Electoral Loss of the CPI(M) Isn't the Defeat of Communist Movement in India
Monday, March 05, 2018
The deafening cacophony of klaxons blown by the rambunctious supporters and cadres of the Hindutva fascist camp, marching victoriously on the roads of Agartala and applying saffron vermillion on each other is a rare optic in the political arena of Tripura, which remained a strong bastion of the CPI(M) since last 25 years. The fortress crumbled and collapsed due to the blitzkrieg attack of the Hindutva fascism, represented by the BJP and supported by the strong network of armed militants from the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and their new-found ally, the IPFT. The BJP, under Narendra Modi, inflicted the most humiliating defeat to the CPI(M) in the first-ever direct electoral battle between the two parties in the history of India.
By winning 35 seats out of the total 59 contested (polling was cancelled in one constituency of Tripura due to the death of the CPI(M) candidate) and its ally, the IPFT, winning eight out of nine seats contested, the saffron camp’s total tally now stands at 43 out of 59, while the CPI(M)-led Left Front is now decimated and reduced to mere 16, a big fall from the 50 seats out of 60 that the bloc won in 2013. The BJP, which had less than 2 per cent vote share in the 2013 Tripura assembly election, managed to secure 43 per cent of the votes, while the CPI(M) -led Left Front could manage only 42.6 per cent votes. The IPFT managed to get 8 per cent votes. The Congress, which won 10 seats in the 2013 assembly election, and later lost six of them to the Trinamool Congress (later those MLAs got a higher price from the BJP and switched to the saffron camp to make the party the largest opposition force in the previous assembly), was wiped away from the political arithmetics of Tripura. This time the Congress only got less than 2 per cent votes and not a single seat in the legislative assembly. This shows that the traditional Congress vote-bank, the utmost reactionary and the anti-people vote bank, this time switched allegiance to the RSS-led Hindutva camp as the payouts offered by Amit Shah were extremely high and the chances of the CPI(M) were bleak.
When the CPI(M) was preparing to fight its maiden direct battle with the BJP led by Narendra Modi in a non-important, small state like Tripura, the entire corporate-controlled and Hindutva-inclined mainstream media focused their lens on the electoral battle and showcased it as a struggle of ideologies, the Marxist ideology vs the Hindutva ideology. The “political experts” on Tripura, who wouldn’t be able to distinguish Tripura from the neighbouring Mizoram, Meghalaya or Assam on an unmarked map of India, run a campaign on the futility of the “left ideology” in Indian politics and the requirement of “development” in Tripura, though the definition of that development remains quite elusive after four years of Modi government’s unbridled rule that resulted into rising inflation, rising unemployment, increase in big-ticket scams, including defence scam over Rafale Jet purchase worth Rs. 58,000 crore and the running away of big crony and comprador capitalists like Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi, who stole thousands of crore rupees from the Indian public sector banks.
These highly-paid political experts on the payroll of the Hindutva fascists and their corporate masters started to write-off the communists from the Indian political arena due to the decimation of the CPI(M) and its parliamentary opportunist allies in the Tripura assembly election. It seemed like a remake of the write-off of Indian communist movement that the RSS and the Congress declared when the CPI(M)-led Left Front had an utter rout in the West Bengal assembly election in 2011 and 2016. Whatever may be the occasion, the electoral defeat of the CPI(M), which is called a social-fascist organisation in the revolutionary left verbiage, is always equated with the defeat of the communist ideology and the working class movement in India. The mere dream of an India, free of the “communist menace” that threatens to disrupt the status quo and the centralisation of wealth in the hands of few, gives a sheer orgasmic pleasure to the right-wing journalists and fascist bootlickers. They love to live in their Goebellian fictitious world and curse the crimson for all the woes their masters have created.
These highly-paid political experts on the payroll of the Hindutva fascists and their corporate masters started to write-off the communists from the Indian political arena due to the decimation of the CPI(M) and its parliamentary opportunist allies in the Tripura assembly election. It seemed like a remake of the write-off of Indian communist movement that the RSS and the Congress declared when the CPI(M)-led Left Front had an utter rout in the West Bengal assembly election in 2011 and 2016. Whatever may be the occasion, the electoral defeat of the CPI(M), which is called a social-fascist organisation in the revolutionary left verbiage, is always equated with the defeat of the communist ideology and the working class movement in India. The mere dream of an India, free of the “communist menace” that threatens to disrupt the status quo and the centralisation of wealth in the hands of few, gives a sheer orgasmic pleasure to the right-wing journalists and fascist bootlickers. They love to live in their Goebellian fictitious world and curse the crimson for all the woes their masters have created.
