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Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa (S L Bhyrappa), one ofIndias most distinguished novelists, is a conscious artiste who depicts fundamental human emotions in his works of art. Well known for hisprofound knowledge of Indian philosophical and cultural traditions, he is a writer who has had intense personal experiences in both rural and urban milieus.

He is known for describing dwindling human emotions and experiences. His characters are deeply rooted in Indian sensibilities.He has authored 24 novels, four volumes of literary criticism and books on aesthetics, social issues and culture. Most of his novels are translated into almost all the Indian languages and six into English.

Uttara Kaanda,Bhyrappas latest novel, is an attempt to view Ramas story from Sitas perspective. The novel brings outthe sensitive voice of a neglected female character.It fills in and uncovers the philosophical gulf, the overhyped mythological sub-stories inside the Ramayana that had masked and covered her up so far. The novel capturesmyriad emotions as he narrates the storyfrom a womans perspective.

The raw emotions runningthrough the minds of Sita, Rama and Lakshmana and Sitas thoughts about Rama, his Rajadharma and Lakshmanas unmatched love towards his brother are the elements thatmake Uttara Kaanda worth a read. Excerpts from an interview

Parva was your response to Mahabharata 40 years ago... Why did you take so long to respond to Ramayana?

AfterParva, my friends wanted meto respond toRamayana. It didnt have the complexity of problems and characters to enthuse me. As I began reading it, I realised that characters like Sita, Lakshmana and Urmila had the scopeto explore mycreativity. The problem of a single parent and an abandoned female baby fascinated me. Valmiki had many hints, whichI thought I could develop.

Did you intend to beloyal to Valmiki, Sita or the theme youhad in mind for Uttara Kaanda?

Uttara Kaanda is my creative response to the Valmiki Ramayana. Valmiki and Vyasa are the greatest propounders of values. Most of the later writers have responded to these two epics. I found that Sita had great scope for development.

Any parallels in the novel between Sita and the 21st century Indian women?

Its too complex to draw parallels between the injustice meted out to Sita andthe 21st century Indian woman. Rama isnt a villain. His approach to be an ideal king was impractical. He volunteeredself-suffering and the suffering of the queen so that his subjects realised theirmistakes. I believe M K Gandhi borrowedthe idea of self-suffering by fasting from Rama. Both Rama and Gandhi failed to realise the impracticability of the method.

Why is the engaging narrative technique of your other novels missing inUttara Kaanda?

Narrative technique depends upon the story. Considering Ramayanas simple story, I chose a different narrative technique. Eitheridealistic characters or demons pervade the Ramayana.There is less scope for complexity in the story.Saartha and Parva have complex stories and hence, the technique had to be different.

Whatdid you really intend to achieve in Uttara Kaanda? Appeal to the heart or the mind?

There cant be Bhakti (devotion) without Jnaana (knowledge). You cant experience Rasa (aesthetic pleasure) without understanding the situation and experience. You cant strictly separate the two.

Is Uttara Kaanda an attempt to shed your label of being ananti-feminist?

The self-titled critics must understand that I created characters like Nanjamma, Satyabhama, Kunti, Draupadi, Chandrika, Ubhaya Bharati and Vyjayanti. Ramayana is nearly a 5000-year-old story, so then, whydid feminists notcreate the Sita of my Uttara Kaanda all these years? Over 30 books have been written on me by learned people who arent self-titled critics.

Why are you opposed to isms in literature?

The isms are fixed ideologies, which block free thinking and creativity.I kept my intellectual freedom due to understanding ofphilosophy, sociology, history, economics and travel in countries of different economies and religious beliefs.

Your take on corporate literary festivals.

Awards and literary festivals sponsored by the corporate world are dominated by the leftists who use the capitalists money to promote themselves and their ideology. Infiltration of ideologies, leftists, events and lobbyinginto literary organisationsis detrimental to literature.

What is your basic concern as a novelist?

I dont have any ideology. For me, each of my novels is an effort to explore some aspects of life. I touch the depth of Indian culture through the hearts of the learned and common readers.

You are yet to receive the Jnanpith award...

