कृति मेरे मन की…….

Jo Wilding

जर्नलिज्म को इतिहास का ‘पहला ड्राफ्ट’ कहा जाता है। आज से ठीक दस साल पहले अमरीका द्वारा ईराक पर हमले के समय जब अधिकांश पत्रकार अमरीकी सेना के साथ ‘Embed’ थे और अमरीका की ‘सफलता’ की खबरे दे रहे थे तो कुछ पत्रकार अपनी जान जोखिम में डालकर उन जगहों पर अमरीकी सेना से पहले पहुंच जाते थे जहां पर अमरीकी सेना हमला करने वाली होनी थी। और हमले के वक्त वे अपनी जान की परवाह न करते हुए न सिर्फ मिनट दर मिनट अमरीकी क्रूरता की खबरे दे रहे होते थे वरन् हमले में फंसे आम नागरिकों को वहां से निकालने में भी मदद कर रहे होते थे। ‘Jo Wilding’ ऐसी ही एक पत्रकार हैं। जिन्होने 10 साल पहले आज ही के दिन ईराक के फालूजा शहर से आंखों देखा हाल बयां किया था और दुनिया को पता चला कि साम्राज्यवादी ताकतों के लिए न सिर्फ उनकी असीमित सैन्य क्षमता उनके अस्तित्व के लिए आवश्यक है वरन् मुख्यधारा के मीडिया द्वारा रचा गया झूठ भी उनके अस्तित्व के लिए उतना ही आवश्यक है। ‘जाॅन पिल्जर’ की मशहूर किताब ‘TELL ME NO LIES’ में Jo Wilding का यह महत्वपूर्ण लेख संकलित है। वही से हम इसे साभार ले रहे हैं।

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway
east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and
from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We
turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and
Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of
people and a few possessions, heading the other way,
past the improvised refreshment posts along the way
where boys throw food through the windows into the bus
for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.
The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local
sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin
and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the
bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door
at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate
in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their
limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around
telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then
when people fled with whatever they could carry, they
were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on
the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching
the sun go down.
He said aid vehicles and the media were being turned
away. He said there was some medical aid that needed
to go in and there was a better chance of it getting
there with foreigners, westerners, to get through the
american checkpoints. The rest of the way was secured
with the armed groups who control the roads we’d
travel on. We’d take in the medical supplies, see what
else we could do to help and then use the bus to bring
out people who needed to leave.
I’ll spare you the whole decision making process, all
the questions we all asked ourselves and each other,
and you can spare me the accusations of madness, but
what it came down to was this: if I don’t do it, who
will? Either way, we arrive in one piece.
We pile the stuff in the corridor and the boxes are
torn open straightaway, the blankets most welcomed.
It’s not a hospital at all but a clinic, a private
doctor’s surgery treating people free since air
strikes destroyed the town’s main hospital. Another
has been improvised in a car garage. There’s no
anaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge and
the doctors warm them up under the hot tap in an
unhygienic toilet.
Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their
chests and faces. Ummi, my mother, one cries. I hold
her until Maki, a consultant and acting director of
the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of
about ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A
smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in
the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their
grandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja.
The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden
quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette
lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. The
electricity to the town has been cut off for days and
when the generator runs out of petrol they just have
to manage till it comes back on. Dave quickly donates
his torch. The children are not going to live.
“Come,” says Maki and ushers me alone into a room
where an old woman has just had an abdominal bullet
wound stitched up. Another in her leg is being
dressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, a
white flag still clutched in her hand and the same
story: I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when I
was hit by a US sniper. Some of the town is held by US
marines, other parts by the local fighters. Their
homes are in the US controlled area and they are
adamant that the snipers were US marines.
Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the
paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services.
The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is
in US territory and cut off from the clinic by
snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times
after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets
because no one can go to collect them without being
shot.
Some said we were mad to come to Iraq; quite a few
said we were completely insane to come to Falluja and
now there are people telling me that getting in the
back of the pick up to go past the snipers and get
sick and injured people is the craziest thing they’ve
ever seen. I know, though, that if we don’t, no one
will.
He’s holding a white flag with a red crescent on; I
don’t know his name. The men we pass wave us on when
the driver explains where we’re going. The silence is
ferocious in the no man’s land between the pick up at
the edge of the Mujahedin territory, which has just
gone from our sight around the last corner and the
marines’ line beyond the next wall; no birds, no
music, no indication that anyone is still living until
a gate opens opposite and a woman comes out, points.
We edge along to the hole in the wall where we can see
the car, spent mortar shells around it. The feet are
visible, crossed, in the gutter. I think he’s dead
already. The snipers are visible too, two of them on
the corner of the building. As yet I think they can’t
see us so we need to let them know we’re there.
“Hello,” I bellow at the top of my voice. “Can you
hear me?” They must. They’re about 30 metres from us,
maybe less, and it’s so still you could hear the flies
buzzing at fifty paces. I repeat myself a few times,
still without reply, so decide to explain myself a bit
more.
“We are a medical team. We want to remove this wounded
man. Is it OK for us to come out and get him? Can you
give us a signal that it’s OK?”
I’m sure they can hear me but they’re still not
responding. Maybe they didn’t understand it all, so I
say the same again. Dave yells too in his US accent. I
yell again. Finally I think I hear a shout back. Not
sure, I call again.
“Hello.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we come out and get him?”
“Yeah,”
Slowly, our hands up, we go out. The black cloud that
rises to greet us carries with it a hot, sour smell.
Solidified, his legs are heavy. I leave them to Rana
and Dave, our guide lifting under his hips. The
Kalashnikov is attached by sticky blood to is hair and
hand and we don’t want it with us so I put my foot on
it as I pick up his shoulders and his blood falls out
through the hole in his back. We heave him into the
pick up as best we can and try to outrun the flies.
I suppose he was wearing flip flops because he’s
barefoot now, no more than 20 years old, in imitation
Nike pants and a blue and black striped football shirt
with a big 28 on the back. As the orderlies form the
clinic pull the young fighter off the pick up, yellow
fluid pours from his mouth and they flip him over,
face up, the way into the clinic clearing in front of
them, straight up the ramp into the makeshift morgue.
We wash the blood off our hands and get in the
ambulance. There are people trapped in the other
hospital who need to go to Baghdad. Siren screaming,
lights flashing, we huddle on the floor of the
ambulance, passports and ID cards held out the
windows. We pack it with people, one with his chest
taped together and a drip, one on a stretcher, legs
jerking violently so I have to hold them down as we
wheel him out, lifting him over steps.
The hospital is better able to treat them than the
clinic but hasn’t got enough of anything to sort them
out properly and the only way to get them to Baghdad
on our bus, which means they have to go to the clinic.
We’re crammed on the floor of the ambulance in case
it’s shot at. Nisareen, a woman doctor about my age,
can’t stop a few tears once we’re out.
The doctor rushes out to meet me: “Can you go to fetch
a lady, she is pregnant and she is delivering the baby
too soon?”
Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing him
and me by the window, the visible foreigner, the
passport. Something scatters across my hand,
simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through the
ambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying through
the window.
We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light
flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US
marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings.
Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible
and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the
window, past my head. Some, it’s hard to tell, are
hitting the ambulance I start singing. What else do
you do when someone’s shooting at you? A tyre bursts
with an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.
I’m outraged. We’re trying to get to a woman who’s
giving birth without any medical attention, without
electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly
marked ambulance, and you’re shooting at us. How dare
you?
How dare you?
Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance into
reverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridge
in the centre of the road , the sots still coming as
we flee around the corner. I carry on singing. The
wheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shake
my head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to see
if we’re OK. Is there any other way to get to her, I
want to know. La, maaku tarieq. There is no other way.
They say we did the right thing. They say they’ve
fixed the ambulance four times already and they’ll fix
it again but the radiator’s gone and the wheels are
buckled and se’s still at home in the dark giving
birth alone. I let her down.
We can’t go out again. For one thing there’s no
ambulance and besides it’s dark now and that means our
foreign faces can’t protect the people who go out with
us or the people we pick up. Maki is the acting
director of the place. He says he hated Saddam but now
he hates the Americans more.
We take off the blue gowns as the sky starts exploding
somewhere beyond the building opposite. Minutes later
a car roars up to the clinic. I can hear him screaming
before I can see that there’s no skin left on his
body. He’s burnt from head to foot. For sure there’s
nothing they can do. He’ll die of dehydration within a
few days.
Another man is pulled from the car onto a stretcher.
Cluster bombs, they say, although it’s not clear
whether they mean one or both of them. We set off
walking to Mr Yasser’s house, waiting at each corner
for someone to check the street before we cross. A
ball of fire falls from a plane, splits into smaller
balls of bright white lights. I think they’re cluster
bombs, because cluster bombs are in the front of my
mind, but they vanish, just magnesium flares,
incredibly bright but short-lived, giving a flash
picture of the town from above.
Yasser asks us all to introduce ourselves. I tell him
I’m training to be a lawyer. One of the other men asks
whether I know about international law. They want to
know about the law on war crimes, what a war crime is.
I tell them I know some of the Geneva Conventions,
that I’ll bring some information next time I come and
we can get someone to explain it in Arabic.
We bring up the matter of Nayoko. This group of
fighters has nothing to do with the ones who are
holding the Japanese hostages, but while they’re
thanking us for what we did this evening, we talk
about the things Nayoko did for the street kids, how
much they loved her. They can’t promise anything but
that they’ll try and find out where she is and try to
persuade the group to let her and the others go. I
don’t suppose it will make any difference. They’re
busy fighting a war in Falluja. They’re unconnected
with the other group. But it can’t hurt to try.
The planes are above us all night so that as I doze I
forget I’m not on a long distance flight, the constant
bass note of an unmanned reconnaissance drone overlaid
with the frantic thrash of jets and the dull beat of
helicopters and interrupted by the explosions.
In the morning I make balloon dogs, giraffes and
elephants for the little one, Abdullah, Aboudi, who’s
clearly distressed by the noise of the aircraft and
explosions. I blow bubbles which he follows with his
eyes. Finally, finally, I score a smile. The twins,
thirteen years old, laugh too, one of them an
ambulance driver, both said to be handy with a
Kalashnikov.
The doctors look haggard in the morning. None has
slept more than a couple of hours a night for a week.
One as had only eight hours of sleep in the last seven
days, missing the funerals of his brother and aunt
because he was needed at the hospital.
“The dead we cannot help,” Jassim said. “I must worry
about the injured.”
We go again, Dave, Rana and me, this time in a pick
up. There are some sick people close to the marines’
line who need evacuating. No one dares come out of
their house because the marines are on top of the
buildings shooting at anything that moves. Saad
fetches us a white flag and tells us not to worry,
he’s checked and secured the road, no Mujahedin will
fire at us, that peace is upon us, this eleven year
old child, his face covered with a keffiyeh, but for
is bright brown eyes, his AK47 almost as tall as he
is.
We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with
a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the
building, cover this side and Rana mutters, “Allahu
akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.”
We jump down and tell them we need to get some sick
people from the houses and they want Rana to go and
bring out the family from the house whose roof they’re
on. Thirteen women and children are still inside, in
one room, without food and water for the last 24
hours.
“We’re going to be going through soon clearing the
houses,” the senior one says.
“What does that mean, clearing the houses?”
“Going into every one searching for weapons.” He’s
checking his watch, can’t tell me what will start
when, of course, but there’s going to be air strikes
in support. “If you’re going to do tis you gotta do it
soon.”
First we go down the street we were sent to. There’s a
man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round
red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies
ave got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I’m by
his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the
stretcher Dave’s hand goes through his chest, through
the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly
through his back and blew his heart out.
There’s no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive,
his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed,
they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gate
and they shot him. None of them have dared come out
since. No one had dared come to get his body,
horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditions
of treating the body immediately. They couldn’t have
known we were coming so it’s inconceivable tat anyone
came out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.
He was unarmed, 55 years old, shot in the back.
We cover his face, carry him to the pick up. There’s
nothing to cover his body with. The sick woman is
helped out of the house, the little girls around her
hugging cloth bags to their bodies, whispering, “Baba.
Baba.” Daddy. Shaking, they let us go first, hands up,
around the corner, then we usher them to the cab of
the pick up, shielding their heads so they can’t see
him, the cuddly fat man stiff in the back.
The people seem to pour out of the houses now in the
hope we can escort them safely out of the line of
fire, kids, women, men, anxiously asking us whether
they can all go, or only the women and children. We go
to ask. The young marine tells us that men of fighting
age can’t leave. What’s fighting age, I want to know.
He contemplates. Anything under forty five. No lower
limit.
It appals me that all those men would be trapped in a
city which is about to be destroyed. Not all of them
are fighters, not all are armed. It’s going to happen
out of the view of the world, out of sight of the
media, because most of the media in Falluja is
embedded with the marines or turned away at the
outskirts. Before we can pass the message on, two
explosions scatter the crowd in the side street back
into their houses.
Rana’s with the marines evacuating the family from the
house they’re occupying. The pick up isn’t back yet.
The families are hiding behind their walls. We wait,
because there’s nothing else we can do. We wait in no
man’s land. The marines, at least, are watching us
through binoculars; maybe the local fighters are too.
I’ve got a disappearing hanky in my pocket so while
I’m sitting like a lemon, nowhere to go, gunfire and
explosions aplenty all around, I make the hanky
disappear, reappear, disappear. It’s always best, I
think, to seem completely unthreatening and completely
unconcerned, so no one worries about you enough to
shoot. We can’t wait too long though. Rana’s been gone
ages. We have to go and get her to hurry. There’s a
young man in the group. She’s talked them into letting
him leave too.
A man wants to use his police car to carry some of the
people, a couple of elderly ones who can’t walk far,
the smallest children. It’s missing a door. Who knows
if he was really a police car or the car was
reappropriated and just ended up there? It didn’t
matter if it got more people out faster. They creep
from their houses, huddle by the wall, follow us out,
their hands up too, and walk up the street clutching
babies, bags, each other.
The pick up gets back and we shovel as many onto it as
we can as an ambulance arrives from somewhere. A young
man waves from the doorway of what’s left of a house,
his upper body bare, a blood soaked bandage around his
arm, probably a fighter but it makes no difference
once someone is wounded and unarmed. Getting the dead
isn’t essential. Like the doctor said, the dead don’t
need help, but if it’s easy enough then we will. Since
we’re already OK with the soldiers and the ambulance
is here, we run down to fetch them in. It’s important
in Islam to bury the body straightaway.
The ambulance follows us down. The soldiers start
shouting in English at us for it to stop, pointing
guns. It’s moving fast. We’re all yelling, signalling
for it to stop but it seems to take forever for the
driver to hear and see us. It stops. It stops, before
they open fire. We haul them onto the stretchers and
run, shove them in the back. Rana squeezes in the
front with the wounded man and Dave and I crouch in
the back beside the bodies. He says he had allergies
as a kid and hasn’t got much sense of smell. I wish,
retrospectively, for childhood allergies, and stick my
head out the window.
The bus is going to leave, taking the injured people
back to Baghdad, the man with the burns, one of the
women who was shot in the jaw and shoulder by a
sniper, several others. Rana says she’s staying to
help. Dave and I don’t hesitate: we’re staying too.
“If I don’t do it, who will?” has become an accidental
motto and I’m acutely aware after the last foray how
many people, how many women and children, are still in
their houses either because they’ve got nowhere to go,
because they’re scared to go out of the door or
because they’ve chosen to stay.
To begin with it’s agreed, then Azzam says we have to
go. He hasn’t got contacts with every armed group,
only with some. There are different issues to square
with each one. We need to get these people back to
Baghdad as quickly as we can. If we’re kidnapped or
killed it will cause even more problems, so it’s
better that we just get on the bus and leave and come
back with him as soon as possible.
It hurts to climb onto the bus when the doctor has
just asked us to go and evacuate some more people. I
hate the fact that a qualified medic can’t travel in
the ambulance but I can, just because I look like the
sniper’s sister or one of his mates, but that’s the
way it is today and the way it was yesterday and I
feel like a traitor for leaving, but I can’t see where
I’ve got a choice. It’s a war now and as alien as it
is to me to do what I’m told, for once I’ve got to.
Jassim is scared. He harangues Mohammed constantly,
tries to pull him out of the driver’s seat wile we’re
moving. The woman with the gunshot wound is on the
back seat, the man with the burns in front of her,
being fanned with cardboard from the empty boxes, his
intravenous drips swinging from the rail along the
ceiling of the bus. It’s hot. It must be unbearable
for him.
Saad comes onto the bus to wish us well for the
journey. He shakes Dave’s hand and then mine. I hold
his in both of mine and tell him “Dir balak,” take
care, as if I could say anything more stupid to a
pre-teen Mujahedin with an AK47 in his other hand, and
our eyes meet and stay fixed, his full of fire and
fear.
Can’t I take him away? Can’t I take him somewhere he
can be a child? Can’t I make him a balloon giraffe and
give him some drawing pens and tell him not to forget
to brush his teeth? Can’t I find the person who put
the rifle in the hands of that little boy? Can’t I
tell someone about what that does to a child? Do I
have to leave him here where there are heavily armed
men all around him and lots of them are not on his
side, however many sides there are in all of this? And
of course I do. I do have to leave him, like child
soldiers everywhere.
The way back is tense, the bus almost getting stuck in
a dip in the sand, people escaping in anything, even
piled on the trailer of a tractor, lines of cars and
pick ups and buses ferrying people to the dubious
sanctuary of Baghdad, lines of men in vehicles queuing
to get back into the city having got their families to
safety, either to fight or to help evacuate more
people. The driver, Jassim, the father, ignores Azzam
and takes a different road so that suddenly we’re not
following the lead car and we’re on a road that’s
controlled by a different armed group than the ones
which know us.
A crowd of men waves guns to stop the bus. Somehow
they apparently believe that there are American
soldiers on the bus, as if they wouldn’t be in tanks
or helicopters, and there are men getting out of their
cars with shouts of “Sahafa Amreeki,” American
journalists. The passengers shout out of the windows,
“Ana min Falluja,” I am from Falluja. Gunmen run onto
the bus and see that it’s true, there are sick and
injured and old people, Iraqis, and then relax, wave
us on.
We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in
the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we
look more western. The American soldiers are so happy
to see westerners they don’t mind too much about the
Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the
women unsearched because there are no women soldiers
to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are
going to be OK.
“Al-melaach wiyana, ” I tell him. The angels are with
us. He laughs.
And then we’re in Baghdad, delivering them to the
hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man
off groaning and whimpering. She puts her arms around
me and asks me to be her friend. I make her feel less
isolated, she says, less alone.
And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding
and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday
that, “I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right.”
Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family
home is right. Shooting grandmothers with white flags
is right? Shooting at women and children who are
fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is
right?
Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like
when you brutalise people so much that they’ve nothing
left to lose. I know what it looks like when an
operation is being done without anaesthetic because
the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and
the city’s under siege and aid isn’t getting in
properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what
it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your
head, even though you’re in an ambulance. I know what
it looks like when a man’s chest is no longer inside
him and what it smells like and I know what it looks
like when his wife and children pour out of his house.
It’s a crime and it’s a disgrace to us all.

