Marxism has no place in India democracy: Indira Gandhi

In politics, actors often find themselves getting Portia's justice - a pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood. Indian communists pink, red or scarlet - have landed themselves in that predicament. The Marxists may rule in Bengal and Kerala, but they will have to encounter increasingly rough political attacks from the combined, or combining, forces of the bourgeoisie.The CPI is caught in its worst crisis in 17 years. The open rebellion of the octogenarian Sripat Amrit Dange (see Current Events' is not what greatly worries Ajay Bhavan. But the question that quickens the pulse beat of every CPI leader is whether, in breaking finally with the COM (Grand Old Man) of Indian communism, the party is not risking a break with the Soviet Union's political line on India.The multiple crises that beset the two communist factions in 1981 are symbolised by the increasingly hostile visage of Indira Gandhi. She has declared that Marxism has no place in Indian democracy. She seems to be determined to translate that icy piece of rhetoric into deadly missiles of political action.For the Marxists, the question is not whether the prime minister will dismiss them from office in Bengal and Tripura tomorrow or the day after. The CPI(M) has governed these two states as leader of a Left Front for nearly four years, and will, in normal course, face the electorate in the next 12 months. Indira Gandhi is determined to extend her party's rule to these two deviant states, and she has given the green signal to her followers to launch a political offensive. The agonising question before the CPI(M), then, is whether it can take on the non-Left Front coalition being forged in West Bengal and still win the next poll.A more immediate question for the CPI(M) is whether it can preserve nervous and cerebral poise in the face of the Congress(I) offensive. Its handling of the Congress(I) protest demonstrations of early April betrayed a breakdown of nerves and a cerebral fade-out.Shaky Alliance: The left-democratic front coalition in Kerala cannot last much longer. Its tenuous existence hinges on the Congress(U) partnership, which will be withdrawn any time now. The Kerala State Congress(U), which draws its strength entirely from its bitterly anti-Marxist student-and-youth front, has been bristling for months to pull out of the coalition. A. K. Anthony hasn't done so, only at the pleading of his party's high command. Now that the high command has permitted the West Bengal Congress(U) to forge a united front with the Congress(I) and Janata to take on the CPI(M) and its allies, it cannot leash Anthony any longer. The Congress(I) in Kerala has promised to support a coalition in power led by the Congress(U), and that's the next chapter in Kerala's shifting political alignments.Conversations with a dozen leaders of the CPI(M) and CPI in Delhi reveal that multiple crises assault the communist condition in India. These crises cannot be seen in isolation from the deeper crises that have gripped world communism at the turn of the decade of the 1980s. Leonid Brezhnev allowed himself to make a halfhearted confession at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 26th congress that things were far from normal with world communism. "The pillars of the socialist state in Poland are in jeopardy," conceded Brezhnev, referring to the worst crisis in East European communism since World War II. Even in respect to the Soviet Union, Brezhnev admitted that things were far from good. "Far be it from us, comrades, to paint the picture of the present-day socialist world in exclusively radiant colours. Complications, too, occur in the development of our countries." said Brezhnev in one of the greatest understatements of the time.The communist predicament in India stems from a plurality of adverse factors - low public support, extremely uneven growth and presence, fragmentation into competing factions, inability to make sizeable dents into the political system built by the bourgeoisie, and the social system erected on the stilt of castes. The total electoral support for communists in India has not exceeded 10 percent of votes cast in any national poll. The Italian Communist Party is a major national political force because it commands about 30 per cent of votes; the French Communist Party is also a national force with its solid 20 per cent electoral support. Even if neither of these two parties enjoy power at the national level, both control several provinces in their respective countries and roughly about one-third of municipalities. The Japanese Communist Party has two million members. 35 members in the Diet, controls 3,592 local councils, and has a readership of one million of its party daily, Akahata. In contrast, the two Indian communist parties do not command a combined membership of 300,000; their publications taken together do not enjoy half that readership. Nevertheless, the CPI(M) is the main ruling party in three states inhabited by 8 per cent of India's total population. No political faction other than the Congress(I) has a larger governing stature in India; neither the Janata nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rules in a single state, while the Congress (U) is a junior partner of the left-democratic coalition in Kerala.Turning Point: In 1979 the CPI(M) and the CPI leaderships took a momentous decision which is partly responsible for their present crises. They agreed that divided and mutually feuding communists in India had no future; if they could come together, if not by merger then at least through joint action, they could be a significant political force despite their uneven growth and organisational feebleness. Unity-in-action leading, hopefully, to reunion at a future time, would also enable the communists to exploit more profitably the acute and bitter competition developing among political factions of the bourgeoisie.