The Betrayals

The Betrayals



Troubled Galaxy Destroyed dreams: Chapter Eight



Palash Biswas



http://www.troubledgalaxydetroyeddreams.blogspot.com/



Ideology sounds always good. It was good enough in Soviet Union and in the entire communist world. What happened , it is history.



My father died in 2001. I still have faith in communist ideology,but I see the picture of ideological betrayal very clear.



Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar always supported CPI-M and they are out to lodge their protest on indiscriminate land gabbing. Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Aparna Sen, Meeratul Naher, Ratan Basu Majumdar and the entire Bengal intelligentsia is known for its left ideology. Even Medha Patekar launched so many movements with left countrywide. Now everyone is against left. Against CPIM.



Why?



So, everyone turns to be Naxalite!



Mohan Ram in his book `Indian Communism: Split within Split and in his write ups on Telengana Peasant`s Uprising has exposed communist Betrayals. Our dear friend VT Rajashekhar has exposed the Brahminical leadership of Indian communist parties time and again. Swami Ramtirth has written,` Memories of Hyderabad Freedom struggle’. Sinha V.B wrote,`The Red rebel in India’.



In West Bengal, the Brahmincal Intelligentsia as well as the media criticises the Capitalist ways of Marxism and supports Nandigram and Singur insurrections. They also have high voltage sympathy with the Thundering Spring, the Naxalbari Uprising. But no one exposes the Marxist Regimented Hegemony, the Gestapo and its betrayals.



Dhimri Block Peasant Uprising was a result of mobilisation by Communist party of India. PC Joshi was the General Secretary then. Joshi is credited with so many peasants` movement. He should be credited for the Marxist betrayals,too. Joshi`s CPI sided with Pdt. Jawahar Lal Nehru against the freedom struggle of Telengan red rebels. CPI then considered Nehru a Communist as he followed the Soviet model of socialist development. Later, his worthy daughter Mrs Indira Gandhi followed suit. She coined all socialist slogans like Gareebee Hatao. Once again, the mother Marxist Party in India, the CPI tagged itself with Indira. It supported Emergency.



Sikh and Bengali refugees were engaged in deforestation in the best interest of the Big farmers in Terai. The Communist party of India led by Joshi launched a peasants`s movement in Nainital Terai. The result us an Uprising instantly. The party betrayed once again! The Communists as well as the Marxists in Uttarakhand are best known for their rock solid defence for the Man Eaters Big Farmers in Terai.



Sir Mahar Singh, governor Of Mumbai bought Jail farm near Sitarganj during Kham settlement. Raja Jwala Prasad had properties from Pilibhit to Bijnore. Raja Badri Prasad got Shktifarm. Nawab of Rampur had substantial jungle areas adjoining Bilash Pur and Gadarpur. Dhanpur, Aadesh Nagar, Vijai Pur, Daulatganj and a Dozen villages around Gadar Pur were under Nawab`s Riasat. The dozens Buksha villages adjoining Gadarpur were wiped out by Plague in 1922. These villages were also located in Rampur Riasat.



In fact, entire Terai was a happy Hunting Ground for dacoits, hunters like Corbett fame, Rajas, Maharajas and Nawabs along with Industrialists.



All of them got large land properties under Kham System at the rate of only Rs six or Rs Seven per Acre.



The Kham Superintendent could allot any amount of land to anyone anywhere, even without proper paper, even on a Match box.



Before arrival of the Bengali and Sikh refugees all the prime land was distributed.



The refugees were used for deforestation only.



The British introduced Kashipur Lalkuan metre gauge Railway line for the Timber only. It was not enough for deforestation.



Gobind Ballabh Pant as the Chief Minister of UP and later, as the Home Minister in GOI failed to convince the Hill People to come down in Terai.



There was no way to clear the forest area for the high profile big farmers. Thus, Refugees were chosen.


Two dozen Ministers including Rammuti, Debi Dutt, Nihal Singh Takshak of Patiyala, Ranbir singh from Haryana, Hembati Nandan Bahuguna,ND Tiwari, Rajmangal Pandey, Satyendra Guria, Chandra Bhanu Gupta had farm land in Terai.All Punjab Prominent leaders including Prakash Singh Badal, Surjeet Singh Barnala and comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet are famous for their Terai links.



The Land Mafia in Terai is Omni Power!





Eighty Two MLAs and MLCs got the land. One of the Farm owned by such public servent, SCOTT Farm near kashipur had Seventy Two thousnad Bighas.



Twenty one Industrial houses including Birla and Sexeria had land in Terai. Now the SIDCUL in Rudrapur Pantangar area has accomodated all MNCs including Tatas and Reliance.



