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In seeking to answer these questions, I shall start with the analysis of a printed text. This is apposite, since Marxists are as much in thrall to the printed word, or Word, as are fundamentalist Muslims or Christians.
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Withal, like Christianity and Islam, Marxism is a faith whose practice is very heavily determined by its texts. Thus, communists the world over justify their actions on the basis of this or that passage in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao.
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In a 1968 book called Marxism and Christianity, MacIntyre observed that “creedal uniformity, as in religion, often seems to be valued by Marxists for its own sake”.
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To quote MacIntrye, “both Marxism and Christianity rescue individual lives from the insignificance of finitude…by showing the individual that he has or can have some role in a world-historical drama.”
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THE TEXT that I shall here subject to scrutiny—the technical term may be ‘exegesis’—was written not by Marx or Lenin, but by a desi deity, so to say. One of the most influential of all Indian Marxists, his name was Bhalchandra Trimbak Ranadive
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It took the shape of an extended review of a book by the Spanish communist Santiago Carrillo, entitled Eurocommunism and the State. The review was published over 33 closely printed pages of Social Scientist, a Marxist monthly edited by scholars associated with the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Here, Ranadive attacked Carrillo as a renegade, the last in a shameful line of ‘revisionists’ who had abandoned the path of revolution in favour of the softer option of reform.
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Second, Carrillo claimed that communist parties did not necessarily possess a monopoly on the truth.
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First, Carrillo thought that, at least in Western Europe, socialists and communists could now come to power via the ballot box rather than armed revolution.
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The Indian communist charged his erstwhile comrade with six heresies in particular
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Third, Carrillo held that private enterprise had a role to play in economic growth, albeit in alliance with the State.
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Fourth, Carrillo argued that in the Cold War, Europeans should keep their distance from the Americans and the Soviets alike.
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Fifth, Carrillo believed that Marx, Engels and Lenin were not infallible, and that their views were open to correction with the passage of time and the evidence of history.
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Sixth, Carrillo believed that the Communist Party was not infallible either, and that—at least in nonpolitical matters—individuals should feel free to follow their own conscience.
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Can any Communist,” Ranadive fumed, “put the enemy of mankind, the gendarme of world reaction, American imperialism, on the same footing as Soviet Russia?”
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Further, the encouragement of a diversity of thought outside the sphere of politics was “the final denigration of the Marxist-Leninist Party in the name of freedom for all its members to profess any opinion they like on any subject”
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However, by the end of 1947, PC Joshi found his line challenged by the radical faction of the CPI. They claimed that the freedom that India had obtained was false—‘Ye Azaadi Jhoothi Hai’, the slogan went—and asked that the party declare an all-out war against the Government of India.
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On 28 February 1948—four weeks after Gandhi’s murder—the CPI leadership met in Calcutta, and confirmed that the revolutionary line would prevail. Joshi was replaced as general secretary by Ranadive, who declared that the Indian government was a lackey of imperialism, and would be overthrown by armed struggle.
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In 1950, the Ranadive line was formally abandoned, and the communists came overground to fight the general elections of 1952. In 1957, the undivided Communist Party of India came to power in Kerala, via the ballot box.
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Seven years later, the party split into two factions, the newer and more numerous group calling itself the Communist Part of India (Marxist). In 1967, the CPI(M) was part of winning coalitions in both West Bengal and Kerala. Later, in 1977 and 1980 respectively, they came to power in these states more or less on their own.
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“Can any Communist,” Ranadive fumed, “put the enemy of mankind, the gendarme of world reaction, American imperialism, on the same footing as Soviet Russia?”
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Carrillo’s argument that other political parties should exist, indeed that these parties might even sometimes be correct in their views, was seen by Ranadive as “giving a permanent charter of existence to non-Marxist, anti-Marxist and unscientific ideologies”.
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It is necessary to point out here that it was the self-same BT Ranadive who, in 1948, led communists in an insurrection against the infant Indian state.