नरेंद्र मोदी आखिर किसका प्रतिनिधित्व करते हैं, और भारतीय राजनीति में उनके उदय के क्या मायने हैं? 2002 के मुस्लिम विरोधी दंगों का बोझ अब भी उनके कंधों पर है। ऐसे में, सांप्रदायिक राजनीति के ऐतिहासिक उभार के तौर पर गुजरात के मुख्यमंत्री का राष्‍ट्रीय पटल पर उदय होते देखना खासा दिलचस्प रहेगा। संघ परिवार के वफादार और हिंदू मध्य वर्ग का एक बड़ा हिस्सा आज अगर उनका भक्त बना है, तो इसकी वजह उनकी कट्टर छवि है। इसलिए जब वह गुजरात में हुए दंगों पर भले ही प्रतीकात्मक रूप में ही सही, खेद जताने तक को राजी न हुए, तो उनके इन समर्थकों ने इसे उनकी कमजोरी के बजाय ताकत की तरह देखा।

इसके बावजूद आज मोदी जिस पायदान पर पहुंच गए हैं, उसकी वजह यह नहीं कि देश में सांप्रदायिकता की लहर जोर मार रही है, बल्कि इसलिए कि भारत का कॉरपोरेट क्षेत्र अधीर हो रहा है। मजबूत होती उनकी स्थिति को दर्शाते हर जनमत सर्वेक्षण के बाद बॉम्बे स्टॉक एक्सचेंज का उत्साह देखते ही बनता है। हाल ही में जेम्स क्रेबट्री ने फाइनेंशियल टाइम्स में अडानी इंटरप्राइजेज को होने वाले भारी मुनाफे का उल्लेख किया है। पिछले महीने के दौरान इस कंपनी के शेयरों में 45 फीसदी से ज्यादा उछाल आया है। जबकि इस दौरान सेंसेक्स में सात फीसदी की ही बढोतरी देखने को मिली। विश्लेषक इसकी एक वजह यह मान रहे हैं कि निवेशकों को भरोसा है कि चुनाव के बाद यदि मोदी की सरकार बनती है, तो पर्यावरणीय अड़चनों के बावजूद अडानी इंटरप्राइजेज को मुंद्रा बंदरगाह के मामले में अनुमति मिल जाएगी।

‘क्‍लीयरेंस’ (सरकारी अनुमति) शब्द सुनने में भले ही सामान्य लगे, लेकिन अगर नरेंद्र मोदी के संदर्भ में देखें, तो इसके कहीं व्यापक मायने हैं। दरअसल बीमा और रिटेल क्षेत्र को खोलने समेत विदेशी निवेशकों की सभी मांगों को पूरा करने के लिए पूंजी के साथ मनचाहा बर्ताव करने की छूट देने की मोदी की मंशा, इस एक शब्द में छिपी हुई है। इतना ही नहीं, पर्यावरणीय अड़चनों, आजीविका या आवास से जुड़े संकटों या सामुदायिक हितों को भी मोदी की इस आकांक्षा के आड़े आने की इजाजत नहीं होगी। इस निर्णायक भूमिका के वायदे के कारण मोदी न सिर्फ भारत, बल्कि पूरी दुनिया के बड़े व्यापार के लिए आकर्षण बन गए हैं। मद्रास स्कूल ऑफ इकोनॉमिक्स के एन एस सिद्धार्थन कहते हैं, ‘आज के बिजनेस माहौल में केवल विनिर्माण के जरिये मुनाफा कमाने की सोचना बेमानी हो गया है। दरअसल इसका तरीका सरकारी स्वामित्व में संसाधनों के दोहन में छिपा हैं।’ गौरतलब है कि इन संसाधनों में केवल कोयला, स्पेक्ट्रम या लोहा ही शामिल नहीं हैं, बल्कि जमीन और पानी भी इसी के तहत आते हैं।

2009 में संपन्न ‘वाइब्रेंट गुजरात’ सम्मेलन में भारत के दो सबसे बड़े उद्योगपतियों अनिल अंबानी और सुनील मित्तल ने खुले तौर पर प्रधानमंत्री पद की दौड़ में मोदी का समर्थन किया था। तब अनिल अंबानी ने कहा था, ‘नरेंद्र भाई ने गुजरात का भला किया है, और जरा सोचिए, जब वह देश का नेतृत्व संभालेंगे, तो क्या होगा।’ वहां मौजूद रतन टाटा ने भी केवल दो दिन के भीतर नैनो के लिए जमीन की व्यवस्‍था करने वाले मोदी की तारीफ की थी।

इसके दो वर्ष बाद 2011 में हुए इसी सम्मेलन में मुकेश अंबानी ने कहा, ‘गुजरात एक स्वर्ण दीपक की भांति जगमगा रहा है, और इसकी वजह नरेंद्र मोदी की दूरदृष्टि है।’ 2013 में अनिल अंबानी ने मोदी को राजाओं का राजा कह कर संबोधित किया था।

राजनीतिक और व्यापारिक हितों के बीच मजबूत होते रिश्तों में महत्वपूर्ण मोड़ 2010 में नीरा राडिया टेप के जरिये आया था। उसने व्यापारियों, राजनेताओं, नीति-नियंताओं और मीडिया के बीच पनपते गठजोड़ का पर्दाफाश किया। सर्वोच्च न्यायालय और कैग के हालिया रवैये को देखते हुए जब यह लगने लगा कि सार्वजनिक संसाधनों की लूट करना अब इतना आसान नहीं होगा, कॉरपोरेट भारत ने मनमोहन सरकार को कोसना शुरू कर दिया।