Ive received the Saraswati Samman, Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, National Professorship and honorary doctorate from seven Universities. The Indian governmenthas selected Parva for translating into Chinese and Russian languages. Ive millions of readers from across the country. I consider it as the greatest award ifreadersfind my books worthy of reading after I am gone.

Something on rightists, leftists and the increasing atrocities against women and dalits after the BJP came to power at the centre?

Communists and socialists coined the termsleft and right. In the Indian context, leftists want the government to own all industries and businesses. Those advocating freedom of enterprise are dubbed rightists.Nehru relied on communism, while hisdaughter relied on communists to continue in power. They pushed India to poverty. The leftists born after 1990s cantimagine the situation in India during Nehru and Indira Gandhi. For the former prime minister Manmohan Singh, the minority community has the first right on the wealth of the country. Those opposing Singhs idea are dubbed rightists and communal.

Today, over 30 per cent of students in the institutions of higher technical learning are girls. Some find faults forabolishingthe Triple Talaq. For them,freedom of speech and expression is at stake when the government tries to fixfalsities in textbookspropagated by the previous regimes.

Increasing atrocities on dalits, women and attempts to curb freedom of speech and expression are fictitious theories floated by a section only to defame the Narendra Modi government.

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The man and the myth - Deccan Herald

The fight against the fascist threat cultivated and promoted by Donald Trump is not over. During the weekend of November 14, the most reactionary elements of the extreme right made their way into Washington, D.C., for the so-called Million MAGA March to demand an overturn of the election results and to keep Trump in the White House for another four years. Mayor Muriel Bowsers citywide mask mandate and quarantine order for visitors from areas outside the city where the COVID-19 caseload is high did not seem apply to fascists and supporters of Trump.

These maskless white supremacists converged on Black Lives Matter Plaza and immediately tore down the murals and signs on the fencing surrounding the White House. These signs portrayed victims of police violence and racial terror, and slogans from the anti-police rebellions that took place over the summer. During this desecration, the D.C. police protected these fascists and prevented the counter-protesters from stopping them. Later on, these same forces tore down the Black Lives Matter mural on the AFL-CIO building. It is a damn disgrace that the police did not stop the vandalism by these folks invited in by Trump and his forces. We demand investigations into the failure of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to contain these fascists. We also reject the false equivalency between the rebellions on behalf of Black lives and extreme-right terrorist groups.

Trump also drove his motorcade through the crowd and sent supporting tweets out to his followers who were and are continuing to terrorize D.C. residents. Proud Boys, QAnon conspiracy theorists, America First-ers, and other fascist groups joined the fray as counter-protesters began to fight back. Later in the evening, violent confrontations took place where fascists began beating and stabbing anti-fascists in the streets. Andy Ngo, known as a fascist grifter from his antics in Portland, OR, posted edited video clips online blaming BLM-Antifa for violence against Trump supporters and so-called peaceful protestors.

We know from the history of our Party that anti-communism and racism are monopolys twin weapons to destroy our movements.

Just a week earlier, those who voted against Trump celebrated in the streets of downtown D.C. by popping champagne corks and dancing as Biden and Harris were declared the victors in the election for presidency. Shouldnt the anti-Trump movement have planned an even broader and larger demonstration to defend democracy and the vote? Lets make no mistake Trump is trying to strip the vote from Black voters in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

Organizations and individuals who dont want fascists taking over D.C. are actually physically fighting against fascism in the streets. We cannot go into a honeymoon period just because Republicans are out of the White House.

Anti-fascists have the right to defend themselves, their friends, and families from far-right violence and terror in D.C., and we stand in solidarity with them. This open terrorism has an eerie resemblance to the massive Ku Klux Klan rallies that happened in the 1920s in D.C. and the American Nazi Party rallies that happened at Madison Square Garden in New York in the 1930s. We must continue fighting these forces, even with Trump being defeated at the polls, and continue our struggles with the coalitions we built in our all-peoples front against fascism.

It is beyond a disgrace for the lack of response to the violence that falls upon D.C. residents, especially from the police, corporate developers, and Trumpian fascist forces. Everyone responsible at the local and federal levels for not averting violence that descended upon the District this past weekend should be called to account. We demand actual accountability from our representatives in office.

