(A Tebhaga veteran and a leading member of the CPI for more than six decades, Comrade Abani Lahiri has authored several books in Bengali and English on the Tebhaga Uprising in undivided Bengal, on the role of the peasantry in the freedom movement, and on the post-war revolt of the rural poor. He has been closely associated with the Joshi-Adhikari Institute of Social Studies and at 86 remains its Vice-President. Below we publish excerpts from the Dr. Nihar Sarkar Memorial Lecture delivered by him on 6 July this year at Darbhanga Hall, Kolkata University. The caption is supplied by us. The full text of the lecture is available as a pamphlet published by the Joshi-Adhikari Institute. – Ed.)
At the beginning, I want to make it clear that I am not submitting a theoretical/ideological treatise on revolutionary unity. This is the painful realization of an octogenarian communist born out of a lifetime of experience.
Firstly, we are now passing through a situation of multi-dimensional crisis unprecedented in recorded history. A ruthless imperialist power, based on predatory finance capital, operating in a unipolar world, has unabashedly declared – “if you are not with us, you are against us.” They mean in effect, that if you are against us, we have the right to wipe you out. Their offensive, under the banner of globalisation, liberalisation and privatization, is developing new forms of colonial relationships through the institutions of World Bank, IMF and WTO. If some misguided people in Afghanistan had taken to the path of anti-social violence, they would be wiped out along with thousands of innocent people. Similarly in Iraq, thousands of women and children would die of starvation and disease because the USA decreed it.
The second dangerous dimension of this crisis is the result of the failure of the national bourgeoisie which formed the leadership of the Indian National Congress, to ameliorate the poverty and distress of the common people during its more than forty-year rule. In the course of these years, they were caught up and drowned in a quagmire of corruption, nepotism and black money operations – all of which amounted to looting the people. In this situation, a string of powerful regional parties, like the TDP, AIADMK and casteist parties like the BSP and RJD grew, along with rabidly communal parties like the Sangh Parivar. This period of vacuum in the national space created by the decline of the Congress, could not be filled up by the fragmented left and democratic forces. The communal and fascist party in collaboration with power hungry regional and casteist parties came to power in India. For our country, a new and dangerous period began. The party in power now, has discarded all anti-imperialist and democratic positions. Non-alignment and anti-imperialism has been buried a hundred fathoms deep. For the first time, independent India is conducting joint military exercises with American naval forces in the Indian Ocean. The USA now has an important role in determining our alignments in the political and military power structure of the world.
The ruling power in India started the mad rush for disinvestments, selling out national assets built up through half a century of independence, to the private sector, sometimes at throwaway prices. They have withdrawn quantitative restrictions on all imports. Globalisation has become virtually the reintroducion of a colonial economic relationship.
On the social plane it has moved towards complete disruption and dismemberment of our polity, dismantling our plurality. What happened in Gujarat is nothing less than a wake-up call for Indian democracy. If this experiment in Gujarat succeeds, we can expect to see similar situations developing in many parts of our country. During the last twenty five years, the left forces have remained limited to a couple of states, accounting for not more than ten percent of the population of India.
It took forty years for the Congress to lose the confidence of the people. But in just four years of rule, the communal fascist forces and their collaborators have already started losing the confidence of the people, as is evident from the recent election results. The tragedy of the situation however is, that in absence of any other viable alternative, the people are turning back to he once discredited and rejected Indian National Congress as the alternative. It is quite likely that, if this party comes to power, it will again revert to its old norms of functioning.
This is the second dimension of the crisis in India today.
The third dimension of our national crisis, is not only the absence of any viable alternative to the Indian National Congress and the NDA before the Indian people, but that there exists no possibility in the near future of such an alternative emerging. The People’s Front of India formed with Sri Jyoti Basu as chairman and Sri Mulayam Singh Yadav as convenor is not likely to fulfill that role. (The People’s Front is recently winded up due to the impact of differences on Presidential election.) The main problem is that the alternative visualized by the initiators of the Front as the united platform of the left and democratic forces, remains an unprincipled alliance within the perimeter of the Indian parliamentary system of political alignments.
The left had entered Parliament in 1952 with a public announcement by Late Comrade A.K. Gopalan, who was then the leader of Communist Group in Parliament, that communists were entering Parliament to expose the limitations and ineffectiveness of the system to our people. Today, the system has co-opted them through a peaceful process, leaving them with hardly any message of mass resistance to the people.
That is why our People’s Front will remain a parliamentary slogan only, with a leading partner in the Front inviting about 4000 guests to a five-star hotel to celebrate the birthday of his twin daughters, according to media reports. We are facing the greatest danger of being totally co-opted by the system, playing the role of a constitutional opposition and trying to come to power through maneuvers and adjustment in the parliamentary elections.
Now let us come face to face with the moot question of the current situation – what is this People’s Front and how to build it up to initiate the militant onslaught against this corrupt and communal fascist government and replace it, not by another bourgeois-landlord government but by a government of left and democratic unity. In today’s alignment of forces, when a communal fascist government in partnership with a group of power-hungry regional and casteist parties is ruling the country, and bourgeois alndlord governments ruling the majority of the States, any idea of building a left and democratic government at the center through a parliamentary coalition appears no more than a day dream, even without any ‘historic blunder’. Parliamentary and Assembly elections are important for building up popular unity. But much more important today is the unity of left and democratic forces as far as possible, in building up and leading militant political struggles at the grassroots level. Here is the key which can open the floodgate of a rapid change in the alignment of forces.