2004 में वाजपेयी सरकार की हार के पीछे गुजरात दंगों को रोक पाने में मोदी की नाकामी को मीडिया ने जिम्मेदार माना था। ऐसे में उनके सामने बड़ा सवाल यह था कि सांप्रदायिक हिंसा के विरोध में खड़े शहरी मध्य वर्ग को इस बात पर कैसे राजी किया जाए कि देश की सारी समस्याओं का समाधान मोदी ही कर सकते हैं। यहीं से गुजरात के विकास मॉडल का मिथक खड़ा किया गया। 2013 में वाइब्रेंट गुजरात सम्मेलन में आनंद महिंद्रा ने कहा, ‘आज लोग गुजरात में विकास के चीन सरीखे मॉडल की बात कर रहे हैं। लेकिन वह दिन दूर नहीं जब चीन में लोग गुजरात के विकास मॉडल की बात करेंगे।’

मोदी की तारीफ के पीछे कॉरपोरेट भारत का विकास के चीनी मॉडल के प्रति छिपा प्रेम दिखता है। क्या है यह मॉडल? यहां ऐसे विकास की बात है, जिसमें जमीन, खदान और पर्यावरण के लिए क्‍लीयरेंस पाना बेहद आसान होगा। इसमें गैस की कीमत जैसे असहज सवाल नहीं किए जाते। कांग्रेस से बेरुखी के लिए जो भ्रष्टाचार कारण बना है, उसे खत्म करने में कॉरपोरेट भारत की दिलचस्पी नहीं है। दरअसल मिलीभगत वह तरीका है, जिस पर हमारी बड़ी कंपनियों को कारोबार करने पर एतराज नहीं। यह पूंजीवादी भारत का चरित्र बन चुका है। और वे मोदी की ओर देख रहे हैं कि वह इस व्यवस्था को निर्णायक तथा स्थायित्व के साथ उनके अनुकूल तरीके से चलाएंगे।
http://svaradarajan.com से साभार

मशहूर मार्क्सवादी विचारक ‘क्रिस्टोफर काडवेल’ ने 1939 में एक महत्वपूर्ण किताब लिखी थी- ‘दी क्राइसिस इन फिजिक्स’। इस किताब में काडवेल ने इस संकट को इस रुप में रखा था- ‘‘भौतिकी का यह संकट जो कुछ वक्त पहले तक महज भौतिकविदों तक सीमित था, अब जनता के बीच भी आ चुका है। आम आदमी भी अब यह जानता है कि भौतिक विज्ञान में सब कुछ ठीक नही चल रहा है। इसकी संरचना में जो तेजी से दरार पैदा हो रही है, उसे ऐसे रहस्यमयी विचारों से पाटा जा रहा है, जो विज्ञान के लिए नये हैं। ख्यातलब्ध भौतिकविद यह ऐलान कर रहे हैं कि ‘निश्चयता’ (determinism) और ‘कार्यकारण संबंध’ (causality) भौतिक विज्ञान से खारिज हो चुके हैं। और यह ब्रह्ंमाण्ड गणितज्ञों की रचना है, और इसकी असल प्रकृति अज्ञात है। इस तरह के विचारों के मूल प्रवक्ता हैं- Jeans, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Dirac और Eddington. ये सभी मशहूर भौतिकविज्ञानी हैं। मैक्स प्लांक और अलबर्ट आइन्सटाइन इनके प्रबल विरोधी थे, जिनकी प्रतिष्ठा ही इनके परंपरागत विचारों की रक्षा का प्रमुख हथियार था। लेकिन ‘दुश्मन’ के ठिकानों पर प्रति आक्रमण करने में ये सक्षम नहीं थे। प्लांक के अनुसार कार्य-कारण संबध (causality) का औचित्य यह था कि यह वैज्ञानिकों का विश्वास, भरोसा व न सिद्ध किया जा सकने वाला विज्ञान का मूल गुण है। आइन्सटाइन की कार्यनीति कही अधिक सरल थी – ‘‘युवा लोग क्या कह रहे हैं यह उन्हें ‘समझ नही आता’।’’ (‘The Crisis In Physics’ page-1)
किताब के आखिरी चैप्टर में काडवेल ने इस संकट का सार बताते हुए लिखा-‘‘ भौतिकी में इस संकट की जड़े काफी गहरी हैं और यह सामान्य व अंतिम संकट का एक हिस्सा हैै।’’ (पेज-161)
पूरी किताब में भौतिकी के इस संकट को समझाते हुए काडवेल ने इसे उचित ही ‘बुर्जुआ संकट’ से जोड़ा है।
तब से लेकर आज तक न सिर्फ यह संकट बढ़ा है, वरन इस संकट की पहचान भी काफी धुंधली पड़ गयी है। ‘बिग बैंग’ से लेकर ‘गाड पार्टिकल’ थ्योरी के माध्यम से अवैज्ञानिक और प्रतिक्रियावादी दर्शन ने जिस तरह से आज विज्ञान विशेषकर भौतिक विज्ञान को एक कुंहासे से ढक रखा है वह अभूतपूर्व है। यह कोई आश्चर्य की बात नही कि बिग बैंग थ्योरी को आज पोप के साथ साथ साम्राज्यवादी शासन व्यवस्था का वरद हस्त प्राप्त है। जबकि इसके बरक्स दूसरी अनेक वैज्ञानिक स्थापनाएं हैं जिन्हे सुनियोजित तरीके से दरकिनार कर दिया जाता है।
‘सिंगुलैरिटी’, ‘ब्लैकहोल'(हालांकि ‘हाकिन्स’ अब इसके अस्तित्व से इंकार कर चुके हैं।), ‘डार्क एनर्जी’, ‘डार्क मैटर’, 4th, 5th, 6th.. डाइमेन्सन, ‘बिग क्रन्च’, ‘बिग बैंग’ ब्रह्माण्ड की ‘हीट डेथ’ आदि के माध्यम से जो परोसा जा रहा है, वह विज्ञान से दूर विज्ञान फंतासी के ज्यादा निकट लगता है। एंगेल्स (Dialectics of nature और Anti Duhring), लेनिन (Materialism and Empirio Criticism) और एक हद तक काडवेल ने अपने अपने समयों पर द्वन्दात्मक भौतिकवाद [Dialectical materialism] की जमीन पर खड़े होकर उस समय के कुंहासे को काफी हद तक साफ किया था।
काडवेल के बाद भले ही यह संघर्ष कमजोर पड़ा हो, लेकिन यह रुका कभी नहीं। David bohm, Shoichi Sakata जैसे अनेक वैज्ञानिकों ने अपने अपने समय के अधिभूतवाद (Metaphysics) से टक्कर ली और भौतिकवादी परम्परा को धूमिल नही होने दिया।
इसी परम्परा में 2007 में एक किताब आयी थी- ‘The New Scientific Worldview’ इसके लेखक हैं- ‘Glenn Borchardt’ जो स्वयं एक वैज्ञानिक है और इनके अब तक 300 से ज्यादा पेपर प्रकाशित हो चुके हैं।
हांलांकि यह किताब मुकम्मल रुप से द्वन्दात्मक भौतिकवाद की जमीन पर खड़ी नही है और समाज विज्ञान के विश्लेषण में तो काफी कमजोर है। लेकिन इसके बावजूद यह आज के भौतिक विज्ञान के क्षेत्र में छाये कुंहासे को काफी हद तक दूर करने में मददगार है।
किसी भी क्षेत्र में बुनियादी अवधारणायें (Assumptions) ही वह प्रस्थान बिन्दू होती हैं जो हमारे चिन्तन व प्रयोगों की दिशा निर्धारित करती है। भौतिकी के क्षेत्र में आज जो संकट व्याप्त है उसका कारण वे बुनियादी गलत अवधारणायें हैं जिन पर पूरा मुख्य धारा का भौतिक विज्ञान खड़ा है। इसलिए लेखक उन बुनियादी अवधारणाओं पर चोट करते हुए विज्ञान की 10 बुनियादी अलग अवधारणायें पेश करते हुए ब्रह्मांड का एक वैकल्पिक माडल पेश करता है। ये अवधारणायें हैं-
1. Materialism- The external world exists after the observer does not.
2. Causality- All effects have an infinit number of material causes.
3. Uncertainty- It is impossible to know everything about anything, but it is possible to know more about anything.
4. Inseparability- Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion.
5. Conservation- Matter and the motion of matter neither can be created nor destroyed.
6. Complementarity- All things are subject to divergence and convergence from other things.
7. Irreversibility- All processes are irreversible.
8. Infinity- The universe is infinite, both in the microcosmic and macrocosmic directions.
9. Relativism- All things have characteristics that make them similar to all other things, as well as characteristics that make them dissimilar to all other things.
10. Interconnection- All things are interconnected, that is, between any two objects exist other objects that transmit matter and motion.
लेखक ने इन अवधारणाओं के आधार पर यह साफ किया है कि इस ब्रह्माण्ड कि कोई शुरुवात या अंत नहीं है. यह माइक्रो [micro] और मैक्रो [macro] दोनों तरफ अनंत है।
लेखक ने इन अवधारणाओं पर आइन्स्टाइन को भी कसा है और उन्हे भी एक हद तक इस संकट का जिम्मेदार माना है। आइन्स्टाइन पर इससे पहले भी ये आरोप लगते रहे हैं कि उन्होंने भौतिक विज्ञान को प्रयोगों से हटाकर गणित का कैदी बना दिया। आइन्स्टाइन की सबसे बड़ी दार्शनिक चूक ‘समय’ को ‘मैटर’ के रुप में देखने की है। जबकि समय किसी मैटर का ‘मोशन’ है। ‘time dilation’ के उनके सिद्धांत ने समय में आगे-पीछे जाने जैसी कल्पनाओं के साथ साथ अन्य फंतासियों को भी जन्म दिया। स्पेस को भी आइन्स्टाइन ’empty space’ के रुप में देखते थे। लेखक कहता है कि पूरे ब्रह्मांड में न ही ’empty space’ है और न ही ‘solid matter’ है। सभी मैटर इन्ही दोनों अवस्थाओं के बीच होते हैं। यही कारण है कि अभी तक कहीं भी 0 डिग्री k नही पाया गया है। जो ’empty space’ के लिए जरुरी है।
आइन्स्टाइन का ‘curved space’ का विचार इसी गलत अवधारणा से पैदा हुआ। जबकि स्पेस (और समय भी) मैटर का ‘mode of existence’ भर है।
किताब की दूसरी महत्वपूर्ण स्थापना ईथर की स्वीकार्यता है। 1887 में ‘Michelson–Morley’ प्रयोग के बाद कई ऐसे प्रयोग हुए जो ईथर के अस्तित्व को साबित करते हैं। 2002 में उक्रेन के दो वैज्ञानिकों ने सफलतापूर्वक ‘aether drift’ को सिद्ध किया। लेकिन इनके पेपर व प्रयोगों को सचेत तरीके से मुख्य धारा के भौतिक विज्ञानियों व संस्थाओं ने नजरअंदाज किया। दरअसल आइन्सटाइन का पूरा माडल ईथर की अस्वीकार्यता पर निर्भर है। ईथर को स्वीकारते ही आइन्स्टाइन का पूरा माडल और उनकी प्रतिष्ठा दांव पर लग जायेगी।
लेखक ने ईथर को स्वीकारने के साथ ही प्रकाश की पुरानी अवधारण को फिर से स्थापित किया है। लेखक के अनुसार प्रकाश कण नही तरंग है जो ईथर माध्यम में विचरण करती है और इसलिए प्रकाश की गति भी कास्टैन्ट नही हैं। ‘फोटान’ ईथर माध्यम का कण हैं प्रकाश का नहीं।
दूसरी महत्वपूर्ण स्थापना ‘गुरुत्वाकर्षण’ को लेकर है। दरअसल विज्ञान में कार्य-कारण संबंध मानने वाले भौतिकवादी वैज्ञानिकों के लिए भी गुरुत्वाकर्षण एक गुत्थी है। यहां तक कि काडवेल ने भी गुरुत्वाकर्षण को सिर्फ ‘प्रभाव’(effect) माना जिसका कोई कारण नही है। न्यूटन की खोज इस ‘प्रभाव’ के बारे में है। इसके कारण का पता वे भी नही लगा सके। हालांकि न्यूटन ने इस पर एक जगह अपना संदेह भी जाहिर किया है कि कैसे दो सूदूर की वस्तुएं बिना किसी भौतिक बन्धन के एक दूसरे को आकर्षित करती हैं। यानी कि यदि कार्य-कारण संबंध का कोई अपवाद नही है तो गुरुत्वाकर्षण का भी कोई कारण अवश्य होना चाहिए और वह कारण भौतिक होना चाहिए आध्यात्मिक नहीं। न्यूटन ने गुरुत्वाकर्षण के प्रभाव का कारण भगवान पर छोड़ दिया। आइन्स्टाइन ‘curved space’ की शरण में चले गये। लेकिन लेखक का कहना है कि पूरे ब्रह्मांण में जो ईथर है उसके ‘फ्री कण’ का ‘काम्प्लेक्स कण’ पर जो ‘push’ बल लगता है उसके कारण गुरुत्वाकर्षण बल पैदा होता है। (इस प्रक्रिया में ‘vortex’ की एक महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका होती है।) इस रुप में गुरुत्वाकर्षण ‘pull’ नहीं बल्कि ‘push’ बल है। और इसका प्रभाव स्थानीय है, हालांकि इसकी व्यापकता पूरे ब्रह्माण्ड में है। किताब का यह चैप्टर थोड़ा कठिन है। लेकिन इतना तो समझ में आ जाता है कि न्यूटन की ‘आकर्षण’ व आइन्स्टाइन की ‘curved space’ वाली गुरुत्वाकर्षण की व्याख्या काफी अपूर्ण है और विज्ञान की दो बुनियादी अवधारणाओं ‘matter-motion’ व ‘causality’ पर खरी नही उतरती।
पुस्तक में लेखक ने ‘उर्जा’ के मिथक को भी साफ किया है। विज्ञान और दर्शन में उर्जा को लेकर अनेक भ्रमात्मक अवधारणायें हैं। आइन्स्टाइन के प्रसिद्ध सूत्र “E=MC2” ने भी इसमें अपना योगदान दिया है। इस सूत्र से ऐसा लगता है कि ‘मैटर’ और ‘उर्जा'[energy] अलग अलग चीज है जिसे एक दूसरे में बदला जा सकता है। इसी गलत अवधारणा से यह कल्पना की जाती है कि बिग बैंग से पहले ब्रह्मांड में ‘शुद्ध उर्जा’ थी और इसी से ‘मैटर’ का जन्म हुआ।
दरअसल इस पूरे ब्रह्मांड में दो ही मूल चीजे हैं- ‘मैटर’ और ‘मोशन’। बिना ‘मैटर’ के ‘मोशन’ नही हो सकता और बिना ‘मोशन’ के ‘मैटर’ नही हो सकता।
लेखक के अनुसार उर्जा ‘matter in motion’ के लिए एक अमूर्त टर्म है। उर्जा का विशिष्ट रुप कोई भी हो वह ‘motion of matter’ ही होगा। जैसे उर्जा का एक रुप प्रकाश है। यह ‘मोशन’ है जो ईथर नामक ‘मैटर’ के कारण संपन्न होता है। दूसरा उदाहरण ‘दौड़ना’ है जो ‘पैर’ नामक मैटर के कारण संभव होता है। क्या हम ‘दौड़ने’ (motion) को ‘पैर’ (matter) से अलग कर सकते हैं। इसी तरह ‘शुद्ध उर्जा’ जैसी कोई चीज नही होती।
“E=MC2” सूत्र एक प्रकार के ‘matter in motion’ का दूसरे प्रकार के ‘motion of matter’ में रुपान्तरण है, न कि ‘matter’ का ‘motion’ में रुपान्तरण।
यह स्थापना बेहद महत्वपूर्ण है कि क्योकि काडवेल भी इसे ठीक से नही समझ पाये थे और उन्होने भी प्रकाश को ‘motion of motion system’ जैसा अजीब नामकरण दिया था। दूसरी जगह इसकी व्याख्या करते हुए वे लिखते हैं – ‘‘ प्रकाश जब परमाणु में जाकर अदृश्य हो जाता है तो मैटर बन जाता है और जब इलेक्ट्रान के रुप में प्रकट होता है तो प्रकाश बन जाता है।(पेज-126)
इस किताब से इस बात का भी तीखा अहसास होता है कि समाज विज्ञान की तरह प्राकृतिक विज्ञान विशेषकर भौतिक विज्ञान भी तीखे विचारधारात्मक दार्शनिक संघर्ष का क्षेत्र होता है क्योकि जैसा कि काडवेल ने बहुत सटीक तरीके से समझाया है कि एक वैज्ञानिक, वैज्ञानिक होने से पहले एक इंसान होता है और इंसान के रुप में उसकी इस वर्ग समाज में एक जगह होती है और उसके अनुरुप उसकी अपनी एक विचारधारा होती है।
शासन व्यवस्था इसमें अपनी महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभाती है। और अपने तात्कालिक व दूरगामी हितों के हिसाब से कुछ वैज्ञानिकों व अवधारणाओं को गोद लेती है तो कुछ का दमन करती है या उन्हे दरकिनार करती है। ब्रूनों को जलाने से लेकर किसी पेपर को मुख्य धारा की साइन्स मैगजीन में ना छपने देना तक यह कुछ भी हो सकता है।
आज व्यवस्था की मदद से जिस तरह से ‘बिग बैंग’, ‘गाड पार्टिकल’, ‘शुद्ध उर्जा’ (स्पिरिट?) जैसी चीजों को धर्म के स्तर तक उठा कर ‘कामन सेन्स’ बनाया जा रहा है, उससे टकराने के लिए हमें भी अपनी ‘scientific worldview’ की धार को तेज करना चाहिए और द्वन्दात्मक भौतिकवाद [Dialectical materialism] की अपनी जड़ो की ओर लौटना चाहिए। यह याद रखना चाहिए कि ‘शुद्ध उर्जा’ की तरह ‘शुद्ध विज्ञान’ जैसी कोई चीज नही होती।
‘The New Scientific Worldview’ आप TheScientificWo डाउनलोड कर सकते है