We demand the following from the D.C. council members and Mayor Bowser:

Want to join the fight against the extreme right? Join our Party today: cpusa.org/join; contact us at dccp@cpusa.org

Statement by DC Metro Club CPUSA.Image: kelly bell photography (CC BY 2.0).

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Fascists converge onto downtown D.C. to overturn the vote - Communist Party USA

Wearing red masks due to the pandemic, workers, members and supporters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) marched through Red Square in order to pay tribute to the most significant event of modern history.

"There has been nothing more magnificent than the Great October", said CPRF chairman Gennady Zyuganov during his address, praising the achievements of the 1917 Revolution.

He also blasted Russian media because while commemorating the iconic parade of November 7, 1941 - when the Red Army marched straight into the battle against the Nazis from the square - they didn't say a word about the reason the parade was held in the first place, which was to mark the October Revolution anniversary.

Zyuganov also praised the decisive and invaluable role of Vladimir Lenin in the victory of the 1917 Revolution and called the people of the country to fight "for a strong, modern and socialist Russia, for the USSR!".

IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM

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Russian communists paid tribute to the October Revolution in Moscow - In Defense of Communism

Communist Party leader Gus Hall is seen here speaking at the University of Oregon campus in Feb. 1962, against a collage of newspaper headlines. The Communist campus tour of 1962 is one episode in CPUSA history recounted in the new book 'Faith in the Masses' from International Publishers. | People's World Archives

The following is a preview of a new book just released by International Publishers:

Faith in the Masses: Essays Celebrating 100 years of the Communist Party USA

The book features contributions from more than a dozen authors examining various episodes, personalities, and themes from across the CPUSAs century of existence. Edited by Tony Pecinovsky, Faith in the Masses challenges anti-communist narratives as well as orthodox historians whove attempted to portray the CPUSA as an appendage of the Soviet Union rather than a product of domestic struggles in the United States for economic, racial, gender, and social equality.

This excerpt comes from a chapter written by Pecinovsky entitled, Far From Marginal: The CPUSA in the 1960s and early 1970s.

To order the book, visit International Publishers website.

1962: The tide has turned

It was February 12, 1962. Communist Party USA general secretary Gus Hall was in the midst of a West Coast speaking tour. On this particular evening, police on horseback nervously observed in the backfield while cheerleaders ushered attendees to their seats as more than 12,000 students packed the University of Oregon football field. Later that night, Hall spoke to an additional 3,000 students at Oregon College in Monmouth. On February 13, he spoke with 1,000 students at Lewis and Clark College and then on the 14th to only 800 at Reed College, as Portland officials refused to let Hall speak at the city auditorium, which could have accommodated the additional 1,000 students who stood around trying to get in.

Order from International Publishers

According to Philip Bart, onetime chair of the CPUSAs history commission, Hall spoke in front of a cumulative 19,000 students on five campuses between February 10th and 15th, 1962, including the University of California, where a spontaneously organized gathering of hundreds met with Hall after he concluded his remarks. Hall told students, Anti-communism is just a smoke-screen, the real aim is to destroy the Bill of Rights. This was a sentiment supported by over a decade of ramified political repression directed at the CPUSA and the broader movements for social and economic justice; the result was a constraining of domestic political discourse.

Just days later, Hall spoke at Stanford University in front of 1,500 students, while his comrade Arnold Johnson jammed the 700-person capacity auditorium at Hamilton College. According to the Utica Daily Press, There were people sitting in the organ loft and on stairs, the floor, and window ledges to hear the party stalwart. Also in February, 350 students heard Bart at Bowdoin College in Maine, and hundreds more heard Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker in St. Paul, Minnesota. Aptheker also addressed 250 students at the University of Pennsylvania in early April, while the onetime Communist Councilman from Harlem, Benjamin Davis, Jr., addressed 600 students at Harvard. And African-American party leader James E. Jackson, editor of The Worker, spoke with 1,400 students at Colby College in May.

