INDIAN REVOLUTION – INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT.
Almost a hundred years have passed since the formation of
the Communist Party of India. Since its inception, the party has been subjected
to repression. This repression was unleashed on the freedom-loving national
revolutionaries as well as on the communist fighters who participated in the
independence struggle with an anti-imperialist aim. They were implicated in the
Peshawar, Lahore, Kanpur, and Meerut conspiracy cases. In the trial of the Kanpur
and Meerut conspiracy cases, Communists had not concealed their ideals and
causes. They declared that it was not at all a crime to wage the struggle for
the liberation of the people of India from the imperialist shackles and to
emancipate the toiling masses of workers, peasants, and weaker sections from
economic, political and cultural exploitation. They voiced the necessity for
the people to organize against feudalism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Until 1942, for two
decades, the party through its hard and untiring work in the face of many
repressions got itself identified as the third largest party in the country. It
gained wide recognition among the people even amid internal struggles on the
policies of the party. The people's movement had reached the level of armed
resistance.
The party worked with
a concrete program against feudal ideology. It owned up and brought to light
many social reformers and progressive writers. It showed the way for a new
culture by promoting it on a wider scale the widow marriages. Social marriages
as against the traditional form of marriage. It opposed child marriages and
marriages against the will of the girls. It worked for gender equality. The
communist party swam against the tide at a time when untouchability, caste discrimination,
and blind faiths and practices were prevalent.
The Communist Party
educated the people on how to resist the feudal atrocities: if you do not have
a stick in your hand even a goat will bite you; get yourselves armed and fight
against caste oppression and communal attacks. It was the party that inculcated
consciousness among the people and made them organize around the general
slogans of independence, democracy, socialism, and world peace led the people’s
movements, and built the organized people's resistance against imperialism and
feudalism. The dedicated work without expecting anything in return personally
and even laying down their own lives by thousands of party members and hundreds
of party cadre were invaluable. We cannot forget the positive impact they have
made on the society. The values and commitments established by that generation
of communists continue to inspire and are worth emulating to us even today.
The communist
movement means the organizations and the agitations and struggles conducted by
the organizations of patriots, democrats, workers, peasants, other toiling
people in urban and rural areas, women, youth, students, children, writers, and
artists as well as defying the atrocities committed by the exploiting classes
and repression by the state. More than this the communist movement means the
movement built through the life sacrificing work for a social cause.
This was one phase.
It was the best phase in the communist movement. But it could not march
forward. Why it was so? True, it could not march ahead; faced setbacks. Yet the
cause of communism is there standing tall before us. With the strength of this
cause, we will review the history; learn lessons from it, and march forward.
The defeat of
fascism in the Second World War and the victory of peace-loving, democratic,
and communist forces have brought many changes in the world. The victory of the
Soviet Union; its reconstruction of the country from the destruction brought by
the fascist war; the march of socialist construction; the coming to power of workers'
parties in East Europe; the Chinese Revolution at the verge of victory; the
rise of peasants and workers struggles in our country; the progress of the
party in various sectors – all this had two types of influence on the party leadership
and ranks. Subjective thinking had overtaken the dialectical materialist
approach. The central leadership of the party led the worker's and peasants
movements with two types of guidance. The differences in the political and
ideological understandings of the leadership were the reason for this
situation. There was a struggle on two or three understandings at the level of
central leadership.
We cannot forget the
fact that the root cause for the split in the communist party was the
differences in the assessment of the character of the bourgeoisie in India and
the ideological differences that arose in the international communist movement.
A friendly discussion on these issues can enable us to correct the mistakes in
our understanding and show the way for our unity.
Along with the above
issue, there is another crucial issue: the confusion that prevailed in deciding
the character of our society. At what stage we are now in the process of
development of society from slave to semi-slave to feudal to the semi-feudal,
capitalist, and socialist system? The communist movement is plagued with
confusion and differences on this issue.
The character of the big
bourgeoisie in India and the process under which the power had come into its
hands; its subservient relations with imperialism; the support of imperialism
to feudalism and feudal landlords' support to imperialism help each other to
withstand or not – does these questions remain as points of difference? Are not
serious differences existing in the assessment of these issues?
Who is the national
bourgeoisie? Is it industrialist or big business? Is it the upper middle class
and middle class that owns and earns private property? Has not lack of clarity
on this issue led to disunity in the party?
Has not the
phenomenon manifested in the leadership of the party that was over-awed by the
philosophical thinking of and qualities of the bourgeois leadership of the national
movement, blunted our class orientation and the edge of our class struggle? Has
not the role of our party as one of the leaders of a national movement been
reduced? As a result of this, had not the basic classes of the party – rural
toilers and urban workers – run behind the mirage of reforms by the exploiting
government? Had not many alien theories raised their ugly heads due to
abandoning dialectical and materialist principles in conducting class
struggles? Has not the party’s mass base and hold not weakened? In the struggle
of the proletariat, who stands by our side, and who takes the side of
exploiting classes? Are we deciding on these questions based on class analysis?
Are not our capabilities being lost because of alien class outlooks on this
issue?
Many communist sympathizers,
well-wishers of the revolutionary movement, and even our adversaries think that
personal ambitions, egos, and careerism are the reasons for the inability of
communists to remain in one organization. Consequently, pessimism is being
expressed. Are there no ideological, political, or organizational reasons for
the spread of such tendencies?
Keeping this whole situation in our view, where to begin our
discussions? What are the ideological tenets to formulate clear-cut policies?
We have to concentrate on these issues.
What is the character
of Indian society? What is the stage of the Indian revolution? There is a need
for deeper and wider discussion on these issues. There is a need for
discussions on the feudal and semi-feudal and colonial and semi-colonial
characters. Is the understanding of the penetration of capital into the rural
economy new? Is then the idea that the entry of capital into rural India would
change the nature of Indian society being pushed forward? Then should the
communist party adopt achieving socialism as its sole aim and work? If so, have
we to change the understanding that imperialism, feudalism, and the comprador
bourgeoisie have become the main impediments to the progress of the people of
India?
Then are we proposing
to put aside our program of CPI (ML)? No, not at all. Our documents have to be
tested in practice. If we let the documents remain as just documents and move
in our way, will not our integrity towards our policies be questioned? So, we
have to continue our practice based on our party’s documents. At the same time,
we are placing the above questions and issues for discussion keeping in view
the long-term perspective and the task of rallying and uniting forces on a
broader scale. It is not unnatural if questions like: Is it correct to engage
in academic discussions and is it necessary to open up Pandora’s Box now etc.
to crop up. Yet it will cause no harm to the movement as long as we have enough
convictions and commitment towards the cause and practice.
The confusions being
spread by the opportunist theoreticians and intellectuals have been influencing
the genuine communists, and Marxist-Leninists and disheartening the
well-wishers of the communist movement. So, the above issues are meant for
wider discussion. Without keeping aside our practice, discussing the problems
faced by the revolutionary movement dispassionately stands as a historic task
and responsibility before all the communists today….
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