आज मैक्सिम गोर्की का जन्म दिन [16th March, 1868] है। इस अवसर पर प्रस्तुत है उनकी एक मर्म स्पर्शी कहानी-

कब्रिस्तान के मुफलिसों के घेरे में पत्तियों से ढकी और बारिश तथा हवा में ढेर बनी समाधियों के बीच एक सूती पोशाक पहने और सिर पर काला दुशाला डाले, दो सूखे भूर्ज वृक्षों की छाया में एक स्त्री बैठी है। उसके सिर के सफेद बालों की एक लट उसके कुम्हलाये गाल पर पड़ी है। उसके मजबूती से बंद होठों के सिरे कुछ फूले हुए-से हैं, जिससे मुहं के दोनों ओर शोक-सहूचक रेखाएं उभर आई है। आंखों की उसकी पलके सूजी हुई हैं, जैसे वह खूब रोई हो और कई लम्बी रातें उसकी जागते बीती हों।

मैं उससे कुछ ही फासले पर खड़ा देख रहा था, पर वह गुमसुम बैठी रही और जब मैं उसके नजदीक पहुंच गया तब भी उसमें कोई हलचल पैदा नहीं हुईं। महज अपनी बुझी हुई आंखों को उठाकर उसने मेरी ओर देखा और मेरे पास पहुंच जाने से जिस उत्सुकता, झिझक अथवा भावावेग की आशा की जाती थीं, उसे तनिक भी दिखाये बिना वह नीचे की ओर ताकती रही।

मैंने उसे नमस्कार किया। पूछा, “क्यों बहन, यह सामधि किसकी है?”

“मेरे लड़के की।” उसने बहत ही बेरुखी से जवाब दिया।

“क्या वह बहुत बड़ा था?”

“नहीं, बारह साल का था।”

“उसकी मौत कब हुई?”

“चार साल पहले।”

स्त्री ने दीर्घ निश्वास छोड़ी और अपने बालों की लट को दुशाले के नीचे कर लिया। उस दिन बड़ी गर्मी थी। मुर्दो की उस नगरी पर सूरज बड़ी बेरहमी से चमक रहा था। कब्रो पर जो थोड़ी बहुत घास उग आई थी। वह मारे गर्मी और धूल के पीली पड़ गई थी और सलीबों के बीच यत्र-तत्र धूल से भरे पेड़ ऐसे चुपचाप खड़े थे, मानों मौत ने उन्हें भी अपने सांये में ले लिया हो।

लड़के की सामधि की ओर सिर से इशारा करते हुए मैने पूछा, “उसकी मौत कैसे हुई?”

“घोड़ो की टापों से कुचलने से।” उसने गिने-चुने शब्दों में उत्तर दिया और समाधि को जैसे सहलाने के लिए झुर्रियों से भरा अपना हाथ उस ओर बढ़ा दिया।

“ऐसा कैसे हुआ?”

जानता था कि मैं अभद्रता दिखा रहा था, लेकिन उस स्त्री को इतना गुमसुम देखकर मेरा मन कुछ उत्तेजित और कुद खीज से भर उठा था। मेरे अन्दर सनक पैदा हुई कि उसकी आंखों में आंसू देखूं। उसकी उदासीनता में अस्वाभाविकता थी पर मुझे लगा कि वह उस ओर से बेसुध थी।

मेरे सवाल पर उसने अपनी आंखें ऊपर उठाई और मेरी ओर देखा। फिर सिर से पैर तक मुझे पर निगाह डालकर उसने धीरे-से आह भरी और बड़े मंद स्वर में अपनी कहानी कहनी शुरू की:

“घटना इस तरह घटी। इसके पिता गबन के मामले में डेढ़ साल के लिए जेल चले गये थे। हमारे पास जो जमा पूंजी थीं वह इस बीच खर्च हो गई। बचत की कमाई ज्यादा तो थी नहीं। जिस समय तक मेरा आदमी जेल से छूटा हम लोग घास जलाकर खाना पकाते थे। एक माली गाड़ी भर वह बेकार घास मुझे दे गया था। उसे मैंने सुखा लिया था और जलाते समय उसमें थोड़ा बुरादा मिला लेती थी। उसमें बड़ा ही बुरा धुआं निकलता था और खाने के स्वाद को खराब कर देता था। कोलूशा स्कूल चला जाता था। वह बड़ा तेज लड़का था और बहुत ही किफायतशार था। स्कूल से घर लौटते समय रास्ते में जो भी लट्ठे- लकड़ी मिल जाते थे, ले आता था। वंसत के दिन थे। बर्फ पिघल रही थी। और कोलूशा के पास पहनने को सिर्फ किरमिच के जूते थे। जब वह उन्हें उतारता था तो उसके पैर मारे सर्दी के लाल-सुर्ख हो जाते थे।

“उन्हीं दिनों उन लोगों ने लड़के के पिता को जेल से रिहा कर दिया और गाड़ी में घर लाये। जेल में उसे दिल का दौरा पड़ गया था। वह बिस्तर पर पड़ा मेरी ओर ताक रहा था। उसके चेहरे पर कुटिल मुस्कराहट थी। मैंने उस पर निगाह डाली और मन-ही मन सोचा, ‘तुमने मेरी यह हालत कर दी है! और अब मैं तुम्हारा पेट कैसे भरूंगी? तुम्हें

कीचड़ में पटक दूं। हां, मैं ऐसा ही करना चाहूंगी।

” लेकिन कोलूशा ने उसे देखा तो बिलख उठा। उसका चेहरा जर्द हो गया और बड़े बड़े आंसू उसके गालों पर बहने लगे। मॉँ, इनकी ऐसी हालत क्यों है?’ उसने पूछा। मैंने कहा, यह अपना जीना जी चुके हैं’

“उस दिन के बाद से हमारी हालत बदतर होती गई। मैं रात दिन मेहनत करती, लेकिन अपना खून सुखा करके भी बीस कापेक से ज्यादा न जुट पाती और वह भी रोज नहीं, खुशकिस्मत दिनों में। यह हालत मौत से भी गई-बीती थी और मैं अक्सर अपनी जिन्दगी का खात्मा कर देना चाहती।

“कोलूशा यह देखता और बहुत परेशान होकर इधर-से-उधर भटकता। एक बार जब मुझे लगा कि यह सब मेरी बर्दाश्त से बाहर है तो मैंने कहा, ‘आग लगे मेरी इस जिंदगी को! मैं मर क्यों नहीं जाती! तुम लोगों में से भी किसी की जान क्यों नहीं निकल जाती?’मेरा इशारा कोलूशा और और उसके पिता की ओर थ।

“उसके पिता ने सिर हिलाकर बस इतना कहा, मैं जल्दी ही चला जाऊंगा। मुझे जली कटी मत कहो। थोड़ा धीरज रक्खो।’

“लेकिन कोलूशा देर तक मेरी ओर ताकता रहा, फिर मुड़ा और घर से बाहर चला गया।

“वह जैसे ही बाहर गया, मुझे अपने शब्दों पर अफसोस होने लगा, पर अब हो क्या सकता था! तीर छूट चुका था।

“एक घंटा भी नहीं बीता होगा कि घोड़े पर सवार एक सिपाही आया।’क्या आप गौसपोजा शिशीनीना हैं?’ उसने पूछा। मेरा दिल बैठने लगा। उसने आगे कहा, ‘तुम्हें अस्पताल में बुलाया है। सौदागर ण्नोखिन के घोड़ों ने तुम्हारे बेटे को कुचल डाला है।’

“मैं फौरन गाड़ी में अस्पताल के लिए रवाना हो गई। मुझे लग रहा था, मानो किसी ने गाड़ी की सीट पर जलते कोयले बिछा दिये हैं” मैं अपने को कोस रही थी—अरी कम्बख्त, तुने यह क्या कर डाला!’

