Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 221
that when power is exercised by the "right" people,
there can be no occasion for human rights concern.
Most of us do not need to be told this about
putative benevolent dictators, but we do not find
it equally obvious about communist dictators,
whether in power in the State or in power over local
society preliminary to such ascendance. How
can the Human Rights movement not look at how
this power is being established, . .. what norms it
is following, how democratic the norms are, how
accountable this power is to the people in whose
name it is exercised, and so on? Can the fact that
the purported final aim of the authority is total
liberation of us human beings from all oppression
render one blind to these questions?lS
For Balagopal, of course, the answer was no.
Another formation conscientious of prefigurative
methods (although they probably wouldn't have put
it in those terms) was the Shramik Mukti Dal in rural
Maharashtra, one of the "post-traditional communist"
groups that developed throughout the 19805. Bharat
Patankar, one of its founding activists, said, "Now, revolution
means . .. the beginning of a struggle to implement a
new strategy regarding the relationship between men and
women and between people of different castes and nationalities.
It means alternative ways of organizing and managing
the production processes, alternate concepts of agriculture
and of agriculturelindustry/ecology, and alternative
health care."16