Sixteen IAS officers including Chief secretary of UP, BP Lal got enormous land property in Terai. commissioner Mehr Singh and Ramswaroop Singh also got land.



Nine Sugar Mills and other industries managed land without any trouble.



Thirteen Cine stars including Dharmendra and Shashikala had ample share.Political leaders also caved in.



One Hundred and forty four Military officers established farms in Terai.



Since the Partition of India, all political parties with colorful ideologies defended the interest of these farmers.

Dhimri Block, Bindu Khatta and kotkharra were instance of Peasant Uprising and cruel repression unrecorded. While Pant Nagar University witness massacres of workers in 1978, 13 th April.



The underclass refugees, Bengali Namoshudras and Paundra Kshatriyas and Punjabi Raisikhs were thrown in the Jungles of Terai until then known for the legend of Sultana Daku, Man Eaters of Gim Corbett and epidemics like Plague, Cholera and Malaria.



The new colonies were crowded with unrehabiliated Bengali and Sikh refugee. The Hill people also came down to plains to earn livelihood. Labour class from eastern UP and local Muslims joined them with tribals evicted for colonisation, the Tharus and Bukshas.



Kisan Sabha united all these forces. The Communist delegation met then UP land and revenue minister chowdhari Charan Singh to rehabiliate all these landless indigenous underclasses in Dhimri Block in between Lalkuan and Gularbhoj Rly stations. Chowdhari rejected.



But Kisansabha occupied the land.



Comrade Harish Dhondiayal of Nanital, Comrade Pulin Kumar Biswas and Baba Ganesha Singh of Dineshpur, Chowdhari Nepal Singh from Gadarpur, Comrade Satypraksh from Sitarganj, Comrade Banarasi Das from Kichha and Liladhar Pathak from Hills led the movement.



Forty seven villages were established with forty families each.



Ten Acre land was distributed per family.



Third jat regiment and all the police forces of Terai districts Bareilly,Rampur, Moradabad, Bijnore and Nainital united to crush the Insurrection on the line of Telengana.Large scale arson, lathicharge and firing was the omnious result.



Dhimri Block was evacuated with brutal force of State Power.



All the leaders, workers and common peasants and landless people were put behind the bar.



At the time of Police action, Pulin Babu was leading a resisting Mob. He was arrested on the spot. Revenue Officer JB Singh broke his hand in Rudrapur Police station before the eyes of an eminent PSP leader Ramdutt Joshi who defeated ND Tiwari in Kashipur Assembelly seat in 1967 General Elections. The gentleman known for his honesty refused to be a witness in the court. His son kailash Joshi befriended with me in my college days. I met Ram Dutt Joshi. So many times. He never spoke on Dhimri Block.later, the young son of JB Singh committed suicide. He was repenting.But his confessions never recorded!



Other socialist leaders Jagannath Mishra and his brother Chandrashekhar Mishra also remained silent.



ND Tiwari won the Assembelly seat in Haldwani defeating Prominent Congress leader and freedom fighter Shyam Lal Verma in 1952. But, later, Tiwari joined Congress and became UP Chief minister three times. He also headed a Congress government in newly created Uttarakhand. Tiwari also held important portfolios in Government of India. As the Communist Party of India betrayed the Dhimri Block Insurrection on the line of Telengana, Communist leaders, specially Kishan sabha leaders in Uttarakhand were disillusioned. Tiwari roped all of them under his Umbrella. But he never spoke a word on Dhimri block. Neither Comrade Joshi or any official document of communist movement revealed any fact.


I knew my father very well and he used to tell me everything. I knew Comrade Harish Dhondiyal who had been my local guardian during my GIC days in Naninital. Dhimri Block repression as well as communist betrayal made this energitic advocate depoliticalised. His wife was the Inspectress of schools in sixties. The lady also visited our home. I met also her mother in Nainital.



I got maximum facts and infrmations from Chowdhatri Nepal Singh. His son Jeet was reading in my school in Dineshpur. He was a dare devil boy who died very early. I can visualise the image of Jeet on Horseback even today.I visited their village. But the Chowdhari maintained our relationship lifelong. In eighties, possibly in 1988, Chowdhari Nepal Singh had been the vice president of People`s Front , UP. After his death, I tried to get documents on Dhimri Block. It was too late.



Baba Ganesha Singh died in jail. He belonged to Arjunpur, the village situated next my village Basanti Pur. Bengali and sikh areas were divided by a small rivulet, which dried up later after they built a big dam Haripura in between Goolarbhoj and dhimri Block. Baba`s fields were opposite our fields. I witnessed his cremation. His family destroyed all his documents whatsoever frightened by day to day police raids.

