It is the CPI(M)’s refusal to identify the Indian big bourgeoisie as dependent and reactionary that serves as the biggest programmatic source of all its political opportunism. If this Indian big bourgeoisie is really interested in defending independence and sovereignty, how does the CPI(M) explain India’s increasing capitulation to the trinity of IMF-WB-GATT? Moreover, in the CPI(M)’s view, economy is not the main arena of imperialist intervention and nor are the big bourgeoisie and its principal party, the Congress, the foremost agency of imperialist penetration and pressure. Because that would not allow the party to get away with its vague thesis of dual character without bothering to identify the primary aspect in this duality. The two key channels of imperialist intervention according to CPI(M) are then located in Pakistan and in the secessionist and other national autonomy or statehood movements. In his critique of our Party in The Marxist in 1990, Prakash Karat pointed out that “the IPF-ML have to realise that to fight against imperialism in India today, the struggle against it has to focus on this keylink of imperialist aid to divisiveness”.[1] We were also accused of taking a “starry-eyed idealistic view of Pakistan”. We were criticised because when relations between India and Pakistan were tense because of the Kashmir developments, we directed the edge of our “propaganda against the war jingoism of the Indian ruling classes”. The message is clear: when relations are tense between India and Pakistan, and they are almost always so, join the chauvinistic chorus against Pakistan and don’t oppose the jingoism of your own bourgeoisie.
This opportunist apology of national chauvinism was theorised in great detail and with great gusto in another article in The Marxist in 1985. The article, titled “Peace in South Asia : the Pakistan Question”, accused Pakistan of bringing imperialist forces into the subcontinental strategic environment, overtly and covertly encouraging, with US backing, our other neighbours to keep up a confrontational posture towards India and striving to diplomatically contain India, pinning it down in endless regional problems and preventing it from playing the larger global role it seeks to play. The author called for giving up the notion which inhibits criticism of the US-Pakistan axis in general and of Pakistan in particular on the ground that it would lead to national chauvinism or softening up of the Left attitude towards the Congress. Pakistan, he pointed out, is not just another state bordering India, but is a peddler of feudal ideology, an agent of US imperialism and a bulwark against communism. The article concluded by exhorting the Left to discharge its historical task to preserve national integrity, fight feudal ideologies and resist imperialist penetration by launching an uninhibited campaign on these issues without being defensive. All these would have been really revolutionary prescriptions for a Communist Party in Pakistan, but when an Indian Communist Party invokes these arguments to rationalise anti-Pak propaganda, it is nothing but the worst kind of opportunist capitulation to the bourgeois ideology of national chauvinism.
There is also an ugly internal face of this chauvinism which manifests itself in the CPI(M) position on the secessionist and other nationality and tribal autonomy movements which are often clubbed together as divisive forces. Incidentally, the CPI(M)’s present policy of extending direct or indirect support to the ruling classes’ way of tackling the nationality question in India can be attributed to the correction it introduced in the concerned chapter of the party programme in the Ninth Party Congress. The 1951 programme had recognised the right of nationalities to self-determination including secession. The Ninth Congress dropped this para and rewrote the entire chapter. All references to India’s multinational character were omitted from the programme and the nationality question was sought to be explained away only as a set of residual problems concerning linguistic states, Centre-State relations and tribal autonomy. Since then, secessionist movements and in many cases even demands for statehood or autonomy have lost all their objectivity to the CPI(M) which treats such movements primarily as imperialist-aided anti-national conspiracies.
In his explanatory speech on Party Programme at the 1985 Central Party School, Basavapunniah pointed out that “India is a multilingual, multinational and multiracial subcontinent, and it was merged into a single State under British rule by the British bayonet.” If that is so then one should naturally expect some attempts to undo that forced integration in the post-British period. Some of the North-Eastern movements do indeed belong to this category. But more importantly we must remember that the natural tendency of capitalism is to lead to nation states. The multinational form is quite exceptional and perhaps compatible only with backward capitalism. The development of capitalism is bound to strengthen not merely the elements of pan-Indian consciousness but also what could be called regional or nationality consciousness. The integration of the feudal kingdoms into the Indian Union and the subsequent formation of linguistic states have not eliminated this natural tendency or law of capitalist development but only facilitated it by removing some obvious fetters and providing a new framework for the growth of such sub-nationalism.
Note :
- 12. CPI(ML)/1PF: Quest for A Left Role, The Marxist,
October-December 1990, p 33.
