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Marxist leader Sitaram Yechuri defended the candidature of Captain Lakshmi Sahgal against the NDA nominee APJ Kalam (People's Democracy, July 9) by offering several arguments in her support, but remained silent on the vital issues which need to be answered by the Marxists. Mr Yechuri is polemical but avoids all basic questions related to Capt Sahgal's nomination. Having refused to be part of the national consensus on the nomination of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam - which is why the Samajwadi Party, the last major ally of the Left parties, deserted it - the Left has still not explained its antipathy for INA yesterday, and hope in one of its brave soldiers today.
Contest is natural in a democracy. But the Left parties' justification for opposing Dr Kalam seems specious. Mr Harkishan Singh Surjeet argued, "With all respect to APJ Kalam, whose contribution to the development of the country's missile programme is acknowledged and honoured, the fact remains that he is a candidate proposed up by the BJP" (The Hindu, June 18, 2002). The CPI(M)-CPI should not forget that they supported Mr VP Singh's National Front Government along with the BJP in 1989, and much earlier the CPI joined coalition government in states in 1967 along with the BJS. Of course, all such thing the Left does in "people's interest"! The Left still justifies its extreme anti-national position in 1942 on the pretext of a term, "people", over which they believe they have a monopoly.
Will the Left leaders disown, say, Karl Marx if the BJP puts up his portrait in its central office? The truth lies in their anger against their allies, particularly the SP, which Mr Surjeet has described as "disruptive". His motive was to use the ceremonial institution of the President for their agenda. The Left parties' asymmetrical unity move by mooting People's Front, was a part of its strategy to increase its political stock despite its dwindling number and strength. Now they are counting the sins of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr Amar Singh.
The superciliousness in dictating the politics of the Congress and other opposition parties has made the Indian Left unrealistic. Moreover, the non-party Left intelligentsia has demonstrated itself as being more loyal than the king by calling Dr Kalam as symbolising one of the two agendas of the BJP: Militarism (the other being majoritarianism). Were the presidential candidate a scientist with a, say, hypothetically Hindu origin, then he would have been blamed for symbolising both the agendas of the party. Never before in any country a scientist must have been slandered thus. His rival Capt. Sahgal too in her first press reaction linked his candidature with the India-Pakistan border tension. However, the Left has not only been isolated politically in the process, but has also fallen in public opinion.
But the Left can turn its isolation into a great opportunity to correct its historical mistakes. Subhas Chandra Bose and his INA, with which Dr Sahgal had been associated both programmatically and ideologically, was slandered by them. A perusal of the resolution adopted by the CPI in its first Congress in 1943 shows its anti-Indian character. The resolution read: "The groups which make up the fifth column are the Forward Bloc, the party of the traitor Bose, the Congress Socialist Party which betrayed socialism at the beginning of the war... and finally the Trotskyite groups which are criminal gangs in the pay of fascists. The Communist Party declares that all these groups must be treated by every honest Indian as the worst enemy of the nation and driven out of political life and exterminated."
Capt. Sahgal must thank her fortune that she could escape the Communist-Imperialist alliance's design of INA's extermination. Slandering cartoons against Bose were frequently published in People's War, portraying him as "a blood thirsty devil riding on the back of the Japanese militarist" (July 19, 1942), "a dog with Gandhi cap under the control and command of Hitler" (September 13, 1942), "Marshal" Bose looking at India to see what happens on August 9 in order to report it to his master Tojo, as a mask of the Japanese militarists (August 1, 1943), and as a bomb falling upon famished Bengal.
The party's general secretary PC Joshi wrote an editorial, 'Isolate the fifth columnist' (August 23, 1942), in which he called Bose "Japanese agent", "black crew", etc. He wrote: "The Bosites stood isolated as unscrupulous disrupters inside the national movement; today they are coming back as 'honest patriots'. The hidden Jap agents dared not show their faces; today they are active among patriots!" For EMS Namboodiripad (People's War, October 25, 1942), "Subhas Bose ki jai is a treacherous slogan". Another founder member of the CPI(M) BT Ranadive (People's War, December 6, 1942) declared Bose as "the henchmen of Japanese Imperialism" and "future dictator by the grace of Tojo". The INA was slandered as "an army of rapine, loot and murder".
Will the communists utilise Capt.
Sahgal's candidature to apologise for what their party did with the real
patriots? If it does, it would be the beginning of the metamorphosis of
the Left into nationalist communists, and thereby the process of their
Indianisation.
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