Comrade Satya Prakash was the only man who did not face any repression or persecution. His all comrades faced trials for nearly ten years from district court, session court to High Court until the state Government withdrew all cases in late sixties. Satya Prakash joined CPIM. His son was an advocate and I was aquainted with him during my small tenure as an editorial help in Laghu Bharat Weekly edited by Keval Krishna Dhal from Sitarganj. He never knew anything significant on Dhimri Block.



Thus, Dhimri Block Uprising was wiped out. So, wiped out was Communist Movement in Uttar Pradesh. Though the Betrayal was not documented as yet but the peasants knew well the betrayers!



Now, coincidentally I live in a Left ruled State, West Bengal!



How they despise the Indigenous aboriginal communities in an age while Barrack Obama of African origin has emerged as the most possible next US President with his democratic nomination. For full six decades, Brahmins, caste Hindus and Ramakrishna Mission Schools dominated the High School and
Higher Secondary Board exams. For the first time, all three top positions are held by SC students. Ronita Jana got 798 out of 800. She is the first girl in 13 years to top the exams. Udhwalak Mandal and Nilanjan Das stood second getting 797 marks. The standard of board Exams is being scrutinised which was never done until the SC students came to limelight undermining the myth of Caste Hindu Barhminical Merit! In kolkata medical college itself, untouchability is practiced. Twenty one outcaste students have lodged written complaint to the Dean!



In west Bengal, nowadays, ST resistance is termed Maoism. Muslim protest is branded as terrorists linked with ISI. SC persons are detected as Bangladeshi. Tousands are put behind jail without any trial.



Only recently, a Raghunath Mandal, obviously a SC landed on Diamond Harbour Rly station with his wife and children. GRP branded Raghu as a Bangladeshi Muslim. He was produced in the court. The court fined him Rs One Thousand. Raghu could not pay and thus, was sentenced for two month`s imprisonment with branded false identity. His wife and children begged on the RLY station as they did not know any relative and neither could return Guahati where from they reached Diamond Harbour.After thirteen painful days, the local BDO, a SC officer Prabhash Mandal got the information and he managed a temporary shelter for the suffering family in a Home.



No one speaks against these Human Right violations!



The refugees are treated as beasts in Bengal.



Icons get mileage supporting Nandigram or Singur, but they have been always silent on Marichjhanpi.



They oppose Reservation and deny every opportunity for the enslaved SC, ST, OBC and Muslim indigenous communities.



Another fact remains, only,yes only Dandakarany resettled Refugees from Malkan GiRi of Orissa, Andhra and Maharashtra with refugees stranded in Five Major camps of United MP landed in Marichjhanpi. Resettled refugees lived in those colonies since fifties while the refugees form all those five camps crossed the border during and before Riots of 1964 in East Bengal. They were not Bangladeshi Nationals, as the Ruling Hegemony with its pet Media and Intelligentsia have been claiming all these years.Branding the refuges as Bangladeshi Nationals or escaped masses from refugee camps justify the Eviction drive and translate the Genocide as a political blunder only. This is systematic subversion freinds!



What is the story of Rehabilitation?



Nehru and BC Roy, the Chief Minister imported form USA and appointed by Lady Mountbatten herself, refused to rehabilitate the East Bengal Refugees as they were not considered Partition Victims like the refugees from West Pakistan.



BC Roy was appointed as the first Governor of UP along with first Governor General in the Dominion of Independent India, C. Rajgopalachary. Buckingham Palace issued both the appointment letters. But the most powerful Lady was successful to insert Sarojini Naidu in Lucknow Rajbhavan. She managed to get rid of East Bengal origin Prafulla Ghosh, the first chief minister of West Bengal.



With New Delhi help, BC Roy overcame the Arambagh Lobby led by Ajay Mukherjee and Prafulla Chandra Sen.



Nehru and Roy decided to push back the refugees back into East Pakistan. No passport or Visa was introduced until 1952 and the border was open with an open call to cross it for any persecuted Hindu.



Nehru was playing the Hindu card as he ensured sixty percent Loksabha Tickets for only Brahmins in the first General Elections in India. In fact, Nehru worthily associated by West Bengal Brahmin leaders who were instrumenatl to divide India, ensured the second third class status for the Dalit East Bengal refugees who got elected Dr Babasheb Bheemrao Ambedkar for the Constitution Assembly, nearly nullifying the aftereffects of mischievous PUNE Pact. These refugees were ejected out of their Hindu dalit Dominated areas like Jassore, Rajsahi,Commilla, Pabna,Dhaka, Noakhali, Faridpur, Barishal, Chittagang, Khulna and Barishal implementing a well planned conspiracy with Redcliff who never did any demographic survey.