“आखिर हम अस्पताल पहुंचे। कोलूशा बिस्तर पर पड़ा था। उसके सारे बदन पर पट्टियां बंधी थीं। वह मेरी तरफ देखकर मुस्कराया! उसके गालों पर आंसू बहने लगे! धीमी आवाज में उसने कहा, ‘मां, मुझे माफ करो। पुलिस के आदमी पैसे ले लिये हैं।’

“तुम किन पैसों की बात कर रहे हो, कोलूशा?” मैंने पूछा।

“वह बोला, अरे, वे पैसे, जो लोगों ने और एनोखिन ने मुझे दिये थे।’

“मैने पूछा, ‘उन्होंने तुम्हें पैसे क्यों दिये?’

“उसने कहा, ‘इसलिए…’

“उसने धिरे से आह भरी। उसकी आंखें तश्तरी जैसी बड़ी हो रही थीं।

‘कोलूशा!’ मैंने कहा, ‘यह क्या हुआ कि तुमने घोड़े आते हुए नहीं देखे!’

“उसने साफ आवाज में हका, ‘मां मैंने घोड़े आते देखे थे, लेकिन मेरे ऊपर से निकल जायंगे तो लोग मुझे जयादा पैसे देंगे, और उन्होंने दिये भी।’

“ये उसके शब्द थे। मैं सबकुछ समझ गई, सबकुछ समझ गई कि उस फरिश्ते लाल ने ऐसा क्यों किया; लेकिन अब तो कुछ भी नहीं किया जा सकता था।

“अगले दिन सबेरे ही वह मर गया। आखिरी सांस लेने तक उसकी चेतना बनी रही और वह बार-बार कहता रहा ‘डैडी के लिए यह खरी लेना, वह खरी लेना और मां अपने लिए भी, ‘जैसेकि उसके सामने पैसा-ही पैसा हो। वास्तव में सौंतालिस रूबल थे।

“मैं एनोखिन के पास गई; लेकिन मुझे कुल जमा पांच रूबल दिये और वे भी गड़बड़ा कर उसने कहा, ‘लड़के ने अपने को घोड़े के बीच झोंक दिया। बहुत-से लोगों ने देखा। इसलिए तुम किस बात की भीख मांगने आई हो? मैं फिर कभी घर वापस नहीं गई। भैया, यह है सारी दास्तान!’

कब्रिस्तान में खामोशी और सन्नटा छाया था। सलीब, रोगी-जैसे पेड़, मिट्टी के ढेर और कब्र पर इतने दुखी भाव से गुमसुम बैठी वह स्त्री—इस सबसे मैं मृत्यु और इन्सानी दुख के बारे में सोचने लगा।

लेकिन आसमान साफ था और धरती पर ढलती गर्मी की वर्षा कर रहा था।

मैंने अपनी जेब से कुछ सिक्के निकाले और उस स्त्री को ओर बढ़ा दिये, जिसे तकदीर ने मार डाला था, फिर भी वह जिये जा रही थी।

उसने सिर हिलया और बहुत ही रुकते-रुकते कहा, “भाई, तुम अपने को क्यों हैरान करते हो! आज के लिए मेरे पास बहुत हैं। अब मुझे ज्यादा की जरूरत भी नहीं है। मैं अकेली हूं-दुनिया में बिलकुल अकेली।”

उसने एक लम्बी सांस ली और फिर मुंह पर वेदना से उभरी रेखाओं के बीच अपने पतले होंठ बन्द कर लिये।
[-अनुवादक आदर्श कुमारी जैन]
https://wikisource.org से साभार

Most physicists foolhardy enough to write a paper claiming that “there are no black holes” — at least not in the sense we usually imagine — would probably be dismissed as cranks. But when the call to redefine these cosmic crunchers comes from Stephen Hawking, it’s worth taking notice. In a paper posted online, the physicist, based at the University of Cambridge, UK, and one of the creators of modern black-hole theory, does away with the notion of an event horizon, the invisible boundary thought to shroud every black hole, beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape.

In its stead, Hawking’s radical proposal is a much more benign “apparent horizon”, which only temporarily holds matter and energy prisoner before eventually releasing them, albeit in a more garbled form.

“There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory,” Hawking told Nature. Quantum theory, however, “enables energy and information to escape from a black hole”. A full explanation of the process, the physicist admits, would require a theory that successfully merges gravity with the other fundamental forces of nature. But that is a goal that has eluded physicists for nearly a century. “The correct treatment,” Hawking says, “remains a mystery.”

Hawking posted his paper on the arXiv preprint server on 22 January1. He titled it, whimsically, ‘Information preservation and weather forecasting for black holes’, and it has yet to pass peer review. The paper was based on a talk he gave via Skype at a meeting at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, in August 2013.
Fire fighting

Hawking’s new work is an attempt to solve what is known as the black-hole firewall paradox, which has been vexing physicists for almost two years, after it was discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski of the Kavli Institute and his colleagues.

In a thought experiment, the researchers asked what would happen to an astronaut unlucky enough to fall into a black hole. Event horizons are mathematically simple consequences of Einstein’s general theory of relativity that were first pointed out by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild in a letter he wrote to Einstein in late 1915, less than a month after the publication of the theory. In that picture, physicists had long assumed, the astronaut would happily pass through the event horizon, unaware of his or her impending doom, before gradually being pulled inwards — stretched out along the way, like spaghetti — and eventually crushed at the ‘singularity’, the black hole’s hypothetical infinitely dense core.

But on analysing the situation in detail, Polchinski’s team came to the startling realization that the laws of quantum mechanics, which govern particles on small scales, change the situation completely. Quantum theory, they said, dictates that the event horizon must actually be transformed into a highly energetic region, or ‘firewall’, that would burn the astronaut to a crisp.

This was alarming because, although the firewall obeyed quantum rules, it flouted Einstein’s general theory of relativity. According to that theory, someone in free fall should perceive the laws of physics as being identical everywhere in the Universe — whether they are falling into a black hole or floating in empty intergalactic space. As far as Einstein is concerned, the event horizon should be an unremarkable place.
Beyond the horizon

Now Hawking proposes a third, tantalizingly simple, option. Quantum mechanics and general relativity remain intact, but black holes simply do not have an event horizon to catch fire. The key to his claim is that quantum effects around the black hole cause space-time to fluctuate too wildly for a sharp boundary surface to exist.

In place of the event horizon, Hawking invokes an “apparent horizon”, a surface along which light rays attempting to rush away from the black hole’s core will be suspended. In general relativity, for an unchanging black hole, these two horizons are identical, because light trying to escape from inside a black hole can reach only as far as the event horizon and will be held there, as though stuck on a treadmill. However, the two horizons can, in principle, be distinguished. If more matter gets swallowed by the black hole, its event horizon will swell and grow larger than the apparent horizon.

Conversely, in the 1970s, Hawking also showed that black holes can slowly shrink, spewing out ‘Hawking radiation’. In that case, the event horizon would, in theory, become smaller than the apparent horizon. Hawking’s new suggestion is that the apparent horizon is the real boundary. “The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes — in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity,” Hawking writes.

“The picture Hawking gives sounds reasonable,” says Don Page, a physicist and expert on black holes at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who collaborated with Hawking in the 1970s. “You could say that it is radical to propose there’s no event horizon. But these are highly quantum conditions, and there’s ambiguity about what space-time even is, let alone whether there is a definite region that can be marked as an event horizon.”

Although Page accepts Hawking’s proposal that a black hole could exist without an event horizon, he questions whether that alone is enough to get past the firewall paradox. The presence of even an ephemeral apparent horizon, he cautions, could well cause the same problems as does an event horizon.

Unlike the event horizon, the apparent horizon can eventually dissolve. Page notes that Hawking is opening the door to a scenario so extreme “that anything in principle can get out of a black hole”. Although Hawking does not specify in his paper exactly how an apparent horizon would disappear, Page speculates that when it has shrunk to a certain size, at which the effects of both quantum mechanics and gravity combine, it is plausible that it could vanish. At that point, whatever was once trapped within the black hole would be released (although not in good shape).

If Hawking is correct, there could even be no singularity at the core of the black hole. Instead, matter would be only temporarily held behind the apparent horizon, which would gradually move inward owing to the pull of the black hole, but would never quite crunch down to the centre. Information about this matter would not destroyed, but would be highly scrambled so that, as it is released through Hawking radiation, it would be in a vastly different form, making it almost impossible to work out what the swallowed objects once were.

“It would be worse than trying to reconstruct a book that you burned from its ashes,” says Page. In his paper, Hawking compares it to trying to forecast the weather ahead of time: in theory it is possible, but in practice it is too difficult to do with much accuracy.

Polchinski, however, is sceptical that black holes without an event horizon could exist in nature. The kind of violent fluctuations needed to erase it are too rare in the Universe, he says. “In Einstein’s gravity, the black-hole horizon is not so different from any other part of space,” says Polchinski. “We never see space-time fluctuate in our own neighbourhood: it is just too rare on large scales.”

Raphael Bousso, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former student of Hawking’s, says that this latest contribution highlights how “abhorrent” physicists find the potential existence of firewalls. However, he is also cautious about Hawking’s solution. “The idea that there are no points from which you cannot escape a black hole is in some ways an even more radical and problematic suggestion than the existence of firewalls,” he says. “But the fact that we’re still discussing such questions 40 years after Hawking’s first papers on black holes and information is testament to their enormous significance.”
[http://www.nature.com से साभार]

पिछले माह 17 जनवरी को आस्ट्रेलिया के सिडनी शहर में जब एक खुली जगह पर ‘जॉन पिल्जर’ की बहुप्रतिक्षित डाक्यूमेन्ट्री ‘यूटोपिया’[Utopia] का प्रदर्शन हुआ तो इसे देखने के लिए 4000 से अधिक लोग आये। इतने सारे लोगो का एक साथ गंभीर सिनेमा देखना एक सुखद आश्चर्य है। ‘यूटोपिया’ फिल्म वैसे तो पिछले साल 15 नवम्बर को ब्रिटेन में रीलीज हुई थी। लेकिन आस्ट्रेलिया में इस फिल्म का यह पहला प्रदर्शन था। ‘यूटोपिया’ फिल्म दरअसल आस्ट्रेलिया पर ही है और जॉन पिल्जर भी आस्ट्रेलिया के ही हैं। फिल्म आस्ट्रेलिया के एक ऐसे नासूर को छूती है जिस पर आमतौर पर कोई आस्ट्रेलियाई बात करना पसंद नही करता। यह मुद्दा है आस्ट्रेलिया के ‘मूल निवासियों’ यानी काले लोगों का। अमरीका की तरह ही आस्ट्रेलिया में भी यूरोपियन के आने से पहले यहाँ एक भरी पूरी सभ्यता निवास करती थी। जिन्हे जीत कर और उनकी बड़ी आबादी को मारकर ही आस्ट्रेलिया पर कब्जा किया गया था। तभी से वहां के मूल निवासी एक गुमनामी का जीवन जीते हुए गोरे आस्ट्रेलियन लोगो के तमाम अत्याचारों को सह रहे हैं। फिल्म देखकर यह समझ में आता है कि यह दक्षिण अफ्रीका के रंगभेद से कही अधिक भयावह है। मजेदार बात यह है कि जॉन पिल्जर दक्षिण अफ्रीका में लंबे समय तक प्रतिबंधित रहे हैं। और इस प्रतिबंध का कारण था उनकी एक फिल्म जो उन्होने वहां के रंगभेद के खिलाफ बनायी थी।

