Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #135 - Whither Indian Gorky and Totalitarianism of Indian Press
(Wall painting in Zürich, Switzerland \ Photo by Timon Klauser on Unsplash)
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can either learn by experience. Or by history. Indian histories like Mahabharat and Ramayana were written in ways where those events, characters, and situations became a learning tool. One could understand human frailties and weaknesses and avoid those pitfalls.
Or one could repeat the cycle of untold misery.
History shows that the most tyrannical have used morality to unleash totalitarian regimes. For this, they have used controlled and censored narratives, press and literature.
The only way to defeat these self-righteous moral busybodies is to open the society up. Let the social sentiment flourish.
And, then strengthen dissent - real dissent - and social well-being in order to dismantle the erstwhile tyrannical structures.
If we as a society, have to have freedom, then it is only possible when that freedom is available to everyone. Or, it will be (and has been) a stinking, albeit decorated, turd.
Freedom doesn’t come in percentages. Either it is. Or not.
why is Pakistan even in the UN Human Rights Council?
The time has come to state the obvious - “the emperor has no clothes.” Pakistan is a tyrannical, genocidal, fascist, failed and a terrorist state.
And yet it goes on giving sermons on Human Rights and justice in the world fora. Most of the countries are sick and tired of its continued ranting but still have to suffer its delusional megalomania when it has really nothing to offer to anyone.
So, this time - Indian diplomat did just that. Called out the obvious.
"Human rights are meant for human beings, but it defeats common sense to see how the deep state of Pakistan, on one hand, pretends to speak for the rights of human beings while at the same time it has unleashed state-sponsored cross border terrorism against my country and is ruthlessly targeting innocent lives. It is high time for this Council and the international community to address the irony where a failed state like Pakistan with no regard whatsoever for values and culture of democracy dares to preach an open and transparent democratic system like India," (Source)
Listen to his admonishment.
What was interesting is that Veronica Ekelund, the RA at European FOundation for South Asian Studies, delivered the most telling statement on the perfidy of Pakistan. She asked the obvious question -
Why is Pakistan still a member of the UN Human Rights Council?
Indeed, why?
analyzing the totalitarianism of the despots of Indian Press
Yesterday, India witnessed a very bizarre situation. Press personnel from one TV station attacked a lone journalist from a competing channel during the coverage of an event. Until now, the journalists of Republic TV - and even TimesNow - have been attacked. But by the police.
This was perhaps the only incident in the world where a journalist was attacked by a mob of other journalists. Only because they did not agree with his views or press freedom.
Now, pause here for a moment. And think.
A press mob attacked another journalist for practicing his freedom of expression and opinion!
While the journalists from Republic TV have been abused and pejoratives like “godi media” and “dalals” have been thrown at them, today when Pradip Bhandari teased the other journalists of being “chai biscuit reporter” (those who thrived on junkets), it was considered a justified enough reason to beat the Republic reporter up.
The very basis and foundation of Indian society’s freedoms are being taken apart by those who have posed themselves as the champions of those freedoms. In that attempt they have usurped the mantle to even decide who deserves those freedoms and who does not.
And, we like idiots have taken that at face value.
If the press has to have freedom, then everyone in the press - including the bloggers - have to have that freedom unconditionally!
Or there is no freedom at all.
Just a farce. Despicable farce!
A farce that has a history and precedent in the story of groups that used revolutions as a weapon to get power. Unlimited, abusive, uncontrolled, genocidal, and fascist power.
Let us look into that history.
Gorky, Lenin, and the farce of revolution
Maxim Gorky was a Russian writer who was also a socialist activist. He was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. He was active in the Marxist communist movement and opposed the Tsars. He was with the Bolsheviks and a close friend of Lenin.
Despite his alignment with the communist credo and Bolshevism, he remained uncertain of the propaganda of the Bolsheviks that the proletariat and workers were “incarnation of spiritual beauty and kindness.”
Over time, Gorky realized that Lenin was not what he thought he was. The “revolution” was also not about Bolshevism or for the workers. It was about power. Which he - frustrated with its obvious obscenity - called “Russian Stupidity”.
Gorky’s disillusionment started in the years after the revolution in 1917. He found it tough to come to terms with the Bolshevik party which had come to power.
He had a term - karamazovshchina - which in Russian means dark, stagnant forces which lay latent in the psyche of large but backward strata of the people. In 1918, Gorky published papers titled Untimely Thoughts in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn (Новая Жизнь, "New Life"). This paper was closed down by Lenin in 1919.
In September of 1919, Lenin wrote a letter to his erstwhile friend, Gorky, on his frustrations and plans for the intellectuals and how he wanted things to change.
The letter was a way to justify his tyranny in words and ways that he thought would make it look righteous.