West Bengal Brahmins were well aware of the risks involving changing demography and did their best to oust all Namoshudra and Paundra dalit refugees out of Bengal. Refugees were branded as escapist of Bengal Famine, not Partition Victims.



West Pakistan refugees were made Indian citizens as soon as they crossed the border.



The rehabiliatation for Punjabi refugees were on War level.



But, in Bengal, neither the Centre nor the State recognised the refugees as refugees.



Government of India refused to sign the United Nations` Caharter for the Refugees. They are still unrecognised despite continuous persecution and refugee influx. The were given DOLE on compassion ground. But refugees refused to return. They were driven out of Refugee camps in West Bengal and were scattered in different parts of India including Dandkaranya and Andaman Nicobar Islands. They were thrown into Jungles like Dandakarnay and Terai of UP. They were rehabiliated on unfertile land in Tribal areas creating an infinite confrontation between Aboriginal Tribals and Indigenous Bengali dalit refugees undermining whatsoever chances of a National Indigenous Resistance Movement led by them in British India!



All the Dalit Leaders and intellectuals shed tears on Marichjhanpi genocide!



They oppose Citizenship act.



They are associated with refugee Movement and different Dalit orgs. But they could not bring the War criminals to justice!



They could not launch a Political or non Political movement.



They claim to know everything!



What they did all these thirty years?



Just tried their best to get maximum favour of the ruling Hegemony or simply a status in Prliament , assembly or Pachayat or a reserved post, promotion!



They licked the Bottom of the Ruling Hegemony!



My foot!



The partition victim Dalit East Bengal refugees- evicted from homeland to accomodate Caste Hindu Brahminical Hegemony with transfer of Power from apartheid generator British clonial rulers, deprived of human and civil rights, mother tongue and citizenship, targeted nationwide as branded as Bangladeshi foriegn national thanks to Citizenship Amendment Act passed by Indian Ruling Class represented by all kinds of left, centrist and Right ideologies and parties and finally facing nationwide deportation drive thanks to brahmins of Bengal led by Defacto Prime Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Hindutva forces led by Sangh Pariwar and shiv sena -should thank Mr Prabhu Chawla , the editor- in - chief of India Today to publish a special report in India Today Bengali on Marichjhanpi Genocide, coinciding with 30th year of the first dress rehearsal of Genocide culture launched by the Regemented so called Marxist ruling hegemony in West Bengal.



The politics and economy of world capitalism-its crises, its wars, and its unrelenting destruction of the environment-all have a global character. Never before has this been so plain as today. The revolutionary party that seeks to overturn capitalism must therefore also be organized on a global scale.



Just as socialism cannot be realized in one country without a world revolution, so no national revolutionary socialist movement can develop completely without being an integral part of a world party of socialist revolution.



My father Pulin Kumar Biswas never believed communists after Telengana and Dhimri Block betrayal.



During seventies, while I was engaged in students` movement and later in Uttarakhand Sangharsha Vahini, he would never listen any reference to ideology. Rather he sounded like George Bernard Shaw who said, `"The Apple Cart exposes the unreality of both democracy and royalty as our idealists conceive them." In fact, The Apple Cart is a treatise on the impossibility of any kind of government. Democracy, autocracy, and monarchy are all making the best of a bad situation, and none of them is doing very well. Shaw is no anarchist; he simply wants us to recognize, as King Magnus does, the invisible shackles that trip government and turn it into a farce. Shaw wrote in the `Preface to Apple Cart', Besides, the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy. Money talks: money prints: money broadcasts: money reigns; and kings and labor leaders alike have to register its decrees, and even, by a staggering paradox, to finance its enterprises and guarantee its profits. Democracy is no longer bought: it is bilked. Ministers who are Socialists to the backbone are as helpless in the grip of Breakages Limited as its acknowledged henchmen: from the moment when they attain to what is with unintentional irony called power (meaning the drudgery of carrying on for the plutocrats) they no longer dare even to talk of nationalizing any industry, however socially vital, that has a farthing of profit for plutocracy still left in it, or that can be made to yield a farthing for it by subsidies.'





BC Roy Government sent East Bengal Refugees by force. Bagjola Camp Police firing is well recorded.

My father Pulin Babu, with his experience as a communist refugee leader in West Bengal and Orissa and Peasant Leader in Dhimri Block peasants Insurrection in Nainital, as a rescuer in Assam and North East understood the betrayal game and somehow, convinced the North India Refugees of UP, Bihar, Assam and Rajsthan that dangers ahead and the communists would betray. As the communists never helped the refugees in these states and they are in better status, they could not be trapped.



Not a single refugee landed in Marichjhanpi from North India excluding MP.