Anyways, the BJP won Tripura because it successfully invested money to buy votes, party cadre and coalition partners; a hell lot of money was spent by the BJP, the very money that it received through generous corporate donations. Tripura was grabbed by the BJP through a very carefully drafted strategy that the RSS planned for the organisation’s North-East expansion. First of all, the Narendra Modi-led government appointed a certified Hindutva rabble-rouser and hatred monger Tathagata Roy as the Governor of Tripura to create a base in the state that can work as the rallying point for all Hindutva terror units. The RSS shakhas that remained in a die-down state since decades, received immense funding for revival and they hired a lot of former militants, local hooligans, Bengali and Tripuri intellectuals and government officials. Secondly, the Modi regime and the BJP bought the entire Congress-turned-Trinamool Congress unit of Tripura to entrench deep into the state’s legislature and both Congress and Trinamool Congress leadership endorsed this encroachment through their silent nod, as they wanted the BJP to work as the chief opposition force that can rally all anti-left voters and wean a majority of the Hindu and tribal voters from the CPI(M)-led Left Front fold by using religious fundamentalism and bigotry as a bait, something that the Congress and the Trinamool Congress can’t do openly because they are tied to their pseudo secular commitments, which talk about secularism in open while promotes bigotry beneath the sublayers.
The BJP managed to secure a huge margin in the state due to its successful political alliance with the IPFT, which played a crucial role in promoting sectarian violence in the state, especially between the Bengalis and tribals, since a long time. The Baptist Church, which played an anti-BJP tune in Meghalaya, supported the Hindutva camp’s endeavour secretly in Tripura, helping the Hindutva fanatics with the votes from the Baptist tribals, while knowing that the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, will attack the tribal Christians - the first thing after they are done with the minuscule Muslim population in Agartala, Udaipur and Dharmanagar. The weapon of all seasons - “Bangladeshi Muslim influx” was used by the team of Ram Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma in Tripura to evoke Islamophobia in a society that had been more or less cohesive in the last two decades after suffering a violence-clad AFSPA rule for years. Though Tripura has a very negligible Muslim population, the saffron camp went on a berserk vilifying the community by magnifying the threat of Bangladeshi Muslims and accusing the parliamentary left of "appeasing Muslims" at the cost of Hindu agony.
The RSS organised a seminar on border security in Kolkata, which was attended by the infamous Tripura Governor and RSS hate monger Tathagata Roy and his RSS collaborator Keshri Nath Tripathi, the Governor of West Bengal, deputed to overlook the strengthening and usurping of power in the state by the BJP, along with the serving DG of the BSF, K.K. Sharma, who attended the event in his official capacity to show his and the BSF's allegiance to the Hindutva fascist bloc and its ideology of hatred. The event was used to build up a strategy to spread communal discord in the border villages of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal by inciting Islamophobia and by falsely implicating the Muslim voters under various laws. The RSS also ensured through a series of measures and by carrying out indoctrination camps for the BSF personnel that a lot of Hindu infiltrators are allowed to pass into Indian territory from Bangladesh, and can be provided with voter cards and Indian identity so that they can increase the vote counts of the BJP, while the original Muslim voters can be bullied and kept away from voting in all these states.
The Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in association with the local Hindutva terror outfit Hindu Samhati (financed by the CIA, Mossad and the SIS), used Tripura as a gateway to reach Bangladesh and set-up militant camps there to incite local Hindus and spread communal discord. The Bengali Hindus of Tripura, who are ardent Shakta Hindus, were slowly evangelised since 2014 by vegetarian Vaishnava Hindu proselytisers to adopt the latter way of life and give up Shakta practices. A lot of bigotry had entrenched into the state, brought by these North Indian and Gujarati proselytisers cum apparatchiks of the Hindutva camp and right under the nose of the CPI(M), the majority of its Hindu supporters, especially Hindu Bengalis, became ardent Hindutva fanatics and supporters of Narendra Modi brand of fascism.
The Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in association with the local Hindutva terror outfit Hindu Samhati (financed by the CIA, Mossad and the SIS), used Tripura as a gateway to reach Bangladesh and set-up militant camps there to incite local Hindus and spread communal discord. The Bengali Hindus of Tripura, who are ardent Shakta Hindus, were slowly evangelised since 2014 by vegetarian Vaishnava Hindu proselytisers to adopt the latter way of life and give up Shakta practices. A lot of bigotry had entrenched into the state, brought by these North Indian and Gujarati proselytisers cum apparatchiks of the Hindutva camp and right under the nose of the CPI(M), the majority of its Hindu supporters, especially Hindu Bengalis, became ardent Hindutva fanatics and supporters of Narendra Modi brand of fascism.
Now the question is - when the BJP and the RSS were doing so many things right under its nose, what the CPI(M) was doing to stop the Hindutva cavalcade and protect its 25-year-long rule in Tripura?