…Recently I read his [Korolenko's] War, Motherland, and Mankind, a pamphlet written in August 1917. Korolenko, you know, is the best of the "quasi-Kadets," almost a Menshevik. But what a vile, despicable, rotten defense of the imperialist war, dressed up with sugar-coated phrases! A pitiful petty bourgeois captivated by bourgeois prejudices! For such gentlemen, 10,000,000 men killed during an imperialist war is a matter deserving support (by deeds, while mouthing sugar-coated phrases "against" the war), but the death of hundreds of thousands in a just civil war against landlords and capitalists evokes only aahs, oohs, sighs, and hysteria. No. It isn't a sin to jail such "men of talent" for short periods if that's what it takes to prevent plots (such as the one at Krasnaia Gorka) and the deaths of tens of thousands. We uncovered the conspiracies of the Kadets and quasi-Kadets. And we know that quasi-Kadet professors are giving assistance heart and soul to the conspirators. That is a fact. The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit. (Source)
That the intellectuals were aghast and perturbed at the mayhem unleashed by the Bolshevik revolution was scorned by Lenin. And done so in the name of the “workers and poor”.
As if the quality of poverty instantly granted one the distinction of divinity.
Which is precisely what Gorky argued against!
an ecosystem of the unions and guilds
What the Leninist regime unleashed subsequently was a censorship that was systemic, all-pervasive, and deep. It was controlled by the Bolshevik leadership and only certain information was allowed to be published.
The party, in effect, served as the artist's Muse. In 1932 the party established socialist realism as the only acceptable aesthetic—measuring merit by the degree to which a work contributed to building socialism among the masses. The Union of Writers was created the same year to harness writers to the Marxist-Leninist cause. Goskomizdat (State Committee for Publishing Houses, Printing Plants, and the Book Trade), in conjunction with the Union's secretariat, made all publishing decisions; the very allocation of paper became a hidden censorship mechanism. Glavlit (Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs), created in 1922, was responsible for censorship, which came later in the creative process. The party's guidance had already affected the process long before the manuscript reached the censor's pen. The Soviet censorship system was thus more pervasive than that of the tsars or of most other recent dictatorships. (Source)
A “Union of Writers” was created to regulate expression in the Soviet world. Only that, which aligned with the party’s credo got through.
the Indian equivalent
An ecosystem was being created and strengthened.
Now, look at the ecosystem that the Left regimes, supported by the Congress have created in India.
Bodies like Editors Guild, Press Trust of India, etc have been the Indian versions of “Union of Writers” of the Bolshevik times.
The regulatory bodies of journalists themselves - ostensibly - have been self-serving as they have aligned with the tyrannical regimes of Congress and the Communist intellectuals.
Only a certain set of ideologies were allowed to go through. Anyone who disagreed faced censorship.
The allocation of paper/newsprint was also practiced by Indira Gandhi during the emergency period.
Television and radio were under full government control. Radio news is still under government control. There were no private news TV channels. So, blacking out a news transmission was not under consideration then. Media back then meant printed newspapers and magazines, which depended heavily on electricity supply to release their editions. In New Delhi, the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg was the newsprint hub. Its power supply, controlled by government companies, was disrupted in a manner to severely delay or cause cancellation of the print for next day edition. (Source)
The stranglehold of the “Union of Writers” was broken by Mikhail Gorbachev when he launched his “glasnost”.
Mikhail Gorbachev needed to enlist the support of writers and journalists to promote his reforms. He did so by launching his policy of glasnost' in 1986, challenging the foundations of censorship by undermining the authority of the Union of Writers to determine which works were appropriate for publication. Officials from the Union were required to place works directly in the open market and to allow these works to be judged according to reader preferences, thereby removing the barrier between writer and reader and marking the beginning of the end of Communist party censorship. (Source)
He used the power of the Open Market.
And, here enters - BARC (Source)
The Indian glasnost, where the “Union” of the Lutyens media and its farce called “Editors Guild” is no longer the arbiter of press stories and morality. A morality that they were dictated to by the powers they sucked up to.
Now, there is an “open market”.
And, that loss of ability to enforce censorship, Leninist style, is exactly the thing that has robbed the many powerful and power-aligned journalists their power, credo and rule over the airwaves and newsprint.
So, they do what Lenin did. Justify tyranny to feign a moral battle.
Read the characterization by Rajdeep Sardesai and then read what Lenin wrote.
And marvel at the tyrannical parallels!
The question that should disturb us is - where is India’s Gorky?
कैसे बाजार का दस्तूर तुम्हें समझाऊं, कि बिक गया जो, वो खरीदार नहीं हो सकता ! (कैफ़ी आज़मी)
nota bene
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Communist subversion of India
Dharma Dispatch does a fantastic job of sharing compelling, serious, and well-researched content. (Source)
That is why when that group shares something so topical, one should pay attention. Please watch these two very informative videos and understand how the Communists have subverted the Indian society.
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