There used to be huge display of news fireworks in India on holy occasions like anniversary of the glorious October revolution or comrade Lenin’s passing away. Communist Party of India’s national secretary was the one who used to light the first cracker. CPI Marxists used to answer it with earth shaking counter cracks. That used to be so loud and deafening that the CPI good souls used to remain mute for the rest of the season. Since the nineties this used to continue once or twice a year but later lost its colour and interest. New age communist leaders like A.B.Bardan and Veliyam Bhargavan did not seem to be good connoisseurs of the CPM-CPI dialectical martial arts. May be it had lost all its glory after the parting of E M S the great, who was the exponent of ideological fireworks.
Reunification of the two great revolutionary parties is the subject that ignites much fire, sound and smoke. When was the last magnificent display of fireworks ? Not sure of the date. Just as old folks remembered dates in coincidence with big calamities like the last big flood or the earth quake, it happened just a few months before Comrade Indrajith Gupta became the Home Minister of India. There was a big farmer’s conference in Hyderabad, jointly organized by the two communist parties. Before the curtain fell, Indrajith stood up to demand the immediate coming together of the two parties. Lakhs of poor, ill-clad farmers from all over Andhra Pradesh had gathered there, and no one was sure as to whether they even knew that there are two communist parties in India. Gupthaji’s mention created a storm and it was comrades Seetharam Yechury and Prakash Karat who were given the task of giving a fitting reply, which they did pretty well.
Of late there seldom are fireworks of quality. Occasionally we hear lonely shots here or there. That was boring and it seems CPM took the initiative in organizing a grand one this time. Seetaram Yechuri had come to talk to journalists in Hyderabad and he might have remembered what happened in Hyderabad farmers meet years back.He spoke about unity of the communist parties. It was for the first time that a CPM leader talked positively about the subject. He said nothing definite. He talked and talked about the two parties joining to fight corruption, communalism, casteism, capitalism- that is, fighting everything except communism. He did not rule out merger of the two parties, something no CPM leader had done before. But he refused to put a time frame for it, the process may take long, he said. Mass organizations of the two parties will first start joint action at the grass root level and the unity will go up, bit by bit. Truth is that this process had started way back in the eighties when CPI had divorced their congress alliance. Forget it, let us start it all over again. Discussions have started on how many will represent each parties in the meeting that will be called to decide the agenda of the meeting to decide joint action at the panchayath level. Whether these meetings will be held in CPI office or the CPM office is a matter requiring great deliberations. In view of the tragedy that occurred in the last West Bengal elections, it is hoped that this will definitely be decided before the next Bengal election.
Does it all mean that the two parties will unite in the future? One cunning journalist asked Yechuri . Quick came the reply’ hope so’. A very dangerous reply. He added a more dangerous sentence to it – well wishers of the left want that to happen without delay. All this created the wrong impression that CPM was proposing a merger of the two communist parties. The normal practice is for the CPI to propose and the CPM to reject it forth right. This time it was the CPM that raised it, it was they themselves who rejected it. Who wouldn’t like a little change!
Yechuri hoping a merger with CPI has raised questions of party discipline. Will it not be against the disciplinary provisions of the party constitution for a leader to hope for some thing the party has not yet decided? Polit bureau or the central committee had not decided to hope for it. Merger may take place due to a variety of reason, some may be political, some may be tactical and some may be historical. Merger may take place even with out the party hoping for it. Merger is okay, but hoping for it is different. Is it good for a revolutionary to hope for some thing? No one hopes for the revolution, one only fight for it.
Let that be there. Split took place in 1964. Those who remained in the mother party -CPI- forgot why the split happened and why those comrades walked out. How can there be re unification when the reasons that caused the split remained as it is? We will iron out those differences before we decide to re unite- Comrade EMS used to say. Revisionism, right deviation, difference between peoples democracy and national democracy, difference between national bourgeois and the party of the landed aristocracy led by them, approach to the main enemy of the working class are just some of the mind boggling issues that stood as stumbling blocks in between the two parties. Now, both the parties are lacking in the expertise to deal with tough ideological concepts of the type mentioned here. Intellectuals of that variety are an extinct species these days.
Times are bad. Both parties are in bad shape. Strength of the left in the parliament is just half of what it was earlier. It is worse in Lok Sabha. Now that Kerala and W. Bengal are gone, Seetaram Yechuri and Brinda Karat may not make it to Rajya Sabha in September. What will the party do to buy flight tickets for leaders and pay for the hundreds of party employees if there are not enough party MPs from whom money can be squeezed in the form of levy? Will they be forced to withdraw the deposits they made in mutual funds and financial institutions? To pay the lakhs of full timers in Bengal may be party will have to approach the World Bank for a sufficiently big loan.
You may ask what use is the CPI to deal with problems of these gigantic proportions. Ignoramus. From the national capital to the panchayath level both parties have offices in at least a dozen states. If the two parties merge, the number of offices in the country can be halved. What a saving in rent! If you can sell half of the real estate the party possesses, communism in India will survive for at least one more decade.
Long live the revolution !