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It took some more time to restore order in Hyderabad, where a recalcitrant Nizam was refusing to join the Indian Union, egged on by militant Islamists (known as ‘Razakars’) who were making common cause with the local communists. But in September 1948 the Indian Army moved into Hyderabad; slowly, over a period of two years, the areas where the communists were active were brought back under the control of the state.
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In 1957, the undivided Communist Party of India came to power in Kerala, via the ballot box. Seven years later, the party split into two factions, the newer and more numerous group calling itself the Communist Part of India (Marxist). In 1967, the CPI(M) was part of winning coalitions in both West Bengal and Kerala. Later
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I HAVE DISINTERRED BT Ranadive’s views here not simply out of an historian’s interest in the strangeness of the past. For the prejudices he held—and so vigorously articulated—are unfortunately still quite widespread in the CPI(M) today.
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In practice, the party’s ideologues seem somewhat reconciled to parliamentary democracy, but they retain an aversion to private enterprise, are still hostile to intellectual debate and dialogue, and yet cling to a faith in their party’s infallibility.
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I have long held that the central paradox of Indian communism is that its practice is vastly superior to its theory. Where other kinds of politicians have eagerly embraced the Page 3 culture, many communists still do mix and mingle with the working people. Communist leaders and activists are probably more intelligent than their counterparts in other parties, and—by and large—more honest.
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That communist leaders are less greedy and corrupt, that they do not live or endorse luxurious lifestyles, is one very important reason why, despite their irrational and often antediluvian beliefs, they have enjoyed power for such long stretches in the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.
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During its 34 years in power, the Left Front in West Bengal had but two chief ministers—Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
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Under their leadership, West Bengal has performed poorly on conventional indicators of social and economic development.
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If, after all the advantages that West Bengal started with, it still lags behind the more advanced parts of India, surely the blame lies to a large extent with the party that ruled the state for the past three-and-a-half decades?
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The Left Front, dominated by the CPI(M), came to power in West Bengal in 1977. In the first decade of its rule, it launched Operation Barga, a programme to protect the rights of sharecroppers and tenants. This was mostly successful, and widely applauded. Yet it was not followed by reforms in other spheres.
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Fear of working-class militancy led to the flight of capital to other states of India. The hatred of the West, so much a part of Indian communist discourse, turned off foreign investors.
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One of the more unpleasant things about communists is their desire to capture and control public institutions.
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The police came under the control of the party cadres, helping them fix local elections and capture the panchayats. The appointing of senior bureaucrats and vice-chancellors was in the hands of the party.
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The History Department of Calcutta University, once India’s finest, was turned into a loyalty parade of the CPI(M).
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In 2006, after decades of demonising capitalism and capitalists, the Left Front in West Bengal decided to bring in the demons to develop their state. The Salim Group of Indonesia was allotted 40,000 acres to create a ‘Special Economic Zone’. The major Indian industrial house, Tata, was invited to start a car factory. These projects, in Nandigram and Singur respectively, became controversial, since local peasants were not consulted about them, nor were they given any meaningful stake in them.
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The Left Front in West Bengal could have forged a new model of industrialisation, by paying a fair market price for land, or by not buying land outright and instead paying a substantial annual rental, or by training and educating peasants beforehand, so that they could get well-paying jobs in the factories built on their land. Instead, both projects were implemented in an authoritarian, top-down manner.
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The definitive account of the Kerala miracle is Robin Jeffrey’s Politics, Women and Well-Being (1992). In this and other books, Jeffrey shows that the progress in education, health, gender and caste emancipation in Kerala is owed to a complex interplay of several factors, which include: (1) The fact that one very numerous caste, the Nairs, are matrilineal. (2) The fact that another very numerous caste, the Ezhava, were organised by the remarkable Sree Narayana Guru (1856-1928) to fight against Brahminical orthodoxy and liberate themselves through education.
