Three Ways During and After COVID 19
Note 1: You can skip the first few pages of this article, if you wish so, and go directly to the Capitalist, State Capitalist and Socialist Perspectives. However, it will be better to read the full article.
Note 2: Talking about the Bengal Famine of 1943–1944, Hindu Mahasabha, Congress, etc., is essential from the workers’ point of view; making no reference to that is very important from the capitalist and feudal viewpoints. It is quite likely that Indian working class might now have to go through far enormous chaos, devastation and death than the Bengal Famine of 1943–1944.
Note 3: The author is not any supporter of Congress or Gandhi, Nehru… As a working class man, he is aware of, wherever applicable, their sophistry, cunning, spinelessness, anti-revolution orientation, and [Brahminist] arrogance in their demeanors, and brutality and deception against the masses. However, this doesn’t mean in any way that he shall distort any historical facts about them. For example the fact about the “Quit India Movement” or that entire Congress cadre was held in prison from 1942–1945, during the Bengal Famine years.
The Scenario before the Pandemic
We take India as an example of the conditions in the backward countries.
And Ayodhya and Janakpur were drowned in an ocean of grieving, tears, wretchedness, death, agony, torment, and mental diseases for fourteen long years after Manthara became the Home Minister and Kaikeyi the Prime Minister of Ayodhya—according to the great epic Ramayana.
Privatization was advocated and implemented as the supreme-most “virtue” for the overall future “welfare” of humankind. The conversion of natural resources, oceans, water-resources, land, jungles, mountains, deserts, mines, railways, roadways, airways, aeronautics, sea-routes, harbors, manufacturing industries, hospitals, educational institutions, services, courts, judges, security guards, weapon manufacturing, police personnel, army, sports industry, entertainment industry, IT, internet, telephone industry, media, literature, art, languages, science, technology, and human beings into some private individuals’ property or pathetic slaves had been accomplished to a great extent. Air was the only thing on earth that still remained a common property of all. The state heads, ministers, administrators, police-chiefs and army lords of various countries had voluntarily become the butlers of the super-rich monsters. Whatever was yet to be privatized was fast being sold to the worshipers of mammon. Whatever was outside the nexus of money’s domination, such as motherhood, fatherhood, love, friendship, sense of duty, sense of justice, foundations of human life, etc., were systematically being changed and ascribed some monetary figure in the general ledger of bookkeeping. The philosophers and philosophies had been betrayed or misinterpreted or maliciously propagated or praised or condemned, with a great deal of chicanery, by the “educated” people merely for receiving a little bit of “reward” in money or recognition. Moses, Buddha, Valmiki, Vyas, Christ, Mohammad… had publicly been auctioned to the robbers and murderers in the thoroughfares. They had been abused uncountable times in innumerable temples, mosques, churches, etc., and changed into the monstrous security-guards of private property of the rich men and women. All things and all values common to humanity had been defaced. All entities of human welfare had been brutally obliterated. All things great had been condemned to pettiness.
The opponents of these happenings had been derided privately and publicly everywhere by the imbeciles, idiots or elite and their corresponding slaves. They had been derided as Siculars (for seculars) and subjected to various imaginable and unimaginable hardships. The said opponents were very few in number and at the verge of extinction.
Not all but most of the individuals rated himself or herself individually for an absolutely honest person, without caring a hoot about knowing that the entire system and consequently everyone, including himself or herself, were thoroughly dishonest to the core in general. For capitalism or feudalism or wars or fight for grabbing resources and markets or businesses or unequal distribution of social production and the consequent power and pelf for some, and wretchedness for others, unemployment, prostitution, etc., and general acceptance thereof is nothing but thorough depravity in letter and spirit.
Not all but most thought he or she was a healthy person, though the whole system, including all individuals, were fatally sick both physically and mentally.
UNO’s charters, covenants, treaties as well as the speeches and discussions had become a gigantic heap of foul garbage and brutal lies delivered with the shamelessness and absolute ease of well-trained scoundrels educated to the purpose in the most “prestigious” “educational” “institutions”.
Hospitals, medical education and research, medicine manufacturing, laboratories, clinics and other institutions associated with the public health of mortal beings had been privatized and converted into money-extracting corporations. In order to expand their business and earnings, they were utilizing every opportunity of devising methods and operating them to inculcate fear in their prospective preys for their lives.
The doctors and all medical staff had been converted into the vassals of this money-extracting business. And they had adopted themselves very well to this spiritual bankruptcy and slavery. There was nothing of the previous three thousand years’ greatness, and there was nothing heroic of the past heroes and heroines of this profession remnant in them.