In United Uttar Pradesh,where I originally belong as I was born in a refugee colony in Udham Singh Nagar (Nainital), the local population always stood by dalit Bengali Refugees.



My father late Pulin kumar Biswas worked for the refugees lifelong. He was the President of All India Udvastu ( Refugee) committee. He as a Communist Leader led the Dhimri Block Peasants` Revolt in 1958 in the Terai of Nainital. The insurrection was repressed brutally by joint forces of third Jat Regiment, Police and PAC. CH. Charan Singh was the Home Minister in UP then. Communist Party of India with General secretary Comrade PC Joshi disowned the movement as they betrayed Telengana. In UP, no one could a single instance of confrontation between Bengali refugees and other communities.



In Terai of Nainital, Pilbhit, Bareilly and Rampur a few corore partition victims Sikh and Punjabies as well as Bengalies live side by side with a bond of unbreakable fraternity and cooperation for six decades.



My father was elected unopposed the Vice President Of Terai Cooperative Committee in mid sixties with local SDM as President by virtue of his post.



I want to emphasise that at that point, Sikhs and Punjabies were more powerful, more dominant and majority in number. Bengali Dalit refugees were minority plus economically very weak.



But the chemistry of Unity is working since the first day.



The spirit of peasant movement works even after the deaths of all the leaders including my father and his comrades. We always enjoyed excellent relations with Hills. ND Tiwari and KC Pant became National Leaders with our help only.



I was just born and I have simply no memory of Dhimri Block uprising in Himalayan Terai.



But I had enough opportunity to witness the trail and victimisation.



In late sixties the communists in Terai played the role of land brokers in the same way as Buddha is doing it in West Bengal on full scale. In our Bengali Refugee areas the communist villages were Netaji Nagar, Vijay Nagar, Pipulia, Chandipur, etc. Most of the communist peasants in these villages lost their land and Communist leaders had their handin every single land transfer.


When Bengali refugees settled in MP, Maharashtra, Andhra and Orissa were planning to launch Marichjhapi agitation, my father Pulin Kumar Biswas went to Mana Camp and tried to convince the refugees that it will be a folly to depend on the communist leaders in West Bengal.



Jyoti Basu had visited Bhilai and Ram Chatterjee went to Mana to mobilise the agitation.Kiranmoy Nanda and Radhika basu, other two prominent ministers in Jyoti Basu ministry with other Marxist leaders visited Dandakaranya refugee colonies and addressed scores of meeting to mobilise the Marichjhanpi campaign.



Since my father has a very good relations with ND Tiwari and KC pant, the refugee leaders did not believe him . He was the president of all India Bengali Refugee committee. He was mishandled and was saved by police. My father came back to Nainital and no refugee joined this Matrichjhapi movement under his influence ie UP, Bihar and Assam.

What happened is Marichjhapi genocide by the Jyoti Basu government.



I also protested the movement purely on ecological ground as I believed that the Mangrove forest Sundar Van must be protected and Marichjhapi won`t solve the refugee problem.



My father was very sad that no refugee movement could be mobilised in Bengal and he held left responsible for this.





Kolkata Intelligentsia deliberately defends CPIM as they brand the Dandakaranya Refugees landed in Marichjhanpi as trespasser Bangladeshi Nationals in a protected Forest Zone, Tiger Project.



It is quite amusing that the Government of India and different state Governments in UP, MP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Orissa, Andhra, Rajsthan and the Administration in Andaman and Nicobar Islands dumped the refugees in Dense forest everywhere. Refugees were used in large scale deforestation in the best interest of the the ruling Class every where from Andaman Nicobar to Nainital Terai, from Malkan Giri in Orissa to Garchiroli in Maharashtra. And now they try to justify the Ethnic Cleansing with the logic of environment and Green!



Mind you, Marichjhanpi never have been under protected Forest or Tiger project. Suman Mukhopaddhay of Teesta parer Britanto(play) and Herbert (film,written by Nabarun bhattacharya) fame, refuses to consider Marichjhanpi a case of Ethnic Cleansing.



I have seen his elitist subversion of the protagonist Bgaharu of the Debesh Roy Novel.



Bengali Caste Hindu media and Intelligentsia call Nandigram killings a Genocide as caste Hindu Politics of Power Dominance as well as Resistance involved.Though, the victims happen to be either ST SC or OBC and Muslims!



But Marichjahanpi was, all in all, a case of Political Betrayal by the communists who got them ousted of Dandyakarany Refugee colonies and Camps to constitute a favourable Vote bank to capture power.



Communist Movement in Bengal got momentum with Refugee vote Bank.



Thus, the Communists never spoke against continuous persecution of Minorities in East Bengal nor did try to stop the Refugee Influx at any point of time.



