History must not remain only at the service of the exploiting classes. At times, it must break away from it, so that one can get a glimpse of those who toil and make this world a habitable place.
—
Education for Rita: A Memoir: 1975–85 by Brinda Karat, Leftword, ₹ 350, pp. 206, 2024
ON the occasion of International Working Women’s Day, here is the story of a courageous woman who forsook her comfortable life as a bourgeois woman so that she could contribute towards the emancipation of the women who uphold half the sky and the whole of the kitchen.
We are talking about none other than the author of a wonderful recent autobiography Brinda Karat.
Brinda is a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), the largest Communist Party in the Indian Parliament. She is a communist activist, a former Rajya Sabha member from West Bengal as well as an actor.
But the reader may not know much about the author’s personal life. This is due to the fact that communist parties around the world, including those in India, do not promote the cult of the individual.
Brinda Karat is a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the largest Communist Party in the Indian Parliament.
The individual within the party hierarchy is more like Michel Foucault’s author. It is a faceless and nameless entity. The communists alone among all other groups practice the phenomenon known as the art of self-effacement.
The text of the autobiography opens up in a dramatic backdrop of the Emergency (1975–77), where Brinda Karat alias Rita (her nom de guerre) attends an underground meeting with fellow party workers.
The author writes: “The main door was shut tight, the only light was from a flickering oil lamp in the middle of the room. We were sitting on the floor, as there was not enough space for so many chairs.
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It was my first meeting with the Birla Mills Branch— a meeting of the members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) who worked in the mill. I had awaited years for this day.”
Brinda Karat was born to a Punjabi father Suraj Lal Dass who came to Calcutta from Lahore due to the riots that had engulfed the nation in the wake of the formation of independent countries of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Like scores of families seeking protection from religious persecution, her family too migrated to India. Brinda’s mother’s name was Ashrukawna (teardrop). She was a Bengali woman whose family was involved in activities of the Anushilan Samiti— the militant nationalist group led by Aurobindo Ghosh.
At the very young age of twenty-three, Brinda gave up her lucrative job in Air India’s London office and became a whole-timer— a concept invented by the Left.
She came back to Calcutta and worked for the party (CPM) for five years, i.e. 1970–75, before she shifted to Delhi— a place where she continues to work to build class consciousness among the working people.
Part II of the lucidly authored text deals with the author’s personal experiences that she gained as a trade unionist while working for various Mills operating in and around the national capital.
Capitalism, as we know, does not require a worker who has some or even a minimal knowledge of how the society works— how the social structures have cropped up, how for example, a capitalist society resembles a multilayered pastry, who created it, should the workers have a share in the government and so on.
As Marx has himself documented at least in two places in his magnum opus Das Capital Vol. I, capitalists are perfectly happy in employing “half-idiotic persons” for doing their work.
This means that organising workers who constitute the bulk of the urban and rural poor is not easy. The workers not only lack class consciousness but they are also isolated and fragmented.
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Organising such workers is an uphill task. This fantastic autobiography by a woman with extensive knowledge recounts the tales of organising workers with keen eyes for details and a sense of humor without which no fruitful Marxist project can ever be undertaken.
The individual within the party hierarchy is more like Michel Foucault’s author. It is a faceless and nameless entity.
As she writes about her experience with one worker’s family: “One night, after the meeting, a handloom worker called Budhsen was to drop me home on his bicycle.
“Ladoo Ram invited us both for dinner at his house. There was no electricity when we got to his jhuggi. I could hardly make out what we were being served in the dancing dim light of the solitary lantern.
“But Budhsen jumped with joy— it was his favourite dish. When I peered into the pot to see what it was, a goat head stared back at me, surrounded by goat feet.
“Laddo Ram saw me gasp. ‘This is a delicacy, comrade— siri (head) and paya (feet).’ I was hardly going to eat it and tried to camouflage my turning stomach with praise. But Ladoo Ram was not to be fooled. ‘Oh comrade, you are like one of those vegetarian types!’ .”
To be fair to the author, she has described Delhi under Emergency in a non-partisan manner. As a people’s author, she narrates the harrowing experience of ordinary people from the point of view of those who have suffered.
“In fact, hundreds of thousands of workers were forcibly evicted from their dwellings, which were demolished, and the land leveled. I’m not sure if there’s been a mass eviction on this scale anywhere in India or even the world.
“Underlying Sanjay Gandhi’s violent beautification drive was a brute reality— the value of land— real estate— far outweighed the value of poor workers’ lives… The scalding wind of the brutal Delhi summer whipped up dust from which there was no escape… Thirsty children howled as desperate mothers hunted for non-existent water sources. It was a nightmare.”
This nightmarish operation of driving the poor from the center to the periphery was carried out by a man named Jagmohan— the same man who would use his ‘expertise’ in Kashmir while evicting Kashmiri Pandits from the valley on January 19, 1990.
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Apart from driving the poor from Delhi, the emergency is also known for curtailment of civil liberties, something that was upheld by the Supreme Court in ADM Jabalpur case.
This infamous judgment had in effect stated that during the Emergency, citizens had no right to life and personal liberty. As if that was not enough, Sanjay Gandhi and his cohorts also introduced a mass sterilisation programme known as ‘nasbandi’.
As the author writes, “The stated rationale was the neo-Malthusian argument that India was poor because our population was high. In the late eighteenth century, Thomas Malthus, in his influential essay ‘Principle of Population’ had argued essentially, that when population growth overtook food supplies, catastrophe would follow.