Almost all of them had transformed themselves into the Bakhts of some individuals that had slapped everyone in the face by their MA degrees in entire political sciences, and ostentatious bragging about the ancient cowboys’ achievements in head-transplant technology in their pastureland habitats.
Cow-urine and cow-dung had been successfully presented as the global panacea for all diseases.
The rape and murder of a small child of nine years in a temple had become the best credential of being a nationalist and patriot; lynch-mobs had become the national heroes in the streets; rapists and murderers in the parliament and assemblies were rated for gods; advocates of exhuming corpses of women from graves and raping them were the adored statesmen of the general public…
And in such circumstances appeared the Mad God of Kahlil Gibran, popularly called Coronas Virus, who proclaimed to all the people: “You are weaker than the thin thread of the spider…. Your lives are hollow. Real life has never visited you, nor will it; neither will your deceitful self realize your living death. Your illusioned eyes see the people quivering before the tempest of life; and you believe them to be alive; while in truth they have been dead since they were born. There was none who would bury them, and the one good career for you is that of the gravedigger, and as such you may rid the few living of the corpses heaped about the homes, the paths, and the churches.”
The “Bosses’ Wisdom”
When any Indian “boss” would get sick, he or she would rush to USA or Europe for his/her treatment. If the “boss” happened to be a descendant or slave of the Brahmin clan, singing hymns of the cow-boys and goatherds, he/she would announce at the airport, “Our ancestors in the ancient past had the greatest and most-developed culture in the world. We had an elixir called Sanjeevani that would bring back the dead to life again. Christ’s reviving the dead by a mere word is merely nonsense fed on the gullible minds. We were indeed the greatest in science and technology. We have successfully brought back that ancient glorious culture into operation and dominance once again. We have already bestowed the greatest honor to our current national heroes of Whatapp university and lynch mobs. We pledge to continue on this path. Cow-urine is the panacea for all Indians. Our real mothers are none else but the cows. Western anthropologists, historians, sociologists, explorers, researchers, discoverers, writers, experts and all others have only confounded and belittled our glorious history and culture. They have spoken brazen lies about our past in order to dominate and loot us. There were no caste atrocities and cast system in Hindustan. Mahavir Jain, Buddha, etc., are mere fictions. They did not challenge any caste system because there was none in prevalence. All people of Hindustan were more powerful than angels. Kunti called the Sun himself to her room by the power of a mantra, given to her by Rishi Durvasa; and the Sun appeared in person meekly before Her Majesty. He gave her a baby that grew into a renowned warrior named Karna, who disgraced his entire life on earth by becoming a willful slave to a headless brute…
“Muslims” conquered and profaned us. And they and their brothers in faith, i.e. the Europeans destroyed all our glory. They eliminated the halo around our heads that we used to be born with. However, we have attained all that now once again!…
“Okay. My time for the flight by a Western culture’s invention and efforts is drawing near. I have booked a place in a great Western hospital where Western know-how and medicines will serve me… Remember, don’t forget our great culture. Our culture is supreme.”
The Preparation before and during the Pandemic
2014–2019: The data of all crucial things in all departments is manipulated to sabotage any prospect of any correct information reaching to the public or even to the experts. The public is transported back into the Dark Age of misinformation at the hands of depraved scoundrels in the media, Whatsapp Rogues, and “bosses”. Crucial files disappear from departments. Courts of law are paralyzed. Accountability and responsibility are sent to death. Police and army are communalized. The institutions of science and technology lose their grace and become Dev Dasis (the sex-slaves or concubines) of Hindu priests. Vice Chancellors and Professors of Universities become Mullahs of Hinduvatva….
December 2019: Delhi Police accompanied with ABVP goons attack the students of Jamia Milia University. Scenes of police brutality in the library against the bookworms in the library are recorded on camera and shown on a TV channel.
January 2020: Indian media is busy in begrudging the people that take Biryani served in the Shaheen Bagh, and the whole country entertains itself with the fuss. Biryani and its contents are classified as anti-national. The plan to deprive poor people and tribal people of citizenship, through CAA and NRC, is going on at full pace. It is now or never for the Hinduvata Brigade. The protesting women in Shaheen Bagh are given different honors of derogation.
Masked ABVP boys and girls, armed with rods and sticks, storm into JNU and assault students and faculty members. Some students are severely injured. Nobody is arrested. Police gives free passage to the violent goons. University “bosses” never register any FIR against them; instead they register an FIR against the victims themselves.
January 30, 2020: WHO declares COVID 19 a Global Health Emergency.