It was reported in early March 1962 that Hall gave 37 separate speeches in just 12 days. In April, he told 400 students at City College-New York that if the McCarran Act prosecutors succeed in jailing him and Benjamin Davis, Jr., no Americanwill be free. Unlike the political inquisitors, his sights were centered on domestic civil liberties. This was a recurring theme for the steelworker turned union organizer turned Communist. Fortunately for Hall and his comrades, the political winds were shifting. Later that month, nearly 1,000 students turned out at Swarthmore College to hear Hall. On May 1, he addressed 7,000 people at the Union Square May Day rally. Days later, he spoke with 400 students at Hunter College, 700 students at the University of Chicago, and 1,800 more at the University of Wisconsin, where another 1,500 students were turned away due to a lack of seating.

By mid-June 1962, Hall declared, During the past six months, I have spoken to some 50,000 students and youth directlyThe tide has turned. Communist speaking engagements continued into the fall. For example, in late November, Michigan party leader Carl Winter spoke with 900 students at Kalamazoo College, a campus traditionally thought of as a conservative stronghold. Communists had every reason to believe it was time to go on the offensive.

That spring, Hall noted, In the mass movements, the most important and most active contingent are the youth. Jubilantly, he added, the student demand to hear Communists was completely without precedent. It was of such magnitude, he said, that no force is able to ignore it, including the FBI. It has become a point of discussion on all levels of political life, he continued. We are so close to it that we do not fully appreciate it. This is an important point, as many today seem unable to fully appreciate it as well. Hall called the growing demand for Communist speakers a mass break-out from the conformist strait-jacket of McCarthyism and a rejection of anti-Communism, a bewildering defeat for the ruling class.

Though many of the emerging student groups were loose and even temporary in nature, Hall was optimistic. He saw the potential for a spark that can fundamentally change and challenge the contours of U.S. anti-communism, a spark spearheaded by youth. Additionally, he noted the array of self-published journals students were then printing. Isnt it fantastic that in a number of colleges, there are two, three, or four monthly magazines and newspapers, Hall continued, many with a Marxist outlook. That Communists must be a factor in finding forms through which this tremendous energy can best express itself, was a given for Hall. That We must not be mere observers, was another.

Halls perspective, that Communists must be a force in helping to initiate forms of united action in this upsurge and help give it cohesion and direction, wasnt rhetorical. Party-led youth formations like the Advance Youth Organization, the publication New Horizons for Youth, the Progressive Youth Organizing Committee, and later the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs were emerging. In this regard, Hall viewed the string of Communist speaking engagements in the early 1960s as not just victories for free speech and democratic rights, won in the face of a powerful campaign organized by the ultra-right, a campaign that was being defiantly challenged by youth and students. He also saw these engagements as an opportunity to introduce students to Marxism-Leninism and rebuild the CPUSA.

The substance of Halls campus presentations often focused on free speech, democracy, the defeat of the ultra-right, and peace. Speaking to students in New York, Hall hailed freedom of speech as vital. Its a weapon, he added. It must be preserved if we hope to collectively thrash out the very complicated problems [youth] face. He connected the fight for free speech generally to the fight to hear Communists specifically. There is a very deep feeling that if you can preserve the right of Communists to speak, then you can preserve the right of all to speak. Thats true. But its more than just a fight for the right of Communists to speak. The fact is that they [youth and students] want to hear a Communist speakThey are sick and tired of hearing the so-called Communist viewpoint from anti-Communists.

To Hall, a shift in consciousness was taking place. The fascist-like assault designed to transform the American people into a hysterical anti-Communist mob had failed. Senator Joseph McCarthy had been silenced. The Smith and McCarran Acts would both be declared unconstitutional. Communists were now on the offensive, regularly speaking to thousands of students across the country. The squirming of politicians, the fanatical fascist-like fringe of the ultra-right was being pushed back into its lair, Hall concluded. This was partly due to the courage of student activists who spearheaded the right of Communists to speak on college and university campuses across the country, a strategic relationship Hall would not soon forget and one that would become a prominent feature of the general secretarys work for many years to come.

