M. N .Roy : Communist Ideology must be inspiring: BG

[Anais_nin]

 

 

 

Babu Gogineni

 

ta10fSpounsorhedi

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Roy, an Indian, established the first Communist Party outside the Soviet Union - in Mexico! The Party came to power in Mexico.

Roy then became a top leader of the Communist International and was with Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky a member of the Presidium and the Executive Committee of Communist International, the highest body for that organization.

First Karl Radek and then Roy became Directors of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East where Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam(class of 1923), Deng Xiaoping of China (1925) Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya) and many others were trained in the heady days of world revolution.

Before all this, Roy also founded the Communist Party of India, and later represented the Comintern in China when Mao was a junior leader.

Roy was out of the Comintern by 1929. After which, egged on by Stalin's stooges, he was attacked by the hangers-on in India. Something that continued till just a few decades ago. So powerful was Roy's critique of Communism, though he remained a Marxist for a long time. Charting out a ' New Orientation ' he then proposed Radical Humanism.

In the absence of the towering intellect, Ranadive, Namboodripad, Basavapunnaiah and the others affiliated to the Soviets or the Chinese became unconvincing leaders of a movement that started well. But as Roy pointed out repeatedly, the ends and the means had to be consistent. That was both a Philosophical, a moral requirement as well as a practical matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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HUNDRED YEARS OF INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT : PROMISE BELIED

It was hundred years ago on October 17,1920 Indian Communist Party was born in exile in Tashkent .The man behind behind who made it happen was M N Roy, a man of 35.

Roy had earlier founded the Communist Party of Mexico in November 1919 and presented his Supplementary Theses on Colonialism,along with Lenin's at the Second Congress of the Communist International .According to Robert C North , Roy's Theses served as a template for all subsequent peasant revolutions in Asia ,Latin America and other underdeveloped countries.It is a signal and the sole Indian contribution to the development of communist praxis .Roy wrote with a rare insight :

"Two distinct movements which grow further apart each day are to be found in dependent countries .One is bourgeois movement ,with a programme of of political independence under the bourgeois order .The other is the mass struggle of the poor and ignorant peasants and workers for the liberation from the various forms of exploitation" .Though the first phase has already been achieved ,the more important second phase remains accomplished. Political ,social and post colonial India is wielded by a political elite comprised of capitalists, the increasingly affluent middle class and an exploitative new political class the members of which almost entirely come from the upper castes.

The party was formed by the Indian revolutionary exiles like Acharya,a Tamil

radical from Madras ,Swadeshi extremists such Bam Roy and Abani Mukherjee from Calcutta and converted Muslim mujahirs who had waged a war on the British and used Tashkent as a transit point .Roy ,though born in an orthodox Brahmin, had outgrown his Hindu nationalist phase and was thinking of a party in which Muslims would be equal stakeholders .Accordingly Mohammad Shafiq was elected as the General Secretary of the new party Kris Manjapra his biographer writes " About 80 per cent of the young men who served as the main coporteurs of communist literature to India ,such as Saukat Usmani ,were Muslims." This did not endear him to his former Swadeshi associates such as Bhupendranath Dutta ,Swami Vivekananda's Marxist brother. He saw it as a futile exercise in the central Asian wilderness .In his " Unpublished Political History " he writes with much unconcealed bitterness, " Who were there in the party ? Mr and Mrs Roy ,people close to them and Muslim Mujahirs" .Even most of the early Bengali Muslims like Muzaffar Ahmed ,were Roy's recruits .It is ironic that Ahmed would turn out to be one of the most malicious slanderers of Roy when he would be expelled from the Cominturn for his criticism of the Soviet party under Stalin ,use of terror to deal with dissent and reducing the communist parties as instruments of the Soviet foreign policy .According to Prof Shobhonlal Duttagupta, with the exit of Roy ,the path of the independent development of the CPI was sealed for ever .Henceforth ,the party looked to Moscow for all its policies and important decisions .Later, when Chinese Communist Party under Mao emerged as a contender for the leadership of the world communist movement, a large section of Indian communists would veer towards this line .It led to the split in 1964 when CPIM would be formed accusing the parent party of revisionism much as ,a few years later ,the more militant section would level same charges againt the CPI M- betrayal of the revolutionary cause and ' revisionism' .They would have none but Mao as the Chairman of the new party ! However, it did not take much time for the CPI ML ,more Maoist than Leninist, to get fragmented on the issues of "correct line" or ' deviations' right or Left .Indian communists dissipated more energy in ' the inner party struggle and inter party struggle than fighting different forms of oppression and exploitation.

Looking back on all these ' ideological struggles ' seem closely reminiscent of theological controversies between iconoclasts and icon worshippers in the Eastern Church ; between Catholics and Protestants; between Lutherans and Anabaptists or Shi'ites and Sunnies.Like these fanatical religios groups, for communists ,re- visioning that is critiquing the theory is an inexcusable crime ,the secular equivalent of heresy and apostasy .No Marxist can be ever expected to doubt the Theory of Surplus Value as no Muslim can question if the Quaran was revealed or not .If one dares to become a critic as Roy did ,he would be marked as a ' renegade ' and all the bitterly quarreling groups would close their ranks to malign, vilify and silence the heretic .They won't mind inventing sensational lies and piously believing in them .Indian communism has had its triumphs and tragedies .The dream of an egalitarian just society with all the 'scientific ' frills has a tremendous moral and imaginative appeal .It attracted the most intelligent ,creative and idealistic people who staked everything to create, what they believed, a better and more livable world.In the 40s and 50s the Indian People's Theatre ( IPTA ) attracted the best talents like Hussain ,Ravi Shankar,Shambhu Mitra - to name only a few .Most of them later felt suffocated in the atmosphere of rigours regimentation and lack of creative freedom. Yet it had a very positive impact on the cultural life of a nation going through the trauma of the famine, communal holocaust and the tragic partition. The liberal attitude of Nehru and democratic space made it possible.

The paradox is that they were using democracy to further an agenda which would put an end to democracy .These intelligent and selfless idealists wasted their considerable talents to present the horrors of dictatorship as a pleasant romantic experience, and surrendering one's conscience and freedom to the omniscient Party as the greatest virtue .Like elsewhere,in India communism is fast losing its ground and ideological appeal .We now know dictatorship in whichever name is a bad thing ,that cosmic forces are not working to take things from socialism to communism when classes will disappear and the state will became a fiction .We also know Marxism is based on some wobbly foundations and despite its apparent scientism, myths are its driving force. Two great myths are the ' historical role ' of the proletariat and the imminent collapse of capitalism. Now capitalism has proved itself to be more dynamic and enduring than Marxism .It is not capitalism which collapsed but the Marxist regimes and more dramatically .Marxism has turned out to be the philosophy of underdevelopment. As capitalism advances ,it recedes.After the Liberalization was initiated in the early 90s ,Indian capitalism gained momentum with impressive growth rates .Consequently, communist parties suffered steady erosion .Capitalism in its neo- liberal incarnation proved to as disastrous to communism as the great asteroid was to the mesozoic huge reptiles .India is now facing the fearful rise of religious fascism that is systematically subverting democratic institutions and ethos. We now need the dedicated idealism of the communists sans their ideology ; their dreams without their illusions ;their intellectual passion without their fanaticism.

[No_body_friends]

Matter in 2 lines please

[Anais_nin]

8 minutes ago, No_body_friends said:

Matter in 2 lines please

We now need the dedicated idealism of the communists sans their ideology ; their dreams without their illusions ;their intellectual passion without their fanaticism.