CPI central executive for expelling Sripad Amrit Dange from primary membership
The three-year-long tangle took just about 15 minutes to be resolved. Last fortnight, the 32-member central executive of the Communist Party of India met briefly at Ajoy Bhavan, the impressive party headquarters in New Delhi, and adopted a terse, two-paragraph resolution.
It could have been a nostalgic parting of ways, followed by a farewell dinner and a golden handshake, had the comradely relations not been fouled by a bitter, protracted controversy. Dange - short, portly, and a fiery orator even at 83 - walked off, seething with revanchist anger, from the party which he created along with others 56 years ago.
Nor could the ouster have been less timely. During the past 15 months, Dange had miserably failed to sell the line - pursued by him since Independence - that Nehru and Mrs Gandhi were leaders of the "patriotic national bourgeoisie" and, hence, it was the "prime task" of all communists to align themselves with the prime minister.
Undaunted:Earlier, at the last party congress held at Bhatinda in 1978, Dange went as far as defending the Emergency, saying that it was right "at least in the initial months". He came a cropper then, with 700 of the delegates voting against his "amendment" and 400 supporting it.
Undaunted by his set-back at Bhatinda, Dange clung to his thesis and speeded up his propaganda drive after Mrs Gandhi's triumphal return to power in January last year. Since then, he was hanging on a cliff, and trying to net in as many followers as possible before he could take the final plunge.