“He particularly criticised the working classes, holding that it was their propensity to produce more children which was responsible for their poverty.”
Brinda’s mother’s name was Ashrukawna (teardrop). She was a Bengali woman whose family was involved in activities of the Anushilan Samiti— the militant nationalist group led by Aurobindo Ghosh.
Part III of this autobiography deals with the post-Emergency euphoria. The one and half man ship-based rule of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi was finally over by March 21, 1977.
When the election results were declared, the CPM, which had fought tooth and nail against the Emergency, emerged as the third largest party in India. In West Bengal, where communists had faced the ire of the powers that be, it emerged as the single-largest party and went on to win seven consecutive elections; a record yet to be broken.
The lost freedom of the people was partially restored. The right of the workers to organise themselves could no longer be suppressed. After the Emergency, the task of organising workers picked up the pace. This was aided by cultural groups like Janam— led by the charismatic writer Safdar Hashmi.
But come what may, the ruling classes cannot be so easily defeated. They sow dissension based on community, caste, language and religion.
The author writes, “When faced with the dirty tricks department, it is essential to remain calm, to not take hasty decisions, and not to give in to emotions or subjective assessments.”
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This was also the period when communists started organising women. It was B.T. Ranadive who had famously said that, “When Marx said, ‘Workers of the world unite’, he was not referring to just the male working class.”
This led the party to start its voyage into uncharted seas. Sexual harassment of working women in places of work was one such area. This finally led to the holding of the Working Women’s Convention in 1979.
Part IV of the text deals with the experience of organising those who organise. This led to the formation of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) in 1981.
As the author says, “We organised regular classes on a wide range of issues, such as the roots of women’s oppression and patriarchy, the reasons for economic equality, why some people are rich and others poor, the use of tradition and customs to reinforce women’s subordinate status and the meaning of women’s emancipation.”
It was during this period that the author, along with her comrades, got involved in a dowry death case known as the Sudha Goel case. The trial court had convicted the accused husband and his family members.
But the Delhi High Court overturned the verdict by holding that giving and taking dowry was a “customary Hindu practice”. This infuriated a lot of sensitive citizens.
To lodge their protest, the author and her comrades scaled the walls of the court complex and jumped in. They created a lot of noise and ruckus. Some lawyers filed a case of contempt of court.
The case was finally heard by Justice Rajinder Sachar and Justice Leila Seth— the first woman high court chief justice of India and mother of the famous author Vikram Seth.
At the very young age of twenty-three, Brinda gave up her lucrative job in Air India’s London office and became a whole-timer— a concept invented by the Left.
In the end, the court heard the accused and sentenced them.
Since the author is a professional revolutionary, she naturally took part in many demonstrations and bandhs. During one of the bandhs in the 1980s, her right arm was smashed and broken by a policeman at the Connaught Place police station.
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She writes, “I remember a photograph which depicted the bravery of one of our activists, Molina, a domestic worker in south Delhi. It was a protest against price rise, and we were breaking through the police barrier. The water cannon was aimed directly at her, and she was literally lifted off the ground, and since she was holding on to the barricade, she was parallel to the ground.”
It was during this period that the AIDWA, along with other groups, came together to fight against violence, dowry and rape. Taken together, these groups later expanded and formed Dahej Virodhi Chetna Manch (DVCM).
Their brave struggle and countless sacrifices finally bore fruits when amendments were introduced to the procedural, penal and evidentiary criminal laws of India.
The final part of the autobiography deals with the events that took place at the closing of the decade. This consisted of the historic strike led by Delhi University teachers.
Their main demands consisted of opening promotion avenues and increasing allowances.
Perhaps the most tragic part of the autobiography is the chapter that deals with the build-up to 1984. Readers are well aware of the fact that in response to the storming of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, two bodyguards, unfortunately actuated by their sectarian motives, had killed the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi.
Soon, there was widespread violence in Delhi against the Sikhs. The infuriated mobs did not spare anyone. When Harikrishan Singh Surjeet visited the house of Indira Gandhi to pay his last homage, the infuriated mob even tried to attack him.
But he survived as the police and party workers intervened. The author writes that during this period she had received a call from her party worker who was trapped in Manakpura.
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She decided to leave immediately to provide them with some relief. She writes, “Although the police posted there advised us not to go out, we got onto his motorcycle and sped to Manakpura. On the way, we saw spirals of black smoke across the skies of Delhi…
For three full days and nights, Delhi turned into hell, where mobs instigated by Congress leaders and Hindu communal groups conducted killings, lootings, burning, and general mayhem.
The author writes, “When faced with the dirty tricks department, it is essential to remain calm, to not take hasty decisions, and not to give in to emotions or subjective assessments.”
“In all this, the police played the role of active connivers… After three days of bloodletting, the death toll stood at over 2,500. It was hard to estimate the destruction of property and livelihoods.”
One only ends this fine and readable text with the hope that this is not the end but rather the beginning of a series of autobiographies.
Brinda di, as her many junior colleagues call her, has had a public career spanning over five decades. She has seen India from the point of view of an activist and organiser.
One hopes that she is perhaps already thinking of working on future installments.
When Harikrishan Singh Surjeet visited the house of Indira Gandhi to pay his last homage, the infuriated mob even tried to attack him.
History must not remain only at the service of the exploiting classes. At times, it must break away from it, so that one can get a glimpse of those who toil and make this world a habitable place.