Actually, the CPI(M) was not preparing itself to fight and wipe away the traces of the divisive North Indian Hindi-speaking Hindutva fascists from the small state that had been its citadel for a long time, rather it consciously allowed the RSS and its Hindutva affiliates to spread throughout the state out of the fear that the Modi government can dismiss the CPI(M)-led government in Tripura, if the latter resisted the growth and aspirations of the Hindutva camp. This fear of the so-called Marxist party evolved from its desperation to retain the ruling position under the present state-machinery, the very fear which is now forcing it to prostrate before the BJP in Kerala. The CPI(M) itself paved the ways for the BJP to win victory and establish the Hindutva hegemony in its former base - Tripura and it's paving the way for the BJP to seize victory in Kerala in 2021.
There are editorials and op-eds written by so many left-bashers who claimed that the left is waning in the country by epitomising the CPI(M) and the Left Front led by it as the sole representative of the Indian communist movement. The rhetoric around the left’s decay in the corporate media, which caught the imagination of the privileged urban, upwardly mobile and aspiring middle-class since the major poll debacle of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the 2009 general election, got a new lease of life after the BJP’s victory in Tripura. There has been an incessant flow of articles asking the CPI(M) to revise its strategy and shed the “outdated” ideology and many so-called militants within the parliamentary left camp demanded a complete separation from the Congress, few expected, in their wildest fantasies, the CPI(M) and the parliamentary left bloc will learn a lesson from these losses and take the path of revolutionary struggle by purging revisionist filth from within. Amidst such hullabaloo, it becomes imperative to discuss the communist movement in India and the role played by the CPI(M)-led Left Front in its context.
The CPI(M) was founded in 1964 after a section of the CPI leadership failed to win the inner-party power struggle. Using the pretext of the Indian aggression on China and the Sino-Soviet contradiction on political ideology, especially the polemic on Marxism-Leninism called The Great Debate, the clique of P. Sundarayya-E.M.S. Namboodiripad-B.T. Ranadive-Jyoti Basu-Pramod Dasgupta split from the CPI and formed the CPI(M) by hoodwinking the revolutionary communists to believe that the new party will follow the path of revolutionary struggle and lead the working class and peasantry to seize power and establish a people’s democratic state.
The revolutionary façade couldn’t be retained by the CPI(M) leadership for long, as the party joined hands with the reactionary feudal parties to form the United Front government in West Bengal after the coalition defeated the Congress in the 1967 assembly election. Same year, in the month of May, Jyoti Basu, the self-styled communist maverick and one of the key leaders of the CPI(M) who became the home minister in the United Front government, ordered police firing on tribal poor and landless peasants of Naxalbari, a small hamlet in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district, who were fighting against the feudal landlords to seize state power by following the political line of Mao Zedong-led revolution of China. The police firing killed 11 peasants, including one man, eight women and two toddlers.
The Naxalbari peasants’ uprising and its subsequent clampdown by the revisionist Jyoti Basu-Harekrishna Konar clique, created a massive uproar within the communist movement of India and the world. Even the Mao Zedong-led Chinese Communist Party, which called the Naxalbari rebellion as “Spring Thunder Over India”, criticised the CPI(M) for its revisionist politics, which aimed at preserving the rule of the reactionary Indian ruling classes. The CPC called the CPI(M) leadership - the running dogs of imperialism, which humiliated the crimson credentials of the Jyoti Basu-Pramod Dasgupta-B.T. Ranadive clique so much that they looked up to the Cuban leader Fidel Castro to use him as the revolutionary icon, along with Che Guevara, instead of Mao Zedong.
The Naxalbari peasants’ uprising and its subsequent clampdown by the revisionist Jyoti Basu-Harekrishna Konar clique, created a massive uproar within the communist movement of India and the world. Even the Mao Zedong-led Chinese Communist Party, which called the Naxalbari rebellion as “Spring Thunder Over India”, criticised the CPI(M) for its revisionist politics, which aimed at preserving the rule of the reactionary Indian ruling classes. The CPC called the CPI(M) leadership - the running dogs of imperialism, which humiliated the crimson credentials of the Jyoti Basu-Pramod Dasgupta-B.T. Ranadive clique so much that they looked up to the Cuban leader Fidel Castro to use him as the revolutionary icon, along with Che Guevara, instead of Mao Zedong.
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the CPI(M) worked hand-in-glove with the reactionary Congress and the Indian state machinery to butcher the Naxalbari-influenced revolutionary communists who rallied under the new communist party, the CPI(M-L). The CPI(M) was complicit in crimes like the massacre of revolutionary communists in Baranagar and Cossipore of Calcutta, where hundreds of CPI(M-L) and even some CPI(M) activists were brutally lynched by the hoodlums of the Congress and supported by the men of CPI(M) who cordoned-off the area.
