Problem With Applying A Marxist Theory To Explain Ila Mitra’s Actual Experience of Torture and Rape as a Hindu Women
Philosophers often use metaphors to conceive of social and culture events and structures. Marx in his various writings, including his very important writing, The German Ideology, used a metaphor to explain the movement of society from one historical stage to another. How did Marx use the metaphor? Marx conceived of society as a two-tiered model, base and superstructure. The base, which is the mover of history, consists of the modes of production and the relations of production. The latter refers to how human beings relate to each other depending on the fundamental modes of production. The modes of production are the ways human beings reproduce their daily lives, food, shelter, clothing, on each stage of human development. The modes of production are tribal, agricultural, feudal and capitalist. Depending on these modes human relationship to each other vary whether they are feudal lords and serfs or employer and employee, etc. On the second floor or the superstructure, is everything else, such as, culture, society, State, religious institution, and so forth. Now, using the cause/effect model Marxists can explain the change in “culture” from one historical stage to another, such as follows: The “base” consisting of the modes of production and the relations of production move to a new stage as new tools are invented, and that in turn causes the superstructure to move. Thus, the shift in culture from the feudal to the capitalist system is an effect, within the Marxist framework, of the fundamental movement from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist mode of production.
While structural systems like “feudalism” or “capitalism” are important to understand the different systems, nonetheless, structures cannot explain how different structures or systems interact on different identities or how different identities experience these different systems. For example, men and women, or people of different races or different faiths experience capitalism differently. Thus, the market may be experienced as liberating for women of the upper class, who wish to become independent via wage labor, while it is experienced by men of the upper class as oppressive for “wage labor” is necessitation for them. Interestingly, in his earlier writings like the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx does hint at identity in his explanation of “class”. For example, in the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx says that in so far as millions of families live under the same economic system, they do not form a class; in so far as they identify themselves as a class distinct from another class, they do form a class. Despite this insight, however, most often Marxists only consider Marx as a philosophers who explained history via a series of systems and structures.
The above limitations of Marx have been detrimental to the understanding of sexual violence due to one’s gender identity and violence specifically directed because of someone’s religious identity, both of which form a pivotal way of experiencing events in post colonial states. I shall show this aporia in the Marxist theory by using the case of Ila Mitra and the violence inflicted on her in police custody during the Tebhaga movement. Ila Mitra was a Communist leader, a woman and Hindu by birth, who led the Tebhaga movement in 1950 (then a part of East Pakistan) under the Nachol police station in Rajshahi district in Bangladesh.
In the area of Nachol, the jotedars (land owners) used to get two-thirds share, while only one-third went to the cultivator, instead of half as in other districts of north Bengal. The objective of the movement, in very simple terms, was to ensure that, out of the total yield, two-thirds share went to the cultivator, and one-third to the jotedar To the administrator and the landowners this was unfair and was illegal looting and hence they appealed to the administration not to let this demand be met and several peasants and activists were taken into custody and tortured. On Jnaury 7 about 2000 soldiers arrived in Nachol and set fire to 12 villages, ransacked countless houses and killed many villagers as they moved in towards Chandipur village. The army was supported by armed police and ansars. They moved from door to door in search of the wanted leaders.” (Summarized from the article by Ajoy Roy, Ila Mitra – Revolutionary, Trailblazer Daily Star, October 17, 2015).
According to Ajoy Roy, “An unequal fighting began — on the one side thousands of Santal, Hindu and Muslim peasants comprising the defense force of Tebhaga and on other side, the army, police and ansars armed with modern fire arms. The defense force could not resist any more– they had to give in. Hundreds of Santals members were killed. Villagers were forced to leave the country to escape inhuman repression at the hands of law enforcing agencies.”
Ila Mitra was taken to police custody and tortured. This included inserting hot eggs inside her vagina to gang rape. According to Ajoy Roy, “Then came the unimaginable torture on Ila Mitra herself. Her fault was– she was a woman, a Hindu, a communist and, above all, she led the Tebhaga rebellion with arms. The process and methods of repression and torture were beastly and totally devoid of any humanity. It was a glaring example of how a civilized government uses its state machinery to brutally torture its own citizens in the name of extracting a confession. “
Ila Mitra’s Confession, “No food was given to me, not even a drop of water. The same day in the evening the sepoys began to beat me on the head with the butt of their guns, in the presence of the S.I. I was profusely bleeding through the nose. Afterwards…Inside the cell again the S.I. ordered the sepoys to bring four hot eggs, and said, now she will talk. Thereafter four or five sepoys forced me to lie down on my back, and one pushed a hot egg through my private parts. I felt like I was being burnt with fire, and became unconscious.
When I came back to my senses in the morning of the 9th, the S.I. and some sepoys came into my cell and began to kick me on the belly with their boots on. Thereafter a nail was pierced through my right heel. I was then lying half conscious, and heard the S.I. muttering: “We are coming again at night, and if you do not confess, one by one the sepoys will ravish you”. At the dead of night, the S.I. and his sepoys came back and the threat was repeated. But as I still refused to say anything, three or four men got hold of me, and a sepoy began to rape me. Shortly afterwards I became unconscious. Next day on 10-1-50, when I became conscious again, I found that I was profusely bleeding and my cloth was drenched in blood. I was in that state taken to Nawabganj from Nachole. The sepoys in Nawabganj jail gate received me with smart blows.” (Ajoy Roy, article as above).
The specific torture happened to Ila Mitra because of her identity as a woman. Subsequently, she was sent to Hindu majority West Bengal, India, because she was a Hindu. This specific kind of torture would not have happened was she a member of the Communist Party and a Muslim male. So, being a woman and a Hindu are identities. A woman and a Hindu would experience the peasant movement, the fight for justice differently than a male and a Muslim in this context. Sexual torture is not gender specific, but because she was a woman, this was the method of torture for Ila Mitra to confess. In addition, had she been a Muslim woman it is possible that in this context she would not have been tortured in the same way. As a Hindu her identity stood opposed to the theocratic state of Pakistan, and hence deserved to get the highest punishment. A Marxist analysis would erase the specific identities and reduce this struggle as class struggle or under systems and structural struggles such as feudalism or capitalism. While these structures are important for us to understand the historical stages of development, but they are little or of no help in understanding the actual experiences of living individuals with different identities who experience historical stages differently. While some talk of gender identity is coming into the discourse, faith identity is still hushed down. Nonetheless, if our understanding of history has to be closer to reality, we have to look into how actual human beings experience historical events and not use abstract structures and systems to explain historical events.
Reference
Marx, K. (1845) The German Ideology. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ on November 18, 2024
Roy, A, (2015). Ila Mitra: Revolutionary, Trailblaiser. The Daily Star. Retrieved on November 18, 2024 from https://www.thedailystar.net/in-focus/ila-mitra-revolutionary-trailblazer-158164.
