Books

Primer for lefties

Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China by Richard Evans; Viking Penguin; Price: Rs.225; 315 pp

In the historic 2004 general election in which the overweening and extraordinarily insensitive charioteers of the BJP were cut down to size and sent into the wilderness of opposition by the much-lauded electorate, the two communist parties and allies won 67 seats in the Lok Sabha, their highest tally ever. This despite it being common knowledge that on every progressive policy issue starting from India’s freedom movement, economic liberalisation and deregulation, cutting non-merit subsidies to the middle class, curbing militant trade unionism, computerisation of banks, divestment of public sector equity, welcoming foreign investment etc, the commissars of the Left have been in opposition.

But there are communists and communists. And contemporary India’s communist party comrades who seem to be enmeshed in a 1950s Stalinist time warp, would do well to read this outstandingly illuminating biography of the late Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), a true-red communist, who following the chaos and confusion of the Cultural Revolution and death of Mao Zedong in 1976, navigated and piloted the transformation of the People’s Republic of China into the world’s fastest growing economic powerhouse. Deng, who was twice stripped of power during communist China’s roller-coaster ride to socio-economic development was paraded through the streets in a dunce cap during the Cultural Revolution (1965-73). How he sprang back to emerge as the undisputed leader of the People’s Republic through the momentous 1980s to morph China into the world’s most high-potential economy, is the subject matter of this engrossing biography-cum-history written by diplomat Sir Richard Evans, British ambassador in China in the mid eighties when Deng Xiaoping was at the height of his power in Beijing. Later, Evans led the British team in the Sino-British negotiations on the future of Hong Kong in the mid 1990s.

There’s much that distinguishes Deng from our own comrade commissars who manage India’s suddenly influential communist parties. For one, he rose to the top after suffering the trials and tribulations of the Long March (1931-35); fought the Japanese invasion of China (1935-45); suffered the pains of the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1957-65); was denounced as a capitalist roader during the Cultural Revolution (1965-73), and suffered a second humiliation during the ascendancy of the Gang of Four (1973-76).

On the other hand, commissars of the Communist Party of India (which split in the sixties into the CPI and CPM) have had it cushy. They didn’t have to suffer colonial police brutality during the freedom movement for the simple reason that they were on the British side. Subsequently after independence which they did nothing to win, they infiltrated academia, the intelligentsia and government, from which cosy, perks-laden environments they shoved their second-hand Soviet inspired bankrupt economic prescriptions down the throat of the nation, in effect sentencing over 700 million Indians to miserable lives in gulags of under-development. All this through the simple expedient of mouthing thunderous anti-capitalist rhetoric, inspiring the militant trade unionism of the labour aristocracy and provoking massive flight of financial and human capital from Bengal and Kerala, and perhaps India. Now for all their pains, the comrade commissars constitute the ruling elites of these two industrially moribund states and exert great power and influence in Delhi, where they have the ruling Congress-led UPA coalition government dancing to their obsolete tunes.

In the circumstances given that the clever, manipulative comrades of the Indian Left — like the poor — will always be with us, the national interest would be better served if they wised up and updated their communism. That’s the value of this important biography-cum-history. It details how within the framework of communist orthodoxy, Deng subtly abandoned the Maoist philosophy of the primacy of politics and let market economics drive political reform in post-Mao China. In 1975 he resurrected ‘the four modernisations’ first recommended by the popular prime minister Zhou Enlai a decade earlier. The four modernisations would he predicted, transform China into a "powerful socialist country with modern agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology by the end of this century".

Following the long-awaited death of chairman Mao in 1976, Deng persuaded the central committee of the party to make the four modernisations the "focus of all party work" with spectacular results. Evans details that in the period 1980-92 China’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 8.9 percent; the value of foreign trade rose from $38 billion to $115 billion; foreign direct investment crossed $20 billion and was used to revitalise 30,000 business enterprises across the country. This biography published in 1993 ends in 1992 when Deng was still alive. Deng died in 1997 at the age of 92. But thanks to the strong economic development policies he formulated for China after rescuing it from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the nation maintained that rate of economic growth until the turn of the century. As a consequence almost every respectable think tank predicts that by the year 2020, China’s GDP will surpass that of the US and become the largest in the world.

Unfortunately with the rare exception of West Bengal’s communist chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who is ploughing a lonely Dengist furrow in Kolkata, the politburo in New Delhi continues to subscribe to the bankrupt economic policies which imploded the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

For committed democrats such as this reviewer, Deng Xiaoping is not entirely a lovable character. After all it was he who ordered the ruthless army crackdown on peacefully protesting pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But though a ruthless hard-core communist, he was at least an effective communist. His biography offers India’s effete lefties and fellow travellers a primer for transforming themselves into something more than a national nuisance.

Brave renegades

A Space of Her Own: Personal Narratives of Twelve Women by Leela Gulati, Jasodhara Bagchi; Sage Publications; Price: Rs.340; 275 pp

It’s useful to remember that women prosaically portrayed as wives, mothers, grandmothers, daughters were also personalities shaping and mediating with the world for the next generation. The stories in this compendium offer a glimpse into the inner chambers of households and interactions within families in an era (early and mid 20th century) when women were cabined, cribbed and confined. Eight of these biographical sketches were written for a gender studies workshop hosted by the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram in 1998. Women participants were exhorted to write about the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. Four narratives were added subsequently to expand the range of this volume.

Most readers will recognise the narrators as luminaries who have risen to positions of eminence in academics, business, theatre, and the arts. They have written about their emancipation struggles in matter-of-fact styles that will appeal to both academic and non-academic readers.

As the title denotes, this compilation is women centric. Men are mentioned peripherally even though they are central to the lives of the women protagonists. We are provided insights into the joint family structure from close quarters, made aware of support systems some households were able to build, and witness several young women making the leap to their destinies. Most often they emerged with definite identities of their own.

Many of the narratives describe touching anecdotes that testify to the grit and determination of the characters placed in the spotlight by the writers. Vina Mazumdar recounts the history of her aunt Pishima who left her husband and returned to her paternal home. She admits to being fortunate in being allowed to stay with her brothers, and uses her position to champion the cause of women in the family.

Then there is Leela Gulati’s mother Saras who is relocated all the way from Karnataka to Baroda with her son and daughters to start a new life, hoping to be free of the pressures and oppressions of her extended family. Here, despite severe financial constraints she pushes for college education for her daughters, helping them to rise to positions of eminence.

Likewise Mary Roy made the tough decision to take her inheritance issue to court. In the process she took her grievance against the Travancore Christian Succession Act all the way to the Supreme Court. This not only made her unpopular with the older generation, but also made life less emotionally secure for her children.

Mothers in India are known to pressurise their daughters to conform to traditions and marriageability criteria. But some of the women whose histories are recounted in this volume taught their daughters and nieces differently. Though they didn’t rebel openly, they grabbed development opportunities whenever they could — to learn to sing, play an instrument or learn to read. This was their way of manoeuvering their spaces within the restricted ambit of their lives.

One of the strong underlying themes in these reflections is the liberating impact of women’s education. It is possible that many of the women were of a class which was well aware of education as the passport to liberation. It is amazing how some of them travelled abroad to study, even before independence. One wonders if these women were extraordinary persons, or just ordinary women with ‘renegade predecessors in the family’ who made it possible to dream. Perhaps a bit of both. Reading this book could bond the brave renegades of this compilation closer to women readers, prompting them to look for liberation of their own lives.