Another partner of the Left Front, the CPI, collaborated nakedly with the Congress regime following the diktats from Moscow and became a partner of the Indira Gandhi regime during the dark period of National Emergency. It remained a partner-in-crime of the Congress throughout the 1970s and played a key role in establishing Soviet social-imperialism’s military hegemony in India during the same period. The fall of the Congress and the waning of the Soviet influence on India following the American assertion on the country since the 1980s caused an immense erosion in the base of the CPI and rendered it a toothless force that had to cling to the CPI(M) to remain politically relevant in the state and the country.
Another partner of the Left Front, the CPI, collaborated nakedly with the Congress regime following the diktats from Moscow and became a partner of the Indira Gandhi regime during the dark period of National Emergency. It remained a partner-in-crime of the Congress throughout the 1970s and played a key role in establishing Soviet social-imperialism’s military hegemony in India during the same period. The fall of the Congress and the waning of the Soviet influence on India following the American assertion on the country since the 1980s caused an immense erosion in the base of the CPI and rendered it a toothless force that had to cling to the CPI(M) to remain politically relevant in the state and the country.
When the CPI(M) founded the Left Front government in West Bengal in 1977, riding the anti-incumbency wave after the end of the Emergency, a lot of Dalit refugees from East Bengal, who were thrown to Dandakaranya to keep them away from the Bengali upper-caste refugees living in West Bengal, returned with a hope to live in the state under the “poor people’s government” - a term with which the Left Front government identified itself. However, the Jyoti Basu government had other plans; it initiated a massacre of Dalit refugees in Marichjhapi, in the Sundarbans of West Bengal.
More than 1,000 refugees were killed, their bodies were dumped in different rivers of the Sundarbans by the police, many were fed alive to the tigers and crocodiles. The massacre of Marichjhapi remains immersed in conspicuous silence due to the identity of the dead. It wasn’t the end, rather, the CPI(M)-led Left Front government organised incessant attacks to halt the growth of the revolutionary communist movement of the working class and the peasantry in states like Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, where it ruled. Many revolutionary communists were killed, Dalits, Tribals and Muslims were repressed by the state machinery marshalled by these pseudo-Marxists.
More than 1,000 refugees were killed, their bodies were dumped in different rivers of the Sundarbans by the police, many were fed alive to the tigers and crocodiles. The massacre of Marichjhapi remains immersed in conspicuous silence due to the identity of the dead. It wasn’t the end, rather, the CPI(M)-led Left Front government organised incessant attacks to halt the growth of the revolutionary communist movement of the working class and the peasantry in states like Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, where it ruled. Many revolutionary communists were killed, Dalits, Tribals and Muslims were repressed by the state machinery marshalled by these pseudo-Marxists.
The CPI(M) and the Left Front members embraced the neo-liberal economic model as soon as the Soviet social-imperialism (which the CPI(M) considered socialist even after Nikita Khrushchev established state-capitalism in the USSR after the death of Stalin) collapsed in 1991. The governments of the CPI(M) in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal nakedly appeased big corporations, foreign capital and banks in their states, following the path shown by other states ruled by the right-wing reactionaries. By using the pretext of bringing "development" to the people, the CPI(M) helped the big corporations to plunder the states it ruled for years. Rather than focusing on building up people's movement against the order of the day, the CPI(M) and its partners worked untiredly to build a positive image of the state-machinery ruled by the reactionary ruling classes and to instil sham hope of justice among the people from the very system that stands on the foundation of gross injustice.
The desperate attempts by the CPI(M) to annex the multi-crop land of the farmers in Singur, Hooghly district of West Bengal, for setting up the Tata Nano Car factory resulted into a massive movement throughout the state, which drew nationwide attention. The CPI(M) resorted to murders, bullying of local villagers and even raping of little girls to dominate the people of Singur and thereby, it lost its strongholds in the state, especially among the villagers, to the Trinamool Congress.
The Nandigram incident of March 2007, where the CPI(M)-led Left Front government sprayed bullets on the agitating peasants who protested against the forcible land acquisition by the government in favour of the giant anti-communist massacre funder, Salem group of Indonesia, dug the grave of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. In Nandigram, the CPI(M) carried out armed raids to cow the villagers, massacred numerous peasants, dumped the dead bodies into the sea, raped women and established a reign of terror through its hired goons to instil fear in the hearts of the villagers and to command their unconditional obeisance.
