K. Damodaran
 |
| NLR I/93 • Sept/Oct 1975 |
Por que você acha que o PCI demorou tanto para se estabelecer? Qual foi sua atividade inicial e suas relações com o movimento nacionalista? Será que o infame "Terceiro Período" do Comintern também desorientou seriamente os comunistas indianos, isolando-os em uma fase crítica da corrente principal do movimento nacionalista?
My personal experience in this period was restricted to Kerala and I will concentrate on that, but of course the line of march throughout the country was essentially the same. I joined the CPI when it was illegal. It had been banned in 1934 after the Bombay Strike wave, which included a general strike of the textile industry. As a result even the distribution of party literature was extremely uneven and the question of organized internal discussion did not arise. But you must also understand that the CPI was an extremely small organization nationally in that period. In fact the CPI as a national political force only began to develop in 1935—6 after the worst excesses of the ‘Third Period’. The politics of the Comintern certainly played a not unimportant part in disorienting the Communist groups which existed regionally in the twenties and early thirties. The Comintern leaders completely underestimated the relative autonomy of the Indian bourgeoisie and its political instrument, the Indian Congress. They went through a stage of equating the nationalist movement and imperialism. Kuusinen, Stalin’s spokesman on colonial questions, and many writers in the Inprecor went so far as to say that the Indian National Congress was a counter-revolutionary force in the struggle against imperialism and the Congress Socialists were branded as ‘social fascists’. The attacks on nationalist leaders in the late twenties and thirties certainly were couched in an ultra-Left rhetoric and were parroted by the different Communist groups which existed in India. However it is not sufficient simply to blame the Comintern: after all the Chinese party also suffered from the wrong advice of the Comintern, but they recovered and finally captured power.
So while not ignoring the importance of the subjective failures we have to look deeper and, when we do, we shall find that there was an objective basis for the existence of a strong and stable bourgeois demo- cratic party like the Indian Congress. This was the development of an Indian bourgeoisie which was not a comprador bourgeoisie and which even in the heyday of the raj enjoyed a certain independence. Its inter- ests clashed on many occasions with those of British imperialism. The Indian capitalists developed at an unusually rapid rate when Britain was tied down by inter-imperialist wars. The existence of this bour- geoisie side by side with a civil service and army that involved many Indians created the basis for the existence of a colonial state apparatus which succeeded in tying down the Congress to its structures and ensuring a smooth transition when the time for Independence came. So Indian communists confronted a unique economic and political structure which they never succeeded in analysing properly.
While the CPI was in fact properly established in 1934—5 its develop- ment was uneven. For instance the first communist group in Kerala was organized only in 1937 by five comrades including Namboodiripad, Krishna Pillai and myself. We decided that we should not openly call ourselves the Communist Party but win ourselves a base inside the Congress Socialists. I think that this was correct, but it did not happen nationally. Accordingly we disseminated Communist literature inside the Congress Socialist Party, which itself worked inside the Congress, as an organized grouping. Our influence inside the Kerala Congress was not negligible: Namboodiripad, A. K. Gopalan, Krishna Pillai and, later, myself were all recognized leaders of the Kerala Congress and we held office on the leading committees. Utilizing our position in the Congress we organized trade unions, peasants’ organizations, students’ unions, and associations of progressive and anti-imperialist writers. We organized a regular Communist Party in Kerala only at the end of 1939. It was our mass work coupled with the fact that we were identified with the nationalist aspirations of the people which un- doubtedly played a significant role in ensuring that Kerala became one of the important strongholds of post-Independence communism.
Quando você foi preso pela primeira vez como comunista?
In 1938. I was at that time a member of the party, but in the eyes of the masses was still regarded as a nationalist agitator. What brought about my arrest on this occasion was a speech I made to a conference of Youth Leaguers in Trivandrum. I had been asked to preside over the meeting and in my opening speech I mounted a diatribe against im- perialism: I attacked British imperialism and the Maharajah of Travan- core as embodying the oppression which was being meted out by British imperialism. The right-wing leaders of the State Congress had been saying that the Maharajah was a great man and it was only his local satraps who were to blame and were misleading him. I attacked this absurd concept head-on and utilized the experiences of the French and Russian revolutions, observing that their method of dealing with the monarchy was rather more effective than that of the Congress leaders! I also explained to the meeting the necessity of involving the peasants and workers in the struggle and concluded with the slogan of ‘Inqilab Zindabad’ (Long Live Revolution) which was joyfully taken up by the whole meeting. That same day there were anti-imperialist demonstra- tions and clashes with the police in Trivandrum. The next morning I was naturally arrested, together with the Youth League leaders. We spent two or three months in prison and were then released. From then on prison became a regular part of my existence.
Quando você foi preso pela primeira vez como comunista?
In 1938. I was at that time a member of the party, but in the eyes of the masses was still regarded as a nationalist agitator. What brought about my arrest on this occasion was a speech I made to a conference of Youth Leaguers in Trivandrum. I had been asked to preside over the meeting and in my opening speech I mounted a diatribe against im- perialism: I attacked British imperialism and the Maharajah of Travan- core as embodying the oppression which was being meted out by British imperialism. The right-wing leaders of the State Congress had been saying that the Maharajah was a great man and it was only his local satraps who were to blame and were misleading him. I attacked this absurd concept head-on and utilized the experiences of the French and Russian revolutions, observing that their method of dealing with the monarchy was rather more effective than that of the Congress leaders! I also explained to the meeting the necessity of involving the peasants and workers in the struggle and concluded with the slogan of ‘Inqilab Zindabad’ (Long Live Revolution) which was joyfully taken up by the whole meeting. That same day there were anti-imperialist demonstra- tions and clashes with the police in Trivandrum. The next morning I was naturally arrested, together with the Youth League leaders. We spent two or three months in prison and were then released. From then on prison became a regular part of my existence.
Você poderia descrever brevemente o impacto dos acontecimentos na União Soviética sobre o comunismo indiano? Afinal, o período que estamos discutindo foi crucial; praticamente toda a liderança bolchevique na época da Revolução foi fisicamente eliminada pelo terror stalinista, como prelúdio de uma ditadura burocrática que estabeleceu seu monopólio total sobre todas as esferas da vida pública. Qual foi o impacto de tudo isso sobre os comunistas indianos?
As far as I am concerned I can speak mainly about Kerala. I was not part of the All-India party apparatus at that time and, as I have already explained, objective conditions — leave alone subjective ones — did not permit horizontal contact with party members in other parts of the country. I joined the party just before the theses of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the Dimitrov theses on the Popular Front strategy. It was after the Seventh Congress that Stalin became wellknown in India in the sense that he became the 'Great Leader’. In fact the theses did coincide — better late than never — with the need for us to have a united front with the Congress against the British. The sectarian ultra-leftism of the 1929—34 period had isolated us and this was seen as an attempt to correct the mistakes. For us it was a step in the right direction. Not so much in Kerala, but in Bombay and Calcutta. After all in Kerala there was no communist party in the early thirties. When people ask me why the CPI became so strong in non-industrialized Kerala as compared to Bombay, I reply that the main reason is that there was no CPI in Kerala in the 1930—33 period and so it was possible to start anew. Most of the Communist leaders in Kerala today were totally immersed in the Civil Disobedience movement launched by the Congress in 1930—32. It explains how they won the support of the masses and were able to shatter the Congress monopoly in a later phase.
But to answer your main question: you must understand that the Communists in India were not seriously educated in Marxism. To give you one example: Lenin's theses on the colonial question were not known to Indian Communists till the end of the fifties. The Seventh Congress line of Anti-Imperialist United Front in India was considered not as a break from the past but a continuation of the Sixth Congress line and was explained as a tactical change necessitated by the changes in the national and international situation. You may consider it strange that the disastrous colonial theses of the Sixth Congress were translated into Malayalam and other Indian languages precisely in this period. But in practice the United Front was a break from the left-sectarian line. The new line implemented by the Party under the able leadership of P. C. Joshi helped us to advance rapidly. The CPI for the first time became a political force with considerable influence in the Congress, among the Congress Socialists and in the mass movements. The rival Trade Unions were united into a single All India Trade Union Con- gress in which the CPI became the leading force. The All-India Kisan Sabha, the All India Students’ Federation and the All-India Progres- sive Writers’ Association came into existence. The Communists played an important role in uniting them and leading their struggles. National unity against Imperialism, Left unity to counter the compromising and anti-struggle policies of the right wing, socialist unity to strengthen Left unity, the CPI as the basis of socialist unity, mass organizations and mass struggles to build and strengthen the united anti-imperialist front — these were the watchwords and positive elements in the new line. This line certainly brought results and helped to build and streng- then an All India Communist Party. The membership of the Party increased from about 150 in 1934 to more than 3,000 in 1939 and its influence multiplied at an even more rapid rate. But these were also the years of Stalinism.
We were told that Stalin was the ‘great teacher’, the ‘guiding star’ who was building socialism in the USSR and the leader of world socialism. And being both new to communism and relatively unschooled in Marxism and Leninism I accepted what I was told. There is a tradition in Indian politics of political gurus enlightening the masses and this tradition suited Stalinism completely. Hence we could accept anything and everything that we were told by the party elders who themselves were dependent for their information exclusively on Moscow. This was the atmosphere in which I was brought up as a communist. How- ever, there were some comrades who were extremely perturbed at the information on the massacres which was coming out of Moscow. Philip Spratt, one of the communists sent to help build the CPI from Britain, became so demoralized and disillusioned with Stalinism that he abandoned communism altogether and became a liberal humanist and towards the end of his life an anti-communist. He was an excellent comrade who played an invaluable role in helping us at an early stage. The Congress left wing was also extremely critical of the purges taking place in Moscow and some of their leaders were extremely disgusted by the propaganda contained in the CPI front journal National Front, which depicted Trotsky as a poisonous cobra and an agent of Fascism. Even Nehru, who was one of the first Congressmen who popularized the Russian Revolution and Soviet achievements, expressed his dis- approval of the purges in 1938. But for us, communists, in those days Trotskyism and fascism were the same. I must confess to you that I also believed that Bukharin, Zinoviev, Radek and other victims of Stalinist purges were enemies of socialism, wreckers and spies working in the interest of imperialism and fascism. In discussions with independent minded socialists I defended Stalin vigorously. I think the main reason for this was that we identified ourselves completely with the Soviet Union, which was then under constant attack by British imperialists and by the Congress right wing. Every strike was supposed to have been inspired by Moscow, every street demonstration was supposed to be led by agitators in the pay of Moscow. We defended the Soviet Union against these people, though, of course, completely uncritically. Hence, when the Soviet Union was attacked from the Left we used the same arguments against these critics as well. Looking back on that period I feel that all this was a big tragedy not just for us, but for the whole communist movement. Can you imagine: Trotsky had vehe- mently opposed Fascism and had warned the German communists against the trap they were falling into and this same Trotsky was label- led by us and thousands of others as a fascist. We sincerely believed that in defending Stalinism we were defending the Russian Revolution. I remember writing articles defending Stalin in the Malayalam press in Kerala after Trotsky’s assassination and utilizing that book ‘The Great Conspiracy’ to get some factual material or what I genuinely believed to be the truth. The official history of the CPSU which was published at the end of the thirties reinforced my faith in Stalin. This book was first translated and published illegally in Malayalam in 1941 and soon be- came a text book of Marxism for our cadres. The study classes I con- ducted in jail for our comrades were very much coloured by Stalinism. In fact we identified Stalinism with Marxism-Leninism.