Not only this, Communist leaders including Jyoti Basu, have been claiming to fight for Rehabilitation of refugees. They protested Bidhan Roy`s initiative to send Bengali refugees out of Bengal.



Samar Mukherjee and Jyoti Basu had been writing to the Centre and State governments to rehbiliatate the East Bengal refugees in Sundarvanas from the very beginning! They never mentioned Forest area or Tiger Project at that time!



More over,Jyoti Basu, Ram Chatterjee and Kiranmoy Nanda with other prominent leaders visietd country wide with an appeal, West Benagl with a five corore population with ten coroer hands would welcome the dalit Bengali refugees and they will be rehabiliated in sundarvanas of West Bengal.



As Basu took over in 1977, Ram Chatterjee and Nanda with other leaders visited Mana Camp and Malakan Giri to call the refugees to settle in Sundarvan. They went there with messages from the Chief Minister! Earlier Basu himself addressed refugee leaders including Satish Mandal in Bhilai.





The partition victim Dalit East Bengal refugees- evicted from homeland to accomodate Caste Hindu Brahminical Hegemony with transfer of Power from apartheid generator British colonial rulers, deprived of human and civil rights, mother tongue and citizenship, targeted nationwide as branded as Bangladeshi foriegn national thanks to Citizenship Amendment Act passed by Indian Ruling Class represented by all kinds of left, centrist and Right ideologies and parties and finally, facing nationwide deportation drive thanks to brahmins of Bengal led by Defacto Prime Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Hindutva forces led by Sangh Pariwar and shiv sena -should thank Mr Prabhu Chawla , the editor- in - chief of India Today to publish a special report in India Today Bengali on Marichjhanpi Genocide, coinciding with 30th year of the first dress rehearsal of Genocide culture launched by the Regimented so called Marxist ruling hegemony in West Bengal.



Rudrangshu Mukherjee wrote in his article, `THE RED BLUNDERS- The communists have consistently betrayed national interests’ published in The Telegraph, Kolkata on Tuesday, August 21, 2007:


` The history of Indian communism is the story of a series of historic blunders. The red flag has never fluttered because those who hold it aloft know only how to blunder. What is pathetic is that even the blunders of the communists are not their own!’

`Given its track record, the Left’s attempt to see itself as a protector of India’s national sovereignty and autonomy is a disgrace. Communists in India have acted, at critical periods, at the behest of the Soviet Union or China. In so doing, communists have sacrificed India’s national interests. They are about to do the same now.’

The years 1936 and 2008 have in common the hosting of the Olympic Games by totalitarian regimes: Nazi Germany and Communist China.

Nazi Germany was a one-party regime, as is China today. Both the Nazi and Chinese Communist parties struggled to gain power and the Nazis endeavored, just as the Chinese regime is endeavoring today, to establish a good reputation by hosting the Olympic Games.

Nazi Germany invented the tradition of having a torch relay, which served to connect and bind as many countries as possible to the event in Berlin. It was a propaganda campaign, one that continues to have an impact.

China has taken the torch relay to the extreme by planning the longest torch relay ever in history, including going high up atop Mount Everest. At every step the Beijing torch is protected by "torch guards," whose presence is already a break with the Olympic spirit.

These totalitarian Olympics may put a parenthesis around the torch relay: After the protest-plagued 2008 Olympic torch relay, the IOC is considering ending the tradition that started in Berlin.

Before holding the Olympic Games Nazi Germany had started to persecute the Jewish community, although it did not begin the "final solution" until several years later. The Nazis didn't even dare to officially exclude Jews from participating in the Games (although Jews were prohibited from representing Germany in the Games).

The Chinese regime has not only started to persecute a group of people for their religious beliefs, but is even very frank about its policy of persecution. At the end of 2007 a spokesperson for the Beijing Olympic Committee stated that practitioners of the Falun Gong are excluded from all Olympic activities.

All human rights organizations and governments know that Falun Gong is one of the main victims of state-sanctioned persecution in China. Several thousand adherents have been tortured to death because of their beliefs.

According to Rudrangshu Mukherjee ,`Indian communists have always had a very uncomfortable relationship with nationalism. Some of the major debates and divisions within the Communist Party of India have revolved around the question of nationalism and the national movement. And, if the truth be told, these debates do not exactly hold up the comrades in an edifying light. On the scorecard of nationalism, the performance of Indian communists is poor to say the least. (On internationalism, their score is irrelevant, since a world communist revolution is not even a pipe dream after the collapse of socialism and the exposure of the many crimes of the socialist regimes in Soviet Russia, in Eastern Europe, in China, in Albania, under Pol Pot in Cambodia and so on.)

