But just as mere acknowledgment of the big bourgeoisie’s leadership over the Indian state and strategic exclusion of this class from the People’s Democratic Front does not preclude class collaboration, it is also not enough to recognise the centrality of the anti-feudal contradiction. Some ninety years ago Lenin had pointed out in his article “Agrarian Programme of Russian Social Democracy”, “The demand for the eradication of the remnants of the serf-owning system is common to us and to all the consistent liberals, Narodniks, social reformers, critics of Marxism on the agrarian question, etc. In advancing this demand, we differ from all those gentlemen, not in principle, but only in degree: in this point too they will inevitably remain at all times within the limits of reforms; we, however, will not stop even at social-revolutionary demands. On the contrary, by demanding that the “free development of the class struggle in the countryside” be ensured, we place ourselves in opposition to all these gentlemen in principle, and even to all revolutionaries and socialists who are not Social Democrats … This condition is the fundamental and focal point in the theory of revolutionary Marxism in the sphere of the agrarian question”.[1]
In the CPI(M)’s case, it is precisely this “fundamental and focal point” which constitutes the weakest point of the party’s programme in the agrarian arena. In his 1985 review of the Statement of Policy published in The Marxist, Basavapunniah noted that “the Congress agrarian reforms during the last three decades, though they didn’t abolish landlordism and give land to the landless, succeeded in disrupting whatever peasant unity was built in the earlier decades around the central slogan of abolition of landlordism and land to the actual tiller”. His dilemma is that while rich and middle peasant households are not to be moved by the slogan of abolition of landlordism while “the agricultural labourers and poor peasants, who are land-hungry and respond to the slogan of land distribution wherever they are organised and led, have not yet the confidence to go into action for the appropriation of landlords’ land and its distribution among the agricultural labourers and poor peasants”. In West Bengal, the movement for occupation of ceiling-surplus lands “could be undertaken only when the State Government of the United Democratic Front in West Bengal, under the influence of the CPI(M), restrained the police from going against the fighting peasants”, whereas in Kerala the agricultural labourers and poor peasants “are inclined to occupy Government and forest land, but are not yet prepared to seize even the surplus land of landlords on a big scale”.
Yet “in the objective interests of the peasants in general, and the country as a whole” the CPI(M) programme retains the land-to-the tiller slogan as its central slogan. But given the structural changes effected by the Congress agrarian reforms and taking serious note of the existing state of organisation, level of consciousness and degree of unity among the peasantry, this central slogan remains today still a propaganda slogan. And the catch is that until and unless this basic slogan of abolition of landlordism becomes a slogan of action, the peasant movement cannot succeed even in enforcing partial demands such as reduction of rent and abolition of eviction. Moreover, Basavapuhniah tells us, “even these partial demands have serious limitations under the present changed conditions, viz. when tenancy, rents, forced labour, etc. no longer exist in their old form, scale and intensity.” The party therefore seeks to harness different agrarian currents, ranging from the wage question to the issue of remunerative prices, into one powerful agrarian stream so as to develop “maximum peasant unity” or “all-in peasant unity against landlordism and the bourgeois state power”. Though there are ritualistic references to the central role of the rural poor as the core of peasant unity, “a unity built around the rural labourers and poor peasants, and mainly based upon them”, the April 1967 document “Tasks on the Kisan Front”, the CPI(M)’s basic guide to agrarian action clearly spells out : “Our Party should ceaselessly educate the peasant and agricultural labour masses that the basic slogan of “abolition of landlordism without compensation and giving land to the agricultural labourers and poor peasant free of cost” has to be realised through the mass action of the entire peasantry”. In other words the rural poor who can and must be inspired and organised take the initiative to carry out that decisive attaclcagainst feudalism are to be kept under leash in the name of ‘mass action of the entire peasantry”.
It is under the cover of such an ambiguous agrarian perspective that the CPI(M) has forged such close alliances with the rich peasant-kulak based parties like Telugu Desam and Akali Dal, in the very states, where the Communist Party was once rooted among the rural poor. Without an essentially collaborationist perspective in day-to-day agrarian struggles, such lasting political alliances with these parties or for that matter even with parties like the Janata Dal or Samajwadi Party in Bihar and UP could never have been possible.
Alliances with parties like Telugu Desam, DMK or Akali Dal are also facilitated by the CPI(M)’s understanding of the “national question” and its opportunist approach towards utilisation of contradictions within the ruling camp. Para 60 of the CPI(M) programme states, “Underlying these contradictions (between the central government and the states) often lies the deeper contradiction between the big bourgeoisie on one hand and the entire people including the bourgeois of this or that state on the other. This deeper contradiction gets constantly aggravated due to the accentuation of the unevenness of economic development under capitalism.” In his polemics against the revisionists on the national question which we have already cited, EMS defines the proletarian approach to the so-called fissiparous movements in the following words : “The bourgeoisie would consider the “unity” of India as “good” and the “fissiparous forces” as “evil” … The proletarian standpoint has nothing to do with such abstract slogans of “good” and “evil”. It goes into the essence of these conflicts and uncovers the reality of conflicts among different sect ions of the ruling classes”. A few lines later when he says that “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”, he uses the word “democratic” in the narrow context of “conflicts among different sections of the ruling classes” and not in the more conventional sense of reflecting the aspirations of the people.
In other words, the CPI(M) is interested in such movements or forces only to the extent they represent a conflict among different sections of the ruling classes and thus give it a scope to “utilize” the contradictions within the ruling camp. This is perhaps what explains their eagerness to have alliance with parties like TOP, DMK or Akali Dal even as they remain cold or even opposed to the tribal autonomy movements in the North-East. In the case of Assam movement, the party showed absolutely no interest and rather displayed a rigid opposition to the movement so long as it was a real mass movement and reflected the democratic aspirations of the broad masses of Assamese people. But the attitude underwent a sea change after the AGP’s emergence as the ruling party in Assam. The AGP was now a constituent of National Front and the CPI(M) a close ally and staunch supporter of the National Front government. Even in, Assam politics, the CPI(M) started moving with the AGP.
Note :
- 1. Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy, LCW, Vol. 6,
pp 121-22.