A small spark of agitation by the tribal people in the Lalgarh block of the West Midnapore district of West Bengal, which started in November 2008, developed into a mass rebellion by June 2009 and targeted the CPI(M) strongholds in the district. The palaces built by the party leaders, who ruled the poorest of the poor tribals, were burned down by the people; even local militias were formed by the tribal people to fight the henchmen of the CPI(M), called “Harmad” in local verbiage. The CPI(M)-led Left Front government joined hands with the Congress-led UPA II government to launch a massive war against the tribal people of the country, codenamed - Operation Green Hunt. The CPI(M) oversaw the deployment of the rabid Hindutva fanatic paramilitary forces in the villages of Lalgarh and along with these henchmen of the state, it sent its own mercenaries to cull villagers en masse and establish a reign of terror in the region.
Though the CPI(M) was booted out of power for its misrule, oppression and unapologetic corporate bootlicking in 2011, the party kept following the same policies throughout its opposition period and didn’t apologise for those inhuman crimes. In connivance with Mamata Banerjee, the CPI(M) helped the religious fundamentalist forces to breed and multiply in the state under the leadership of the RSS and Hindu Samhati since 2011. One after another CPI(M) mercenary either switched to the Trinamool Congress or the BJP and the CPI(M) was rendered into a signboard throughout the state. Powered by the henchmen who joined their bandwagon, the Hindutva camp and the Trinamool Congress are fighting a bloody war for power in West Bengal by instigating communal riots and by inciting mob violence.
The CPI(M) is a revisionist, opportunist and social-fascist party that discarded the ideology of Marxism-Leninism soon after its formation and since 1967, it has been supporting and serving the interests of the feudal landlords, the comprador and bureaucratic capitalists, the foreign imperialist powers with extreme diligence and devotion. The CPI(M) and the Left Front constituents are a bulwark of reaction in crimson attire; their main job is to befool the Indian people, keep them away from the path of revolution and to push them into the mire of parliamentary politics that will bring no real and substantial changes for the majority of the people. The CPI(M) is another parliamentary party of the ruling class, which is equally anti-communist like the rest but with one difference, the signboard that calls it communist. Rather than following the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and implementing it to the concrete condition of the Indian revolution, the CPI(M) and its Left Front allies have diluted Marxism and have acted in connivance with the ruling classes to build up a negative perception about the communist movement in the minds of the poor people, who have felt cheated as the CPI(M) and other Left Front partners never fulfilled their aspirations for a better future, an economic freedom and social justice, rather intensified the oppression by adding the fading crimson hue to it.
Joseph Stalin died in 1953 on this very day; if he had seen the CPI(M) in power, then its fall from power and then its campaign to regain power through elections, he would have reiterated: “After the experience of Social-Democrats being in power, when they broke strikes, organised lockouts and shot down workers, the false promises of "industrial democracy, peace in industry," and "peaceful methods" of struggle sound like cruel mockery to the workers. Will many workers be found today capable of believing the false doctrines of the social-fascists?” (SW Vol-12 pp 259-260)
No wonder, these social-fascists (socialism in name and fascism in deeds) like the CPI(M) and its allies are what Lenin called the “labour lieutenants of imperialism” or the exemplary example of the “labour aristocracy” which evolved into utmost revisionist and a reactionary battalion of the ruling classes. The CPI(M) has served the ruling classes of India quite earnestly to receive its share of trickled down benefits of the so-called “development” that is driving its brand of “alternative” politics since a long time. As a representative of the Brahminical, patriarchal and feudal ruling classes, the CPI(M) is the reactionary beast against which the working class of the country must fight, ideologically and organisationally, to ensure its liquidation, which will pave the way for the revolutionary ranks of the working class to fight its real class enemies and seize the state power to establish a people’s democratic rule.
It’s not that the social-fascist CPI(M) isn’t aware of the plans and programmes of the RSS and the BJP in the states that it rules, like Kerala and formerly Tripura and West Bengal, however, the party skipped the responsibility of building strong resistance struggle against the onslaught of Hindutva fascism because it followed the diktat of the ruling clique, which ordered the party and its stakeholders to endorse the menace. Unless the CPI(M) wanted, the RSS or the BJP wouldn’t have survived in Tripura for 24 hours, forget months and years. It’s the CPI(M) and the BJP’s tactical understanding and their obeisance to the diktats of the common master that one willfully stepped down from power while the other ascended to the throne.
This is a sheer reason that when the poor supporters of the CPI(M), who somehow still believe that the party will serve their class interests, come under attack from the fascist goons of the BJP or the Trinamool during the post-poll violence in Kerala, Tripura or West Bengal, the CPI(M) desists them from resisting those attacks through strong and militant class struggle. Rather the CPI(M) leaders betray their poor loyalists at their hour of crisis and then exploit their beleaguered situation to build up “legal” movements, demanding respite from the very system that is commanded by those who are complicit in the killing of the poor. This gross sacrilege of Marxist-Leninist values by the CPI(M) and its Left Front partners make them the subject of opprobrium in the international and domestic Marxist-Leninist camp.
