.

Well, Comrade Basu, this is the rule of law, which your successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, wants to impose. He seems to have seen the futility of communism and of the system that you thrust upon West Bengal. In your scheme of things, the subservience of administration to the party is an axiomatic, self-evident truth; for that is what all the icons like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao have recommended. It is another matter that all these great men also ended up slaughtering millions of men, women, and children; and all this is not ?bourgeois propaganda?.

The rule of law is an alien concept for communists; they try to subvert it, often successfully. They were successful in the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, eastern Europe, and a host of other countries; the results are not only mass murder, the Gulag, and a police state; the entire economies are ruined; moral depravity sets in. Russia is an apt example: the cradle of communism that had been under the comrades for more than seven decades and one of the best-endowed nations of the world-huge landmass, enormous natural resources, hard-working people-is facing all sorts of problems. Despite the great pressure from the West, neither its economy is being properly opened up (privatization ended up in huge scandals, unlike that in India) nor its democratic institutions are in good health. Had the communists ruled a little longer, they would have ensured Russia'sdescent into barbarianism. Yet, communists accuse others of being barbarians. When the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government started its term in New Delhi, Mr Basu said that ?barbarians? had come to power.

Fortunately, there are communists like Mr Bhattacharjee who have seen the light and who are trying to stop further decline of West Bengal. Unfortunately, they are in a very small minority; the vast majority of commies love Mr Basu, who would like to see the end of the rule of law.

(The author is Editor, www.indiaright.org, email: raviskapoor@gmail.com)