Release Comrade Govindan Kutty!

[This appeared on the Single Spark website a while ago, we  here are reposting it for comment and raising the awareness of Kutty's arrest. The original document can be found here on the Single Spark website .]

 In recent weeks since the Maoist prison break on December 16th, 2007 in the Dantewada prison in Chhattisgarh, in which over 300 Maoist prisoners, after overpowering a guard escaped the prison the Indian government has attempted to restore some semblance of control over the situation. This has included the December 20th, 2007 comments by Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, urging the chief ministers of 12 states that have been particularly affected by the Maoist insurgency to crush the Maoist movement. It is in this context that the arrest of Com. Govindan Kutty has occurred. The Government has attempted to attack the Maoist movement by attacking vulnerable targets like Com. Govindan Kutty.Comrade Govindan Kutty has been unfairly jailed for editing an independent magazine, which had been legally and lawfully registered with the Indian government. Com. Govindan Kutty was arrested under the charges of spreading sedition and indulging in unlawful activities and was remanded in judicial custody by a lower court at Aluva in Kerala. This is despite the fact that the magazine, People’s March, was registered with the Government of India and the RNI number is KER ENG/2000/2051 and the postal registration number: KL/EKM/614/2007-09. Indeed, the magazine has often provided a sharp critique of the Indian government and the anti-people policies that it has enacted, whilst remaining squarely within the legal parameters of the Indian state and has done so for the last 9 years. Indeed, the magazine was not banned until the day that Com. Govindan Kutty was arrested.

The revisionist Communist Party of India-Marxist led ‘Left Democratic Front’ in Kerala has again demonstrated that they are a social fascist force, and have utilized fear and violence to repress dissent much like they have done in West Bengal. They have severely limited the Right to Freedom of Speech. The State government has consistently harassed and psychologically tortured Com. Govindan Kutty after his arrest. This has resulted in Com. Govindan Kutty engaging in a hunger strike until he is released. It must be noted that due to his age and ailments Com. Govindan Kutty’s health is under severe threat.

The Single Spark Collective demands that the government of India release Comrade Govindan Kutty immediately and unconditionally. Furthermore, we demand that ‘People’s March’ be allowed to be published and distributed without State harassment.

Why are we Unhappy?

 

In a country like Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s, people were, in a way, happy: three fundamental conditions of happiness were fulfilled. (1) Their material needs were absically satisfied - not too satisfied, since the excess of consumption can in itself generate unhappiness. It is god to experience a brief shortage of some goods on the market from time to time (no coffee for a couple of days, then no beef, then no TV sets): these brief periods of shortage functioned as exceptions that remined people that they should be glad that these goods were generally avaliable - if everything is available all the time, people take this availability as an evident fact of life, an no longer appreciate their luck. So life went on in a regular and predictable way, without any great efforts or schocks, one was allowed to withdraw into one’s private niche. (2) A seoncd extremely important feature: there was the Other (the Party) to blame for everything that went wrong, so that one did not feel really responsible - if there was a temporary shortage of goods, even if stormy weather caused great damage, it was “their” fault. (3) And, last but not least, there was an Other Place (consumerist West) about whch one was allowed to dream, and one could even visit it sometimes - this place was at just the right distance: not too far away, not too close. This fragile balance was disturbed - by what? By desire, prescisely. Desire was the force that compelled the people to move on - and up in a system in which the great majority are definately less happy.

Happiness is thus, to put it in Badiou’s terms, not a category of truth, but a category of mere Being, and as such confused, indeterminate, inconsistent (recall the proverbial anwser of a German immigrant  to the United States who, when asked “Are you happy?” anwsered “Yes, yes, I am very happy, aber glücklich bin ich nicht…”) [translation is 'but luckily I am not']. It is a pagan category: for pagans the goal of life is to live a happy life (the idea of living “happily ever after” is a christianized version of paganism), and religious experience or political activity themselves are considered higher form of happiness (see Aristotle) - no wonder the Dalai Lama himself has had such success recently preaching the gospel of happiness around the world, and no wonder he is finding the greatest response precisely in the United States, the ultimate empire of (the persuit of) happiness…In short, “happiness” is a category of the pleasure principle, and what undermines it is the insistence of a Beyond the pleasure principle.

(Puppet and the Dwarf, Slavoj Zizek)

 Could this probably explain why  people in the West are so unhappy?