February 2020: The lousiest and the dirtiest elections in the capital of India, Delhi, are held on extreme communal lines. The female-folk protesting in Shaheen Bagh against CAA + NRC become practical orphans left in the streets to face the wrath of the bosses of faithful servants of the British Colonialists.
AAP desperately becomes the B Team of the Hinduvatva Brigade for winning in the elections.
Hinduvatva Brigade carries out a communal massacre in Delhi.
Donald Trump is the Chief Guest and the Most Dignified Observer of the massacre. He announces dollar three billion worth of armaments sale to the Indian “bosses”. One hundred twenty-five thousand Indians crowd into a stadium in Gujarat to honor him.
Great gatherings are held in the various places of India, as compiled by some gentleman in a letter to Modi:
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Surajkund International Craftsmela
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Kala Ghoda Arts Festival
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Sula Fest
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Matho Nagrang Festival
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Adoor Gajamela
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Udaipur World Music Festival
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Alwar Festival
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Jaisalmer Desert Festival
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Thaipooya Mahotsavam
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Mahindra Blues Festival
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World Sufi Festival
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Shekhawati Heritage Festival
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Elephanta Festival
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Pariyanampetta Pooram Kattakulam
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India Art Festival
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Taj Mahotsav
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Konark Festival
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Natyanjali Dance Festival
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Maha Shivratri
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Goa Carnival
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Losar Festival
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Khajuraho Dance Festival
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Nagaur Fair
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World Sacred Spirit Festival
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Deccan Festival
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Hampi Festival
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Def Expo 2020, Lucknow.
Around seventy thousands people from abroad enter India by air during February 2020.
March 2020: Everything is going on as usual in compliance with the trend set through the previous years. Nobody among the “bosses” feels even the least bit concerned about the threat of the impending doom of the poor people, including their wretched Bakhts. They either earnestly desire Indian poor to die or they have no knowledge of the past pandemics and famines in India, including the Bengal famine in which four to six million Bengalis were reduced to skeletons and starved to death, and which none their founders Savarkar, Golwalkar, Syama Mukerjee, et. al cared even a hoot about and who instead were all engrossed in celebrating their victory in opposing Indian National Congress’ most crucial campaign called the “Quit India Movement” of 1942.
Taking inspiration from Savarkar, Golwalkar, Syama Mukerjee, et al—who according to the author, Abhijat Sarkar (The Hindu Mahasabha’s politics…Bengal Famine, 1943–1944; Cambridge University Press), propagated Hindu communalism through food distribution, caste and class bias in private relief, used the famine for political purposes, portrayed Muslim food officials as ‘saboteurs’ in the food administration, alleged that the Muslim League government was ‘creating’ a new group of Muslim grain traders undermining the established Hindu traders, deliberately impeded the food supply, accused Muslim volunteers of converting starving Hindus to Islam in exchange for food, demanded that Hindu and Muslim famine orphans should remain in Hindu and Muslim orphanages respectively, and used the beef consumption by the army at the time of an acute shortage of dairy milk to fan communal tensions surrounding the orthodox Hindu taboo on cow slaughter…—the Hinduvatva Brigade of 2020 India downplays the possibility of the spread of the pandemic.
Cow-urine and cow-dung parties are organized and relished as the surest defense against any infection of the COVID 19.
March 22: People’s curfew is announced from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. All citizens are ordered to stand in their doorways, balconies or windows, and clap their hands or ring their bells or beat the tins.
March 25: Total lockdown begins at midnight within four hours’ of its announcement.
120 million workers, including millions of Bakhts, lose their jobs and means of livelihood.
March 26: “Relief” is announced as follows:
People that work for 100 days a year under MGNREGA
will get Rs 20200 a year (USD 3 per day) as wages for their work. Whether the work under MGNREGA is going on anywhere is not known.
30 million poor senior citizens, widows, disabled to get one-time ex-gratia amount of Rs 1,000 in two installments. The data about how many got is unavailable.
200 million women Jan Dhan account holders will get an ex-gratia amount of Rs 500 per month for three months. How many got it? Nobody knows.
Government announces that it will give 800 million poor people 5 kgs rice, 5 kgs wheet and one kg pulses per head per month for next three months (Rs 40000 million—Rs 500 per person)—but nobody is allowed to move out from their homes to receive it. Again data as to how many had the papers of entitlement is unavailable.
The situation becomes gruesome and hideous. Workers, with or without any papers, begin their long march from the cities they had been working in to their villages in homes.
Police brutality on workers becomes the general norm.
