|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THOUGH he is no more, his books will, no doubt, inspire generations to come. And if we can discuss peace and human rights today, it is all because of the undying commitment of people like him. Howard Zinn died suddenly while swimming at Santa Monica, California, recently. He was 87. When I interviewed him sometime back, I had begun to believe that people like him were here to stay. Now, it is difficult to imagine a world without the presence of such a thinker whose passing will leave a tangible vacuum in the political involvement of many of his followers. Noam Chomsky, the political activist and a close friend of Howard Zinn, said on hearing of his sudden death, ‘He’s made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture and changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect".
No single label can be used to describe the variety and richness of his work. He was a man of letters, a political activist, a Left-wing historian of the people and, more than anything, a playwright who was a stirring inspiration behind the civil rights and anti-war movements. Coming from a working class background, he taught history at Spelman College, a historically all-Black and all-female institution in Atlanta, which he was asked to leave because of his support for a student’s demonstration for civil rights. He moved to Boston, where he was a professor of Political Science. Indeed, he was a major force in the American intellectual scene and one of the most significant dissidents of our times. When I asked him if he was a believer in social anarchism, he replied, ‘I don’t like to label my views that way. I’m a certain kind of socialist, a certain kind of anarchist. May be "democratic socialism" comes closest, a socialism that uses resources for human needs of production based on need rather than on profit. And there should be no control of thought or speech". In his famous book, A People's History of the United States, for which he will always be remembered, Howard Zinn drew attention to the eloquent, often uncompromising, voices of resistance that have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard textbooks, the controlled culture. As Zinn observed, ‘It is vital that such voices are more widely read, and contribute to our understanding of history as seen by—and made by—ordinary people. Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and Blacks and Native Americans given their due, it has been because "unimportant" people spoke up, organised, protested, and brought democracy alive". Often history has been quiet about the stories of the exploited and the deprived. Zinn’s credo for history from below was apparent in every statement: ‘All of us, no matter what we do, have the right to make moral decisions about the world. We must be undeterred by the cries of the people who say, ‘You don’t know. You are not an expert. These people up there they know’. The White House or the Congress is not the only agency that has the right to make the decisions and that "knows", the involvement of citizens is crucial to the running of the country". Zinn falls within the same category of people as Chomsky for raising his voice against war, may it be in Vietnam or in Iraq. Thousands who have suffered brought him deep distress, infuriating him to stand up against ‘all brute powers that destroy life and break the spirit of man.’ Soldiers who have been dispatched half way around the world into the heart of another nation to fight a decidedly avoidable war urge Zinn to ask angrily: "Is this not the ultimate betrayal of our young by our government?" Zinn’s two recent books, Artists in Times of War and Rule by Force are a derisive attack on the justification of war. For him, criticising the government is the ‘highest act of patriotism.’ The US governments, according to him, have browbeaten their own people as well as the people of the world, a fact largely kept out of the histories taught at school level. War, which has always accompanied economic exploitation, needs to be rejected at all costs. The voices of struggle,
mostly absent from history books, need to be given the place they
deserve. And this is what Zinn will be remembered for in times to
come. He will be remembered by the peace-loving people of the world
whom he provoked to think and organise, to engage in civil
disobedience against people who have no respect for freedom and
justice and who are responsible for spending billions on war.
|
|||
|
|
|||