To begin with the most notorious example that communists have never been able to live down: 1942. The CPI was officially against the Quit India movement. What needs to be emphasized here is that this decision of the CPI was not based on any understanding of the Indian situation by Indian communists. The opposition to the clarion call of 1942 was the outcome of a diktat emanating from Moscow. When Hitler attacked his erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, in 1941, the fight against Nazism overnight became a People’s War for all communists. The directive from Moscow was carried by Achhar Singh Chinna, alias Larkin, who travelled from the Soviet Union to India with the full knowledge of the British authorities. In India, it meant communists had to isolate themselves from the mainstream of national life and politics and see British rule as a friendly force since the communists’ “fatherland”, Soviet Russia, was an ally of Britain. A critical decision affecting the strategic and the tactical line of the party was thus taken defying national interests at the behest of a foreign power, whose orders determined the positions and actions of the CPI.

In 1948, within a few months of India becoming independent, the CPI under the leadership of B.T. Randive launched the line that this freedom was fake (yeh azadi jhooti hai), and argued that the situation in India was ripe for an armed revolution. The Randive line led to the expulsion of P.C. Joshi, who believed that freedom from British rule was a substantial achievement and that, tactically, the communist movement would gain by supporting leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru who, Joshi said, represented a “progressive” trend within the Congress. Apart from the inner-party struggle, what needs to be noted here is that the Randive line, which completely misread the national mood, was the direct outgrowth of a policy formulated by the Comintern (or the Cominform, as it had renamed itself), in other words, Moscow. The directive of Moscow to the Indian communists was that Congress should be opposed since it was no more than a satellite of imperialism. The retreat from this line was also sounded from Moscow in the form of an editorial entitled, “For a Lasting Peace”, in the mouthpiece of the Cominform.

The defeat of Joshi in the inner- party struggle camouflaged an important and lasting tension within the CPI. This concerned the party’s ideological and tactical position regarding the Congress. Joshi represented a trend within the party that believed in closer ties with the Congress, especially Nehru. It argued that, given the incipient nature of the proletarian movement in India in the Forties and Fifties, it was necessary to seek an alliance with the Congress since it was the party that was closest to the masses and it had leaders who were favourably inclined to socialism and its global future. It was Joshi’s firm belief that the democratic revolution in India could be completed only through an alliance between the national bourgeoisie represented within the Congress and the CPI. While the opposite trend saw the Congress as a bourgeois party and therefore hostile to the interests of the working class and the communist movement. The Congress could not be trusted, a suspicion that was strengthened when the first communist government in Kerala led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad was dismissed by Nehru in the summer of 1959.

Three years later, in 1962, when the Sino-Indian border conflict occurred, a section of communists, among whom Namboodiripad was prominent, chose to uphold the cause of China and portrayed India as the aggressor. This was yet another occasion when the communist movement found itself isolated from the national mainstream. It led eventually to a split in the CPI with the pro-Chinese faction leaving the parent party to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist). A rump remained as the CPI — a party totally subservient to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and some would say even fully funded by it.

To these dates — 1942, 1948, and 1962 — when the communists chose not to serve Indian interests but to act at the behest of either Moscow or Peking (as it was then) can now be added another date: 2007. The communists are poised at the moment to withdraw support from the government led by Manmohan Singh unless the latter agrees to renegotiate the Indo-US nuclear treaty. The opposition of the communists is based not on substantial objections to the terms of the treaty, but to the fact that it brings India closer to the US. Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the CPI(M), made this clear in an article in People’s Democracy. He wrote, “The Left parties have been watching with disquiet the way the UPA government has gone about forging close strategic and military ties with the United States….The Left is clear that going ahead with the agreement will bind India to the United States in a manner that will seriously impair an independent foreign policy and our strategic autonomy.”’


The First International, founded in London in 1864, declared in the preamble to its Rules and Administrative Regulations, adopted in 1866:

"Considering ... that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties; and the abolition of all class rule:

"That the economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that is the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence;

"That the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;

"That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries;

"That the emancipation of labor is neither a local, nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries;

"That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrious [industrialized] countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors, and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements."

The First International was unable to attain the historic objective it had set out to achieve. Marx and Engels and their collaborators could not save the organization from disintegration due to the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 and centrifugal tendencies set up by anarchist groupings within its ranks.

Nevertheless, the First International set an imperishable example in the task of uniting the working class on a worldwide scale in the struggle for a socialist society.

The banner and program of the First International were taken up by the Second International, founded in Paris in 1889 under the solemn pledge to carry on the work begun in 1864. In the following decades the Second International gave a socialist political education to great masses of workers, particularly in Europe, and established powerful parties in a number of countries.