Blaming the spread of COVID 19 on Muslims is the culture of the time. Muslim vegetable vendors and fruit vendors are portrayed as agents of unleashing the pandemic—exactly in repetition of the path adopted by Hindu Mahasabha during the Bengal Famine.
The Indian Prospects
More adoration, storage and propagation of cow-urine and cow-dung for the Hindu masses; more lynch-mobs; more ABVP goons; more Whatsapp perversion of everything; more confounding of public; more abuses against all reason; more outrages against all scholarship; more atrocities on the working class; more murders of intellectuals; more arrests of learned men and women; few more dictums to go to Pakistan; more battering and ugliness on TVs; more decrees of anti-nationalism;… are in store for Indians.
Good journalists that presented the ground-report of hardships and death of workers in the roads in their march of hundreds or even thousands of kilometres on foot to their villages under the scorching sun were condemned by innumerable Bakhts. The reporting of their deaths in the highways and the blisters on their feet has been rated for attempts to tarnish the image of India. Reporting any rape or crime or callousness of brutes has been termed as anti-national activity.…
Before the “Supreme” “Court” of “India”, the “Solicitor General” of “India” himself declared India as: The Country of Vultures.
The International Scene
Despite having a conservative president, USA announced, on April 7, a USD 2 trillion stimulus package with a direct deposit of around $1,000 in cash into the average American’s bank account (though $1000 is not going to sustain most Americans through to the end of the pandemic); dollar 10 million loans to small businesses to help rent or help payroll.
UK, USA, and all developed countries incorporate State Capitalist measures in combination with Individual Capitalist ways in order to try as much as they can to ensure that nobody is left out of medical consultation and care, nobody is left without food, nobody is left in chaos or tension, and nobody’s child is left out in education programs. Institutions deliver the necessary supplies to the people in need thereof. Telephone calls to such institutions are enough to carry out the process.
Spain nationalizes all private hospitals and healthcare providers [March 16, 2020].
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God no more wants you to go to mosques, temples, churches, synagogues… You have created a great mess and murderous bigotry on earth throughout history so far through your mosques, churches, temples, etc.
….
Heroism and honor to the profession of doctors, nurses, other medical staff and researchers in the field is returning to its cherished path of the past. It is, or it has, no more to be merely for earning salary, fees, commissions, etc. It has become clear that the survival of humanity and all other life on this planet depends on them. Their jobs are honorable again.
Many doctors and nurses and other medical staff are battling against a life and death situation in their workplaces and families. Many of them have contacted the virus; some have laid their lives in this heroic fight…
Reasonable people question: Are doctors, nurses and other medical staff risking their lives and the lives of their families for a few thousand US dollars? Are their lives, their efforts, their work and their honor measurable in petty currency notes?
To quote just one such incident, Dr. Shabnam Tahir, Associate Professor of a Teaching Hospital in Lahore, and her husband, Professor Doctor Tahir Saleem lost their 21 years’ Son, Salman Tahir, a fourth year student of MBBS to Corona. And her heartrending words for every sensible human-being are: Take everything from me but give my Son back to me!
Did doctors, nurses and other medical staff lay their lives or put their and their family-members’ lives at risk to please Bagwan, Krishna, Rama, God, Allah, angels, demons, afterlife, etc., or for glorifying the names of Moses, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, etc.?
The virus announced to one and all:
“You are not angels. You are not superior to anything animate or inanimate. You are just a nothing or just a straw flowing or flying or riding on a hurricane.
“Do something useful during the time given to you as life. Your survival depends on one another. Get rid of your bigotry, poverty, illiteracy, in-education, ignorance, unemployment, wars, plunder, loot,… and ill-will against one another.
“You are not at all what you have illusions about your being.
“You are just as small, invisible and (un)important as I am.”
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If humanity has to survive, private hospitals, private medical manufacturing companies, private research centers, private labs, etc., should be immediately nationalized and operated on public expenses.
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Medical insurance should be immediately abolished. Everybody should be entitled to free medical facilities as a fundamental human right.
Reason: If a patient is poor and unable to pay for his medical expenses in any private hospital, etc., he is bound to spread the disease freely to as many people as come in contact with him/her.
Proletarian perspective adds:
It is monopoly capitalism grown absolutely obese and filthy. An Ambani is worth 500000 or more people like you and me. Slaves accept this gross insult upon their lives with religious devotion. We reject this fictitious worth of Ambani or anybody else over other people. We rate such people for despicable and pernicious animals. And we categorize all lovers of capitalism as…..
