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Degenerated Stand of CPM on Nationalities
The Political Resolution of the 8th Party Congress
of the CPI(M) only casually mentioned the nationalist aspirations of the
"border nationalities and tribal people" requiring "a just and
democratic solution" keeping mum over the very question of the right to
self-determination of nationalities.64
The 11th Congress of the CPI(M) charged the
missionaries working in the "Adivasi areas" propagating separation,
particularly in the North-East region of India.65
So also perturbed by the concern for national unity the 12th
Party Congress of the CPI(M) expressed its chauvinistic bias stating
that "The entire north-eastern region is full of discontent,
insurgency and secessionist challenges" and lamented that the
backwardness of the region was being fanned by "Reactionaries,
Christian missions and foreign agencies." 66
How reactionary anti-nationality bias and communalistic trend are
buttressed by the revisionist CPM and CPI, rejecting the aspirations of
the nationalities to determine their own fate and branding all
leadership of those nationalitists as mere tools in the hands of
imperialism or reactionaries, is pure and simple worship of the powerful
Indian state imposing its class rule of oppression and exploitation on
those nationalities. This refrain of fighting against the "divisive
and separatist forces" is heard in all the later party Congresses in
order to strengthen the role of the Indian state machinery.
The CPI(M) dismissed the independent aspirations of the Kashmiri people
to determine their own fate and has consistenly remained silent or
ambiguous like all present and past central governments. The
parliamentary revisionists ignore the massive blood-shed of the Kashmiri
people for the right of self-determination, the enormous presence of the
military over years, the "disappearance" of 3,734 Kashmiris67
since 2000, the manufactured story by the BJP Government about the
large-scale massacre of peace-loving Sikhs in Kasmir during the U.S
President Clinton’s visit to India and such brutalities perpetrated on
the Kashmiris.
Both the BJP and the CPI(M) prefer only to see the subversive acts of
Pakistan and fall in line to rope in by any means, the Kashmiri people
in the mainstream of parliamentary politics abandoning their aspirations
for freedom from India or Pakistan. A sham election was foisted on
the Kashmiri people in Sepetember 1996 and the CPI(M) hailed it as an "important
stage in the struggle against the secessionist forces backed by
Pakistan." This particular election held literally against the
aspirations of decision from democratic minded people and media was
glorified in the same CPI(M) Party Congress document shamelessly singing
the Congress-BJP tune: "The initiative taken to hold the elections at
the appropriate time with about 50 percent of the voters participating,
was an achievement of the United Front government."68
Even most of the media people confirmed that only a miniscule percentage
of people really cast their votes.
CPM documents also confirm the failure of the ‘Left Front’ to
implement the Government stipulated wages. Then where has gone all the
euphoria about providing "relief" to the common people through such
CPM led government ? Is there any basic difference between the
performance of such government and the governments run by the
Congress(I) or the BJP in other states ? One can not afford to ignore
the thorny and bitter reality.
Both the CPM and the CPI, like all reactionary parties, simply ignore to
listen to the voice of the Kashmiris. Nor do they believe that all
Kashmiris are not Islamic fundamentalists inviting Pakistan as saviour.
It is the extreme brutality on the people, which makes room for negative
forces to divert any movement in the absence of a sufficiently powerful
revolutionary party. But what the revisionists are at is to derail the
Kashmiri people’s growing aspirations for freedom in order to force them
to rest satisfied with autonomy "within the framework of the Indian
Union."69 Not
being satisfied with this prescription the 16th
Party Congress provided a lot of satisfaction and elation to the Indian
ruling classes by dishing out the policy of inciting the Indian people
against the Kashmiri fighters. It gave the inflammatory call: "There
has to be a massive campaign in Kashmir and the rest of the country to
explain how the extremist activities have disrupted the economic and
social life in the valley and to rally the people for the defence of
secularism and national unity."70
This is the culmination of parliamentary revisionism in India, which has
long officially abandoned the policy of propagating the need for armed
revolution in India and the solution to nationality problems as per
people’s demands in the Leninist way. The present revisionist call for
national unity reminds us of the CPI CC led by the die-hand revisionist
leader P.C. Joshi’s line in the British colonial period with surging
waves of people’s struggle. It rejected the minority trend in the CPI
which relied on armed struggle Joshi argued, "on the elemental
upsurge", a "narrow strategy, of class Vs class and Left Vs Right
instead of the correct strategy of national unity Vs national
disruption."71
While emphatically dismissing that trend the then CPI CC did not,
however, shirk its duty like the present CPI and the CPI(M) to appease
the discontented activists by voicing against the tendency towards
imminent electoral politics.
Notes
64. People’s
Democracy, October 27, 1968, p. 18.
65. Documents of
the Eleventh Congress of the CPI(M), Vijayawada, January 26-31, 1982 p.
53.
66. Political
Resolution of the Twelfth Congress of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist), December 25-30, 1985, pp. 45-49.
67. Hindustan
Times, April 24, 2003
68. Communist
Party of India (Marxist), Draft Political Resolution, 16th Party
Congress, Calcutta, October 5-11, 1998, p. 26
69. Ibid . p.
27.
70. CPI(M),
Political Organisational Report, Adopted By 16th Congress of CPI(M),
5-11 October 1998, Calcutta, p. 34.
71. The New situation And Our
Tasks, Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPI (passed by session
of the Central Committee on 16.12.’45), CPI Publication, 1945, pp 3-4.
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