Country	HPI	Life Satisfaction	Migration	% poverty	% unemployed	UN Poverty Index
Vanuatu	1	7.4	NA	NA	NA	128
Colombia	2	7.2	-3	14.5%	10.2%	64
Costa Rica	3	7.5	+49	18%	6.6%	42
Dominica	4	7.3	-930	30%	23%	68
Panama	5	7.2	-40	16,6%	8.7%	59
Cuba	6	6.2	-131	NA	1.9%	52
Honduras	7	7.2	-139	53%	28%	115
Guatemala	8	7.0	-194	75%	7.5%	119
El Salvador	9	6.6	-361	NA	6.5%*	105
St Vincent	10	7.2	-739	NA	15%	80
United Kingdom	108	7.1	+218	17%	4.7%	13
United States	150	7.4	+318	12%	5.1%	7

The chart I have stolen from Wikipedia , which article notes “..Happy Planet Index makes no claims about which is the ‘best country to live in’, but only which is the most efficient at converting natural resources into the conditions for living well. It acknowledges that Western countries, for example, have high levels of well-being and low levels of absolute poverty, but questions whether the societal and economic systems used to maintain these levels are sustainable or just.”

In fact, there is no developed Western country that makes the list until Austria at spot 61. Russia, Estonia, and the Ukraine are at the bottom of the list at 172, 173, 174 in a list of 178 nations. Does Zizek offer us an interesting insight into this question, that is Desire, our conscious idealizing that if realized creates unhappiness?

 Zizek goes into great detail of the implications on the academic Left, and its bluffing to the system. “[T]he old ‘68 motto ‘Soyons réalistes, demandons l’impossible!‘ aquires a new cynical-sinisrer meaning which, perhaps, reveals its truth: ‘Lets be realistic: we, the academic Left, want to appear critical, while fully enjoying the priviledges the system offers us. So lets bombard the system with impossible demands: we all know that such demands won’t be met, so we can be sure that nothing will change, and w’ll maintain our priviledged status quo!” If you accuse a big corporation of particular financial crimes, you expose yourself to risks that can go even as far as murder attempts; if you  ask the same corporation to finance a research rpoject on the link between global capitalism and the emergence of hybrid postcolonial identities, you stand a good chance of getting hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

A taste of such criticism can be found in Zizek’s critique of Simon Critchley’s (a professor at the New School University in New York City) book “Infinitely Demanding.” The critique was sharply entitled Resistance is Surrender.

Update: Govindan Kutty

Row over HR activists’ visit to Viyyur prison
Wednesday January 9 2008 10:48 IST
From newindpress.com

THRISSUR: Suspecting to be extremists, the police action to hold a group of five human rights activists who came to make a fact-finding study in the Central Prison at Viyyur, near here, on Tuesday kicked off a controversy.

Members of the group were PUCL state president P A Powran, editor of Hindi language monthly ‘Janaprathirodh’ published from Delhi, Raj Kishore, Tamil Nadu PUCl secretary K Kesavan, P A Shyna and Thusar Nirmal Sarathi from Ernakulam.

Later, reporters at the Press Club here on Tuesday, they said that they had come to Thrissur to visit Viyyur Central Prison and meet P Govindankutty, 65, editor of ‘People’s March’, who is on remand in the prison since December 20.

They said that Govindankutty was arrested from Aluva on December 19 . His bail applications were rejected both by the Aluva Judicial First Class Magistrate and the Sessions Court.

They said that the purpose of their visit was to obtain the signature of Govindankutty on a vakalath for filing bail application in a higher court and also to make a fact-finding study of his situation in the prison.

The human rights activists said that Govindankutty was fasting in the jail and the jail authorities indulged in forced-feeding of glucose after tying his hands and legs.

They said that Govindankutty had told them that the jail authorities were treating him cruelly. They said that the jail authorities told them that he was being forcibly fed as per orders from higher authorities and requested them to urge Govindankutty to end his fast.

However, Govindan Kutty turned down their request for ending the fast. They said that the group had gone to Viyyur Central Prison on Monday and had presented their identities to the jail authorities.

However, the jail authorities could not grant them permission to enter the jail as it was late in the afternoon. They were allowed entry to the prison on Tuesday and meet Govindankutty.

They said that during the meeting, they obtained the signature on the vakalath from him. However, when they came out of the jail, the Viyyur police, led by the Sub- Inspector, asked them to come to the police station, which they refused as the police had no warrant.

They said that when asked why they were wanted in the police station, the police told them that it was for the verification of their identities.

They said they had informed the police that their addresses and other identities could be verified from the jail authorities. They said that dissatisfied with their reply, the police was planning to detain them. However, somehow they managed to escape.

They said that they will demand withdrawal of the false case against Govindankutty and compensation for his illegal detention from the State Government.