As noted above, J. Edgar Hoovers FBI unsurprisingly took note of this shift, too. They saw the tide turning as well. Cartha D. De Loach, assistant director of the FBI, speaking at an American Bar Association conference in January 1962, told reporters, the Communists have grown increasingly ambitious in their designs upon youth. He noted that the Communist-led Progressive Youth Organizing Committee, which was founded on December 30, 1960 to January 2, 1961, was created to pave the way for greater Communist influence among broad segments of our college students. De Loach also credited Hall with the partys renewed emphasis on youth.

Communists and their successful speaking engagements were getting under Hoovers skin. Uniformed and undercover police watched Halls every move. For example, it was reported in the New York Times that 22 uniformed police and 15 detectives attended Halls early May Hunter College speaking engagement. That same month, Time magazine reported that some 100 campuses had extended invitations to Communist speakers. It did not, however, report on the number of colleges and universities that had denied Hall, and other Communists, their First Amendment rightwhich was likely also a considerable number.

In September 1962, the partys Lecture and Information Bureau sent a series of letters to various professors, college papers, student councils, and organizations requesting that you invite representatives of the Communist Party to speak. This was a deliberate, systematic approach to reach students. In the past year Communist spokesmen addressed more than thirty colleges and universities where approximately 75,000 students and townspeople attended. It is clear from this, the letter concluded, that students wish to hear the Communist viewpoint from bona fide spokesmen. Students in their search for knowledge apparently are not satisfied to learn about communism from anti-Communists. Those hoping to stunt the youth and student movement and its welcoming of Communists were likely dismayed.

After over a decade of political repression, Communists seemed poised to make a comeback.

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Book preview: Gus Hall and the Communist campus tour of 1962 - People's World

Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washingtons Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (New York: Public Affairs, 2020)

How do you get policymakers in Washington to think more about Southeast Asia, a strategic region of more than 600 million people? Talk to them about something they actually care about, an American counterpart once joked to me. If you portray Southeast Asia as an arena for competition with a rival great power (China today, the Soviet Union previously) or for pushback against a dangerous ideology, be it Islamism or communism, you just might get some interest.

In doing so, however, you risk a Pyrrhic victory. For, having framed the region around a broad, sweeping threat, you will find it very hard to argue for a nuanced approach to the diverse and divergent nations of Southeast Asia. And without clear thinking and a carefully calibrated approach, a great power such as the United States risks doing its own position in the region more harm than good.

The Donald Trump administration is the latest to rediscover this reality, as it has tried and failed to push its China containment drive into Southeast Asia. It would be a stretch to say that it has advanced a policy toward Southeast Asia. But, in between weakening the State Department and failing to show due regard for the regions premier security forum, it has leaned on Southeast Asian governments to join it in a broad pushback against China. While advising Southeast Asian nations to reject mobile technology from Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, or rebuff Beijings Belt and Road Initiative, the administration has not offered much in the way of viable alternatives.

But more concerning than this practical shortcoming is the deeper misunderstanding of how most of the regions governments see the intensifying U.S.-Chinese rivalry. The 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations vary greatly in terms of their warmth toward Beijing and Washington respectively, with Cambodia and Laos the most Chinese-friendly and Singapore and Vietnam (for now) the most U.S.-friendly.

However, none of these nations want to go all in with either great power. All, including Cambodia and Laos (sometimes seen as vassal states in Washington), have concerns about Beijings increasingly aggressive positioning. But they all have very close economic and trade relationships with China, too. They all, to different extents, value the U.S. security presence in Asia as a balancing force, as well as access to U.S. capital and markets. But they also have concerns about Washingtons reliability and its track record of attempting to interfere in their internal affairs.

The heavy, but shaky, hand of the Trump administration has alienated key U.S. partners in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, while doing little to win over the likes of Cambodia and Laos. A case in point is Washingtons recent request to Jakarta to allow P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft to land and refuel in Indonesia, presumably while monitoring the South China Sea and other contested areas. The Indonesian government was always likely to reject such a tin-eared ask, because it jealously guards its nonaligned status and is wary of upsetting Beijing. That it even would make such a request signals to Indonesia that Washington does not understand its very clearly stated independent and active foreign policy, helpfully laid out in English in Foreign Affairs magazine by Mohammad Hatta, one of the nations founders, in 1953.