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(3) The fact that Kerala had progressive maharajas who built schools and sent brilliant students of all castes (and both genders) on scholarships abroad. (4) The fact that the state also had very active Christian institutions which emphasised the importance of education, including women’s education.
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What share of the credit for this must go to the communists? The short answer is: a fair amount, but not as much as that commonly accorded to them by party followers or fellow travellers.
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In the absence of caste reformers, missionaries, maharajas, matriarchs, etc, the human development record of Kerala may have been closer to that of West Bengal’s.
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With the state’s very high literacy rates, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, rather than Bengaluru and Hyderabad, should really have been in the forefront of the software revolution. One reason why this has not happened is the anti-industrialism and anti-Westernism of the CPI(M).
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A romantic may pin his hopes on the Naxalites, who seek to overthrow the bourgeois order by force of arms. The realist knows this dream is a (blood-soaked) fantasy.
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A modern left must also stop playing, or replaying, the battles of the Cold War. Consider our relationship with the United States. The view of the CPI(M) (expressed in People’s Democracy and in the editorial pages of The Hindu) is that one must always be suspicious of American intentions and always give the Chinese government the benefit of the doubt.
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While Marx himself was a great champion of modern technology, Indian Marxists are technophobic.
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In the 1980s and the 1990s, they resisted the computerisation of banks and railways. In protecting the interests of a relatively small constituency, the organised working class, they disregarded the tens of millions of ordinary consumers who benefited from computerisation.
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Most middle-class people are revolted by the company that the leaders of the major parties keep, by their proximity to crooks and moneybags. Many are further disenchanted with the sycophantic tendencies of the Congress; many others detest the bigotry of the BJP. But they have nowhere else to go. Those disgusted by the First Family vote by default for the BJP; those who cannot abide Hindutva vote reluctantly for the Congress.
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If the left can modernise and present itself as a party of reform, a party that is inclusive and outward-looking, a party committed to social welfare but not opposed to economic growth, it could capture a vote bank that is far more numerous that represented by its own current special interest, the organised working class.
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Finally, the CPI(M) must abandon the Leninist dogma that it is the only party that understands and represents the interests of the poor and the excluded.
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In the 1980s, the CPI(M) made the foolish (and possibly tragic) mistake of dismissing Indian environmentalists as reactionary and anti-progress. I remember a CPI(M) friend telling me that the Chipko movement had to be opposed since it was against the working class.
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In 1985, the current general secretary of the CPI(M) published an extraordinary attack on these civil society groups, calling them fronts for American imperialism.
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The polemic had its roots in an ideology whose twin, complementary attributes are certitude and paranoia—only the Party knows the Truth, and anything undertaken outside the Party’s auspices must necessarily be False.
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These dogmas have cost the party dearly and inhibited its expansion into parts of India and among social groups whose predicament cannot be adequately understood through the lens of a philosophy developed on another continent in another century.
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For all their talk of transforming and shattering the system, however, Marxists—and more particularly Marxist-Leninists—are conservative in their attachment to past ideas and ideologies.
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Who, now, will step up to be the Indian Eduard Bernstein (who abandoned the dogma of one-party dominance in Germany); the Indian Deng Xiaoping (who embraced the market in China); the Indian Santiago Carrillo (who spoke in favour of multiparty democracy, the mixed economy, an independent foreign policy, cultural pluralism and the autonomy of intellectual work—all at once)?
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It may be too much to hope that the CPI(M) shall replace their four foreign icons with (shall we say) Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay.
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In 1948, he thought he would become the Indian Mao and come to power via the barrel of a gun; in 1978, he fancied himself as the Indian Lenin, who would vanquish the renegades and heretics. The first time, he disregarded the social history of his own country; the second time, he disregarded the commitment of his compatriots to incremental reform under the conditions of multiparty democracy. Had the party had the wisdom and the courage to support PC Joshi after Independence, instead of taking the adventurist line advocated by BT Ranadive, by now the communists would not be known for their insularity, both geographical and intellectual, but for having a visible and largely beneficial presence in India as a whole.