Hope all doctors, nurses, medical staff, etc., all over the world will realize the sanctity of their profession and become the grave diggers of money-extracting business and commissions. Hope it will no more be the nefarious enterprise as usual even after the virus is sent to extinction. Hope they will practically honor their work, their vocation, their sacrifices and their heroes and heroines from ancient times to the present. For it stands to reason that they are not and they should not be risking their and their families’ lives merely for earning a few currency notes [the capitalist worldview] or letting the world of wars, violence, loot, exploitation, scoundrels, poverty, wretchedness, rape, murder, ignorance, etc., continue to demonstrate its outrages and malice upon the world humanity. They must also become the architects and workers for creating a better world for all humankind.
COVID–19 has given the all important lesson about how important honesty is and how harmful is dishonesty. For, humanity fate depends on the honesty of the medical staff, medicines, etc., not on their dishonesty.
Three months will tell us whether Corona Virus goes under control or not; one year will reveal its full prospects; and after five years the full result will be before the survivors.
Hundreds of thousands were starved to death in Yemen, without even the slightest qualms on the conscience or consciousness of the people in the rest of the world. Now, Corona has come and involved the skin of a vast majority of people all over the world. All backward countries are now a gigantic Yemen.
Is it going to be capitalism all over again even after the pandemic makes its exit? Will it be unhindered capitalism in its more ruthless form after the storm? Unhindered and more savage monopoly capitalism on account of the losses suffered by the governments and the lords of private ownership of resources, industries, services, land and people?
The treatment meted out to the workers and their families in India demonstrated clearly that Indians are no more than creatures to the capitalists and their ideological slaves, who they can deal with in whatever way it pleases them to do, as long as our class brothers are voluntarily their Bakhts and concubines.
The gutter-gas and his entourage was sure to create innumerable catastrophes and unimaginable devastation. Entire Political Science degree was the display of what he and his imbecile Hinduvatva section and their lackeys rated the Indians for: Cattle.
The entire country’s one billion people are reaping the harvest. And they will continue doing so through future too. What we have seen is the catastrophe among just the semi-urban workers and rural poor. The turn of lower middle class and Andh Bakhts is now on cards. I won’t be surprised if inflation by the end of 2022 is 1000% in comparison to the current price of commodities. Pensioners, salaried class, etc., will enjoy its fruits as their pockets get bulky in terms of currency notes (their accounts inflate in numbers) that fetch far lesser than their amount of salary or pension could purchase in 2013—and their purchasing power goes down by 60% or 70%.
Will people come to their senses at last? A great opportunity of transformation for creating a better world is in front of them; if they squander away this opportunity of awakening and organizing, if they allow themselves to be drugged again to slumber, unconsciousness and spinelessness, the consequences are sure to be fatal for 90% or more people. The people with the Proletarian Perspective repeat the words of Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers of the USA,
“If this be treason, let us make the most of it!” and
“…it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?
“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. Let us not, I beseech you, sir[/madam], deceive ourselves longer.
“…we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament.
“Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne!
“In vain, after these things, may we indulge in the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—WE MUST FIGHT!
“They tell us… that we are weak—unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week or the next year?…
“Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
“…we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which …nature has placed in our power. …millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir[/madam], we shall not fight our battles alone…
“The battle…is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir[/madam], we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of…! The war is inevitable—and let it come!
“I repeat it… let it come! It is vain…to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry ‘peace’, ‘peace’—but there is no peace! The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the…will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?
