Just as the CPI(M) considers the transfer of power of August 1947 as the conclusion of the first stage of India’s democratic revolution, it may also consider the national question to have been resolved in the main. But the nationality problem is by no means a remnant or residue of the past. If it is a remnant, then like our feudal remnants it is also a live remnant acquiring new meanings and drawing fresh strength from every degree of capitalist development as capitalism develops not just in spite of but also through these remnants. The whole experience of Soviet Union or Eastern Europe would now seem to bear it out. Even in developed Canada we have a separatist movement raising its head. There is thus little possibility that people’s democratic or socialist India can escape the challenge of rewriting her national unity.
For Marxists, the right to self-determination is not so much a question of nationalism as of democracy. In fact, as Lenin tells us, “the recognition of the right of all nations to self-determination implies the maximum of democracy and the minimum of nationalism”. “The proletariat”, says Lenin, “cannot be victorious except through democracy, i.e., by giving full effect to democracy and by linking with each step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the most resolute terms … We must combine the revolutionary struggle against capitalism with a revolutionary programme and tactics on all democratic demands: a republic, a militia, the popular election of officials, equal rights for women, the self-determination of nations, etc.” Lenin also cautions us repeatedly that we must not confuse “unreserved recognition” of the right to self-determination with any mandatory support for each and every such demand which should be decided on the basis of concrete analysis of each case subject to the overriding interests of proletarian class struggle.
In his lecture note Basavapunniah noted with satisfaction that “the timely correction (of the party’s position on nationality question) has become a handy weapon in the hand of the revolutionary working class movement of India.” He also adds without elaborating “The experience of Bangladesh seceding from Pakistan, and the rising national movements of Sindhis, Baluchis, Pathans, etc. in Pakistan have many lessons for India and its future”. The only revolutionary and not chauvinist lesson for the Indian working class could be to recognise the objectivity of similar movements in India and strive for closer political unity of the proletariat and working people of the whole country on the basis of that recognition. By precisely refusing to do that the CPI(M) has only helped corrupt the revolutionary proletarian consciousness and exposed the working class to the dangerous consequences of national chauvinism.
In this context, let us cite a rather long excerpt from the writings of none other than EMS. Ina polemical piece exposing the revisionists’ bankruptcy on the national question written in 1966 it was EMS who had made the following observation : “… (It is) necessary for all Marxist-Leninists to make it clear to the people that the so-called “struggle between nationalism and the fissiparous forces”, the struggle in the name of which the leaders of the ruling party are trying to beat oppositionist forces into submission is a fake “struggle”. It is the means through which the dominant section of the bourgeoisie is trying to maintain its domination not only over the working people but over sections of their own class. The slogan of “national unity” is thus the weapon with which the dominant monopoly group tries to bring their competitors into submission …
“While thus exposing the false claims of the dominant and other sections of the ruling classes, Marxist-Leninists should see what is anti-feudal and democratic in the struggles waged by the various national and social groups against the dominant section of the ruling classes.
“Such a Marxist-Leninist approach to national unity and democracy is absurd in the ideological stand of the revisionists … whether it is in relation to India’s foreign policy, or in connection with the internal national problems, the revisionists are adopting the typically chauvinistic approach of the bourgeoisie.
“This is the inevitable consequence of their tailing behind the bourgeoisie, their refusal to fight to bourgeois, ideologically and politically, their effort to unite the working people with the bourgeoisie. Never has there been a more shameless example of subservience to the bourgeoisie and its ideological-political outlook”.[1]
Well, let us only update EMS by pointing out that we now have more such examples of ideological subservience and it is becoming increasingly difficult and absurd to try and order these examples in terms of their degree of shamelessness! But EMS was quite right in linking the revisionist bankruptcy on foreign policy with that on internal national problems. It is but two sides of the same coin, two distortions joined by the same key link – a vulgar, opportunist variety of anti-imperialism. And at the root of this distorted theory and practice of anti-imperialism and the opportunist tendency of class collaboration that follows from it lies the CPI(M)’s programmatic prevarication in analysing the nature of the Indian big bourgeoisie.
Note :
- 1. The Revisionists on the National Question, The Programme Explained, EMS Namboodiripad, 1966, pp 118-24.