दरअसल ‘यूटोपिया’ फिल्म जॉन पिल्जर की ही एक पुरानी फिल्म ‘दी सीक्रेट कन्ट्री’[The secret country] का विस्तार है। जॉन पिल्जर ने यह फिल्म 1985 में बनायी थी। ‘यूटोपिया’ फिल्म के प्रदर्शन के बाद एक इण्टरव्यू में जॉन पिल्जर ने कहा कि ‘दी सीक्रेट कन्ट्री’ बनाने के दौरान उन्हे बिल्कुल भी अनुमान नही था कि 25 साल बाद भी उन्हे इसी विषय पर फिल्म बनाने के लिए फिर बाध्य होना पड़ेगा, क्योकि स्थितियां तब से अब तक तनिक भी नही बदली है। वास्तव में इस फिल्म में पुरानी फिल्म के व्यूजुअल [visuals] का भी प्रयोग किया गया है। जिन्होने पुरानी फिल्म देखी है वे इसे महसूस कर सकते है। जॉन पिल्जर उन लोगो के पास भी जाते है जिनसे वे 25 साल पहले अपनी पिछली फिल्म के दौरान मिले थे। इन 25 सालों का उनका अनुभव यह बताता है कि स्थितियां और खराब ही हुई है। इस दौरान किसी ने पुलिस के हाथों अपना बेटा खो दिया है तो सरकारी एंजेसियों द्वारा बहुतों का बच्चा चुरा लिया गया है।
मूल निवासियों के बच्चों को चुराने की बात वहां बहुत सुनियोजित तरीके से घटित हुई। वहां के सामाजिक कार्यकर्ता इसे ‘पूरी पीढ़ी को चुरा लेने’[stealing a generation] की संज्ञा देते हैं। यह एक तरह से उनकी कौम को छिन्न भिन्न कर देने और खत्म कर देने की साजिश थी। चोरी किये हुए बच्चों को या तो गोरे लागों के घरो में नौकर रख लिया जाता था या उन्हे किसी को गोद दे दिया जाता था।
दरअसल फिल्म की शुरुआत ही एक स्तब्ध कर देने वाले वक्तव्य से होती है। मूल निवासियों की ‘समस्या’ के समाधान के तौर पर एक खनन माफिया कहता है कि मूल निवासियों के पीने के पानी में ऐसा केमिकल मिला देना चाहिए कि उनकी प्रजनन क्षमता खत्म हो जाये। इस तरह कुछ समय बाद उनकी पूरी कौम ही खत्म हो जायेगी। फिल्म की शुरुआत में खनन माफिया का यह वक्तव्य बाद में और साफ हो जाता है जब यह पता चलता है कि जहां जहां ये मूल निवासी बसे हुए है कमोवेश वहीं पर युरेनियम के भंडार भी है। आस्ट्रेलिया में दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा यूरेनियम भंडार है। फिल्म का यह हिस्सा निश्चय ही आपको भारत की याद दिलायेगा। यहां भी आदिवासियों के खिलाफ एक जंग जारी है। और वजह वही है-खनिज सम्पदा।
जॉन पिल्जर का कैमरा जब आस्ट्रेलिया के ‘वार मेमोरियल’ में आता है तो देखकर हैरानी होती है कि यहां मूल निवासियों की तस्वीरें जानवरों मसलन हाथी, कंगारु आदि के साथ लगी हैं। जबकि गोरे आस्ट्रेलियन लोगों की तस्वीरें अलग लगी हुई हैं। यह चीज गोरे आस्ट्रेलियन लोगों की मूल निवासियों के प्रति उनकी सोच को दर्शाता है। क्या यही सोच हमारे यहां भी तमाम शहरी लोगो की अपने आदिवासी समुदाय के लोगो के प्रति नही है। इस ‘वार मेमोरियल’ में आस्ट्रेलिया द्वारा किये गये तमाम युद्धों का जिक्र है। लेकिन यहां आने वाले पहले यूरोपियनों ने जो भीषण और क्रूर युद्ध यहां के मूल निवासियों के खिलाफ छेड़ा था, उसका कहीं कोई जिक्र नही है। जॉन पिल्जर की यह फिल्म यह बताती है कि मूल निवासियों के खिलाफ यह युद्ध कभी नही रुका और बदले रुपों में यह आज भी जारी है। इस युद्ध का एक उदाहरण फिल्म में बहुत विस्तार से बताया है। 2007-08 में वहां के प्रमुख टीवी चैनल एबीसी [ABC] की तरफ से एक रिपोर्ट जारी हुई कि एक खास जगह रहने वाले सभी मूल निवासियों में उनके बच्चे सुरक्षित नही हैं क्योकि इस कौम के वयस्क ‘पेडोफिल’ [Pedophile] रोग से पीडि़त हैं और बड़े पैमाने पर ड्रग्स का इस्तेमाल करते है। ‘पेडोफिल’ से पीडि़त व्यक्ति सेक्स एडिक्ट हो जाता है और अपने आसपास के बच्चो को अपना शिकार बनाता है। रिपोर्ट को विश्वसनीय बनाने के लिए एक आदमी का इण्टरव्यू भी प्रसारित किया गया और दावा किया गया कि यह उसी कौम का आदमी है और सुरक्षा कारणों से इसका चेहरा और पहचान छुपायी गयी है। यह रिपोर्ट एबीसी न्यूज चैनल पर हमारे यहा की तरह ही 24 घण्टे दिखायी जाने लगी। इस 24 घण्टे न्यूज चैनल को जान पिल्जर ने बहुत ही सटीक नाम दिया है- व्यूजुअल च्यूनगम [visual chewing gum]।
बहरहाल इस ‘व्यूजुअल च्यूनगम’ की आड़ लेकर सरकारी एंजेसियां सक्रिय हो गयी और उस एरिया के मूल निवासियों पर पुलिस का छापा पड़ने लगा और बच्चो को बचाने के नाम पर उनसे उनके अपने बच्चे छीने जाने लगे। और उन्हे 200-300 किलोमीटर दूर के किसी अनाथालय में पहुचाया जाने लगा।
बाद में कुछ साहसी व खोजी पत्रकारों ने इस पूरे अभियान का पर्दाफाश किया और पता लगा कि यह पूरी कहानी मूल निवासियों को बदनाम करने और उन्हे उस खास जगह से हटाने के लिए रची गयी थी। क्योकि उस क्षेत्र में युरेनियम होने की संभावना बतायी जा रही थी। यह भी साफ हुआ कि इस पूरे अभियान को वहां की खनन कंपनियां प्रायोजित कर रही थी। जिस व्यक्ति को मूल निवासियों के बीच का बताकर उसका वक्तव्य लगातार प्रसारित किया जा रहा था वह सरकार का आदमी निकला और वह इस पूरे साजिश का हिस्सा था। बाद में सरकार ने तो औपचारिक माफी मांग ली लेकिन एबीसी न्यूज चैनल ने अपनी बेहयायी बरकरार रखी और कोइ बयान नही दिया। फिल्म का यह हिस्सा बहुत ही ताकतवर और स्तब्ध कर देने वाला है।
फिल्म की खास बात यह है कि यह आस्ट्रेलिया के मूल निवासियो के दुःख और दमन की ही बात नही करती बल्कि उनके प्रतिरोध को भी बहुत शानदार तरीके से रखती है। आस्ट्रेलिया में हुए ओलम्पिक खेलो के दौरान यहां के मूल निवासियों ने सुनियोजित तरीके से स्टेडियम के अंदर प्रदर्शन करके हडकम्प मचा दिया था। और तब पहली बार दुनिया को पता चला कि आस्ट्रेलिया में गोरे ही नही काले लोग भी बसते हैं। यहां हर साल ‘आस्ट्रेलिया दिवस’ मनाया जाता है। यह योरोपियनों द्वारा आस्ट्रेलिया और यहां के मूल निवासियों पर कब्जा करने का प्रतीक दिवस है। लेकिन इसी दिन मूल निवासी भी अपना विरोध दिवस मनाते हैं। और कभी कभी तो टकराव भी हो जाता है। अभी 40-50 साल पहले तक यहां के काले लोगो से गुलामों जैसा काम लिया जाता था। यहा के विगत के ‘कपास उद्योग’ और ‘कैटल उद्योग’ में बहुत कम मजदूरी पर काले लोगो को रखा जाता था। इन दोनो ही उद्योगों में काले लोगों की एतिहासिक हड़ताले हुई और फलस्वरुप स्थितियां थोड़ी बेहतर हुई। लेकिन वहां के आफिशियल इतिहास में यह सब दर्ज नहीं है।
सच तो यह है कि सुनियोजित तरीके से यहां के मूल निवासियों के प्रति हुए अत्याचारों के चिन्ह को मिटाया जा रहा है। प्रधानमंत्री ‘जान हावर्ड’ के शासन काल में यह बखूबी हुआ। 51 मूल निवासियों को फांसी पर चढ़ाने से पहले जिस जगह उन्हे रखा गया था वहा एक आलीशान होटल बना दिया गया है। उनके एक सामूहिक कब्रगाह को ‘टूरिस्ट प्लेस’ में बदल दिया गया। यह सामूहिक कब्रगाह इतिहास में हुए उनके एक सामूहिक नरसंहार का साक्षी था। उनके प्रतीक चिन्हो, उनकी संस्कृति, उनकी भाषा को सुनियोजित तरीके से नष्ट कर दिया गया है।
यह फिल्म देखकर आपको ‘हावर्ड जिन’ की याद आ सकती है। उन्होने अपनी किताब ‘पीपल्स हिस्ट्री आफ अमरीका’ में वहां के मूल निवासियों का विस्तार से वर्णन किया है। और यह सिद्ध किया है कि आज की अमरीकन सभ्यता वहां के मूल निवासियों की सभ्यता को नेस्तनाबूद करके ही खड़ी हुई है। ‘जार्ज वाशिंगटन’ और ‘जैफरसन’ की डेमोक्रैसी वहां के मूल निवासियों के लिए नही थी।
आस्ट्रेलिया की कहानी भी इससे अलग नही है।
जॉन पिल्जर भी हावर्ड जिन की परम्परा से ही आते हैं। अपनी लगभग 50 बेहतरीन डाक्यूमेन्ट्री फिल्मों में वे ऐसे ही ‘लहुलुहान सवालों’ को उठाते हैं और ‘स्थापित सत्य’ के विरोध में ‘बगावती सत्य’ को लाकर खड़ा करते हैं। उनकी यह फिल्म भी इसी परम्परा की मजबूत कड़ी है।
‘यूटोपिया’ सहित उनकी सभी फिल्में वीमियो [vimeo.com] पर उपल्ब्ध हैं। यह फिल्म आप यहां देख सकते हैं।

अधिनायक

राष्ट्रगीत में भला कौन वह
भारत-भाग्य-विधाता है
फटा सुथन्ना पहने जिसका
गुन हरचरना गाता है।
मखमल टमटम बल्लम तुरही
पगड़ी छत्र चंवर के साथ
तोप छुड़ाकर ढोल बजाकर
जय-जय कौन कराता है।
पूरब-पश्चिम से आते हैं
नंगे-बूचे नरकंकाल

सिंहासन पर बैठा,उनके
तमगे कौन लगाता है।
कौन-कौन है वह जन-गण-मन
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बाजा रोज बजाता है।

Listening to Indian mainstream media and society, you might have missed this phenomenal course of events stirring up global dialogue from Punjab over the past 41 days. With Anna’s bill getting tweets, ironically enough, from globally infamous human rights violators like Modi, and India busy defending its diplomat’s oppressive labor practice as a source of national pride. It is sad that Gurbaksh Singh’s is a name yet largely unheard of in the Indian mainstream.

Since November 14, one man, a Sikh farmer, has been using his body as a means of protest to highlight human rights violations against prisoners, protesters and advocates of human rights. He is literally killing himself to bring attention to the cause.

While Sikh internet media sources have played a key role in espousing his struggle onto a global platform, Indian mainstream media is largely mum on the issue. BBC Radio rightfully noted:

“[M]ost people in Delhi, most people in other cities in India would have very little idea that there is a man in Punjab who has been on hunger strike since the middle of November…because of political prisoners being held beyond their terms of sentences.”