Qual foi a primeira reação do PCI à guerra e em que circunstâncias isso mudou? Um de seus ex-companheiros, o líder do PCI, A. K. Gopalan, argumenta em seu livro que o PCI se tornou um partido de massas durante a guerra. Isso está correto?
The initial response of our party was to oppose the war and even before 1939 we were pressuring the Congress to step up the struggle against British imperialism. It was the Congress which hesitated im- mediately the war began. I remember at the Poona session of the All India Congress Committee in 1940, I moved an amendment to the main resolution moved by Gandhi, and was supported, incidentally, by Jawaharlal Nehru. Opposing Gandhi’s line I called for the start of a new mass struggle against the British. This was the line of the CPI at that stage. Soon after that I was arrested and remained in prison till the end of the war. It is necessary to explain why I was kept in prison when most other communists were released to implement the Peoples’ War’ policy. Immediately on the outbreak of war, and in the year that follow- ed, communists had been arrested in large numbers. In prison contro- versies started on whether or not our line was correct. Then the Soviet Union was invaded by the Nazi armies. Our controversies became ever more heated. Professor K. B. Krishna who was with us in jail wrote a set of theses developing the Peoples’ War’ line and advocating that now everything had changed and that communists should drop their anti-imperialist activities and their opposition to war. I wrote a set of counter-theses arguing that while the existence of the Soviet Union was vital, nonetheless the best way to help the Russian comrades was not by ceasing all anti-imperialist activity, but on the contrary by step- ping it up. Our enemy remained British imperialism. The majority of communists inside prison supported my line and only a tiny minority was in favour of the Peoples’ War’ theses. Then some months later we heard that the British party had changed its line and that Moscow was in favour of the change. Outside the jail, the party secretary P. C. Joshi, who was initially one of the strongest opponents of the Peoples’ War’ line, had to change his line and start using his oratorical skills to con- vince party members, and also the masses, of the importance of helping the war effort. After the change of line most of the pro- war communists were released, but some, including myself, were kept in prison. British intelligence knew perfectly well who to release and who to keep inside.
It seems the atmosphere in jail, as far as discussion and debates within the CP were concerned, was considerably more democratic than it was outside. From what you have said it woidd appear that all CP members, regardless of hierarchy, were involved in these discussions and that on some subjects there were votes taken.
Yes that is true, but the debate inside prison did have its limits. As long as the discussion did not directly counter the party line it took place. For instance, even on the war issue, when a circular from the party leadership arrived to our party Jail Committee instructing us to carry out the pro-war line I automatically dropped my positions and was mocked by the others who said ‘You considered yourself one of the party theoreticians, but you were wrong!’ This incident typifies how we were trained as communists. I made a self-criticism and admitted I was wrong. I had to do so because the party was always right, but doubts persisted and in later years I was reassured that I had been correct. Today even the leaders of both the CPI and the CPM are forced to admit that ‘some mistakes were made’. That phrase is meant to explain everything. However, in spite of the self-criticism the British did not release me from prison. It is possible that their intelligence services decided that my self-criticism was far too shallow. The official charge-sheet handed to me in prison gave as one reason for my con- tinued detention the fact that I had opposed the line of the People's War’. This was written black on white on my charge sheet! Of course the CP leadership made numerous representations to the British authori- ties demanding our release, but to no avail. I was not released till October 1945.
Então, quando o Congresso lançou o movimento "Saiam da Índia" em agosto de 1942, você ainda estava preso. Havia muito ressentimento em relação ao PCI por parte das hordas de voluntários e líderes do Congresso que lotaram as prisões após esse movimento?
There is a view developed by some of the apologists for the Peoples’ War’ line which argues that the CPI gained a lot of support as a conse- quence of ‘swimming against the stream’. I do not subscribe to this view. Of course the party took advantage of legality granted to it by British imperialism to gain new members and increase its trade-union strength, but the point is that it was swimming against the stream of the mass movement and was to all intents and purposes considered an ally of British imperialism. It became respectable to be a communist. Many young communists joined the British army to go and 'defend the Soviet Union’ in Italy and North Africa. Some of them rapidly shed their 'communism' and stayed in the army even after the war — and not to do clandestine work! It is true that the membership of the Party increased from about 4,500 in July 1942 to well over 15,500 in May 1943 at the time of the First Party Congress. Membership of the mass organizations also increased. But most of these new members had no experience of any militant mass struggle or police repression but only the peaceful campaigns conducted by the Party to ‘grow more food’, 'increase production’, ‘release national leaders’, ‘form a national government’ and ‘defend the motherland’ from the Japanese invasion which never came. Strikes were denounced as sabotage. The party members also conducted social welfare operations to save the victims of the Bengal Famine of 1943. They organized medical aid for the victims of the smallpox and cholera epidemics. Of course, even this social work paid dividends in India, where there is a terrible disregard for loss of life. But we failed in our basic task, namely, to explain the roots of all the problems which confronted the masses.
On the other side, the growth of the Congress and its influence after the ‘Quit India’ struggle of August 1942 was phenomenal. Millions of men and women, especially the youth, were attracted and radicalized by the struggle, which was considered as a revolution against imperialism. True, we campaigned for the release of the arrested Congress leaders and the formation of a provisional national government to conduct the Peoples’ War. But at the same time we branded the Congress Socialists, Bose’s followers and other radicals who braved arrests and police repression as fifth columnists and saboteurs. We appealed to Gandhi and other Congress leaders to condemn the violence indulged in by these people. After their release not only Nehru but also the apostles of non-violence, instead of condemning them, praised them as real anti-imperialist patriots — Subhas Bose, Jayaprakash Narain, Aruna Asaf Ali and even obscure figures like Colonel Lakshmi emerged as national heroes and heroines.
In reality the CPI was isolated from the mainstream of the nationalist movement for the second time within a decade. In my view the party’s policy virtually delivered the entire anti-imperialist movement to the Congress and the Indian bourgeoisie on a platter. At the time, if the CPI had adopted a correct position the possibility existed of winning over a sizeable and influential section of the Congress to communism. In the 1936—42 period Jawaharlal Nehru himself went through his most radical phase and there were numerous leftward-moving currents (such as the Congress Socialists and Subhas Bose’s followers) within the Congress. On my release from prison I experienced the wrath of the left-wing nationalists who used to chant 'Down with supporters of British imperialism’ at our meetings. So swimming against the stream when the stream was flowing in the right direction resulted in drowning the possibility of genuine independence and a socialist transformation. We were outmanoeuvred and outflanked by the Indian bourgeoisie.
If the party recovered some ground it was due largely to the militant strike wave which developed immediately after the Second World War in the 1946—7 period and into which we threw ourselves, though our political line was still faulty. We supported, for example, the creation of the confessional state of Pakistan. In Bombay it was the CPI which mobilized support for the naval mutineers of 1946 only to find that our political line of supporting Congress-Muslim League unity hampered any real solidarity as the naval mutiny was broken not so much by the British as by the Congress and League leaders. They united tempor- arily to confront this new threat on their left flank which was un- comfortably similar to some of the events of the Russian Revolution. A number of us, including myself, were arrested once again for foment- ing class struggles and we were released only on 13 August 1947, a bare twenty-four hours before Independence.
Qual era a lógica por trás das notórias teses ranadivas que levaram o PCI a uma trajetória ultraesquerdista no período após a Independência?
Creio que precisamos distinguir cuidadosamente uma série de fatores inter-relacionados. Não há dúvida de que as teses redigidas por Ranadive e adotadas pelo Segundo Congresso em Calcutá, em 1948, eram ultraesquerdistas, mas as críticas que lhes foram feitas no final dos anos 1950 e ainda hoje por muitos comunistas e congressistas de esquerda soam um tanto vazias, pois partem de uma problemática reformista.
Qual foi a primeira reação do PCI à guerra e em que circunstâncias isso mudou? Um de seus ex-companheiros, o líder do PCI, A. K. Gopalan, argumenta em seu livro que o PCI se tornou um partido de massas durante a guerra. Isso está correto?
The initial response of our party was to oppose the war and even before 1939 we were pressuring the Congress to step up the struggle against British imperialism. It was the Congress which hesitated im- mediately the war began. I remember at the Poona session of the All India Congress Committee in 1940, I moved an amendment to the main resolution moved by Gandhi, and was supported, incidentally, by Jawaharlal Nehru. Opposing Gandhi’s line I called for the start of a new mass struggle against the British. This was the line of the CPI at that stage. Soon after that I was arrested and remained in prison till the end of the war. It is necessary to explain why I was kept in prison when most other communists were released to implement the Peoples’ War’ policy. Immediately on the outbreak of war, and in the year that follow- ed, communists had been arrested in large numbers. In prison contro- versies started on whether or not our line was correct. Then the Soviet Union was invaded by the Nazi armies. Our controversies became ever more heated. Professor K. B. Krishna who was with us in jail wrote a set of theses developing the Peoples’ War’ line and advocating that now everything had changed and that communists should drop their anti-imperialist activities and their opposition to war. I wrote a set of counter-theses arguing that while the existence of the Soviet Union was vital, nonetheless the best way to help the Russian comrades was not by ceasing all anti-imperialist activity, but on the contrary by step- ping it up. Our enemy remained British imperialism. The majority of communists inside prison supported my line and only a tiny minority was in favour of the Peoples’ War’ theses. Then some months later we heard that the British party had changed its line and that Moscow was in favour of the change. Outside the jail, the party secretary P. C. Joshi, who was initially one of the strongest opponents of the Peoples’ War’ line, had to change his line and start using his oratorical skills to con- vince party members, and also the masses, of the importance of helping the war effort. After the change of line most of the pro- war communists were released, but some, including myself, were kept in prison. British intelligence knew perfectly well who to release and who to keep inside.
It seems the atmosphere in jail, as far as discussion and debates within the CP were concerned, was considerably more democratic than it was outside. From what you have said it woidd appear that all CP members, regardless of hierarchy, were involved in these discussions and that on some subjects there were votes taken.