The P-8 controversy brings to mind another, far more high-profile incident, involving U.S. aircraft operating in Indonesia 62 years ago a time when Washington also saw Southeast Asia through the lens of great-power competition and ideological rivalry. In May 1958, Washingtons secret backing for separatist uprisings in Indonesia was exposed when a B-26 bomber piloted by CIA agent Allen Lawrence Pope was shot down by the Indonesian military over Ambon and Pope was captured. The CIA had been trying to weaken Indonesias founding President Sukarno, who it feared was getting too close to the Indonesian Communist Party and the Soviet Union. But, as Vincent Bevins argues in The Jakarta Method, Washington misjudged Sukarno and ended up being exposed in Asia as an aggressor against one of the worlds leading neutral powers. Sukarno took the Pope incident personally. I love America, but Im a disappointed lover, Bevins quotes him as saying. With bitter irony, the United States drove Sukarnos Indonesia in the direction from which it had been trying to divert it: a more anti-Western, more pro-Soviet Union, and pro-China path.

Howard Jones, who served as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia during this increasingly fraught period in the bilateral relationship, had tried to push for a more conciliatory approach to Sukarno, insisting that Washington was wrong to see Indonesia as another domino at risk of falling to communism. This was the all too common weakness of Americans to view conflict in black and white terms, Bevins quotes him as having written. There were no grays in the world landscape. There was either good or evil, right or wrong, hero or villain.

Bevins crisply written book documents how this blinkered approach contributed to tragedy upon tragedy in the developing world. Washingtons covert and overt efforts to oppose communism in Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Indonesia helped to precipitate or support mass violence and military coups. In Indonesia, at least several hundred thousand alleged leftists were massacred in 1965 to 1966 after Sukarno was ousted by Gen. Suharto with backing from Washington. Bevins describes how U.S. diplomats in Jakarta shared lists of purported communist sympathizers with the Indonesian army knowing that they would be murdered, just as had been done in other countries.

The Jakarta Method shows how the United States and its anti-communist local allies rolled out a disturbingly familiar playbook across the world to violently suppress leftists movements, parties, and partisans, even where they were not likely to come to power. In the early 1950s, U.S. officials had spoken of a Jakarta axiom in their foreign policy. That meant respecting the neutrality of independent states such as Indonesia, rather than pressuring them to choose a side in the Cold War. Twenty years later, Jakarta had become a byword for the murderous U.S.-backed repression of leftists. In 1973, the name of Indonesias capital was spray-painted onto the streets of Santiago as a warning of the impending murderous purge of leftists that followed Augusto Pinochets U.S.-backed military ouster of Salvador Allendes socialist government in Chile.

Using a mix of documentary sources and interviews with participants across multiple continents, Bevins shows how U.S.-backed violence shaped the world we live in today. More contentiously, he argues that this violence was an important contributor to the ultimate Western victory in the Cold War an outcome that surely stems more from the collapse of the Soviet Union and its East bloc satellites than to U.S. meddling in third countries.

Although the author admits that there was no central plan for a global campaign of extermination, at times he seems to succumb to the black-and-white, U.S.-centric approach of which he is rightly so critical. When U.S. interventions fail, such as in the Pope incident, they are depicted as ham-fisted and tragicomic. When U.S. allies succeed in ousting leftists, Washington is presented as an all-knowing, evil mastermind. But the margins between the success and failure of anti-leftist coups and uprisings were more often decided by the balance of political and military power on the ground than by the machinations of the CIA and U.S. diplomats.

In putting so much emphasis on the U.S. role in these turbulent events, Bevins risks underplaying the deep domestic divisions that were the key drivers of conflict and overlooking the agency of local actors. Such is the dizzying force of U.S. power that it can blind its sternest critics, as well as its strongest supporters, to the gray zones where most other nations exist. Viewing the world in black and white, through the lens of great-power competition: You might call it the Washington Method.

Ben Bland is the director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute. His most recent book is Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia.

Image: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (Photo by David Hume Kennerly)

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The Washington Method in Southeast Asia - War on the Rocks