Coverage or not, Singh is steadfastly committed to the cause and is demanding the release of six prisoners who are among many other political prisoners identified by human rights activists in Punjab as being held without due review (the oldest of the list of 118 prisoners, being 94-years-old). These men were swept up during the state oppression and genocidal violence after 1984; the landmark year when the Sikh Golden Temple (Harmandhir Sahib, Amritsar) was stormed by the Indian Army on a day of religious celebration, directed by Indira Gandhi. With thousands massacred by gunfire, tanks, beatings and burnings, hundreds became actively involved against the Indian state and fighting against its injustices. Over the next decade Punjab experienced mass human rights violations and the disappearances of thousands of Sikh men and women, most of whom are believed to have been killed in fake encounters and others locked up for almost three decades now.

Gurbaksh Singh has experienced, first hand, the oppression of the state: as a survivor of the post 1984 violence and now as a non-violent protester still being met with police brutality. On the 23rd day of his protest, Singh was illegally detained overnight, beaten, forcibly administered glucose and subjected to non-consensual medical exams; however his resolve remains unfazed. Singh summarizes this in his own words saying, “Jabbar da mukablaa, sabar naal kar rahe haan.” He is responding to force with patience, but he doesn’t hesitate to ask- if peaceful patient protest will also be thwarted, what are people to do? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZJmrSkHwOg

Community groups and human rights defenders are expressing fear for Gurbaksh Singh’s safety, especially given India’s precedence of selectively dealing with political activists with great coercion and violence based on the state or minority group to which the activist belongs . We only have to think of the treatment meted to Irom Sharmila of Manipur, being held on charges of attempted suicide for her twelve year hunger strike against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in her state; recently being highlighted by Amnesty International which is again demanding charges to be dropped immediately. ((link))

Given the exigency of the situation, global media including CNN has created space for coverage, dialogue and updates on the most current of events . Canada’s official opposition party, the NDP, has released a statement of concern and urgency after meeting with India’s High Commissioner ; and USA based Sikh organizations have collectively released a statement. During 1984 there was an enforced media blackout not allowing for news to leave Punjab. I wonder, what is stopping the press today? With State oppression an already difficult feat, what happens when the people’s press only works to reinforce the injustices of the day?

What will it take for Gurbaksh Singh to be heard?
Countercurrents.org से साभार

दुनिया में बहुत से ऐसे ‘महान’ व्यक्ति हुए हैं,जिनका उत्तरवर्ती जीवन उनके परवर्ती जीवन की कब्र पर खड़ा होता है। ‘नेल्शन मंडेला’ का जीवन भी ऐसा ही था। दुनिया के तमाम शासक वर्ग आज जिस मंडेला की मौत का गम मना रहे हैं, वे वे मंडेला नही है जिसने नस्लभेद के खिलाफ युद्ध छेड़ा था। ये वे मंडेला हैं जिनकी रिहाई ही इस शर्त पर हुई थी कि वे अंतर्राष्ट्रीय पूंजी की दक्षिण अफ्रीका में रक्षा करेंगे। और मंडेला ने अंतिम दम तक यह वादा निभाया। ‘अफ्रीकी नेशनल कांग्रेस’ ने किस तरह मंडेला की रिहाई के ठीक पहले अंतर्राष्ट्रीय पूंजी के प्रतिनिधियों के साथ गुप्त समझौते किये, इसका दिलचस्प ब्योरा ‘नोमी क्लेन’ ने अपनी किताब ‘शाक डाक्ट्रिन’ में दिया है। एक तरह से अफ्रीकी नेशनल कांग्रेस का ‘फ्रीडम चार्टर’ रातों रात अंतर्राष्ट्रीय पूंजी का फ्रीडम चार्टर बन गया।

मशहूर फिल्म मेकर ‘जान पिल्जर’ ने 1998 में एक डाक्यूमेन्ट्री बनायी थी-“Apartheid Did Not Die” उस वक्त नेल्शन मंडेला राष्ट्रपति के पद पर थे। जान पिल्जर ने इस फिल्म मे उनका एक दिलचस्प इंटरव्यू भी लिया है। यह महत्वपुर्ण फिल्म आप यहां देख सकते हैं।
इसी वर्ष के जुलाई माह में ‘New Statesman’ में जान पिल्जर ने मंडेला पर एक बहुत अच्छा लेख लिखा था। जो मंडेला पर एक नयी रोशनी डालता है। आज यह और भी प्रांसगिक हो गया है।

When I reported from South Africa in the 1960s, the Nazi admirer B J Vorster occupied the prime minister’s residence in Cape Town. Thirty years later, as I waited at the gates, it was as if the guards had not changed. White Afrikaners checked my ID with the confidence of men in secure work. One carried a copy of Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. “It’s very eenspirational,” he said.

Mandela had just had his afternoon nap and looked sleepy; his shoelaces were untied. Wearing a bright gold shirt, he meandered into the room. “Welcome back,” he said, bursting into a smile. “You must understand that to have been banned from my country is a great honour.” The sheer grace and charm of the man made you feel good. He chuckled about his elevation to sainthood. “That’s not the job I applied for,” he said drily.

Still, he was well used to deferential interviews and I was ticked off several times – “you completely forgot what I said” and “I have already explained that matter to you”. In brooking no criticism of the African National Congress (ANC), he revealed something of why millions of South Africans will mourn his passing but not his “legacy”.

I asked him why the pledges he and the ANC had given on his release from prison in 1990 had not been kept. The liberation government, Mandela had promised, would take over the apartheid economy, including the banks – and “a change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable”. But once in power, the party’s official policy to end the impoverishment of most South Africans, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, was abandoned, and one of his ministers boasted that the ANC’s politics were Thatcherite.

“You can put any label on it if you like,” Mandela replied. “. . . but, for this country, privatisation is the fundamental policy.”

“That’s the opposite of what you said in 1994.”

“You have to appreciate that every process incorporates a change.”

Few ordinary South Africans were aware that this “process” had begun in high secrecy more than two years before Mandela’s release, when the ANC in exile had, in effect, done a deal with members of the Afrikaner elite at a stately home, Mells Park House, near Bath. The prime movers were the corporations that had underpinned apartheid.

Around the same time, Mandela was conducting his own secret negotiations. In 1982, he had been moved from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison, where he could receive and entertain people. The apartheid regime’s aim was to split the resistance between the “moderates” that it could “do business with” (Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Oliver Tambo) and those in the front-line townships who were leading the United Democratic Front. On 5 July 1989, Mandela was spirited out of prison to meet P W Botha, the white-minority president known as Die Groot Krokodil (“the big crocodile”). Mandela was delighted that Botha poured the tea.

With democratic elections in 1994, racial apartheid ended and economic apartheid had a new face. The Botha regime had offered black businessmen generous loans, allowing them to set up companies outside the Bantustans. A new black bourgeoisie emerged quickly, along with a rampant cronyism. ANC chieftains moved into mansions in “golf and country estates”. As the disparities between white and black narrowed, they widened between black and black.

The familiar refrain that the wealth would “trickle down” and “create jobs” was lost in dodgy merger deals and “restructuring” that cost jobs. For foreign companies, a black face on the board often ensured that nothing changed. In 2001 George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos, “South Africa is in the hands of international capital.”

In the townships, people felt little change and were subjected to evictions typical of the apartheid era; some expressed nostalgia for the “order” of the old regime. The postapartheid achievements in desegregating daily life in South Africa, including schools, were undercut by the extremes and corruption of a “neoliberalism” to which the ANC devoted itself. This led directly to state crimes such as the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012, which evoked the Sharpeville massacre more than half a century earlier. Both were protests about injustice.

Mandela, too, fostered crony relationships with wealthy whites from the corporate world, including those who had profited from apartheid. He saw this as part of “reconciliation”. Perhaps he and his beloved ANC had been in struggle and exile for so long that they were willing to accept and collude with the people’s enemy. There were those who genuinely wanted change, including a few in the South African Communist Party, but it was the reform-and-redeem influence of mission Christianity that may have left the most indelible mark. White liberals at home and abroad warmed to this, often ignoring or welcoming Mandela’s reluctance to spell out a coherent vision, as Amilcar Cabral and Pandit Nehru had done.

Mandela seemed to change in retirement, alerting the world to the post-9/11 dangers of George W Bush and Tony Blair. His description of Blair as “Bush’s foreign minister” was mischievously timed; Mbeki, his own successor, was about to visit Chequers. I wonder what he would make of the “pilgrimage” to his cell on Robben Island by Barack Obama, the unrelenting jailer of Guantanamo.

When my interview with him was over, he patted me on the arm as if to say I was forgiven for contradicting him. We walked to his silver Mercedes, which consumed his small grey head among a bevy of white men with huge arms and wires in their ears. One of them gave an order in Afrikaans and he was gone.
http://www.newstatesman.com से साभार

Quantum physics occupies a fascinating place at the cutting edge of modern scientific research. First developed in the early 20th Century, quantum theory is allowing today’s scientists to plumb new depths when it comes to matter and motion. A new book, Quantum Social Science, by Andrei Khrennikov and Emmanuel Haven argues that applying the logic of quantum theory to social systems can take our understanding of human society to a whole new level.

quantumSeemingly without realising it, these scientists are following in the footsteps of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who developed the logic of dialectical materialism out of philosophical enquiry into the natural world. On this basis, by applying scientific logic to society, they developed the theory of scientific socialism.
The logic of quantum physics

Quantum mechanics is complex and, occupying as it does a place at the frontier of human knowledge, arguments still rage amongst scientists as to the correct interpretations and explanations of quantum theory. It all began with the observation that light can be measured as both a particle and a wave.

Niels Bohr, famous for his series of thought experiments that sought to explain quantum physics, hypothesised that by trying to measure light (or any other particle) we inevitably change its behaviour. His argument was that the measuring device itself delivers random kicks to the particles that cause a fundamental change in its behaviour. For this reason, he argued, light can appear to be both a particle and a wave, but as soon as you try to measure that light it inevitably becomes EITHER a particle OR a wave depending on your method of measurement – it cannot be measured as both at the same time.

This approach, based on Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’, brings out an interesting point in relation to the logic of quantum physics. In order to accurately explain what was happening Bohr noted that the more accurate the measurement of the location of a particle, the less accurate the measurement of its movement and vice versa. In other words there is a contradiction between the particle and its movement, between matter and motion.

This contradiction is at the heart of our understanding of the universe because it is impossible to conceive of matter without. All matter is in motion; the particles that make up everything are constantly vibrating, moving and changing. The planet itself is in constant motion around the sun, and our solar system is in constant motion with the spinning of the Milky Way, which in turn is constantly moving in relation to other galaxies.
What is dialectics?

Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, famously said that “everything changes and nothing remains the same” and that “you can never step twice into the same stream”. It is the ideas of ceaseless change, motion, interconnectedness and contradiction that define dialectical thought.

The philosopher Zeno famously tried to illustrate how essential dialectical thinking is to our understanding of the world by using thought experiments. He poses the following:

Imagine an arrow in flight. At any one durationless instant in time (like the freeze-frame in a film) the arrow is not moving to where it is going to, nor is it moving to where it already is. Thus, at every conceivable instant in time, there is no motion occurring, so how does the arrow move?

To answer this we are forced to embrace what appears on the surface to be a contradictory idea – that the arrow is, at any one time, in more than one place at once. This thought experiment serves to highlight the contradictory nature of the movement of matter in the world.

The German philosopher Hegel further developed the dialectical in a systematic form. Instead trying to discard contradictions Hegel saw in them the real impulse for all development. In fact Hegel saw the interpenetration of opposites as one of the fundamental characters of all phenomena. Hegel’s philosophy is one of interconnectedness where the means and the end, the cause and the effect, are constantly changing place. It explains progress in terms of struggle and contradiction, not a straight line or an inevitable triumphal march forward. Hegel’s main mistake though was to see all of this development as essentially reflecting the movement of a mystical Idea or World Spirit.

Marx based his dialectical understanding of society on Hegel’s teachings, but he went further and combined dialectics the Materialist view of the world which sees the real objective world as the only existing one. Marx discovered that the dialectical laws where nothing more than the general underlying laws of nature and human society. The result is an understanding of the contradictions and ceaseless change in society and the economy. It is this dialectical understanding of society, ultimately, that gives Marxist thought its revolutionary character.
Formal logic

However, not all scientists are willing to accept that the discoveries of quantum physics are best explained using the logic of dialectics. Bohr himself was one of these scientists who saw the acceptance of contradiction in science or nature as an acceptance of failure as a scientist. For scientists like Bohr, the rigid doctrines of formal logic and an abhorrence of contradiction are the foundations of their approach to scientific study.