Yes that is true, but the debate inside prison did have its limits. As long as the discussion did not directly counter the party line it took place. For instance, even on the war issue, when a circular from the party leadership arrived to our party Jail Committee instructing us to carry out the pro-war line I automatically dropped my positions and was mocked by the others who said ‘You considered yourself one of the party theoreticians, but you were wrong!’ This incident typifies how we were trained as communists. I made a self-criticism and admitted I was wrong. I had to do so because the party was always right, but doubts persisted and in later years I was reassured that I had been correct. Today even the leaders of both the CPI and the CPM are forced to admit that ‘some mistakes were made’. That phrase is meant to explain everything. However, in spite of the self-criticism the British did not release me from prison. It is possible that their intelligence services decided that my self-criticism was far too shallow. The official charge-sheet handed to me in prison gave as one reason for my con- tinued detention the fact that I had opposed the line of the People's War’. This was written black on white on my charge sheet! Of course the CP leadership made numerous representations to the British authori- ties demanding our release, but to no avail. I was not released till October 1945.
Então, quando o Congresso lançou o movimento "Saiam da Índia" em agosto de 1942, você ainda estava preso. Havia muito ressentimento em relação ao PCI por parte das hordas de voluntários e líderes do Congresso que lotaram as prisões após esse movimento?
There is a view developed by some of the apologists for the Peoples’ War’ line which argues that the CPI gained a lot of support as a conse- quence of ‘swimming against the stream’. I do not subscribe to this view. Of course the party took advantage of legality granted to it by British imperialism to gain new members and increase its trade-union strength, but the point is that it was swimming against the stream of the mass movement and was to all intents and purposes considered an ally of British imperialism. It became respectable to be a communist. Many young communists joined the British army to go and 'defend the Soviet Union’ in Italy and North Africa. Some of them rapidly shed their 'communism' and stayed in the army even after the war — and not to do clandestine work! It is true that the membership of the Party increased from about 4,500 in July 1942 to well over 15,500 in May 1943 at the time of the First Party Congress. Membership of the mass organizations also increased. But most of these new members had no experience of any militant mass struggle or police repression but only the peaceful campaigns conducted by the Party to ‘grow more food’, 'increase production’, ‘release national leaders’, ‘form a national government’ and ‘defend the motherland’ from the Japanese invasion which never came. Strikes were denounced as sabotage. The party members also conducted social welfare operations to save the victims of the Bengal Famine of 1943. They organized medical aid for the victims of the smallpox and cholera epidemics. Of course, even this social work paid dividends in India, where there is a terrible disregard for loss of life. But we failed in our basic task, namely, to explain the roots of all the problems which confronted the masses.
On the other side, the growth of the Congress and its influence after the ‘Quit India’ struggle of August 1942 was phenomenal. Millions of men and women, especially the youth, were attracted and radicalized by the struggle, which was considered as a revolution against imperialism. True, we campaigned for the release of the arrested Congress leaders and the formation of a provisional national government to conduct the Peoples’ War. But at the same time we branded the Congress Socialists, Bose’s followers and other radicals who braved arrests and police repression as fifth columnists and saboteurs. We appealed to Gandhi and other Congress leaders to condemn the violence indulged in by these people. After their release not only Nehru but also the apostles of non-violence, instead of condemning them, praised them as real anti-imperialist patriots — Subhas Bose, Jayaprakash Narain, Aruna Asaf Ali and even obscure figures like Colonel Lakshmi emerged as national heroes and heroines.
In reality the CPI was isolated from the mainstream of the nationalist movement for the second time within a decade. In my view the party’s policy virtually delivered the entire anti-imperialist movement to the Congress and the Indian bourgeoisie on a platter. At the time, if the CPI had adopted a correct position the possibility existed of winning over a sizeable and influential section of the Congress to communism. In the 1936—42 period Jawaharlal Nehru himself went through his most radical phase and there were numerous leftward-moving currents (such as the Congress Socialists and Subhas Bose’s followers) within the Congress. On my release from prison I experienced the wrath of the left-wing nationalists who used to chant 'Down with supporters of British imperialism’ at our meetings. So swimming against the stream when the stream was flowing in the right direction resulted in drowning the possibility of genuine independence and a socialist transformation. We were outmanoeuvred and outflanked by the Indian bourgeoisie.
If the party recovered some ground it was due largely to the militant strike wave which developed immediately after the Second World War in the 1946—7 period and into which we threw ourselves, though our political line was still faulty. We supported, for example, the creation of the confessional state of Pakistan. In Bombay it was the CPI which mobilized support for the naval mutineers of 1946 only to find that our political line of supporting Congress-Muslim League unity hampered any real solidarity as the naval mutiny was broken not so much by the British as by the Congress and League leaders. They united tempor- arily to confront this new threat on their left flank which was un- comfortably similar to some of the events of the Russian Revolution. A number of us, including myself, were arrested once again for foment- ing class struggles and we were released only on 13 August 1947, a bare twenty-four hours before Independence.
Qual era a lógica por trás das notórias teses ranadivas que levaram o PCI a uma trajetória ultraesquerdista no período após a Independência?
Creio que precisamos distinguir cuidadosamente uma série de fatores inter-relacionados. Não há dúvida de que as teses redigidas por Ranadive e adotadas pelo Segundo Congresso em Calcutá, em 1948, eram ultraesquerdistas, mas as críticas que lhes foram feitas no final dos anos 1950 e ainda hoje por muitos comunistas e congressistas de esquerda soam um tanto vazias, pois partem de uma problemática reformista.
Após a transferência de poder, houve uma eclosão antecipada de lutas em muitas partes do país: essas lutas tinham uma natureza dupla. Ambas celebravam a transferência de poder para o Congresso e também esperavam que o Congresso cumprisse todas as suas promessas radicais. Lutas semelhantes saudaram a eleição dos governos provinciais do Congresso em 1937, enquanto os britânicos ainda estavam na Índia. O que essas lutas nos dizem é que há uma ligação entre vitórias importantes na arena da política burguesa e o movimento de massas extraparlamentar. Houve também a luta em Telengana (Hyderabad), que havia começado antes da Independência e que estava sendo travada contra o Nizam de Hyderabad, sua administração e seus latifundiários patrocinados na zona rural ao redor de Hyderabad. Mesmo aqui, a intervenção do exército indiano mudou a situação, pois efetivamente removeu o Nizam e, ao mesmo tempo, bloqueou o desenvolvimento da esquerda.
O levante pós-Independência envolveu trabalhadores, camponeses, estudantes e professores. Muitos apoiadores de esquerda do Congresso participaram dessas lutas por mais direitos sindicais, pela abolição do latifúndio e por mais liberdades; seu caráter era essencialmente o de pressionar o Congresso a se mover para a esquerda. Se o PCI tivesse desenvolvido uma estratégia correta com base em uma análise das condições indianas nos anos anteriores, teria sido capaz de desempenhar um papel vital nessas lutas, dando-lhes liderança. Nessa eventualidade, as teses ranadivas teriam sido equivocadas, mas teriam tido uma ressonância maior. No entanto, dadas as reviravoltas do PCI, o ultraesquerdismo do Congresso de 1948 provou ser desastroso. As massas não estavam preparadas para derrubar o governo Nehru. Pelo contrário, grandes setores delas se identificaram com ele, e o slogan do PCI: "Esta Independência é uma Independência Falsa" apenas conseguiu isolar o partido. A luta armada que foi lançada juntamente com este slogan levou à morte de muitos quadros e à prisão e tortura de outros em todo o subcontinente. A análise do governo Nehru como um governo comprador fantoche do imperialismo foi outro erro, pois implicava que não havia diferença entre a administração colonial britânica e o governo Nehru pós-colonial. Como é agora comumente aceito pelos marxistas, a classe dominante indiana nunca foi uma classe compradora no verdadeiro sentido da palavra. Ela gozou de relativa autonomia mesmo durante a ocupação colonial. Argumentar que era uma classe compradora após a Independência não era apenas ultraesquerdista no sentido de que sustentava uma linha estratégica equivocada, mas também demonstrava a inadequação teórica do comunismo indiano. Muitos dos temas daquele período foram retomados no final dos anos 1960 pelos rebeldes maoístas em Naxalbari e outras partes da Índia, e sabemos com quais consequências desastrosas. Além do fato de centenas de jovens terem sido mortos, milhares torturados e o movimento ter sofrido reveses, ainda temos seu legado na forma de milhares de presos políticos presos pela classe dominante indiana. A tragédia aqui é que os presos estão praticamente desprovidos de qualquer apoio popular.
Voltando a 1948: vários comunistas, incluindo eu, foram presos novamente, e foi na prisão que vários debates sobre as teses ranadivas foram iniciados. Havia grande insatisfação com a nova linha. Os camaradas sindicais estavam se tornando cada vez mais hostis à liderança do partido. A liderança do partido havia lançado um chamado para uma greve nacional ferroviária, que fracassou completamente. Conseguiu apenas identificar os apoiadores comunistas no sindicato ferroviário, e muitos deles foram presos. Então, os líderes do partido disseram que os comunistas, que eram os líderes do sindicato, eram revisionistas e reformistas e que era por isso que a greve ferroviária não ocorreu. Mas mesmo esse debate evoluiu rapidamente de uma maneira particular. Não houve qualquer esforço para analisar as condições que existiam na Índia. Tornou-se uma sessão de "Stalin disse...", à qual os oponentes na discussão respondiam "Mas Mao disse o contrário...". Portanto, o debate em si foi em grande parte estéril. Consequentemente, o resultado de todas essas disputas não seria decidido pelo congresso do partido após uma discussão em todo o partido e a preparação de um balanço da linha Ranadive. Seguindo as melhores tradições do stalinismo, a liderança do partido decidiu enviar uma delegação a Moscou para se encontrar com Stalin. Quatro líderes foram selecionados para esta honra única: Ajo Ghosh, Rajeshwar Rao, S. A. Dange e Basava Punniah. Ranadive foi eclipsado. Eles retornaram com uma nova linha tática e um novo rascunho de programa, que foram adotados por uma conferência especial do Partido realizada em Calcutá em outubro de 1951. A nova linha formulada sob a orientação direta de Stalin, Molotov e Suslov declarava que o Governo do Congresso foi instalado com o consentimento dos imperialistas britânicos, que a estrutura colonial ainda prevalecia na Índia, que os imperialistas agora cobriam seu domínio com o manto do Governo do Congresso, que era completamente subserviente ao imperialismo, e que, portanto, a tarefa imediata do Partido Comunista era derrubar o Estado indiano e substituí-lo por um Estado Democrático Popular. Assim, quatro anos após a transferência do poder, Stalin e outros líderes da União Soviética consideravam a Índia um país colonial sob o imperialismo britânico. Não foi surpresa que a Conferência do Partido tenha aprovado a nova linha, especialmente porque contava com a benevolência do "maior marxista-leninista e líder da revolução mundial". Esse era o pensamento da maioria dos nossos camaradas pelo menos até 1956. Eu também concordei com essa visão absurda por algum tempo, mas logo surgiram dúvidas e comecei a argumentar que a Índia era politicamente livre.
