Resilence Of Political Islam

With the triumph of Hamas in last month's election in Palestine, politics in Islamic countries has taken a historic turn. In an international scenario in which Islamic polity, or Islamism, poses cultural challenges to the West, the victory of Hamas seems to haveredrawn the political landscape of the region, challenging the US's "democratisation" process. Many commentators are of the opinion that the Hamas triumph harks back to the so-called Iranian revolution of 1979.The Islamists had overthrown the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979. The Iranian society that was reasonably secular under Shah did not have an option but to live under repressive mullahs.A declared objective of Iranian foreign policy was to export 'revolution' to other Islamic countries. But the worried West Asian monarchs along with the US put an effective check on the mullahs. The eight-year long Iran-Iraq war was a planned one. The chosen scapegoat, the self-declared saviour of the Arab cause, Saddam Hussein, fought against Iran on behalf of the Americans and the Islamic monarchs.In the early 1990s, Islamism had become less of a threat. Iran had come out of its revolutionary nostalgia, and become pragmatic. But post 9/11, Islamism has burst onto the world scene with vengeance.Islamism has had two versions: One, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorism and the other, mass movements led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Both these factions are militant, rigid in religious matters and offer resistance to a common enemy: Democratic plulalism.
The recent election result in West Asia shows the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to new heights. Now an isolated Iran is not able to spread Islamism in other countries. Yet, Islamist governments are coming to power in its neighbourhood, that too through the democratic process. This is the biggest challenge that the US and other liberal democracies are facing in West Asia.In a municipal election held in Saudi Arabia last April Wahhabi Islamists emerged victorious. The Muslim Brotherhood, brutally suppressed since Nasser's time, performed remarkably well in the Egyptian parliamentary election held last December. Following the US's biggest blunder in West Asia, Iraq became the first country in the world that elected Islamists to power. The Shia-led Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) coalition swept the 2005December election. The SCIRI has close links with Iran and is inimical to the US and all liberal democracies. Therefore, Hamas' victory is just the continuation of the Islamists'triumph in West Asia. Hamas is universally recognised as a terrorist organisation.
And this terrorist organisation has been elected to power ironically through democratic means. This is the paradox that the US confronts. If it goes ahead with its so-called democratization process, it will see Islamist Governments coming to power in theentire region.Anti-Americanism lies at the core of the illiberal and fundamentalist philosophy Islamism in modern times. In addition Islamists are sworn enemies of Israel. If the US goes after its next target which is Iran, Islamism will only grow in political strength.With this theinternational community confronts a new scenario. It has to make a distinction between terrorism and Islamist movements. How else can it deal with the new Islamist Governments that have come to power.
(Published on The Pioneer on February 19, 2006)

Honey, I Shrunk The Party

Call it the new age dialectics invented by those in charge of concocted revolution. The political dilemma that the politburo of the CPI(M) faces now is purely historical, but with a difference; it is paradoxically historical. It now embattles the enigmatic irony of a political Right-turn which has been vehemently checked by an army of comrades who now face the threat of isolation and retaliatory action just because they seemed a stumbling block to the new-age CPI(M).
It all started with the March 12 Central Committee decision that barred the Politburo members from contesting Assembly election. A shot in the arm for the capitalist comrades in Kerala who were waiting for a chance to herald the political death of VS Achuthanandan, the leader of the die-hard ideologues in the State.
The Central Committee decision paved the way for the March 16 Kerala State Committee announcement that denied him a seat in the coming Assembly election. The move invited protests from supporters of the VS faction who considered Mr Achuthanandan the only means to check the surging onslaught of the so-called agenda of globalisation in the State.
However, the capitalist comrades in the Kerala CPI(M), who have all been up in arms against this apostle of ideal Marxism, have made up their mind, scripting what they called the requiem on the political existence of the old Red admiral.
This very episode makes one recall the enigma of the metamorphosis of the Marxist party into a post-modern social democratic party that discards the very credentials of its own ideology, a transformation into a market-driven Marxist party. Is this accidental? No. Historical by all means, but as we stated above, with a difference.
The ideological churn that has been haunting the Indian Left in the post-Soviet era has produced its offspring now, though quite accidentally. Blind to the rational and radical developments that whirlpooled the Indian political arena, the Politburo now is a divided
lot. The party in Kerala always relied on Mr Achuthanandan, a vocal critic of the neo-liberal economic environment, to gather momentum in the battle against capitalism. It upheld his personality as an ambassador of "anti-capitalist agenda". But the shift in the political stance has forced it to invent a new political vocabulary using which it can never script the sort of revolution it is used to.
That Mr Achuthanandan is the last name that the capitalist comrades in the Kerala CPI(M) can think of when it comes to facing the 2006 Assembly election means the political ideology that he represented has become obsolete to them. A drastic change, indeed. For the new-age Marxist messiahs in Kerala, Mr Achuthanandan is a stale Marxist metaphor. So, doing away with that metaphor comes only as the last step in the historic transformation of a Marxist party to the so-called social democratic party.
The violent outbreak of protests against the leadership - that too in Kerala - underscores the very transition of Marxist party. The party has never faced such a crisis; that of its own activists leading protest march to the AKG Bhavan - the secretarial palace of Kerala party - even when former Red hands like Ms KR Gouri and Mr MV Raghavan were sacked from the party. This has also shed light on the political and organisational challenges that the party faces in the eve of another crucial Assemble election. The Indian Left may still fight and win revolutions on paper, but how long they can keep silent on the questions rising against their own ideological dilemma?

(Article Published on The Pioneer, March 12, 2006)