Being a non-writer, I am not qualified to answer this question. However,
during the last 2-3 decades, I had the good fortune of knowing or being
acquainted with "progressive writers." Whether you are a progressive
writer or you are just a kindred spirit like me, the collapse of the
governments that used to be called communist should not be so damning. I
would give two reasons:
The link of progressive writers to communist idealogy varied very much;
some were marxists and others were much less interested in or cared about
the label. For example, Suresh himself was saying recently that Sri Sri
probably did not understand marxism well, yet his writings carried
such a force of conviction in the fight for the underdog. That itself
suggests that it does not matter whether you are a marxist, socialist,
communist, progressive or whatever the label, it is your convictions and
their strength that leave a mark on your writings. Now the other example
I will give will be that of Tilak and Ka Ra. I would call them
progressives. As you know there are plenty of places where Tilak
ridiculed marxist idealogy. But nobody I know calls either of them as
regressive. I guess what I am saying is that it does not matter what the
label is, a progressive writer is more attached to the cause, social
commitment and an egalitarian society and less with the communist world.
That is not to say that the progressive writers, at least some of them,
were not disappointed with the collapse of communist governments.
Ramakrishna gaaru said it right, that these governments collapsed under
their own weight. I believe that is for the good. But I personally would
not write off progressive idealogy - irrespective of the labels like
socialist and communist etc. Let me give the following logic as my
argument: Roman empire had a democratic system. At least that was what
they called it. It would be unrecognizable by today's norms of democracy.
It took 2000 years for democracy to get to where it is today and we are
still arguing whether a particular mechanism is democratic or whether it
can be improved to make it more representative. Marxist idealogy was put
to test only in this century. Thank God the Soviet Union is gone. But as
long as sizable populations remain as underdogs and as long as
they are ignored, there will be progressives and the governments they
form may or may not be called communist, but the next one would have
learnt from the mistakes of the last one. After all that is progress(ive).
Right now I realized that I violated the rule - no politics on this
forum. Oops!
Regards,
Sitaramayya Ari.