Na prática, porém, houve um novo desenvolvimento. Juntamente com a adoção do novo programa em 1951, o Partido decidiu participar das Eleições Gerais, que se aproximavam rapidamente. Embora isso fosse correto por si só, as políticas adotadas pelo Partido após as eleições foram uma indicação mais reveladora da mudança que havia sido feita. Do ultraesquerdismo, o Partido havia embarcado em um curso que só pode ser categorizado como cretinismo parlamentar. O Manifesto Eleitoral, bem como o novo programa de 1951, afirmavam que o socialismo não era o objetivo imediato do Partido, visto que a Índia ainda era um país colonial atrasado. A tarefa imediata era a substituição do Governo Nehru, antidemocrático e antipopular, por um governo da Democracia Popular, com base em uma coalizão de todos os partidos e forças anti-imperialistas e antifeudais. A palavra "classe" foi substituída pela palavra "partido" e a palavra "estado" foi substituída pela palavra "governo". Não se tratava de mudanças meramente semânticas. De 1948 a 1951, o Partido declarou que seu objetivo era a criação de um Estado Democrático Popular, que foi o ponto de partida da ditadura do proletariado. Deixando de lado as ambiguidades e evasões contidas na fórmula da "Democracia Popular", o objetivo era, no entanto, claro. O Terceiro Congresso do Partido em Madurai enfatizou que a tarefa central do Partido era a luta para substituir o governo do Congresso por um "governo popular de unidade democrática". E aqui, claramente, "democracia popular" não era sinônimo de ditadura do proletariado. Foi concebido como uma aliança do PCI e dos partidos "democráticos" anticongresso. O objetivo do Partido passou a ser adquirir maioria parlamentar e reunir aliados suficientes para formar governos. Em suas diferentes formas, esta continua sendo a política do PCI e do PCI(m).
Voltando a 1948: vários comunistas, incluindo eu, foram presos novamente, e foi na prisão que vários debates sobre as teses ranadivas foram iniciados. Havia grande insatisfação com a nova linha. Os camaradas sindicais estavam se tornando cada vez mais hostis à liderança do partido. A liderança do partido havia lançado um chamado para uma greve nacional ferroviária, que fracassou completamente. Conseguiu apenas identificar os apoiadores comunistas no sindicato ferroviário, e muitos deles foram presos. Então, os líderes do partido disseram que os comunistas, que eram os líderes do sindicato, eram revisionistas e reformistas e que era por isso que a greve ferroviária não ocorreu. Mas mesmo esse debate evoluiu rapidamente de uma maneira particular. Não houve qualquer esforço para analisar as condições que existiam na Índia. Tornou-se uma sessão de "Stalin disse...", à qual os oponentes na discussão respondiam "Mas Mao disse o contrário...". Portanto, o debate em si foi em grande parte estéril. Consequentemente, o resultado de todas essas disputas não seria decidido pelo congresso do partido após uma discussão em todo o partido e a preparação de um balanço da linha Ranadive. Seguindo as melhores tradições do stalinismo, a liderança do partido decidiu enviar uma delegação a Moscou para se encontrar com Stalin. Quatro líderes foram selecionados para esta honra única: Ajo Ghosh, Rajeshwar Rao, S. A. Dange e Basava Punniah. Ranadive foi eclipsado. Eles retornaram com uma nova linha tática e um novo rascunho de programa, que foram adotados por uma conferência especial do Partido realizada em Calcutá em outubro de 1951. A nova linha formulada sob a orientação direta de Stalin, Molotov e Suslov declarava que o Governo do Congresso foi instalado com o consentimento dos imperialistas britânicos, que a estrutura colonial ainda prevalecia na Índia, que os imperialistas agora cobriam seu domínio com o manto do Governo do Congresso, que era completamente subserviente ao imperialismo, e que, portanto, a tarefa imediata do Partido Comunista era derrubar o Estado indiano e substituí-lo por um Estado Democrático Popular. Assim, quatro anos após a transferência do poder, Stalin e outros líderes da União Soviética consideravam a Índia um país colonial sob o imperialismo britânico. Não foi surpresa que a Conferência do Partido tenha aprovado a nova linha, especialmente porque contava com a benevolência do "maior marxista-leninista e líder da revolução mundial". Esse era o pensamento da maioria dos nossos camaradas pelo menos até 1956. Eu também concordei com essa visão absurda por algum tempo, mas logo surgiram dúvidas e comecei a argumentar que a Índia era politicamente livre.
Na prática, porém, houve um novo desenvolvimento. Juntamente com a adoção do novo programa em 1951, o Partido decidiu participar das Eleições Gerais, que se aproximavam rapidamente. Embora isso fosse correto por si só, as políticas adotadas pelo Partido após as eleições foram uma indicação mais reveladora da mudança que havia sido feita. Do ultraesquerdismo, o Partido havia embarcado em um curso que só pode ser categorizado como cretinismo parlamentar. O Manifesto Eleitoral, bem como o novo programa de 1951, afirmavam que o socialismo não era o objetivo imediato do Partido, visto que a Índia ainda era um país colonial atrasado. A tarefa imediata era a substituição do Governo Nehru, antidemocrático e antipopular, por um governo da Democracia Popular, com base em uma coalizão de todos os partidos e forças anti-imperialistas e antifeudais. A palavra "classe" foi substituída pela palavra "partido" e a palavra "estado" foi substituída pela palavra "governo". Não se tratava de mudanças meramente semânticas. De 1948 a 1951, o Partido declarou que seu objetivo era a criação de um Estado Democrático Popular, que foi o ponto de partida da ditadura do proletariado. Deixando de lado as ambiguidades e evasões contidas na fórmula da "Democracia Popular", o objetivo era, no entanto, claro. O Terceiro Congresso do Partido em Madurai enfatizou que a tarefa central do Partido era a luta para substituir o governo do Congresso por um "governo popular de unidade democrática". E aqui, claramente, "democracia popular" não era sinônimo de ditadura do proletariado. Foi concebido como uma aliança do PCI e dos partidos "democráticos" anticongresso. O objetivo do Partido passou a ser adquirir maioria parlamentar e reunir aliados suficientes para formar governos. Em suas diferentes formas, esta continua sendo a política do PCI e do PCI(m).
Você poderia explicar por que, apesar de todos os seus erros sectários, o PCI se saiu tão bem nas eleições gerais de 1951? Ele sofreu repressão, estava isolado das forças anti-imperialistas e tomou apenas uma decisão de última hora, obviamente correta, de participar das eleições.
I think we were all surprised by the election results. We got about twenty-six or twenty-seven seats in parliament, became the largest party after the Congress and the main focus of opposition to the government. In some cases our candidates got more votes than even Nehru and overnight a whole number of comrades who had only recently been underground or in prison became members of parliament or of provincial assemblies. I think the main reason for this success was not that the people who voted for us thought that our sectarian line was correct. The major factor was that the party cadres were em- bedded in the mass movement. They worked in the trade unions and the peasants’ organizations and many of them were respected for their honesty and courage. Thus the vote for the CPI in the 1951 election was a straightforward class vote and it revealed the potentialities which existed. The fact that these were not realized is shown on one level in the representation of the party inside parliament today, which is rough- ly the same as in 1951.
Após a guinada para o parlamentarismo, houve alguma discussão dentro do partido sobre quais táticas extraparlamentares deveriam ser adotadas? Certamente seria difícil simplesmente desligar os membros do partido das lutas de massa.
Yes, there were discussions on party committees. The Soviet Union had, after the Korean War, embarked once again on a policy of peace and collaboration with capitalist powers, which Khruschev was to later theorize as ‘peaceful co-existence’. Both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China began to praise the government of India for its ‘progressive’ policies, especially its foreign policy based on non- alignment. During their visits to India, Khruschev and Chou En-lai attracted huge crowds. Nehru became one of the architects of the 'Bandung Spirit’. It was against this background that the debate in our party continued. Is India really free or still subservient to British im- perialism? Who do we ally ourselves with in the political arena? I remember the debates we had in the Malabar Provincial Committee of the CPI of which I was the secretary, and in the pre-Congress dis- cussion in the Malabar Conference of the Party. Some wanted a Con- gress-Communist coalition government, others argued for an anti- Congress front and concentrated their fire on the INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress) which was under the leadership of the Con- gress. Both conceived of the problem as essentially one of winning elections. What these comrades did not realize was that by attempting to unite the class for struggle against its oppressors we would at the same time have weakened the Congress electorally. I, therefore, dis- agreed with both these lines. My position at that time was for the CPI to have, first of all, a mass line for the struggles ahead. We should conceive of the struggle basically as one between classes and not par- ties. Accordingly we should attempt united actions between the AITUC and the INTUC and other trade unions against the capitalists with the aim of uniting the working class and other mass organizations which had been disrupted in the immediate postwar period. I argued that on the basis of class unity we should attempt to unite all progressive sec- tions of the people, including Congress supporters, for the implemen- tation of land reforms, for workers’ rights, for more democratic liberties, for a firm anti-imperialist foreign policy, etc. and, through these struggles, wean away the masses from bourgeois influence and build the hegemony of the working class. The political resolution moved by me on the above basis was passed by a majority in the Malabar Party Conference.
The Fourth Congress of the Party was held in 1956 at Palghat in Kerala. The emphasis of the majority was on an anti-Congress Front. This well suited their theory that the Indian bourgeoisie was sub-servient to British finance capital. P. C. Joshi, Bhawani Sen, myself and a few others actually distributed an alternative resolution to the official one which Joshi moved on our behalf. Our resolution pointed out that the Congress government was not subservient to imperialism although it occasionally made compromises, that it served primarily the sectional interests of the bourgeoisie and not of the common people, that all the acute problems that plagued our people arose because of the bourgeois leadership of the country and that therefore the real remedy lay in establishing proletarian leadership in completing the bourgeois democratic revolution. It called upon the different trade unions like the AITUC, INTUC, HMS and UTOC to merge themselves into a single, united trade-union centre. It called for the united mass organizations to inter- vene to mould the Second Five Year Plan in their own and the country’s true interests. It stressed the need of building a United National Demo- cratic Front as a powerful mass movement to fuse together the masses both within the Congress and outside through struggles against the remnants of imperialism and feudalism and against the reactionary policies of the right wing. We thought that such a united democratic front was the means to build the hegemony of the proletariat. Our resolution was defeated but one-fourth of the delegates supported us. Some of the amendments moved on our behalf were incorporated into the official resolution with the result that it was later interpreted in different ways.