“What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
“Forbid it, … I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
The Precedent of Backwardness
There have been many pandemics in the world in each century but we shall give just a synopsis of few thereof, as examples:
Time |
Origin |
Spread |
No. of deaths |
1817–1824 |
Bengal |
India (suspected to have been spread by Kumbh Mela)ChinaIndonesia…. |
India = Hundreds of thousands + 10000 British soldiersChina = UnknownIndonesia = 100000 in Java alone…. |
1829–1837 |
RussiaHungryGermanyEgyptUK…. |
Russia = UnknownHungry = 100000+Germany = UnknownEgypt = 130000+UK = 55000+…. |
|
1846–1860 |
RussiaMeccaEngland and WalesUSAMexicoTokyoSpain…. |
Russia = 1,000,000+Mecca = 15000+England and Wales = 52000+USA = Tens of thousandsMexico = 200000+Tokyo = 100000–200000Spain = 236000+…. |
|
1863–1875 |
Bengal |
Mecca (travelled with Muslim pilgrims)ZanzibarRussiaAustrian EmpireGermanyBelgiumItalyAlgeriaUSA…. |
Mecca = 30000–90000 pilgrimsZanzibar = 70000+Russia = 90000+Austrian Empire = 165000+Germany = 115000+Belgium = 30000+Italy = 113000+Algeria = 80000+USA = 50000+…. |
1881–1896 |
AmericasRussiaSpainJapanPersiaEgypt…. |
Americas = 50000+Russia = 267890+Spain = 120000+Japan = 90000+Persia = 60000+Egypt = 58000+…. |
|
1899–1923 |
RussiaPhilippinesIndiaAustrian EmpireGermanyBelgiumItalyAlgeriaUSA…. |
Russia = 500000+Philippines = 200000+ (including the PM Apolinario Mabini)India = 800000+Austrian Empire = 165000Germany = 115000Belgium = 30000Italy = 113000Algeria = 80000USA = 50000…. |
The cholera pandemic’s origin in India led to a rise in anti-Asian sentiment, especially towards Indian people and culture, in the West during the initial outbreak and following more outbreaks decades later. The disease was subsequently associated with Asia and South Asia, in particular, was seen as in some way to blame for cholera. Derision towards Indian cultural practices, especially Hindu pilgrimages, and hygiene following the initial outbreak were reported. Speaking about the anti-Asian sentiment that rose after the outbreak, British historian David Arnold said, “The Indian origins of cholera and its almost global dissemination from Bengal made the disease a convenient symbol for much that the west feared or despised about a society so different from its own”. Medical professionals of the time were also noted for relying on moral judgments and generalizations of Indian people on pilgramages. The sanitary commissioner of Bengal in British India, Dr. David Smith said, “The human mind can scarcely sink lower than it has done in connection with the appalling degeneration of idol-worship at Pooree”. During the outbreak, British authorities launched inquiries into the conditions of the South Asian People on pilgrimages and eventually classified pilgrims as a “dangerous class” that were placed under surveillance.
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In Russia, cholera riots (1830–1831) were caused by the anti-cholera measures, undertaken by the Tsarist government, such as quarantine, armed cordons and migratory restrictions. Influenced by rumors of deliberate contamination of ordinary people by government officials and doctors, agitated mobs started raiding police departments and state hospitals, killing hated functionaries, officers, landowners and gentry. In November 1830, the citizens of Tambov attacked their governor, but they were soon suppressed by the regular army. In June 1831, there was a riot on the Sennaya Square in St. Petersburg, but the agitated workers, artisans and house-serfs were dispersed by the army, reinforced with artillery. The riots went especially out of control in Sevastopol and in military settlements of the Novgorod guberniya. The rebels established their own court, electoral committees out of soldiers and non-commissioned officers and conducted propaganda among the serfs.
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In the summer of 1832, a series of cholera riots occurred in various towns and cities throughout Britain, frequently directed against the authorities, doctors, or both. The city of Liverpool, in the northwest of England, experienced more riots than elsewhere. Between 29 May and 10 June 1832, eight major street riots occurred, with several other minor disturbances. The object of the crowds’ anger was the local medical fraternity. The public perception was that cholera victims were being removed to the hospital to be killed by doctors in order to use them for anatomical dissection. “Bring out the Burkers” was one cry of the Liverpool mobs, referring to the Burke and Hare scandal four years earlier, when two men had murdered people in Edinburgh in order to sell their bodies for dissection to the local anatomy school. This issue was of special concern to the Liverpool citizenry because in 1826, thirty-three bodies had been discovered on the Liverpool docks, about to be shipped to Scotland for dissection. Two years later a local surgeon, William Gill, was tried and found guilty of running an extensive local grave robbing system to supply corpses for his dissection rooms.
The widespread cholera rioting in Liverpool was thus as much related to local anatomical issues as it was to the national epidemic. The riots ended relatively abruptly, largely in response to an appeal by the Roman Catholic clergy read from church pulpits, and also published in the local press. In addition, a respected local doctor, James Collins, published a passionate appeal for calm. The Liverpool Cholera Riots of 1832 demonstrate the complex social responses to epidemic disease, as well as the fragile interface between the public and the medical profession.
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During the pandemic of 1899-1923, Italians blamed the Jews and gypsies, the British in India accused the “dirty natives”, and the Americans thought the disease came from the Philippines.
There have been outbreaks of cholera thereafter as well but they have not been tremendously serious.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera_outbreaks_and_pandemics
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Add to this list the diseases that European settlers spread in the Americas and Australia which wiped out the entire populations of the native people in a number of places there.
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That was a brief introduction to the precedents, but the most fatal Pandemic in human history is said to have been the Bubonic Plague in the fourteenth century. Asian data and reaction to that pandemic is unavailable but a fairly clear picture of Europe during the time is available.