This is a sheer reason that when the poor supporters of the CPI(M), who somehow still believe that the party will serve their class interests, come under attack from the fascist goons of the BJP or the Trinamool during the post-poll violence in Kerala, Tripura or West Bengal, the CPI(M) desists them from resisting those attacks through strong and militant class struggle. Rather the CPI(M) leaders betray their poor loyalists at their hour of crisis and then exploit their beleaguered situation to build up “legal” movements, demanding respite from the very system that is commanded by those who are complicit in the killing of the poor. This gross sacrilege of Marxist-Leninist values by the CPI(M) and its Left Front partners make them the subject of opprobrium in the international and domestic Marxist-Leninist camp.
If the CPI(M) had a genuine desire to fight the RSS-led Hindutva camp anywhere in India, including their citadel of Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, they would have done it and defeated the Hindutva fascists with their manpower by now. The CPI(M) cadres and leaders oversaw the formation and growth of the RSS Shakhas and they actively supported the Hindutva camp in many places of Tripura, especially in the Bengali Hindu neighbourhoods of Agartala and Dharmanagar, as the RSS and other Hindutva organisations appealed to the bigotry-filled minds of the party's leadership.
Recently, the dreaded former mercenary of the CPI(M), Lakshman Sheth of Tamluk, infamous for mastering massacres in Nandigram, joined the BJP and is now helping it make inroads in territories that were hitherto uncharted. The people of West Bengal and the Marxist-Leninists of the country are not flabbergasted at the political optics of this development. A lot of CPI(M) workers and supporters in post-poll Tripura have switched to the BJP by the time of writing this article and a lot of leaders, workers and supporters are waiting to join the Hindutva fascist caravan and slay Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribal people.
Ram Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma, the two rising stars of the Hindutva fascist camp, are enjoying their aggrandisement, following the strengthening of the saffron base in Tripura, the state where they had no presence four years ago. They were able to unfurl the saffron banner of hatred and violence in Agartala because of the active and concealed support they received from the CPI(M) leadership. The CPI(M) leaders, who helped Ram Madhav, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Tathagata Roy in their first major electoral victory against the parliamentary left in the country, are getting rewarded by the ruling classes for their exemplary service in spreading pessimism about the future of the communist movement in the country. It's expected that Himanta Biswa Sarma will include some old-timers of the CPI(M) in the newly floated Tripura BJP to ensure that there are less scope of opposition in the state, which the saffron camp plans to rule forever now.
Recently, the dreaded former mercenary of the CPI(M), Lakshman Sheth of Tamluk, infamous for mastering massacres in Nandigram, joined the BJP and is now helping it make inroads in territories that were hitherto uncharted. The people of West Bengal and the Marxist-Leninists of the country are not flabbergasted at the political optics of this development. A lot of CPI(M) workers and supporters in post-poll Tripura have switched to the BJP by the time of writing this article and a lot of leaders, workers and supporters are waiting to join the Hindutva fascist caravan and slay Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribal people.
Ram Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma, the two rising stars of the Hindutva fascist camp, are enjoying their aggrandisement, following the strengthening of the saffron base in Tripura, the state where they had no presence four years ago. They were able to unfurl the saffron banner of hatred and violence in Agartala because of the active and concealed support they received from the CPI(M) leadership. The CPI(M) leaders, who helped Ram Madhav, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Tathagata Roy in their first major electoral victory against the parliamentary left in the country, are getting rewarded by the ruling classes for their exemplary service in spreading pessimism about the future of the communist movement in the country. It's expected that Himanta Biswa Sarma will include some old-timers of the CPI(M) in the newly floated Tripura BJP to ensure that there are less scope of opposition in the state, which the saffron camp plans to rule forever now.
Lenin said, “...to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.” (CW, Vol-5, pp 384) The revisionist and opportunist politics of the CPI(M) as well as the CPI and other partners of the Left Front, kept strengthening the rule of the reactionary powers. Revisionism gripped the Indian communist movement until 1967, when Charu Mazumdar, the charismatic leader of the Naxalbari peasant uprising, broke the shackles of opportunism that tied the Indian working class and peasantry with the revisionist practice. The revolutionary spirit infused by him into the communist movement of the country brought a new approach in dealing with the problem of revolution.