Qual foi o impacto direto do 20º Congresso do PCUS no congresso do PCI? Foi discutido?
Yes, certainly. A resolution was submitted to our Congress on the
changes in the Soviet Union. It approved the general drift of Khrus-
chev’s speech, but demanded more discussion on the subjects he had
raised. There was, however, not a full discussion on this either at the
Party Congress or after. The reason for insisting on further discussion
was because most comrades were not convinced of the correctness of
the attack on Stalin. I myself began to rethink radically a whole num-
ber of questions after 1956. I wanted to defend Khruschev for his
attack on Stalin even though I had been a staunch Stalinist up till that
time. For two or three nights after the 20th Party Congress I could not
sleep. A man we had been taught to worship, the idol of our world
movement, had been attacked and by his own former comrades. Even
after reading Khruschev ’s secret report I remained in a state of shell
shock; I could not believe it for some time, but after re-reading and
thinking I came to the conclusion that Khruschev was correct and I
began to defend him against the supporters of Stalin. It was for Khrus-
chev ’s attack on Stalin that a number of comrades began attacking him
as a revisionist, because his other theses were not too different to
Stalin’s own practice.
Após a guinada para o parlamentarismo, houve alguma discussão dentro do partido sobre quais táticas extraparlamentares deveriam ser adotadas? Certamente seria difícil simplesmente desligar os membros do partido das lutas de massa.
Yes, there were discussions on party committees. The Soviet Union had, after the Korean War, embarked once again on a policy of peace and collaboration with capitalist powers, which Khruschev was to later theorize as ‘peaceful co-existence’. Both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China began to praise the government of India for its ‘progressive’ policies, especially its foreign policy based on non- alignment. During their visits to India, Khruschev and Chou En-lai attracted huge crowds. Nehru became one of the architects of the 'Bandung Spirit’. It was against this background that the debate in our party continued. Is India really free or still subservient to British im- perialism? Who do we ally ourselves with in the political arena? I remember the debates we had in the Malabar Provincial Committee of the CPI of which I was the secretary, and in the pre-Congress dis- cussion in the Malabar Conference of the Party. Some wanted a Con- gress-Communist coalition government, others argued for an anti- Congress front and concentrated their fire on the INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress) which was under the leadership of the Con- gress. Both conceived of the problem as essentially one of winning elections. What these comrades did not realize was that by attempting to unite the class for struggle against its oppressors we would at the same time have weakened the Congress electorally. I, therefore, dis- agreed with both these lines. My position at that time was for the CPI to have, first of all, a mass line for the struggles ahead. We should conceive of the struggle basically as one between classes and not par- ties. Accordingly we should attempt united actions between the AITUC and the INTUC and other trade unions against the capitalists with the aim of uniting the working class and other mass organizations which had been disrupted in the immediate postwar period. I argued that on the basis of class unity we should attempt to unite all progressive sec- tions of the people, including Congress supporters, for the implemen- tation of land reforms, for workers’ rights, for more democratic liberties, for a firm anti-imperialist foreign policy, etc. and, through these struggles, wean away the masses from bourgeois influence and build the hegemony of the working class. The political resolution moved by me on the above basis was passed by a majority in the Malabar Party Conference.
The Fourth Congress of the Party was held in 1956 at Palghat in Kerala. The emphasis of the majority was on an anti-Congress Front. This well suited their theory that the Indian bourgeoisie was sub-servient to British finance capital. P. C. Joshi, Bhawani Sen, myself and a few others actually distributed an alternative resolution to the official one which Joshi moved on our behalf. Our resolution pointed out that the Congress government was not subservient to imperialism although it occasionally made compromises, that it served primarily the sectional interests of the bourgeoisie and not of the common people, that all the acute problems that plagued our people arose because of the bourgeois leadership of the country and that therefore the real remedy lay in establishing proletarian leadership in completing the bourgeois democratic revolution. It called upon the different trade unions like the AITUC, INTUC, HMS and UTOC to merge themselves into a single, united trade-union centre. It called for the united mass organizations to inter- vene to mould the Second Five Year Plan in their own and the country’s true interests. It stressed the need of building a United National Demo- cratic Front as a powerful mass movement to fuse together the masses both within the Congress and outside through struggles against the remnants of imperialism and feudalism and against the reactionary policies of the right wing. We thought that such a united democratic front was the means to build the hegemony of the proletariat. Our resolution was defeated but one-fourth of the delegates supported us. Some of the amendments moved on our behalf were incorporated into the official resolution with the result that it was later interpreted in different ways.
Qual foi o impacto direto do 20º Congresso do PCUS no congresso do PCI? Foi discutido?
Yes, certainly. A resolution was submitted to our Congress on the
changes in the Soviet Union. It approved the general drift of Khrus-
chev’s speech, but demanded more discussion on the subjects he had
raised. There was, however, not a full discussion on this either at the
Party Congress or after. The reason for insisting on further discussion
was because most comrades were not convinced of the correctness of
the attack on Stalin. I myself began to rethink radically a whole num-
ber of questions after 1956. I wanted to defend Khruschev for his
attack on Stalin even though I had been a staunch Stalinist up till that
time. For two or three nights after the 20th Party Congress I could not
sleep. A man we had been taught to worship, the idol of our world
movement, had been attacked and by his own former comrades. Even
after reading Khruschev ’s secret report I remained in a state of shell
shock; I could not believe it for some time, but after re-reading and
thinking I came to the conclusion that Khruschev was correct and I
began to defend him against the supporters of Stalin. It was for Khrus-
chev ’s attack on Stalin that a number of comrades began attacking him
as a revisionist, because his other theses were not too different to
Stalin’s own practice.
Foi no Congresso do Partido de 1956 que fui eleito para o órgão máximo do partido, o Conselho Nacional. Antes disso, trabalhei exclusivamente em nível provincial e me concentrei na construção do partido em Kerala.
Not long after your Fourth Party Congress, the CPI won a tremendous victory in the provincial elections in Kerala, emerging as the largest party in the legislature. Its leader E. M. S. Namboodiripad formed the first ever Communist government in India. The election clearly showed that the party had mass support in the province and it also struck a blow against the dominant cold war ideology of the time. However, what in your view was the real impact of this victory both on the mass movement and on the future evolution of the CPI?
Soon after the formation of the Communist government, there was a
heated discussion within the leadership of the Kerala CP on the nature
of the new government. The dominant view, held by the central leaders
including Namboodiripad, was that the workers had captured power
in Kerala by peaceful means, by winning a majority in the elections,
and that Kerala would become the best example of the peaceful road to
socialism. It was the first time that this had happened anywhere in the
world and it showed the way to the future for comrades throughout
the world. This was the initial reaction of the leadership.
I did not agree with this view. I argued that the state remained a
capitalist state despite the Communist victory and that it would be
wrong to spread illusions to the contrary. I was supported by a small
number of comrades. A joy Ghosh the Party secretary was sent from
Delhi to discuss with the Kerala leadership to try and solve the dispute.
Both views were put to him. I spoke for the minority and argued that
we were exercising governmental power in a province, but that the
state both provincially and nationally remained capitalist and that the
main problem which confronted us was how to use this situation in
order to strengthen the Party and the mass movement. In other words
the working class had not come to power. E.M.S. put forward the
majority view and after he had finished Ajoy Ghosh waved his finger
at me and asked: ‘You mean to say that E. M. S. Namboodiripad is
bourgeois? Is he not a representative of the working class?’ and much
else along the same lines. Needless to say that was not what I had
meant. The question was whether the state was bourgeois or not.
Namboodiripad was only the Chief Minister of a Provincial Govern-
ment. Ghosh backed the majority and that was that. I held my views,
but all opposition ceased. It was only after the Kerala government had
been dismissed that Namboodiripad wrote an article in Communist ,
which was then the theoretical organ of the Kerala unit of the CPI, in
which he argued that the state had not been a workers’ state. If this
wisdom had dawned on him earlier it is possible that the situation
would have been entirely different, as the Party would have given
primacy to the extra-parliamentary mass struggle which had swept it to
power. But Kerala left within the CPI leaders an overwhelming desire
to win power and form ministries through electoral means. We can
still see it in both the segments of what used to be the CPI. Alliances
are made not on the basis of principle, but to get government office.
The impact of the victory on the masses was tremendous. Immediately
after the victory the workers and poor peasants, in the main, were
jubilant. They felt very deeply that the new government would satisfy
their demands. There was a tremendous feeling of pride and strength
in the working class. I remember hearing poor, illiterate workers telling
policemen on the streets: 'Now you daren’t attack us because our
government is in power. Namboodiripad is our leader. We are ruling.’
This was not an uncommon view. The reserves of goodwill which
existed for the government were considerable. Amongst the poor
peasants, sections of the students and teachers there was also a feeling of joy, which increased when they saw how discomfiting the victory
was for the landlords, the capitalists and for reactionaries in general.
In the first weeks after the election the CP ministers made very radical
speeches, constantly stressing their support for the struggle of the
workers.
But these promises were in the main, restricted to speeches. Namboo-
diripad and his Ministers discovered fairly quickly that the civil service
was a powerful entity and that the Chief Secretary, the top civil servant
in the province, was functioning on orders from the Centre and not
from the provincial Chief Minister. The same went for the police and
furthermore no laws could be passed without the sanction of the Centre.
So even as far as inaugurating a number of reforms was concerned the
CP ministry found itself powerless. As it had no other real perspectives
it found itself in a blind alley. Nothing radically new happened and
after a while the novelty of having a communist government began to
wear off. In some cases jubilation turned to passivity and in others to
open and bitter disillusionment.
An important test for the new government arose a few months after
they had been elected. Workers in a factory near Quilon, a town close
to the capital city of Trivandrum, went on strike. The union in that
factory was under the leadership of the RSP (Revolutionary Socialist
Party). The strike was not against the government, but against the
employer in that particular factory. It was a typical trade-union struggle.
I remember vividly how the situation developed. We were sitting at a
meeting of the State Council of the CPI (which consisted of about
sixty comrades) when news was brought to us that three workers on
strike had been shot dead by the police. We were stunned. Workers
had been shot dead by the police while the Communists were in office.
The immediate response of all the comrades present was to condemn
the firing, institute an immediate enquiry, give compensation to the
bereaved families, publicly apologize to the workers on strike and give
a public assurance that such a thing would never happen again while
we were in government. This was our instinctive class response. But a
discussion started which lasted for two hours and at the end of it the
decisions taken were completely different to our initial response. In my
view the whole business was unjustifiable, but it is necessary to under-
stand the context of the time.