Europe was under the murderous grip of the Catholic Church. Clergymen were the lords. From birth to death a system of rites, rituals, customs, traditions, etc., gave them authority over everybody’s life and death. Nothing could be done without consulting them and without offering them the “due” fees. Nobody could be given a name and nobody could be buried in any graveyard without their rites and rituals and fees. They were the biggest feudal lords of the time.
And under such conditions came a disease and death of one-third to one-half of the populations.
The disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders, or it could have arrived via ships.
Symptoms of the disease included fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Of those that contracted the bubonic plague, 80 percent died within eight days of the initial infection.
The most commonly noted symptom were the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, neck, and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio’s description:
Half of Paris’ population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from 110,000–120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, with a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353. Florence’s tax records suggest that 80% of the city’s population died within four months in 1348. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to the contagion…Monks, nuns, and priests were especially hard-hit since they performed the death rites initially. Soon they abandoned those rites.
For details, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS33xGVkW60
The papal doctor claimed that all true cases of the plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable.
Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where the plague arrived in May 1348:
Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices… great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds both day and night… And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug… And I, Agnolo di Tura, … buried my five children with my own hands. And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city. There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death. And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.
The spread of disease was significantly more rampant in areas of poverty. Epidemics ravaged cities, particularly children. Plagues were easily spread by lice, unsanitary drinking water, armies, or by poor sanitation.
It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia out of a population of 475 million individuals.
The reports that “India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies” had reached to Europe in 1346 itself, but nobody could do anything under those circumstances of non-existent scientific understanding and the murderous grip of religion on one and all. Europe was still centuries away from the dawning of Science.
It was during this time that the great Persian poet, Hafiz Shirazi, composed his poem which became viral in 2020 COVID pandemic. We shall translate that poem under the subheading “
There were Bakhts of that time that did things similar to beating tins, pots, thalis, talies, galis, etc., lit lights for nine minutes, and so forth, initially but soon their activities extended to many horizons. They were called flagellants.
Flagellants believed in demons and spirits. They were certain that the disease and deaths were caused due to the sins of humankind. They began with atoning for their sins by whipping themselves. They grew like mushrooms. As their numerical strength and support increased they began violence and murder of
Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers, and Romani, blaming them for the crisis. Lepors, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were murdered throughout Europe.
Because 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks. Jews had suffered violence, discrimination, humiliation, murder, extermination… throughout their history of two thousand years, their situation became extraordinarily disastrous during the pandemic (which was surpassed only under the Nazi regime).
In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered. In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed. During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where the conditions were favorable for their survival.
Within a few years, the flagellants successfully transformed themselves also into rapists, debauches and whores. They were defeated by the regular armies of the kings thereafter.
In Asia, Muslim religious scholars taught that the plague was a “martyrdom and mercy” from God, assuring the believer’s place in paradise. For non-believers, it was a punishment. Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God. Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for the plague used by Europeans. These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks.
That was bubonic Plague of the fourteenth century. It had further waves too:
The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone.
According to historian Geoffrey Parker, “France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31.” In the first half of the 17th century, a plague claimed some 1.7 million victims in Italy. More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.
The cause of the disease, a bacillus, named Yersinla pestis was discovered by Alexander Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacillus was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission.
The modern understanding about the Bubonic Plague is: Due to the climatic change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas. The bacillus, Yersinla pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas.
Source: Wikipedia
The Crossroads: Medical Staff, Religion-cum-Existentialism
Hafiz Shirazi composed during the bubonic plague:
The city is empty, roads, streets and houses are empty
The beverage, table, goblet and cup are empty
Our acquaintances and nightingales departed one group after another
The garden, flower-bed, branches and the nests are empty
Oh pain! One friend in the world takes fright from his own friend’s presence
And the thirty buds are horrified by the garden itself
And lover is terrified upon listening to the voice of his beloved
And the musician’s fingers feel horrid in touching the wires of his instrument.
The stormtroopers feel horrified with even the plain roads
And the doctor feels horrified just at the appointment with the patient
The instruments of music are dilapidated and the poets’ pain is unfathomable
The many painful years of your and mine waiting have passed
The known have become unknown
And my expressing so too is no less than torture
….
Turn up [O Healthy world!] that the passed on caravan may turn up too
Turn up! That the proud lovers turn up as well
Turn up that the songsters, musicians and instruments turn up too
Spread your tresses that the kind sweetheart also turns up
….