As a result Bohr interpreted the Uncertainty Principle, not as confirmation of the contradictory nature of matter, but instead as proof that we can never know about the objectively real world. The fact that the nature of matter changes as it is measured proves, according to Bohr, that our experience of the world is subjective and that any attempt at measuring the objective world will be thwarted by the very act of trying to measure it.

This is problematic because this leaves Bohr and his supporters defending a very unscientific position. The history of Science has been the expansion of the collective knowledge of the world and its processes. This endeavour is rendered impossible if there is no objective world to be discovered. The discoveries of one individual would apply only to the world as experienced by that individual and would have no general scientific application. In fact the only existence that would be left for any person to prove would be the existence of their own thoughts.

Ironically, by rejecting the dialectical ideas of contradiction and the unity of opposites, Bohr placed himself in the contradictory position of being a scientist arguing against science.

As well as Bohr’s ideas other attempts have been made to explain quantum phenomena on the basis of formal logic. One hypothesis is the existence of multiple parallel universes which would then allow the light we see as a wave to exist as a particle in another universe. It explains what’s happening without rejecting the idea of objective reality but it avoids accepting a contradiction between matter and motion. The problem with this “multiverse” theory is that there is no evidence for it – the best that physicists have been able to come up with are abstract mathematical proofs that have yet to be supported by any physical evidence. This is the result of a formally logical position that will do anything to avoid contradiction in nature – the rejection of the results of real experiments in favour of a theoretical hypothesis that, despite numerous attempts, does not seem to be backed up by hard evidence.
Quantum dialectics

In opposition to these formally logical theorists a number of other quantum physicists have been busy proving that it is only through contradiction that the discoveries of quantum physics can be explained. An experiment carried out by physicist Shahriar Afshar suggests that we are able to measure light as a wave and a particle at the same time. Furthermore, the development of quantum computers is based upon matter being held in more than one state at the same time. While classical computers rely on electrical current to create bits that can either be on (1) or off (0), quantum computers will be able to create “qubits” that can store both 1 and 0 at the same time thus giving these computers vastly increased processing power. Finally, a phenomenon known as entanglement or ‘action at a distance’ suggests that particles that have interacted with each other become linked such that changing one invariably affects the other, no matter how far apart they are. The nature of and explanation for this effect are still not fully known.

Without accepting that constant change, movement and contradiction is at the heart of all things, and that these things are interconnected, we cannot explain the workings of quantum computers or the phenomenon of entanglement. The discoveries of quantum physics can only be explained using the logic of dialectics.
Quantum logic and society

In their new book Khrennikov and Haven argue that “quantum-like” models can be applied to areas outside the natural remit of quantum physics. Quantum theory is normally used to explain the movement of particles at the sub-atomic level and the authors do not seek to map these theories onto complex social systems in a mechanical way. Instead they take the logic underpinning quantum physics and apply it to society.

One area they particularly highlight is decision-making, a field particularly relevant to modern economics. Many economic theories rely on the assumption that humans are rational and will make rational, self-interested decisions. This is known as the basic law of total probability – a model to calculate the probability of a particular outcome. Yet this basic law is regularly violated by real life experiences. One experiment shows that people who make decisions in a two-stage gamble are influenced in the second stage by whether or not they are told how they did in the first gamble, even though the outcome of the second doesn’t depend on the first.

The reason why this so-called “law” of economics seems to be inadequate when explaining the real world is because it rests on formal logic. Modern economics too frequently ignores the interconnectedness of factors such as superstition, tradition, sentiment and other things that, in addition to rational thinking, make up decision-making processes.

Khrennikov and Haven point out that the wave-particle duality of matter also violates the basic law of total probability. The contradictory nature of matter in motion means that it is impossible for quantum scientists to pin down the exact location of a particle at any one moment in time. Applying the law of total probability does not accurately describe the location of particles. All that physicists can do is give an estimate of the probability that a particle will be in any one place at a given time. In order to explain these probability values in wave-particle experiments a mathematical factor known as the “interference term” is introduced.

What Khrennikov and Haven show is that this interference term, when applied to economics, also explains the seemingly illogical probability values for economic decision-making. What they show is that the same mathematical tools that are required to explain the contradictory processes taking place at a sub-atomic level are also required to explain the contradictory processes in society. In other words, the dialectical understanding of quantum particles also applies to economics.

The authors don’t stop there. They also explain how quantum thinking can give us a deeper understanding of a plethora of scientific and social institutions, from neuroscience to voting patterns. They argue that the strength of a quantum-like approach to social science is that it can take into account the complex blend of physical, social, environmental, financial and other factors that influence society to a much greater extent than classical models have been able to do.

In short, these scientists argue that we should understand quantum physics in a dialectical way (although they don’t use the term “dialectics”) and that using dialectical logic to understand the world can open up the possibility of creating new advances, not only in the fields of science and technology, but also in almost every aspect of society.
Marx and Engels on dialectics

Khrennikov and Haven state that “the idea of applying quantum mechanics to social science is still quite new”. It’s true that the practice has never been formulated in these terms before, but the idea of deriving dialectical principles from an observation of nature and applying them to society was first developed by Marx and Engels over 160 years ago.

Engels sums up his own position in the book ‘Dialectics of Nature’ by saying:

“It is, therefore, from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself.”

In other words Engels is saying that dialectical logic can be used to explain both nature and human society – exactly the same claim as is being made by Khrennikov and Haven.

In the book, ‘Dialectics of Nature’, Engels examines the most advanced scientific information available at the time of writing (1883) in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics and astronomy and explains the discoveries using dialectics. On this basis he is able to make a number of suggestions for future avenues of scientific study and even attempts some predictions of what scientists will find. The most famous of these predictions is contained in his essay ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man’ which argues, contrary to the prevailing thinking at the time, that the development of the human brain was a consequence of the development of the hand and the use of tools and not the other way around.

This view of the development of humans is a dialectical one that views evolution and change as the product of a complex interaction between different parts of the body, and of the interaction between humans and the environment. This was not a mainstream idea at the time it was put forward by Engels because it did not conform to a clear mechanical formula for evolution. However, as modern anthropologists gather more and more evidence of pre-historic humans, they are finding that their discoveries cannot be explained by a basic model that sees the brain develop first and as a result of that humans produced tools and developed society. In fact the process of development seems to have been much more complex than that and requires an explanation based on change, contradiction and interconnectedness, just as Engels predicted.

Engels’ ability to make such a prediction shows the same thing that Khrennikov and Haven are suggesting – that understanding the world as being always in the process of contradictory change gives us a more accurate scientific picture of things than to view the world as static and mechanical.

In his “textbook of Marxism” (as Lenin described it), ‘Anti-Duhring’, Engels even provides a dialectical explanation for the apparent conundrum represented by the qubits of quantum computers that are able to store both 1 and 0 at the same time. He says:

“…in mathematics it is necessary to start from definite, finite terms…or they cannot be used for calculation. The abstract requirements of a mathematician are, however, very far from being a compulsory law for the world of reality.”

In other words, although the concept of storing the figures “1” and “0” at the same time seems illogical because they are two different definite finite terms, when we consider that these figures are nothing more than abstractions of processes occurring in the real world, the apparent problem disappears. The numbers themselves are not the concrete reality; it is the real processes that they represent which concern us. Thus, if we develop a new process that cannot be expressed using the classical system of binary digits we do not reject that discovery because it doesn’t conform to the mathematical abstractions used to define the old process, we simply have to accept that the new process can only be described by introducing the concept of contradiction into our abstract understanding. In short, to take our understanding of science and our capacity for technological development further, we must apply the logic of dialectics.

Engels thoroughly develops his understanding of dialectics as applicable to nature and society in the short pamphlet ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ where he says:

“When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine and are connected.”

This passage was written in 1878, long before the concept of quantum theory had been conceived. And yet this description of dialectics could very easily apply to the central argument made by Khrennikov and Haven in ‘Quantum Social Science’. Questions of entanglement, contradiction and change are the defining characteristics both of quantum mechanics and economics, history and human consciousness.

The dialectical method so clearly explained by Engels permeates all the writings of Karl Marx. In his economic writings Marx is able to explain the workings of the capitalist system by highlighting its contradictions and the interconnectedness of all of its parts. The best example of this is the Marxist theory of economic crisis, or “overproduction”. Marx explained that workers are paid less than the value of the goods that they produce which means that at some point more commodities will be being produced than can be absorbed by the market, leading to an economic crisis.

This theory highlights the contradiction in capitalism between wages and prices and it explains how this contradictory state can continue for a long period before crisis occurs. It also demonstrates the interconnectedness of all sectors of the economy such that when one country or industry is affected, the rest begin to experience the same effects. Just as Engels’ application of dialectics to evolutionary theory led him to make predictions that are being proved correct today, Marx’s application of dialectics to economic theory is being vindicated by the current economic crisis – a crisis that can only be explained with the Marxist theory of overproduction.

Marx, like Khrennikov and Haven, applied dialectics to every aspect of human society. It was from this rigorous application of dialectical logic that Marx understood the relationship between different classes in society, their contradictions and interconnectedness. Based on this dialectical study of history and economics, summed up in the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, Marx and Engels developed the perspective of revolutionary socialism.
The future of quantum social science

It is clear that Khrennikov and Haven are not Marxists, nor even are they necessarily conscious dialecticians. Nevertheless, consciously or not, they are using modern scientific ideas and concepts that inevitably lead to the same conclusions that Marx and Engels reached many years ago. In applying their particular understanding of the complex interconnectedness at the heart of quantum physics to society as a whole, they are – albeit unconsciously – following the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

However, Khrennikov and Haven do not draw the same revolutionary conclusions as Marx and Engels. They are only interested in individual social phenomena such as voting or decision-making, but they stop short of applying their logic to class society as a whole, its history and future development as such they are defying their own principles inter-connectedness of phenomena.

This is not to say that such conclusions could not be drawn by scientists in the future because, as the authors point out, there are a lot of research grants available in the field of quantum social science (although we can bet that these grants from governments and prestigious institutes will quickly dry up if scientists start drawing revolutionary conclusions). However, for Marxist conclusions to be drawn from quantum social science what is most clearly needed are scientists who recognise the revolutionary potential of dialectical thinking. The continued study of quantum physics and the development of quantum computers and methods of encryption are likely to hail progress in the development of dialectical thinking and as a result develop the school of thought that seeks to apply these ideas to society in general.

We should also note, however, that further study of quantum physics will not automatically equal clear dialectical thinking. For example, Bohr’s idea that there is no reality beyond what we observe ourselves is a popular interpretation of quantum phenomena and is much more mainstream in academic circles than that put forward by Krennikov and Haven. Bohr’s interpretation of quantum physics, based on formal logic, is not just scientifically problematic, but it also has pernicious philosophical underpinnings. It is the same philosophy that props up the myth of the ‘self-made man’ in capitalist society. The idea that a person’s experience of the world is whatever he makes of it is entirely subjective. This idea holds that there are no objective factors really holding the individual back and that success or failure is determined by subjective factors such as how hard a person works or how lazy he or she is. Such a denial of objective reality is echoed in Margaret Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society, only families and individuals”. These ideas are false and dangerous and must be challenged at every turn, including in theoretical physics.

All genuine Marxists take an interest in scientific development. The ability of scientists to come up with new ideas, new technology and new discoveries that are capable of taking society forwards is a reflection of the ability of that society to invest in its future. It is also a reflection of the prevailing philosophical outlook of society and so explanations of scientific ideas can find an echo in explanations for the rest of society.

We have written elsewhere about the decline of innovation in the recent period, a reflection of the decline and crisis of the capitalist system as a whole and the poverty of the prevailing philosophical thought in modern times.

For this reason the work of Khrennikov and Haven is interesting and encouraging because of it confirms once again the validity of dialectical materialist philosophy – the philosophy of Marxism. It seems that these scientists are confirming that the way to make the best use of modern discoveries is to revolutionise the way we think about them. If we think about these things in terms of dialectics we can not only understand the science, but economics, history and society as well. Khrennikov and Haven’s work provides proof of the scientific basis of Marxist thought, of the radical and revolutionary potential of Marxist ideas, and of the relevance of Marxism today.
[http://www.marxist.com से साभार]