The reactionary groups and parties had started a campaign against us
under the demagogic slogan of 'Join the Liberation Struggle Against
Communist Rule’. They had begun to exploit our weaknesses. The
movement was spearheaded by the Roman Catholic priests (as you
know Kerala has a significant Catholic population) and the Nair Com-
munalists. But all those opposed to the CPI joined them including the
right and left social democrats (the Socialist Party and the RSP) and the
movement was beginning to gather mass support. It was in this con-
text that the police firing took place. The logic of the comrades who
advocated changing the initial position on the firing went something
like this: if we attack the police, there will be a serious decline in their
morale; if there is a serious decline in their morale the anti-communist
movement will be strengthened; if the anti-communist movement is strengthened our government will be overthrown; if our government
is overthrown it will be a tremendous blow against the communist
movement. The final resolution passed by the party defended the police
action. It was then decided that someone must go to the spot to explain
our point of view, attack the RSP and defend the police action. I was
supposed to be one of the party’s effective Malayalam orators and I was
asked to go and speak on behalf of the Kerala CP. My response was to
refuse and maintain that I had been unable to digest the decision taken
by the Council and therefore I could not defend it. I was then formally
instructed by the party leadership to go and defend the party. I went. I
spoke for about an hour and a half and it was pure demagogy. I blamed
the deaths of the three workers on the irresponsibility of the RSP and
asked them to publicly explain why they had led these workers to be
shot. I made vicious attacks on the strike leaders. That night when I
returned home I really felt sick inside. I could not sleep. I kept thinking
that I should have refused to defend the party and I felt that I was going
mad. I shouted at my wife. Instead of having shouted and hurled abuse
at the party leaders, who had put me in such a situation, I took it out on
my wife. The next day I was asked to speak at three different places and
make the same speech. This time I refused pointblank and my refusal
was accepted.
While the firing obviously had a traumatic effect on a number of party members such as yourself did it also have a lasting effect on the working class?
Obviously it weakened the government and dented its mass support,
but a significant section of our supporters remained solid despite the
Quilon incidents. Of course the reactionaries increased their support,
but, even at that stage, if the CPI leaders had understood the dialectical
interrelationship between parliamentary and mass work and under-
stood that the former must always be subordinated to the needs of the
struggle we would have maintained our strength and probably in-
creased it tenfold. In the process we would have been dismissed from
office, as we were in any case, but we would have been in an im-
measurably stronger situation and we could have educated the masses
in the limitations of bourgeois democracy. Real revolutionary con-
sciousness could have been developed. None of this was done and at
the same time Namboodiripad made speeches predicting a civil war,
which flowed logically from his view that the working class had taken
the power. These speeches were then used by the Congress leadership
to further attack and weaken the government. It soon became obvious
from press reports and statements by Congress leaders that the Centre
was considering the imposition of President's Rule and the dissolution
of the government. The growth of the reactionary-led mass movement
within Kerala was also reaching its peak. It soon became difficult for
CP leaders to go anywhere without being stoned and this included my-
self. It was at this time that Nehru decided to visit Kerala and see the
situation for himself. He was besieged by petitioners demanding the
immediate dismissal of the government. Of course he also met us. He
had a number of separate meetings with the government ministers and
a delegation of the state committee of the CP. I was one of the members
of this delegation. I remember in his discussions with us the first ques-
tion he asked us was: ‘How did you manage to so wonderfully isolate yourself from the people in such a short space of time?' He then sug-
gested that the communist government could continue on the con-
dition that there would be new elections in order to let the electorate
decide. The state committee convened a special session to discuss
Nehru’s proposal and on Namboodiripad’s insistence decided to reject
the proposal. We were prepared to accept new elections only in the
event that they were held in all the other provinces! I felt even then
that it was a wrong decision. We should have accepted Nehru's pro-
posal, won ourselves a breathing space and then entered into battle
with the opposition, which in any case was a motley collection of
reactionaries, bandwagon opportunists and social-democrats. Second-
ly the elections would have been held with the communist govern-
ment in office which would have neutralized if not completely impeded
the intervention against us by the state apparatus: the use of civil
servants and the police. In any case we refused and in 1959 the govern-
ment was dismissed. But in the next election, held a year and a half
later, we increased our share of the popular vote though we got fewer
seats. So while we were defeated electorally it was not a real defeat in
the eyes of the masses. And this despite all our errors and mistakes.
The electoral victory in Kerala undoubtedly made the CPI into a
national force; its prestige increased tenfold and communist enthu-
siasts answering the stale headlines of the bourgeois commentators
replied: ‘After Nehru, Namboodiripad!’ The importance of Kerala in
that sense was the feeling that Congress could be defeated and that an
alternative existed, namely, the Communist Party of India. This was
not an unimportant factor given the international situation. Of course
even within the CPI there were criticisms of the way in which the
E.M.S. ministry had condoned the killing of workers. The state com-
mittee of the West Bengal CPI wrote a letter criticizing the Kerala
party. But despite all this Namboodiripad drew larger crowds than
any other CPI leader and had become a national figure in his own right
as the leader of the successful Kerala CPI. The CP Congress in Amritsar
in 1958 also treated him as a hero and announced that power could be
taken electorally, a view which was facilitated by the positions being
developed by the Soviet party. There were some amendments to the
main resolution and a few comrades expressed doubts, but by and
large there was a consensus. The Amritsar line was to be applied
nationally.
Was there never a real discussion within the leadership , even after 1959, of the
problems posed on a strategic level by electoral victories won by parties pledged
to some form of socialist transformation. Surely one of the key weaknesses of the
CPI in Kerala, the CPM in West Bengal and, later , the Popular Unity in Chile
was that there was no understanding of the necessity of helping to stimulate and
create organs of popular power of a Soviet type which could organize the masses
independently of the bourgeois state and coidd be utilized to challenge the state
when the need arose. This whole dimension has been absent from the strategy of
the Communist parties for many decades.
These problems you mention are very important and vital ones, but I am sorry to say that they did not enter into the discussions which took place. One of the results of Stalinism has been precisely that the key importance of organizing the masses through their own organs of power, such as soviets, has disappeared. The party has been seen as the sole representative of the masses.
As for my own political development, I continued to develop doubts
after 1956. The question of Stalin was resolved for me by Khruschev’s
speech, but on international issues I was to remain totally confused.
For instance on Hungary my position was completely orthodox. I
even wrote a pamphlet called ‘What Happened in Hungary’ to answer
the widespread attacks on the Soviet Union in every bourgeois news-
paper. So, in spite of 1956, the change in my thinking was gradual. I
felt fairly regularly the need to read more, but then the material avail-
able to one at that time in India was also very limited. I thought in 1956
that I had broken with Stalinism, but looking back it is obvious that
this was not the case. The Amritsar line, the Kerala government, all
strengthened my doubts, but that is the level on which matters re-
mained: personal doubts, many of which were not expressed even
internally within the party. I am convinced that this must have been the
case with many a communist militant in those days. But there was no
revolutionary alternative to the line of the CPI.
A further change took place in 1958 when I had the opportunity to
visit the Soviet Union. I visited Tashkent in 1958 as a member of the
Indian Writers’ Delegation to attend an Afro-Asian writers’ conference.
The Chinese delegates were also present and were quite open about
explaining their difference with the Soviet Union. But I also had an
opportunity to see the Soviet Union and while the tremendous advan-
ces made cannot be denied, there was another side which made me
uneasy. In Moscow there was a special reception for the Indian dele-
gates which was attended by Khruschev. During this there was a
cultural show and to my surprise I discovered that the empty chair next
to me had been taken by Khruschev. So I used this opportunity to
discuss with him and attempt to clear my doubts. At that time you may
recall the Pasternak case had excited a great deal of attention. So I
asked Khruschev how he justified the treatment of Pasternak. How
was it possible that, fifty years after the Revolution, the Soviet govern-
ment still felt threatened by a novel written by Pasternak. I explained
that as a writer I could not justify the treatment meted out to him even
though, as a Marxist, I disagreed with his political line. I explained to
him that in a country like India where many anti-imperialists had been
sentenced to prison for their writings including poems and short
stories, it was impossible to justify and genuinely defend the Soviet
party on the Pasternak issue. Khruschev denied all responsibility for
the episode and claimed that it was done by the Writers’ Union and
suggested that I discuss the matter with them. It was obvious that he
was not anxious to discuss the issue. We then discussed the problem of
drinking in the Soviet Union and I asked if he had considered prohibi-
tion. He replied that they had, but if there was prohibition then im-
mediately illegal distilleries would begin to spring up and it would
create graver problems. I responded by suggesting that similarly if
they continued to ban books illegal distilleries of books would spring
up and could also create problems. Extremely irritated by now he
suggested that we concentrate on the ballet! I began to understand the limits of 'destalinization’. Attempts to discuss Yugoslavia and China
were also unsuccessful. Discussions with the officials of the Writers’
Union were more vigorous, but equally disappointing. As a result my
disillusionment began to deepen.
Did you visit any other countries apart from the Soviet Union. Did you , for instance, have an opportunity to visit the People’s Republic of China, where the revolution was more recent and in one sense more relevant to the problems confronting India?
After my trip to the Soviet Union I got more opportunities to travel
outside and discuss with foreign comrades. This was very vital for my
political evolution. For example, in i960 I attended the Third Congress
of the Vietnamese Workers Party in Hanoi. Harekrishan Konar and
myself were the fraternal delegates from the Indian party. I gave the
fraternal greetings from Indian Communists to the Congress and after-
wards discussed the situation with numerous comrades from different
countries. It was a very exciting period. The NLF was about to be
formed in the South and the Sino-Soviet split was beginning to domi-
nate communist gatherings. The Soviet delegation invited us to dinner
to explain their views, with which we were in any case familiar. The
discussion was continued the next day as both Konar and I subjected
the Russians to some extremely critical questioning. The positive
features of the early period of the Sino-Soviet dispute was that it allow-
ed the possibility of debate and discussion on fundamentals inside the
communist movement for the first time since the twenties.