Here I am not elaborating on the urgent programme, on the basis of which, many organizations of rural India may ultimately be with the opposition. The problem of landownership, division of crop, working conditions and wages of the increasing number of landless labourers; of education, healthcare, housing and of innumerable local issues such as water management, fertilizers, pesticides etc. has the potential to develop into militant confrontation with the authorities, particularly in the Hindi belt. These struggles also have the potential to shake up the rural support base of local reaction. The question of human dignity and social justice are issues which have acquired considerable potentiality, particularly in the Hindi heartland of India and a number of other States, where more than half of India lives. … In spite of reports of improvement of the quality of life of the Indian people recently published by the Planning Commission, a storm is brewing amongst 80 million tribals of India, overwhelming numbers of whom are extremely combustible material. Where are the left and democratic forces in these areas/ You cannot hope to build up a People’s Front within our Parliamentary system without organizing mass struggles of the rural and urban poor of the country.
Moreover, what is the norm and definition of a ‘democratic force’? Can a party occupying an important position in supporting the reactionary Central Government or taking a negative stand on questions of landownership, division of crops, or wages to the landless labourers be a democratic force if for any other consideration of their own they join the left at the time of Assembly or Parliamentary election? Can a party led by leaders known for various types of corruptions be counted as a partner in a left and democratic alliance?
There are areas of hopes and progress, though in small areas of this vast country. The Left Front Government of West Bengal have been in power in the State for about twenty five years. This is not a short period. During Congress rule in India, the people had started expressing their dissatisfaction against the ruling party from the 1967 elections. The Left Front Government in West Bengal, through the implementation of its land reform programme, created a new alignment of forces in rural West Bengal, where landlords no more dominate the villages. About 15 lakh sharecroppers had received the right of perpetual cultivation of the land already under their plough. According to official figures, 99.8% of the landholdings in West Bengal are small, marginal and medium holdings, leaving only 0.2% holdings of over 10 acres size. Lakhs of homeless day labourers have got land to build their huts. 25 lakhs of peasants got the surplus land of the landlords, distributed among them. These are remarkable achievements.
However, from the last decade of the 20th century signs of retreat and retrogression are visible. Instead of making the share-croppers owners of the land they cultivate, they are being advised by the Left Front to give to the landowner his share of the produce, even if he is an absentee landowner. No portion of this share of the produce, given to the landowner, ever comes back to the village for improvement of the productivity of the land or quality of rural life. This is a simple remnant of the old landlordism, designed to keep the non-cultivating rural middle class with the Left Front, at the cost of the share-croppers.
To build up a firm unity of the left and democratic forces to accomplish these unfinished tasks, the core of unity must be firm fraternal relationship amongst the communist parties on a principled basis. In the days of Comintern, we were accustomed to the idea of having a single communist party in a country. If there were more parties, they were categorized as splitters. The communist movement in India is fragmented into many parties – some of them small and some comparatively larger. But no single party can claim to be the sole custodian of Marxist-Leninist wisdom. On the whole, there are at the moment about 15,00,000 communists and about 50 million workers, peasants, women, students and youth, organized under the influence of the communist-led mass organizations excluding organizations like PWG and MCC. But they are fragmented into many parties, all of them owing allegiance to Marxism-Leninism. They have large areas of common understanding as well as serious differences on ideology and tactics for an Indian revolution. In case of a united thrust by the communists of India and the mass organizations under their leadership, the whole of India may experience an unprecedented movement towards bringing about a new combination of classes to take over power in the country. But the common people do not understand why the communist movement is still fighting its battles within its own ranks, why it cannot unite on a common minimum working programme.
In spite of having a common perception about the communal fascist government ruling the country, it is difficult to understand, why for a beginning, the CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(ML) could not send combined anti-riot squads to Gujarat on the basis of a working unity. It would have been a risky venture no doubt, but did not the united CPI have a history of scores of martyrs like Comrade Lal Mohan Sen, Comrade Amrita Nag, Comrade Smritish Banerji among many others who sacrificed their lives fighting communal riots, during days of the partition of the country. That could have shown to our countrymen that communists are made of different mettle, unlike the bulk of present day politicians. Or take the case of Ayodhya, where the VHP is creating a hell of communal tension off and on. Why cannot a massive combined rally of workers, peasants and urban poor called by the united communist movement, march through hundreds of villages to confront the communal forces? Even the protest at the genocide in Gujarat, why did a united call by the communists not go out for a general strike by the working class, along with innumerable small and big peasant and landless labourer marches in the villages, against this communal carnage? There are the real historic blunders for which future historians will not pardon the communists.
I firmly believe that the emergence of such a united platform will usher in a qualitative change in the situation and make it possible to initiate in innumerable areas, struggles big or small. That is the only way to oust the communal fascist power in India. It is also, the only way to build the People’s Front of struggle for power, not a front for manoeurving and manipulating in Parliament.