I am sorry to have to correct a person who has proved his credentials as an extremely well-provided analyst of matters military, but this account of Bengal from the sixties onwards is dreadfully off track, apart from being off-topic./QUOTE]
All of us seem to have a long way from HAL and its achievements, which is why i intended to cease and desist.
(Pls refer to my last post).
Notwithstanding any impression that i may (even unwittingly) have conveyed through my posts, i am no analyst of anything; military, political or otherwise.
My initial response to Abir was to the information that he shared on the language policy in some states which i consider/ed to be retrograde.
It was no comment on a political idealogy.
i carry little enthusiasm for political idealogies one way or another. Though i recognise them as being a part of national life.
On the one hand, these states are among those, not unique but among a larger number of states, which maintained communal harmony. This also warrants a look at the standards and levels of conduct of some of the 'Western India' states, which have turned out to be tales of horror, truly of horror. This is not a forum in which to vent my personal feelings of anguish that the criminals concerned should have received as little punishment as the criminals of 1984. But the thought will not go away - is it that we want development
at any cost? [/QUOTE]
You seem to have misunderstood my geography (may be that is my fault). i had the west in mind not the north-west. But be that as it may, i only had "
economic growth" in my sights. As for other parameters of growth, there are deficiencies still extant. And did i give the impression of believing in "progress at any cost" ? i believe in anything that is inclusive, not exclusive.
[/QUOTE]Are these compunctions that we can dismiss with an airy wave of the hand?[/QUOTE]
i have neither the position nor desire to do so.
[/QUOTE]I sincerely hope not. If it is so, then there is no difference between our republic and the murderous ones to our west and north.[/QUOTE]
Indeed.
[/QUOTE]It will attract charges of prejudice and racial bias if this examination were to exclude mistakes made by others in the presentations. @Abir, there is a huge, yawning ideological gap between the CPI(M), who are midway in their ideology but not their practice between Soviet Russia, which does not exist, and Maoist China: by a curious coincidence, that does not exist either, leaving the CPI(M) swinging gracefully on nothing but a trapeze held up on both sides by little other than faith.[/QUOTE]
They are still not absolved from their primary role (of meaningful governance). History will judge their role as governors, regardless of the merits/demerits of their idealogy. They cannot escape from that, just as the governed cannot escape the consequences of that governance.
[/QUOTE]The Naxalites are unreconstructed Indian Maoists, whose elementary stand is that India is a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist country, and who base their politics on this formulation. This is true ever since their days as an extreme left wing faction of the CPI(M), a faction subsequently expelled for their deviant views.
To ascribe the woes of West Bengal, or Tripura or Kerala for that matter, to Naxalism conflated with the CPI(M) is very sloppy categorisation. The maximum number of people killed in either is by the other side.[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]@Capt. Popeye
Ranajit Roy was a nice, but eccentric ICS man, whom we knew very well. He stayed with us in Jalpaiguri, and was busy showing me, an enthralled eight-year, all about bows and arrows. He had a superb modern re-entrant bow.
I would not put too much stock in the book you mention, if it is the same Ranajit Roy.
I could go on for another week without repeating myself, but beg to draw both your attentions to the steady drift in the content of the thread. We can discuss Bengal politics later.
Regards,[/QUOTE]
Since i've neither had the privilege of meeting or knowing Ranajit Roy, i cannot comment. But i definitely would not assess him as unwise in any way. i would only seek to determine whether his views make sense to me or not.
In context, i referred to his book since it was quite fashionable for some people to quote it esp. in the 70s/80s as a defence (or alibi?) for the problems of WB. While his book
may be largely forgotten, his views are still being debated on at least one blog.
Finally in conclusion, we seem to have flown far (
on a HAL-built plane?) from the original topic.