(From left), CPI (M) leaders Namboodiripad, Dasgupta; President Brezhnev, and CPI leaders Dange and Rao: different approaches to the Soviet factorFor unity-in-action, both the CPI(M) and the CPI made important concessions to each other's tactical demands. The Marxists broke with the Janata Party and helped bring about the collapse of the Janata regime in Delhi. The CPI yielded to the CPI (M) leadership of the Kerala Government, and resolutely abandoned the line of trailing Indira Gandhi. While these and other less important mutual concessions paved the way to communist unity they also created serious problems for both factions.For the CPI(M), the return of Indira Gandhi to power at the Centre and restoration of the Congress regime in most of India posed an unprecedented problem. The Marxists with their overwhelming majority in the state legislature could not be easily dismissed from power; in the January 1980 Lok Sabha poll, they showed that the Indira wave did not penetrate Bengal.But so afraid was the Marxist leadership of the Centre's axe, that for the whole of 1980 the CPI(M) muted peasant mobilisation and adopted a low ideological profile in Calcutta. With the result that cadres became restive, many panchayat officials succumbed to temptations of graft, and even middle class followers wondered if remaining in power was more important for the CPI(M) than waging the struggle of the working people. The crowning tactical mistake of 1980 was to mount an attack on entrenched middle class sentiments and values. The decisions to bring the universities and colleges under CPl(M) influence, withdraw Tagore's Easy Reader from the primary schools and abolish English at the primary stage of education gave the bhadralok enough ammunition to mount a frontal offensive against the Left Front regime. Very soon Congress(I) took over the battle, and it developed into a veritable political war.Argument: In the CPI, the right flank rose in rebellion. For Dange and his followers, "surrender" to the CPI(M) was suicide plus humiliation. For several months the leadership as well as the dissidents argued with CPSU officials, both groups trying to convince the Soviet party that its tactical line was more correct. The CPSU had made no secret in 1979 of its preference for CPI-CPI(M) unity-in-action. Apparently the CPSU leaders did not expect Mrs Gandhi to stage her remarkable political comeback in January 1980. When this happened, unity-in-action had progressed a great deal, and there could be no tracking back. Besides, neither the CPI nor the CPSU wished to repeat the mistake they committed in 1975-76 by supporting Mrs Gandhi's Emergency rule. In 1980 it wasn't clear to either that Mrs Gandhi would not once again be moving in the direction of authoritarian rule.The situation however changed swiftly. With the death of Sanjay Gandhi, fear of the re-establishment of authoritarian rule gradually disappeared. After the intervention in Afghanistan, the Soviets acutely needed Indira Gandhi's support. But Brezhnev could not ask the CPI leaders to return to the prime minister's fold. Nor could the CPSU bestow the slightest smile on the breakaway right flank of the CPI under the leadership of Dange's daughter, Roza Deshpande. The only concession the CPI leadership made to the position was that it no longer saw the Congress(I) as its number one enemy. It was even prepared to support the ruling party's progressive foreign policy. But the CPI had grown out of its 20 years of tailism.It would not once again yoke itself to the Indira bandwagon.Leaders of the two communist factions continue to attach the greatest importance to unity-in-action; they claim that the CPI and the CPI(M) will stand together to face whatever political storms may break out in West Bengal and Kerala. But they also realise - though they won't admit this in public-that their cadres who have learnt to hate each other are not going to learn easily to love one another, and that Mrs Gandhi is not without resources to disrupt communist unity. What worries the communist leaders most is to what extent Mrs Gandhi could use the Soviet factor for her purpose.As one CPI leader put it: "The CPSU will never try to dictate a political line to us, the question doesn't arise." The CPI maintains that in inter-party discussions both sides explain their points of view with frankness; the question is of persuasion. The party is determined to pursue its own political line. But it also realises that the Soviet Union needs India's support in its struggle for peace and against imperialist aggression, and the security and strength of the Soviet Union is of supreme importance for communism everywhere. It must therefore watch every move of Indira Gandhi. The party feels she has already started detaching communists and leftists from her government's friendly relations with the Soviet Union. The Soviet factor has been for many years a rallying point of democratic forces in India. The prime minister now wants to disrupt that rallying point, they point out.Hard Times: The fear indeed goes far deeper. Will Mrs Gandhi dislodge CPI sympathisers from the many key positions they occupy in the educational and cultural establishments in India? Already several prominent intellectuals who allowed themselves to be identified as pro-CPI and pro-Moscow have started to distance themselves from the CPI and to speak less warmly about the Soviet Union. The multiple crises that beset the two communist factions in 1981 are symbolised by the increasingly hostile visage of Indira Gandhi She has declared that Marxism has no place in Indian democracy.Mrs Gandhi can very well edge the Soviets out of the position of vantage they occupy in the Indian educational and cultural areas and still maintain very friendly state-to-state relations. But if she moves in this direction, the Soviets may get panicky and seek CPI's help to maintain their cultural presence in India.The Marxist leaders muted their criticism of the Soviet Union throughout 1980 to make it easier for the CPI to trod the-unity-in-action line. Probably some of the Marxist leaders even hoped that the CPSU would recognise the CPI (M) officially and establish party-to-party relations. In 1981 the CPI(M) has gone a step further by virtually endorsing the Brezhnev proposals for a settlement of the Afghan crisis leading to the withdrawal of Soviet troops. At the same time, M. Basavapunniah, Marxist theoretician, has taken Brezhnev severely to task for the CPSU's refusal to concede that world communism has got entangled in serious crises and that for the melancholy situation, the CPSU's failure to repair the Sino-Soviet relationship is to a large extent responsible.The Marxist leadership has reluctantly come to the conclusion that hard times and bitter struggle lie ahead of the CPI (M). The ministries in Bengal and Kerala will be a bed of thorns so long as they last. The next election in Bengal will in all probability be a bloody encounter. If the Marxists lose, some of the leaders may be sad but most of the younger cadres will be happy for they are disenchanted with the kind of government that is possible with a hostile party in power at the Centre. One senior CPI(M) leader said: "We are getting ready for battle, and we know that it will be a long, bitter and serious fight. That's probably the best for communists if there's to be an Indian revolution before the end of the century."Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 21, 2013 15:56 IST--- ENDS ---

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Marxism has no place in India democracy: Indira Gandhi

In politics, actors often find themselves getting Portia's justice - a pound of flesh, but not a drop of blood. Indian communists pink, red or scarlet - have landed themselves in that predicament.

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