Wrecking from within
Wrecking from within
Arabinda Ghose
Organiser
December 26, 1999
Title: Wrecking from
within
Author: Arabinda Ghose
Publication: Organiser
Date: December 26, 1999
When in 1957, the undivided
Communist Party won the State Assembly elections in Kerala, Chief Minister
E.M.S. Namboodiripad was asked how was it that the Communists who believed
in the philosophy of dictatorship of the proletarriat accepted the Parliamentary
system and formed a Government in the State. The one-sentence response
from EMS was: "To wreck it from within".
Forty-two years later,
in December 1999, the larger and stronger faction of the divided Communist
Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is on the threshold of losing
the status of a "national party" in the eyes of the Election Commission'.
If the Commission ultimately decided to terminate the status of a national
party accorded to the CPI-M after the general elections in 1967, the party
led by Harkishan Singh Surjit and Jyoti Basu will be reduced to a State
Party in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.
This decision, if taken,
will correctly reflect the real strength of the CPI-M, because it does
not really exist anywhere, else in India although dry have now 33 Members
in the Lok Sabha. It has of course one Member from Tamil Nadu-Madurai constituency
returned one CPI-M nominee in the elections to the 13th Lok Sabha, but
it was really the "gift" of Jayalalitha. Another Marxist won from Bhagalpur
in Bihar, but then it was again the gift of Laloo Prasad Yadav.
It is true that the CPI-M
have been winning seats from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh earlier, but
these were the gifts of the regional parties there, for example the Telugu
Desam Party helped the CPI-M win two seats from Andhra Pradesh in 1996,
but this time, the Telugu Desam-BJP combine has been able to banish the
CPI-M from the, State. They could win seats neither for the Lok Sabha nor
for the State Assembly and in fact the reason for their de-recognition,
if it comes about, will be this defeat.
And what about the parent
party, the CPI? Despite the arrogance of its leader in the Lok Sabha and
the party's General Secretary, the CPI could manage to win just four seats
in the general elections to the -13th Lok Sabha. Three of them came from
West Bengal a gift from the CPI-M- and a fluke victory from Punjab because
of the failure of the Akali Dal to present an united house to the electorate
took the tally to four. Surprisingly, the CPI will not lose recognition
as a National Party because it has the requisite number of Members from
State Assemblies which makes them eligible to remain a "national party".
This is not a surprising thing, because even the one-man demolition squad
Subramanian Swamy's Janata Party too remained a "national party" for quite
some years.
However, the moot point
today is not whether the two Communist Parties remain as national parties.
The question that is arising in the minds of people everywhere is what
at all is the relevance of these parties and indeed the philosphy which
they profess in India or elsewhere in the world. Time was when almost every
metropolitan city of India and a few others used to send at least one Communist
Member to the Lok Sabha-Dange, Homi Daji, Jharkhande Rai, Shakir Ali, Ramchandra
Sarvate, Prof Hiren Mookerjee, etc. now are long-forgotten names. No CPI
Member has. been elected from Calcutta in the last quarter century, thanks
to the machinations of the CPI-M which would give only rural seats to the
CPI, the RSP and the Forward Bloc. However, for the last three elections,
no CPI-M man or woman has won from Calcutta or its immediate neighbourhood
including Jadavpur and Howrah (this time Howrah however has voted a CPI-M
candidate).
The loss in the share
of votes is one facet of the decline and impending fall of the Communists
from the political arena of India except as marginal outfits. What is more
frightening for the Marxists, whose ideology has been "fine-tuned" by the
world's most notorious butcher, Joseph Stalin, is that their strong arm
tactics of killing. maiming and banishing of their opponents from their
homes have started recoiling on them now.
According to the well
known Bengali daily Bartaman (December 15, 1999), the Marxists are now
witnessing the mightmarish situation of the BJP-Trinamool cadres repaying
them in the same coin. In Medinipur, Hooghly, Bankura, South 24-Parganas
and Murshidabad districts, the BJP-Trinamool combine has been retaliating
the attacks by the Marxists and spreading terror among their supporters.
This has been admitted in the review of the 13th Lok Sabha elections conducted
by the CPI-M Central Committee in New Delhi recently.
In an earlier report,
the newspaper had also reported that the CPI-M leaders have complained
that the BJP-Trinamool Congress combine has been banishing CPI-M cadres
from certain areas of the State-notably Hooghly district and it is impossible
for these people to return to their homes. This report clearly underscores
the fact-the-two parties are now able not only to resist the strong-arm
tactics of the CPI-M, but also &eat them with their own medicine.
What is causing concern
among the leaders of the Party these days is more or less open rebellion
against the leadership by some Prominent members such as Saifuddin Choudhury
who used to be elected to the Lok Sabha from the Katwa Consituency repeatedly
till he was denied ticket in 1996 and marginalised ever since, Giving him
company, in not too covert a manner is Transport minister Subhash Chakravorty,
without who organisational capability in collecting an impressive crowd,
Shri Jyoti Basu would not be able to address a public rally at the Brigade
Parade Ground in Calcutta. Other like-minded leaders include Samir Patitundi,
secretary of the South 24-Parganas district unit within which comes Satgachhia,
the Assembly constituency from where Shri Jyoti Basu contests elections.
To add to its woes, dissent
CPI-M leaders, have now formed the "West Bengal Democratic Forum". This
anti-CPI-M front has as its leaders Natwar Bagdi, former CPI-M MLA from
Purulia district, the rebel CPI-M leader from Dum Dum, Sujit Basu, Shri
Samanta Hira another former Marxist leader, former Forward Block MLA, Deepak
Sengupta, former CPI MP Manorajan Sur and others.
What these anti-CPI-M
fronts and rebellious attitudes of some leaders of the Party actually signify
is that Communists and Communism have become totally irrelevant in today's
India. The rantings and ravings by some of the leaders of the Party against
the present ruling party at the Centre and their associates in various
States only reflect their despondency to achieve anything beneficial to
the country or the world at large and they can be dismisso4 as comic characters
performing a political pantomime Unfortunately for the, CPI-M some of these
leaders still do not realise that they are only the relics of the past
and their rightful place is "dustbin of history".
The violence against
their own partners in the Left Front Government in West Bengal, the macabre
killings of RSS and BJP men in the Kannur region of Kerala and their not
so-clandestine linkages with the terrorist forces in Tripura can best be
described as the flickers of the lamp lit by Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin,
Mao De Zung, Che Guevara and the Shining Path leaders of Peru which is
on the verge of being extinguished for over.
In this connection, one
must oppose any move to delete the teachings of Marxism in schools and
colleges. Marxism must be taught in educational institutions because only
then the future generations can become aware of the fruitless nature of
this philosophy which has only succeeded in blood-letting in its country
of origin and other places in the world.
"EMS" had said that they
would wreck Parliamentary Democracy from within. What has happened is Parliamentary
Democracy has wrecked the Communist movement for over and very soon the
epitaph of Communism will be written-mostly by those Who still profess
this failed philosophy.
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