Imagine how profound Hafiz Shirazi’s sorrow has been! Imagine how clear his comprehension of the estrangement of the elements of the society of his time with one another has been! His expression of it is tantamount to calling the world: The Earth of Dead People. And it has been more glaring in our time, when pogroms (in Yemen, Palestine, India, Kashmir, Kurd area, Baluchistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela,…) were celebrated in digital age before everybody’s nose, and the perpetrators of such pogroms still managed to keep themselves at the helm of affairs and lording their dictates over the world’s masses. What else can we call this, except: The World of the Deceased?
Now apply this phenomenon to existentialism and religions—both of which have a fundamental thing in common. Existence calls for the projection of one’s individual life (without caring a hoot for anybody else or anything else or any happenings), and religions in general call for individual, not social, salvation. Both generally celebrate the horrible estrangement of the elements of each society. Both show total disregard to the subjects of social equality, education, equal facilities, property relations, gruesome poverty, ignorance… Isn’t it dehumanization, de-socialization, alienation, numbness, deadening…?
Hafiz Shirazi was in absolute grief about it, and he lamented on it. He dreamed and called for the coming of the noble sweetheart, bloom in the gardens, nightingales’ joy, music, poetry, cascades, and all charms of natural and social life. He prayed for the end of the estrangement of world’s people. The existentialists celebrate all the devastation and emptiness. All they care for is projection of one’s life in the future (of social death).
The Three Prospective Paths Ahead
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The path of Capitalism: New and extensive ways of profit-manufacturing and fleecing the population through private hospitals, companies, etc., will come into operation in far more gruesome ways than it used to be. Those that can afford the expenses will get the required medical care. Those that can’t, will remain sick or die for its want.
Though all developed countries have adopted some state capitalist measures by granting some pocket-money and other necessities to the needy. In New York for example, an institution will place you in hotel room, free of any charges to you, if you are infected and need to be quarantined; another institution will deliver groceries to your home, for free; yet other institution will provide you medical and emotional support through the period; and so on.
Source: https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org
However, these facilities will certainly be stopped throughout all the developed countries as soon as possible. And it will be the business as usual thereafter.
When the working class begins to organize for itself, and gathers some organizational strength, the capitalists begin to provide concessions to them. Many of the capitalists and pre-capitalist lords take to philanthropy; many begin to show discipline; many rapists, criminals and murderers are punished…. When working class is disorganized, cow-urine is presented as panacea; Gutter Gas takes the charge of countries; rapists are honored with parliamentary seats; criminals become the lords under law; murderers become ministers; and foul rubbish is presented in TV debates for your children to assimilate.
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The path of State Capitalism: All clinics, hospitals, laboratories, research institutions, medicine manufacturing companies and other facilities will be nationalized on the national levels; and all population will be given free medical facilities, care, surgeries, medicines, etc., without any charges—as a mother feeds her child—as a fundamental human right: because you and your ancestors have contributed your enough in making this world what it is. Without that gigantic and immense contribution, all humankind would still have been in the hunting and gathering stage, and dwelling in caves or hovels. Every person is alive today because of agriculture and serfs, peasants, farmers and agricultural workers of the past and present. Hence a farmer or any worker is worth as much as a scientist. One cannot exist without the other. And once you get well, you will again work for the welfare of the people and the country you live in. And if you don’t get well, you will receive full care as long as you survive–because it is not merely your personal problem. This problem can occur to anybody. So in giving you full, free treatment and care, humanity serves itself and everybody’s future welfare as well.
Medical insurance companies will be abrogated and entitlement to medical facilities, medical care, surgeries and medicines to a selected few individuals or grandees [or criminals—for every criminal sentenced to prison is entitled to free medical facilities] will be send to the past epoch of barbarism. All doctors, nurses, medical staff and researchers will be the national heroes and heroines and ambassadors of public health culture.
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The path of socialism: Socialism or communism means end of wars, and end of armies. That is only possible when world is united into one Humandom. When you have a national state that you are bound to defend from foreign aggression, you must have army and the war-machinery. And when you have army and war machinery, you can’t have socialism. That is, socialism in one country is impossible. National state is the apparatus of Capitalism. It is the system of private or state ownership of natural resources, human resources, industries, land, services, institutions, etc. Bolsheviks clarified it long before the Bolshevik revolution. They didn’t take over power with the thought of establishing socialism only in Russia. They harbored no such illusion. They had the great hope that whole Europe would go for revolution, and the conditions indicated that. Germany, in particular, was at the threshold of an impending working class revolution. German capitalists and their press, professors, intellectuals, etc., successfully managed to pervert the workers’ revolutionary campaign towards Nazism and War, with disastrous consequences for all, and one hundred years’ humiliation of entire Europe as well.