The Chinese delegation invited us to go to Peking for a lengthy dis-
cussion. We were flown to Canton and from there in a special plane to
Peking. We spent a total of four days in the Chinese capital including a
5— hour session with Chou En-lai and other party leaders. The main
item of discussion was the Sino-Indian border dispute. An hour was
spent with the most intricate details relating to old maps, border trea-
ties and the like to establish China's claim to the border lands. I stated
my views quite openly. I said to the Chinese comrades: Legally, geo-
graphically, historically you may be correct. The question which con-
cerns me is what political purpose does this dispute over uninhabited
territory serve. You have come to an agreement with Pakistan and you
have given up some land. Why not do the same with India. It will
prevent the reactionaries from whipping up anti-Chinese chauvinism
and it will strengthen the Left movement in India. We will be able to
demonstrate the superiority of the method by which socialist states
settle border disputes. We could utilize this to strengthen the bond
between the Chinese revolution and the Indian masses. I explained that
this had been Lenin’s attitude when dealing with bourgeois govern-
ments such as Finland or even pre-capitalist monarchies such as Afghan-
istan. By doing so Lenin strengthened the Russian revolution and its
appeal to the broad masses. Immediately Chou said, ‘Lenin did the
correct thing’. But he explained it in terms of the Soviet state’s isolation
and the non-existence of a ‘socialist camp’. I responded by arguing that
while I did not have the texts on me there was considerable evidence
to show that Lenin’s motives were in reality to develop friendly rela-
tions with the peoples of these countries and not to allow the ruling classes to paint the Soviet Union as a big power gobbling up their
countries. Finally Chou said that he could not agree and that we should
agree to disagree on this point. I had an extremely soft spot for the
Chinese comrades and their revolution so I didn’t want to leave matters
there. I asked Chou: ‘Is there any danger of the US imperialists attack-
ing you through these disputed border territories?’ He replied in the
negative and said the threat was from the Nehru government and not
from the Americans in this instance. The next point of discussion was
on the Sino-Soviet dispute.
Here Chou stressed the betrayal they had felt when the Soviet Union,
because of political disagreements, had withdrawn their technicians from
China overnight. He was extremely bitter about this and complained
that they had even taken the blueprints away! I felt that the Russians
had been completely wrong, but I did not speak my mind as I did not
want to take sides between the two giants. I returned from the dis-
cussion fairly depressed with what the Soviet Union had done, but I
was not satisfied with Chou’s answers on the border question. I couldn’t
help feeling there was a trace of chauvinism in his attitudes. Konar
was much more sympathetic to the Chinese and on his return to India
he organized a number of study circles to explain their views.
Qual era a atitude dos camaradas vietnamitas naqueles dias?
The position of the Vietnamese then was what it remains today. They
saw in the dispute then the seeds of further and growing discord which
they felt could only aid imperialism. On that level they were not so
wrong and the attitude of both China and the Soviet Union towards the
Vietnamese struggle was not as it should have been. Before I left for
Peking we had a lengthy discussion with Ho Chi Minh in the course
of which we discussed Vietnam, India and the Sino-Soviet dispute. On
the last question he told us that he agreed neither with China nor the
Soviet Union and felt that their quarrels were reaching a stage where
they could harm the working-class movement internationally. He was
extremely anxious and apprehensive and he suggested that nothing
should be done to exacerbate the conflict. I asked why the Vietnamese
did not publish their positions in their press as it could be a useful way
of keeping the movement united, but he replied that they had decided
not to interfere in the dispute at all. He made a few jokes about the
Third World War theses and said that Vietnam was a small country
and even if a few people survived in China after the war there would
be no one left in Vietnam, so from pure self-interest they could not
support the theses. But all this was said in a semi-ironic vein. I must
confess that I found him the most cultured and charming of all the
communist leaders I have met. He impressed me a great deal by speak-
ing in six languages to welcome the delegations to Vietnam: Chinese,
Russian, Vietnamese, French, English and Spanish.
He gave a characteristic reply when I asked him how in his view the
Vietnamese party, which in the thirties was not much bigger than the
Indian party, had succeeded whereas we had failed. He replied: ‘There
you had Mahatma Gandhi, here I am the Mahatma Gandhi!' He then
went on to explain how they had utilized the anti-imperialist struggle to build their hegemony over the masses. They had become the leading
force in the anti-imperialist struggle and moved on to socialism. The
clear implication was that in India it was Gandhi and the Congress who
had kept control and that the CPI was at fault. He also explained as did
other Vietnamese leaders the endemic weaknesses of the Vietnamese
bourgeoisie, which of course contrasted very vividly with the strength
of the Indian bourgeoisie.
It was trips abroad which undoubtedly opened my mind, even though
in the beginning these trips were mainly to the Soviet Union and other
non-capitalist countries. I remember visiting the Soviet Union again in
1962 for health reasons. While in prison during 1940—5 I had managed
to learn a bit of Russian, enough to read Pravda, albeit at a snail’s pace.
The period I was in Moscow coincided with some anniversary com-
memorating Napoleon s failure to take Moscow and his subsequent
retreat. The very fact that a Tsarist victory was being celebrated was
odd enough in itself, but what compounded the error in my view was
the lengthy diatribe against Napoleon in the pages of Pravda. The
nationalist fervour of the article was horrifying to me. Of course
Napoleon was a counter-revolutionary in the context of the French
revolution, but in a war with Tsarist absolutism if one had to retro-
spectively take sides, it would be with Napoleon not the Tsar. After all
he was carrying the bourgeois-democratic revolution, even in a dis-
torted and impure form, to the territories being conquered. The whole
of reactionary Europe was arraigned against him. If anything, there is
an analogy with the Red Army's sweep into Eastern Europe at the
conclusion of the Second World War and the abolition of the capitalist
mode of production. I was lying in the hospital reading this article, and
I did not have much else to do, so I decided to write a letter to the
editor of Pravda expressing my shock and dismay at the reactionary
nature of this article. After that I used to grab eagerly a copy of Pravda
every day to see whether or not it had been printed and every day I was
disappointed. After a week I was visited by a member of the Central
Committee of CPSU who ostensibly came to inquire about my health.
And then he informed me that he had read my letter to Pravda. I asked
how he had read it, if it had been addressed to the Pravda editor. He
preferred to ignore this question and proceeded to defend the Pravda
assessment of Napoleon. I cut the discussion short by saying I would
be happy to discuss with him or any other comrade in the columns of
Pravda, but I would rather be spared a heavy-handed lecture in my
hospital room. Of course all these things are symptomatic of a more
serious disease, but this was the way in which my eyes were opened. If
you want to you can learn a lot in the Soviet Union!
This evolution continued in the years which followed and I visited
Western Europe twice in the period 1967—9. In Italy I discussed not
only with some of the Communist Party leaders, but also with com-
rades of II Manifesto, in France with dissident communists such as
Garaudy and some comrades of the new Left. I also personally ex-
perienced the after-effects of May 1968 and then I visited Britain. It
was coincidental that I happened to visit Western Europe at a time
when it was experiencing new upheavals and a mass radicalization,
but nonetheless once there my political evolution continued. I wanted to study developments taking place with an open mind and so I met all
the representatives of different currents which existed and discussed
with them. I witnessed for myself in France the differences on the
streets between the extreme Left and the PCF and I must confess I was
inclined to sympathize with the courage and conviction of the far Left
demonstrators, even though I could not completely agree with them.
Qual foi a base para a cisão no comunismo indiano que levou à existência de dois grandes partidos — PCI e CPM? Seria um reflexo parcial da cisão sino-soviética? Considerando que o PCI perdeu Kerala e Bengala, seus dois principais redutos, para o CPM, qual foi o impacto da cisão dentro do PCI?
Many people have written that the CPi/CPM split was a pure reflection
of the Sino-Soviet dispute. This is not correct. A more substantial
factor was the attitude towards the Sino-Indian conflict. As I have
already told you, I was not at all convinced by Chou En-lai’s explana-
tion of the Chinese position on the border dispute. I still think that the
CPI was correct in opposing the Chinese line. However, there is a big
difference between not supporting the Chinese position and supporting
your own bourgeoisie. I’m afraid that the statements of some of the
CPI leaders were totally chauvinist and merely parroted the speeches
made by the Congress leaders. There were even racist slurs of the
'yellow peril’ variety directed against the Chinese leaders and some of
the articles written by Dange attacking China and defending the Indian
bourgeoisie were outrageous, even for a communist leader steeped in
Stalinist traditions. Many of the comrades who left with the CPM were
disgusted by this and correctly so, but even this was not the main
reason for the split, which took place in 1964, some years after the
Sino-Indian border clashes.
In my view the major reason for the split was internal differences
related to the question of electoral alliances. Ever since the fall of the
Kerala ministry a discussion of sorts had been taking place and it
reached a head in 1964. If you study the party documents from i960 to
1964 you can trace the real causes of the split. There is a consistent
theme running through all these documents: parliamentary cretinism.
On this there are no major differences between the two sides. There is
agreement on the need to win more elections in the states and more
seats in the Lok Sabha. That is the road to communism in India. There
is a supplementary slogan embodied in the formula: ‘Break the Con-
gress monopoly’. It is around this that differences develop. Some party
leaders state that the key is to break the Congress monopoly, even if
this means having the Jan Sangh or the Muslim League as a partner.
Others state that the best way to break the monopoly is by aligning
with the progressive sections of the Congress against its right wing.
Thus the debate which led to a split in Indian communism was not on
differences around how best to overthrow the existing state and its
structures, but on how to win more seats. In my view it was tactical
differences which led to a split.
Other differences were there: on the Sino-Indian question, on an
assessment of the Soviet Union’s policies, but the main reason was
differences on the implementation of electoral tactics. The immediate reason for the walkout by the comrades who became the CPM leader-
ship was the affair of the Dange letter. This was a letter supposedly
written by Dange in 1924 to the British authorities offering his services
to them and a copy of this letter appeared in the national archives. The
CPI National Council set up a commission to investigate the whole
business. The majority of this commission absolved Dange by stating
that the letter was a forgery, but a minority stated that there was no
proof to indicate that Dange had not written the letter. One-third of
the thirty-two members of the Council left the meeting. They were not
to return. Of course it was clear that the Dange letter was merely the
pretext, but it was also clear that there were no fundamental differences.
I think the evolution of the two parties since that time has confirmed
this fact. While on the National Council the CPI had an overwhelming
majority, the situation in the state councils of the party was different. In
West Bengal the CPM had the majority and in Kerala the CPI had a very
narrow majority. But even this could be misleading. I'll explain why.
If you went below the state council to the district committees the
CPM had a majority in some, but if you went even lower down the scale
of branches and cells you would see that the CPI was virtually wiped out.
A large section of the base went with the CPM in Kerala. In Andhra
Pradesh the situation was roughly similar. In those areas where the
CP represented a mass current, the CPM gained the upper hand. The
reason for this is that many of the CPM leaders after the split and the
bulk of their middle cadres, including those who would in the following
years break with the CPM and align themselves with Peking, explained
the split in terms of the CPI being the 'Right Communists' who strug-
gled for reforms via electoral victories whereas the CPM struggled for
revolution. Many of the CPM’s middle cadres obviously believed this,
but the CPM leadership was engaged not in revolution, but in trying to
win elections. Their behaviour after the election victory of 1967 in
West Bengal showed this very clearly. But the bulk of those who
joined the CPM after the split did so because they genuinely believed
that the latter was going to lead them towards the revolution. In
addition many of those who were opposed to the line of the CPI and
the CPM nonetheless went with the CPM because they believed that the
latter had greater potential in the sense that it had taken with it the
best and most revolutionary sections of the base. So in all those areas
where there was a communist tradition the ranks went largely with
the CPM.
