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Letters

"Hindu Fascism"
This has reference to Sumanta Banerjee's article 'An Open Letter to Ganapathy…" (Frontier, June 1-7, 2014). No doubt the demand of the day is to form a broadest possible United Front against 'Corporate-Communal majoritarian fascism.' It would comprise radical Gandhians, Socialists of all hues (carrying forward the legacy of Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram-monohar Lohia, Madhu Limaye and the like), concerned leftists thoroughly disillusioned about official leftism, Naxalites including the Maoists, Environmental activists, human rights workers, civil society representatives, Feminists of all shades and varieties and progressive and democratic intelligentsia and other secular forces.

So the open appeal should have been addressed to all such concerned people as such. But why this singular approach to one particular organization only? It is of no use merely pointing out their contradictions, dichtomies, ambivanlences and major policy lapses arising out of their facile formulation and theorization about present day Indian reality. The programme and strategy-tactics combination are mere off-shoots of this simplistic generalization. They will only defend the position according to their existing or prevalent party line, however crude and mechanistic it appears to the public.

The negative examples cited in the piece will be considered as mere aberrations and nothing else. But selective use of fire arms, gunpowder etc while giving the call to "unite in a broad front with all genuine democratic forces which would be willing to fight back the Hindu fascist offensive" sounds somewhat paradoxical.
Amit Bandyopadhyay,
Kolkata

‘Dr Saibaba’
In the ‘Letters’ column of ‘Frontier’ weekly dt 20th-26th July appeared an announcement regarding the formation of a Defence Committee to secure Defence in Law for the release of Dr Saibaba who was illegally arrested by the Maharastra Government on the 9th May 2014 under the notorious UAPA Act. In the same it was also pointed out how inhuman atrocities were practised on Dr Saibaba by the Maharastra Police and the Jail Authorities. The life of Dr Saibaba is in grave danger. This is a very good move at this critical juncture and takes one to the history of the Naxalbari Movement about 50 years back. The said History is nearly Fifty Years old now. Dr Saibaba is continuing the legacy of resistance to the unjust system in his own way.

The Indian Situation today is very bleak with no appropriate leadership to lead to fight against the Imperialists and the reactionaries. In these circumstances the Intellectuals will have to bear the special responsibility to come forward to defend human rights and relentlessly protest against state terror aimed at silencing the growing voice of dissent as it was the case with Dr Saibaba.
Ms Sunder V Navalkar, Mumbai

Frontier
Vol. 47, No. 21, Nov 30 - Dec 6, 2014