The path of Charu Mazumdar is loathed and despised by the CPI(M) and revisionists of all hues because it takes Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought as the theoretical guide to action and integrates the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought with the concrete practice of Indian revolution. The politics of Charu Mazumdar emphasises on the annihilation of feudalism and an uncompromising struggle against the US imperialism-led imperialist bloc, the comprador and bureaucratic capitalism. The politics of Charu Mazumdar aims at establishing the leadership of the working class and the poor-landless peasantry over the communist movement, by educating and arousing the masses with the invincible weapon of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong's Thought. The existence of the line of Charu Mazumdar and the prevalence of the anti-revisionist communist ideology in the country, an antithesis to the venomous theory spewed by the CPI(M)-led revisionists of all hues, is a sign that the revolutionary flames of Naxalbari couldn’t be extinguished by the CPI(M) despite its incessant attempts, rather the party itself is on the verge of its extinction at present after being booed by people from all corners of the country where it existed.
The path of Charu Mazumdar is loathed and despised by the CPI(M) and revisionists of all hues because it takes Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought as the theoretical guide to action and integrates the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought with the concrete practice of Indian revolution. The politics of Charu Mazumdar emphasises on the annihilation of feudalism and an uncompromising struggle against the US imperialism-led imperialist bloc, the comprador and bureaucratic capitalism. The politics of Charu Mazumdar aims at establishing the leadership of the working class and the poor-landless peasantry over the communist movement, by educating and arousing the masses with the invincible weapon of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong's Thought. The existence of the line of Charu Mazumdar and the prevalence of the anti-revisionist communist ideology in the country, an antithesis to the venomous theory spewed by the CPI(M)-led revisionists of all hues, is a sign that the revolutionary flames of Naxalbari couldn’t be extinguished by the CPI(M) despite its incessant attempts, rather the party itself is on the verge of its extinction at present after being booed by people from all corners of the country where it existed.
More than a century ago Lenin said: “The working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this backsliding, spinelessness, subservience to opportunism, and unparalleled vulgarisation of the theories of Marxism.” (CW, Vol-21, pp 312)
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China raised the slogan - “Fight Self! Combat Revisionism!” - to fight revisionism mercilessly, as revisionism is considered as the principal danger for the revolutionary working class movement in the present era, i.e. the era of Mao Zedong’s Thought, i.e. the era in which imperialism is heading towards total collapse and socialism is marching towards worldwide victory. Despite setbacks and treacherous backstabbing by the revisionist forces, who are trying to pull up imperialism, quagmire in deep economic crisis all over the world at the verge of its collapse, through gimmicks and by counterfeiting the politics of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, the victory march of the working class cannot be halted by the reactionary forces for long.
The CPI(M) and the likes of it, who inherit the legacy of traitors like Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky, Tito, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping or Xi Jinping, cannot remain at the helms of affair forever. They have been repeatedly exposed before the peasants and workers and their efforts to misguide and deviate the revolutionary struggles of the working class and the peasantry have been quashed by the people’s democratic revolutionary struggle in different parts of the country. By siding with the reactionary powers, the CPI(M) and other revisionist parliamentary parties have openly betrayed the people and they will be punished and condemned by the people for this betrayal.
The loss of the CPI(M) in West Bengal or Tripura will not end the revolutionary communist movement of the country, rather it will give a fillip to it, as the people will now see the bankruptcy of the sham communists like the Left Front partners more prominently than ever. The people will also observe and experience the utmost failure of the parliamentary left in halting the cavalcade of Hindutva fascism in India. The more the opportunist social-fascist CPI(M) and its lackeys and followers will be exposed before the people, the more the people can be educated and aroused with the revolutionary politics of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, the more intensified will be the revolutionary struggle of the working class and peasantry for state power against the Hindutva fascist camp.
It’s true that the Hindutva fascist BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the RSS, will now up the ante against the working class and peasantry everywhere in India to divide the revolutionary classes on the basis of religion and use the fissures to instigate communal antagonism between the people. The inner-conflict between the peasants and workers of all communities will be used by the Modi government to appease foreign investors and indigenous comprador capitalists. The land, mineral resources, water and labour of the country will be offered to the plunderers for free and India will be turned into a sanctuary of imperialist loot and plunder.
At present, when the global finance and monopoly capital is shrinking in the quagmire of a sheer crisis of capitalism, an unhindered access to plunder the resources of India and use its market to sell goods paying the lowest or zero taxes will help the big corporations to recuperate. The CPI(M) and other revisionist parties of the left are accomplices of the Hindutva fascist camp in their evil endeavour and though the lower-level cadres and supporters will be slain by the BJP and the RSS goons, the leaders of the CPI(M) and other revisionist outfits will profiteer from the bloodbath. This is the tragedy of the revisionist politics.
