Sugata Bose : @Sourav Nandi -- The Americans did what they did to Vietnam not by way of capitalistic derivation alone -- which at any rate is inhuman by its very exploitative nature, by the way -- but on account of imperialistic, hegemonic designs. Hence, such counter allegations against capitalism cannot absolve communism of its ills and substantive sickness to its core philosophy and method of application. Where has communism shown a human face, pray, tell me, that you so raise it to a pedestal while denouncing China as being a devious applier of this inhuman and unnatural philosophy that makes man into a beast? Just show me one instance where communism has been benign in its applied mode -- which, incidentally, arises from its theoretical propositions -- and where it has not invariably been a malignant force in the historical evolutionary process of the last century and beyond till date.
Sugata Bose : @Sourav Nandi -- A stupendous argument ! Where in the history of communism has it produced a single pure person, a holy man, an enlightened sage, a free soul who has transcended the limitations of the senses to reach the infinitude of his being, where? All that it has produced, despite its tallest pretensions to the contrary, have been malevolent dictators the world over who have reduced humanity to despair. I agree religion has deviated from his course of rectitude and played the dirty political game in history to destroy as much of civilisation as it has given to making it. But the essential difference is that in the case of religion it has been an aberration but in the case of communism it has been the very kernel of its philosophy to regard man as cattle by its very definition of him as 'social animal' to be slaughtered at will to bring about holy revolution.
I agree also that Christianity and Islam and the caste system in India arising as the social derivative of a religion-driven society have reduced humanity often, and very often at that, to ruins. But these have been ancient and medieval dealings of humankind grappling with the social reality unlike communism which in all its modern pretension and under the full blaze of modern scientific attainments has yer resorted to such philosophically justified barbarism. No wonder Sri Aurobindo, at the onset of the Russian Revolution, had famously remarked that a barbaric system (Tsarism) had come to be replaced by an even more barbaric order (communism).
Moreover, why are you bent upon conflating issues by bringing in religion and capitalism and their characteristics and aberrations when the core content of the write-up is the evil that is communism. And do you disagree that it is so? Would you absolve the philosophy of communism in theoretical terms of its pernicious core content, as you seem to be implying, while selectively denouncing some of its proponents like China for having distorted its teachings and applied the same thereafter to the ruin of vast numbers of people?
Two more points :
1. Man is not a social animal beyond his material body and his organic workings at the level of surface perception, which is the materialistic view, as of communism. Man is a deeper reality as idealists the world over have always held from Athens to the Indus.
2. The caste system -- in real, the fourfold 'varna' differentiation, -- is not a religious system but is a distinct social system that was evolved to arrive at a harmonious social order with allotted duties and responsibilities to each social group for the smooth functioning of society. This was the ancient system of meritocracy in the ancient simple village and small town order of society which later degenerated owing to greater complexities arising in society as it evolved. However, religion, as such, had never had anything to do with it fundamentally here in Bharatvarsha where the divinity of the human being and of all sentience has in trumpet voice been sounded from the ramparts of the Vedanta, if I may be excused this allusion to the fortress form, for, indeed, it has the Vedanta and the Vedanta alone that has rock-like withstood the ravages of turbulent times that have swept through the hills and the dales, the plains and the plateaus of this holy land (Punyabhumi) that has never known man as a social animal but has ever revered his body and mind, soul and self as the manifestation of the Absolute Reality, the Brahman, the Atman.
My best wishes to you for your forthright and vigorous responses. Do continue to comment like this and light up the conversation that will in consequence follow.
Jai Hind !
Written by Sugata Bose
P.S. : Sugata Bose : Wonderful enlightened comment, my friend, Sourav Nandi, but you are misjudging me in a sense and doing me an injustice by ignoring my copious posts where I making perceptive observations about communism and the great founder of Marxism, Karl Marx himself. However, I will have to write about the relative merits of these diverse systems, communism, socialism in the primary phase, the New Economic Policy of Lenin and Deng Xiaoping's socialism with Chinese characteristics. Do not get me wrong, I will soon address these issues and I sincerely thank you for reminding me that I must be more neutral in my observations as a thinker and not so tilted towards any one particular world view to the exclusion of others. God bless you and wait for my gradual flow of essays in this promised realm.
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