But capitalism was still rising; and, with the opening of its imperialist stage, was able to broaden and intensify its exploitive system sufficiently to grant substantial reforms to the toiling masses in the industrially advanced countries.

Thus, primarily in the imperialist countries, a whole social layer appeared, the "labor aristocracy;" a stratum of workers imbued with illusions about reforming capitalism and winning socialism gradually by means of the ballot. Theoretical expression for these illusions was provided by revising Marxism.

The conservatism of the "labor aristocracy," expressed by the right wing rooted in the bureaucracy of the organization, led to the degeneration of the Second International as a revolutionary formation. Upon the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Second International proved to be a mere federation that broke up under the impact of the crisis.

The majority of the leaders of the national parties, composing the federation, betrayed the internationalist socialist program and their own solemn, oft-repeated pledges to oppose the war. Following World War I, they provided the decisive political support needed by their own capitalist classes to block the revolutionary upsurge of the working class throughout Europe in opposition to the costs of the war and inspired by the victory of the Russian Revolution in 1917 (The "Ten Days That Shook the World.")

The Third International, founded in 1919 in Moscow, restored the principles of proletarian internationalism and revolutionary Marxism, applying them to the period of the death agony of capitalism. Its statutes declared:

"The Communist International aims at armed struggle to overthrow the international bourgeoisie and to create an international republic of Soviets (councils) as the first stage on the road to complete liquidation of any government regime. The Communist International considers the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the only available means to save humanity from the horrors of capitalism. But the Communist International considers the power of Soviets to be the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat imposed by history.

"The Communist International supports, completely and without reservation, the conquest of the great proletarian revolution in Russia, the first victorious socialist revolution in history, and calls on the world proletariat to take the same road. The Communist International pledges to support by every means within its capacity any socialist republic no matter where it is established.

But the Third International degenerated like the Second, although from quite different causes.

Due to its success in leading the first proletarian revolution, the Russian Communist Party became the dominant section of the Third International. Because this revolution occurred in a backward country where it was extremely difficult to repair the damages of the imperialist war and the following civil war, and to increase the productivity of the economy sufficiently in a short period to overcome the enormous shortages of consumers' goods, a bureaucracy arose.

Due to the delay in and betrayal of the proletarian revolution in other countries and the growing political apathy of the Russian workers, the bureaucracy managed to usurp control of the Soviet state apparatus and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Through this control, the Third International was converted into an instrument limited to defending the narrow diplomatic interests of the Soviet bureaucracy at the expense of the broad interests of the world revolution.

The struggle against the Stalinist deformation of Lenin's policies, begun on a national scale in Russia in 1923 by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition, developed until 1928 when, as the International Left Opposition, it was extended on a worldwide scale under the name "International Communist League."

Despite the bureaucratic expulsions carried out by the Stalinist faction against the oppositionists in all the sections of the Comintern, despite the jailings and murders in the USSR, the International Communist League held that it was still possible to reform the Comintern, viewing itself as only an opposition, trying to gain reinstatement in the various national sections.

But in 1933, when the powerful German Communist Party capitulated, under Stalin's guidance, in face of Hitler's drive for power, and permitted the German proletariat to be defeated and decimated without the slightest effort at a united and organized struggle, it was clear that it was no longer possible to reform the Comintern.

In September 1933, the International Left Opposition called for construction of a Fourth International. Under the guidance of Leon Trotsky, the Movement for the Fourth International achieved its goal at a founding conference held in Europe in 1938. Five years later, Stalin dissolved the remnants of the Third International.

As heir to the traditions and principles of revolutionary Marxism and proletarian internationalism, the Fourth International undertook the task of carrying forward the work begun by the First, Second, and Third Internationals-construction of the leadership needed by the working class to overturn capitalism and open the way to a socialist world.

The level of economic development required to go beyond capitalism to a higher form of society has already been achieved by humanity. On a global scale, the premises exist for the socialist organization of society, for planned worldwide production directly linked to the broad needs of humanity rather than the chaotic production of capitalism which is dehumanized by the aim of profit-making for the benefit of a minute class of exploiters.

In a certain sense capitalism has become overripe for socialism. As an historic punishment for not yet having achieved socialism, humanity has had to pay a fearful cost. This includes two world wars, with their tens of millions of dead and immense material destruction; the repeated bloodletting inflicted upon the neocolonialized areas by imperialism; the endemic threat of war, famine, pestilence, and death as capitalism extends throughout the world like the four horsemen of the apocalypse; the everyday reality of war throughout the world and constant threat of a third world war in which the use of nuclear weapons could destroy civilization and possibly humankind and all the higher forms of life on this planet if not by war, then by the destruction of the habitat.