At present, when the global finance and monopoly capital is shrinking in the quagmire of a sheer crisis of capitalism, an unhindered access to plunder the resources of India and use its market to sell goods paying the lowest or zero taxes will help the big corporations to recuperate. The CPI(M) and other revisionist parties of the left are accomplices of the Hindutva fascist camp in their evil endeavour and though the lower-level cadres and supporters will be slain by the BJP and the RSS goons, the leaders of the CPI(M) and other revisionist outfits will profiteer from the bloodbath. This is the tragedy of the revisionist politics.
For the revolutionary communists, the bandwagon of the working class, the peasantry and the toiled people, led by the vanguard organisation of the proletariats, there will be stern challenges ahead on the road. The Hindutva fascists are emboldened with their unbridled victories and immense funding. To fight and defeat them, it is imperative for the revolutionary communists to penetrate deep inside the basic masses, the workers and peasants and arouse them by politically educating them.
By being perseverant and by assisting the poor and landless peasantry, the factory workers, the unorganised workers, the toiling people to understand the key theory of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, using real-life examples and analysing them using dialectical and historical materialism, the revolutionary communists can convert these people into the spiritual atom bombs, who can fight against the class enemies by holding high the crimson banner of revolution. Countering the liberal-bourgeois cliché of “save democracy”, now reiterated by the parliamentary Left equally, the revolutionary communists, who represent the working class and the peasantry, must propagate among the revolutionary classes the immemorial teachings of Lenin on the parliamentary democracy that the ruling classes hold out as a bait to distract the people from the revolutionary path:
By being perseverant and by assisting the poor and landless peasantry, the factory workers, the unorganised workers, the toiling people to understand the key theory of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, using real-life examples and analysing them using dialectical and historical materialism, the revolutionary communists can convert these people into the spiritual atom bombs, who can fight against the class enemies by holding high the crimson banner of revolution. Countering the liberal-bourgeois cliché of “save democracy”, now reiterated by the parliamentary Left equally, the revolutionary communists, who represent the working class and the peasantry, must propagate among the revolutionary classes the immemorial teachings of Lenin on the parliamentary democracy that the ruling classes hold out as a bait to distract the people from the revolutionary path:
“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”—supposedly petty—details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organisation of the daily press, etc., etc.,—we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10 ten, if not 99 ninety-nine out of 100 a hundred, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.
Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analysing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!” (CW, Vol-25, pp 365-366)
As a reactionary and feudal ideology, the Hindutva fascist doctrine and jargons of their apparatchiks can’t befool the poor for long, as the class interest of the poor will arouse them in rebellion against the very forces that loot them. The task of the revolutionary communists is to organise them with a clear vision. The recent militant movement of the tribal people and peasantry under the CPI(M) leadership in Rajasthan shows that the Hindutva camp cannot subjugate the people for long under its fascist jackboots. Though the CPI(M) betrayed the movement in Rajasthan, despite the militant mood of the peasants, who wanted to carry out a large-scale struggle against the Hindutva fascist Vasundhara Raje government, the peasants didn’t surrender their will and their goals along with the CPI(M) leaders when the latter capitulated to the ruling clique.
Despite Narendra Modi’s intensified Hindutva campaign, the poor of India are rising and they, slowly, however, steadily understand that the Modi government will not fulfil any promises regarding better days; rather it will push them into the abyss of extreme poverty and subject them to extreme exploitation over the period of time. However, as the electoral results are pre-determined in a sham democracy like India, where the ruling classes choose their representative to rule and get it endorsed through an election process, the poor can’t change anything for themselves through the electoral/parliamentary path. Rather, to effectively defeat Hindutva fascists, the poor must be organised under the banner of revolution by the genuine Marxist-Leninists, who must also unite all other anti-fascist and progressive forces, including those sections of the society that are truly determined to fight against the Hindutva fascism. By threading all struggles against the Hindutva fascist empire of Narendra Modi, by uniting all secular, democratic, anti-corporate, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist movements of the people under a common anti-fascist democratic banner, the revolutionary communists must lead the greater struggle against the Hindutva fascism and defeat it to bring an end to the anti-people Modi government.
No obstreperous bourgeois TV anchor or loquacious "political experts" can halt the forward march of the oppressed people of the country: the broad masses of peasants, the workers and the toiled people towards their goal of liberation, towards the establishment of a people’s democratic state and socialism. A society free from the exploitation of man by man is something that the working class, and the people led by it, will achieve, not because it’s in their whim, rather, because it’s inevitable in the course of human progress, according to the law of history. The likes of the CPI(M) and other so-called “communist” parties that serve the interests of the ruling classes and work as their lapdogs, will be trashed to the same gutter of history where the likes of Khrushchev-Gorbachev or Deng Xiaoping are dumped. This is their invincible fate.
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