HVK Archives: Traitors to the nation
Traitors to the nation - The Observer
Prafull Goradia
()
11 February 1997
Title : Traitors to the nation
Author : Prafull Goradia
Publication : The Observer
Date : February 11, 1997
Apropos Dina Nath Mishra's article entitled 'Bleary-eyed
communists' (The Observer of Business and Politics, February 6). It
is indeed true that the communists are communalists. To illustrate.
early in 1942, the Communist Party of India showed an 'increasing
warmth towards the Muslim League'. The party declared its approval
of the League's aspirations. A CPI leader Sajjad had been quoted
as then saying 'it is a good thing and a fine thing, a happy augury
for Indian Muslims and for India as a whole that the Muslim League
continues to grow'. This is an atheistic, secular communist
compliment to the League which allowed no one except a Muslim to be
its member and which stood for the two nation theory as well as the
demand for Pakistan.
By September 1942, a CPI resolution had talked about 'Muslim
independence and a manifesto in October used the word "sovereign"
in discussing a Muslim state. By a year later, the party was
openly supporting Pakistan. Sajjad Zaheer admonished the Congress
for failing to see that the demand for Muslim self-determination or
Pakistan is- a just, progressive and national demand'. (Overstreet
and Windmiller, page 215).
Equally unpatriotic was the attitude of the Indian communists
towards the aggression committed by China against India. None of
the comrades is on record having expressed concern about the attack
on the motherland. But many of them are on record of having said
whether the CPSU (the Soviet party) was correct or whether the CPC
(the Chinese Communist party) was right. Dr Sudipto Kaviraj (in
his unpublished Ph D dissertation) has devoted a whole 50-page
chapter on why the CPI split into CPI and CPI(M) in April 1964.
The inner party debate was couched in communist jargon like the
issue of the international line of the communist movement,
especially as the members were afraid of two factors. One was the
fear of being arrested and jailed for treason under the Defence of
India Rules. The other was the fear of a public reaction against
anyone taking the side against India in the face of foreign
aggression. Whoever agreed with Peking (now Beijing) line believed
that the Indian government provoked the Chinese by intrusions
across the border. As Dr Kaviraj has said 'there was an important
group in the West Bengal party which did not condemn the Chinese
thrust as aggression and took a stand against rising nationalism'.
These included people like Jyoti Basu, and from outside Bengal the
only but significant support of Namboodiripad.
Those communists who agreed with the international line of Moscow,
condemned the Chinese attack presumably not because mother India
was assaulted, but because the CPSU was right and the CPC was
wrong. They stayed back with the CPI when the split took place.
All this would not seem surprising if one remembers that the
communists owed their loyalty to only Moscow until 1949 when
Beijing (then called Peking) also became a Mecca of Marx. To call
communism internationalism is to exaggerate its significance. But
courtesy costs nothing. And courtesy it is, because the communists
used to sing an anthem called the 'International' (a French word).
Communists the world over sang it on all solemn occasions.
Probably, because they had no time or respect for the national
anthems of their own countries.
Moreover, the communist called their world federations
'Internationals' (an English word). The first of these was founded
in London in 1864.
The second at Paris in 1889 while the third was established by V I
Lenin at Moscow in 1919. It was later known as the Comintern which
became a committee with the help of which the Soviet Union
conducted its imperial rule over all communist parties in the
world. Incidentally, in a preparatory meeting held in 1915, Lenin
has proposed the promotion of 'civil war, not civil peace' through
propaganda directed at soldiers and workers. Remember, at the
time, World War I was raging.
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