During the current discussion of the role of the CPI, there has so far been no reference to the activities of other self-proclaimed radical parties in the country. This is perhaps largely the result of the fact that the CPI has managed to wield considerable influence in recent years, not so much by virtue of its own intrinsic strength as because of its links with a certain section of the Congress and that this has provoked resentment. But the issues under consideration cannot be placed in perspective without a discussion of the performance of other radical parties.
The CPI is doubtless not just another radical party. It is, for instance, distinguished from others by its self-acknowledged adherence to what it calls “proletarian internationalism.” It, of course, studiously denies that this involves a subordination or even a willingness on its part to subordinate, national interests to an external power. Indeed, it claims that the concept of “proletarian internationalism” does not in the least detract from the principle of equality which, according to it, is and has always been the life breath of the world communist movement. If it has ever acknowledged that this principle was blatantly violated all the time, at least during the Stalinist era when by common consent communist parties all over the world were reduced to the status of instruments of the Soviet state, it has done so in a very quiet manner.
World
The CPI is living in a world of make-believe if it is genuinely convinced that it enjoys complete autonomy and pursues policies which are designed to promote national interests as it perceives and defines them. The fact that it has refused to take public cognisance of the frequent turmoils in the world communist movement since 1948, specifically on the issue of the autonomy and equality of constituent parties, speaks for itself. This is in sharp contrast to the attitude of the Yugoslav, Chinese, Rumanian and now Italian, French and Spanish parties, all of whom have asserted their right to complete independence. The stand taken by these parties does not seem to have made any significant impact on the CPI. There was, of course, a section in it before the split in 1964 which felt more drawn towards China than towards Russia. But once it broke away for very different reasons, the party was able to resume its old course – unquestioned loyalty to “proletarian internationalism”.
By way of argument, it can be said that the Socialist party, too, has had some association with the Socialist International and received a measure of assistance and moral support from it. But the socialist movement, for whatever it is worth, has had no discipline. In fact, such a thing as a world socialist movement has never existed. And as it happens, the Socialist party in this country has split so often that it is difficult to say which of the factions is the real party.
This is not to suggest that the socialists have not played havoc with politics. They have. In the ‘fifties, for instance, they were as guilty of introducing the politics of the cold war into this country as their rivals, the communists. It will, of course, be a gross exaggeration to say that they were primarily responsible for the conflict with China leading to the 1962 war and the vast increase in defence expenditure with all its consequences. But they certainly made Mr. Nehru’s delicate task of dealing with the Chinese all the more difficult and failed to see the likely consequences of their policy of opposition to the late Prime Minister’s complex approach. And who can deny that the late Dr. Rammanohar Lohia pioneered the style of politics which the CPM subsequently developed in West Bengal?
Lesson
The CPI has, of course, been far more pragmatic and realistic than the CPM, though both follow the same ideological framework and organisational principles. After it learnt the bitter lesson in Telengana in the late ‘forties, it has not toyed with the idea of an armed revolution. While it supported Mr. Nehru from the mid-fifties onwards and has supported Mrs. Gandhi since 1969, most other radical parties have behaved differently to their own disadvantage. This may have been a variant of the united front tactics other communist parties have tried elsewhere at various times. But that is less pertinent than the fact that the strategy has helped it acquire a leverage quite out of all proportion to the party’s own strength in terms of the following it enjoys. It has undoubtedly benefitted from the fact of India’s consistently good relations with the Soviet Union since 1954 and generally troubled ones with the United States and the increase, despite some setbacks, in the Soviet influence in Asia and Africa from the mid-’fifties till the early ‘seventies.
But despite all their differences, all radical parties share, on the one hand, the desire to remake the country so that it is rid not only of gross inequalities but also of caste and communal divisions along which Indian society has been organised from time immemorial and, on the other, the incapacity to take with them the common people, specially in the countryside where over 80 per cent of the population lives. The second point is incontrovertible. Apart from the Congress, with its amazing capacity to appeal at once to the upper land-owning castes and the economically and socially depressed scheduled castes and tribes, no party of the right or left has been able, except in certain pockets as in the case of the BKD in western UP and the Akali Dal in Punjab, to win sizable support in the countryside. But the point regarding the common desire to remake India needs to be elucidated.
All radical parties in the country are essentially a middle class phenomenon. Since they recruit their cadres almost exclusively from this class, which has been disoriented from the country’s traditional culture by virtue of its western-style education, which is highly superficial in most cases, they do not have either a proper understanding of or an adequate sympathy with the nation’s past achievements. But there are differences which are fairly sharp in certain cases. Those socialists who fell under Gandhiji’s influence are not modernisers in the sense the communists are. This cannot, however, be much cause for satisfaction. They, too, remain romantics though unlike the communists, they are unwilling to pay the price of industrialisation on the western pattern.
In the ‘fifties some socialists said that they wanted to marry Marxism and Gandhism. In reality they could never do this because the two traditions were so different in origin, inspiration and objective. All that the socialists have done is to produce a strange mix which has neither helped to keep them together nor enabled them to overcome populism and, in some cases, the almost irresistible desire to do something dramatic.
Effort
The socialists have on that account been singularly unable to co-operate in the cautious effort gradually to modernise the country. Even when they had the opportunity to join the government in the early ‘fifties, they laid down impossible conditions for co-operation. In reality, they were either afraid, albeit unconsciously, of the responsibility that goes with power, or were so completely cut off from reality as to convince themselves that Mr. Nehru needed them more than they needed him. The conditions they laid down were wholly populist in character and their acceptance would have resulted in a serious crisis.
That apart, they have never been able to take a realistic view of the compulsions of development in a poor country and of the building of a viable state in a land which in the past has been singularly deficient in the art of statecraft. But for this lack of realism the socialists would not have made common cause with the rightists and the communalists in the disruptive JP-led agitation in the months preceding the emergency.
It is, of course, far easier to analyse the weakness of the left parties, or for that matter the parties of the right, than to suggest a way out for them and the country. But analysis itself is an essential task which these parties can no longer shirk. It is for them to do some heart-searching and find out where they have gone astray and what amends they can make for the past.
The Times of India, 5 January 1977