Why did you personally decide to stay with the CPIP
Because I was opposed to a split. I did not see that there were any
fundamental differences between the two groupings and I feared that
a split would further divide the trade-union movement, which is what
happened. Some time after the CPM split, the AITUC was also split, the
peasant organizations were split and the student organizations were
split. This weakened the Left considerably and enabled the Congress
and the parties on its right to strengthen their hold on the masses. It is
of course scandalous that the workers’ movement has to be permanently
divided in this fashion. Leaving aside the broader questions of trade-
union unity, at least the two communist parties could have maintained
a common trade-union structure in the interests of the class they claim to serve. The main reason they did not cannot simply be ascribed to
sectarianism. The reason is that given the weight they attach to elec-
toralism and the fact that they subordinate the extra-parliamentary
struggles to parliament, they need their own trade unions to gain
electoral support. Thus both parties utilize their respective trade-union,
student and peasant organizations mainly for electoral work. The basic
concept of unity against the class enemy on every front is lacking from
their politics. In any case I saw no reason to split from the CPI and join
the CPM and today I am still a member of the CPI. I still maintain that
my decision was correct.
There were rumblings in the CPI leadership over the invasion of Czechoslo vakia.
I know that the CPM defended the invasion without raising any doubts, but
within the CPI we heard that there was opposition and that this was not a
result of the desire not to offend ‘ democratic allies’ in India?
The National Council unanimously passed a resolution in 1968 approv-
ing the measures being carried out by Dubcek and pledging its support
to ‘socialism with a human face’. Then came the military intervention
of the Soviet Union. Immediately a discussion began and a number of
us visited the Czech embassy in New Delhi to collect all the materials
of the CPCz. There was an even split on the National Council. I think
that those who supported the Soviet Union had thirty-five votes and
we had thirty-four (it was not a well-attended meeting of the Council
in any case) with two initial abstentions. There was further discussion
and both the comrades who had abstained came over to our side so
that we now had a majority to oppose the Soviet intervention. Once
the party leaders realized that they were going to be defeated, they
became very conciliatory and suggested that we should not take an
immediate vote, but should open a three-month discussion period
throughout the party and circulate all the relevant documents. I agreed
because I thought that it would be a good thing if all the literature on
this question was discussed throughout the party. It could do us
nothing but good to have a real debate. But this promise was never
kept.
The next council meeting took place four months later. In that time
we had been deluged by visitors from the Soviet Union. Some of them
discussed with me as well, but I was not convinced one bit. In fact I
edited a book entitled ‘Whither Czechoslovakia?’ under a pseudonym
in which all the contributors were pro-CPI, but opposed to the Soviet
line. I made sure that not a single contributor could be attacked as an
'enemy of the CPi’. I do not know all the pressures that were applied.
In any case at the Council meeting the party apparatus had mobilized
all its forces and obtained a majority at that meeting. Immediately
afterwards I was questioned about the book and I admitted that I was
responsible for it. I was rebuked and an instruction was sent out that
this book was neither to be distributed nor read by any CPI members.
A public censure of me was proposed in the party press. A party leader
suggested that before the censure was published in New Age I should
be given fifteen days to rethink and recant. I said that it was they who
should have time to rethink. They nonetheless gave me fifteen days
respite and meanwhile some people came to see me and pressure me to apologize. They said that they didn’t want to censure me openly
because I was a leader of the party and well-respected. I refused point
blank. So the censure was published in a small corner of New Age. But
the very next day it was reported in great detail in all the bourgeois
newspapers that I had been censured for writing a book criticizing the
Soviet invasion and probably more copies of the book were sold than
would have been if the leaders of my party had ignored the whole
business. Despite all this, however, it is worth pointing out that a
discussion of sorts did take place inside the CPI in contrast to the CPM
which defended the invasion wholeheartedly.
Você pode me dizer quais são suas opiniões sobre Trotsky e o trotskismo?
Soon after the formation of the Communist government, there was a
heated discussion within the leadership of the Kerala CP on the nature
of the new government. The dominant view, held by the central leaders
including Namboodiripad, was that the workers had captured power
in Kerala by peaceful means, by winning a majority in the elections,
and that Kerala would become the best example of the peaceful road to
socialism. It was the first time that this had happened anywhere in the
world and it showed the way to the future for comrades throughout
the world. This was the initial reaction of the leadership.
I did not agree with this view. I argued that the state remained a
capitalist state despite the Communist victory and that it would be
wrong to spread illusions to the contrary. I was supported by a small
number of comrades. A joy Ghosh the Party secretary was sent from
Delhi to discuss with the Kerala leadership to try and solve the dispute.
Both views were put to him. I spoke for the minority and argued that
we were exercising governmental power in a province, but that the
state both provincially and nationally remained capitalist and that the
main problem which confronted us was how to use this situation in
order to strengthen the Party and the mass movement. In other words
the working class had not come to power. E.M.S. put forward the
majority view and after he had finished Ajoy Ghosh waved his finger
at me and asked: ‘You mean to say that E. M. S. Namboodiripad is
bourgeois? Is he not a representative of the working class?’ and much
else along the same lines. Needless to say that was not what I had
meant. The question was whether the state was bourgeois or not.
Namboodiripad was only the Chief Minister of a Provincial Govern-
ment. Ghosh backed the majority and that was that. I held my views,
but all opposition ceased. It was only after the Kerala government had
been dismissed that Namboodiripad wrote an article in Communist ,
which was then the theoretical organ of the Kerala unit of the CPI, in
which he argued that the state had not been a workers’ state. If this
wisdom had dawned on him earlier it is possible that the situation
would have been entirely different, as the Party would have given
primacy to the extra-parliamentary mass struggle which had swept it to
power. But Kerala left within the CPI leaders an overwhelming desire
to win power and form ministries through electoral means. We can
still see it in both the segments of what used to be the CPI. Alliances
are made not on the basis of principle, but to get government office.
The impact of the victory on the masses was tremendous. Immediately
after the victory the workers and poor peasants, in the main, were
jubilant. They felt very deeply that the new government would satisfy
their demands. There was a tremendous feeling of pride and strength
in the working class. I remember hearing poor, illiterate workers telling
policemen on the streets: 'Now you daren’t attack us because our
government is in power. Namboodiripad is our leader. We are ruling.’
This was not an uncommon view. The reserves of goodwill which
existed for the government were considerable. Amongst the poor
peasants, sections of the students and teachers there was also a feeling of joy, which increased when they saw how discomfiting the victory
was for the landlords, the capitalists and for reactionaries in general.
In the first weeks after the election the CP ministers made very radical
speeches, constantly stressing their support for the struggle of the
workers.
But these promises were in the main, restricted to speeches. Namboo-
diripad and his Ministers discovered fairly quickly that the civil service
was a powerful entity and that the Chief Secretary, the top civil servant
in the province, was functioning on orders from the Centre and not
from the provincial Chief Minister. The same went for the police and
furthermore no laws could be passed without the sanction of the Centre.
So even as far as inaugurating a number of reforms was concerned the
CP ministry found itself powerless. As it had no other real perspectives
it found itself in a blind alley. Nothing radically new happened and
after a while the novelty of having a communist government began to
wear off. In some cases jubilation turned to passivity and in others to
open and bitter disillusionment.
An important test for the new government arose a few months after
they had been elected. Workers in a factory near Quilon, a town close
to the capital city of Trivandrum, went on strike. The union in that
factory was under the leadership of the RSP (Revolutionary Socialist
Party). The strike was not against the government, but against the
employer in that particular factory. It was a typical trade-union struggle.
I remember vividly how the situation developed. We were sitting at a
meeting of the State Council of the CPI (which consisted of about
sixty comrades) when news was brought to us that three workers on
strike had been shot dead by the police. We were stunned. Workers
had been shot dead by the police while the Communists were in office.
The immediate response of all the comrades present was to condemn
the firing, institute an immediate enquiry, give compensation to the
bereaved families, publicly apologize to the workers on strike and give
a public assurance that such a thing would never happen again while
we were in government. This was our instinctive class response. But a
discussion started which lasted for two hours and at the end of it the
decisions taken were completely different to our initial response. In my
view the whole business was unjustifiable, but it is necessary to under-
stand the context of the time.
The reactionary groups and parties had started a campaign against us
under the demagogic slogan of 'Join the Liberation Struggle Against
Communist Rule’. They had begun to exploit our weaknesses. The
movement was spearheaded by the Roman Catholic priests (as you
know Kerala has a significant Catholic population) and the Nair Com-
munalists. But all those opposed to the CPI joined them including the
right and left social democrats (the Socialist Party and the RSP) and the
movement was beginning to gather mass support. It was in this con-
text that the police firing took place. The logic of the comrades who
advocated changing the initial position on the firing went something
like this: if we attack the police, there will be a serious decline in their
morale; if there is a serious decline in their morale the anti-communist
movement will be strengthened; if the anti-communist movement is strengthened our government will be overthrown; if our government
is overthrown it will be a tremendous blow against the communist
movement. The final resolution passed by the party defended the police
action. It was then decided that someone must go to the spot to explain
our point of view, attack the RSP and defend the police action. I was
supposed to be one of the party’s effective Malayalam orators and I was
asked to go and speak on behalf of the Kerala CP. My response was to
refuse and maintain that I had been unable to digest the decision taken
by the Council and therefore I could not defend it. I was then formally
instructed by the party leadership to go and defend the party. I went. I
spoke for about an hour and a half and it was pure demagogy. I blamed
the deaths of the three workers on the irresponsibility of the RSP and
asked them to publicly explain why they had led these workers to be
shot. I made vicious attacks on the strike leaders. That night when I
returned home I really felt sick inside. I could not sleep. I kept thinking
that I should have refused to defend the party and I felt that I was going
mad. I shouted at my wife. Instead of having shouted and hurled abuse
at the party leaders, who had put me in such a situation, I took it out on
my wife. The next day I was asked to speak at three different places and
make the same speech. This time I refused pointblank and my refusal
was accepted.
While the firing obviously had a traumatic effect on a number of party members such as yourself did it also have a lasting effect on the working class?
Obviously it weakened the government and dented its mass support,
but a significant section of our supporters remained solid despite the
Quilon incidents. Of course the reactionaries increased their support,
but, even at that stage, if the CPI leaders had understood the dialectical
interrelationship between parliamentary and mass work and under-
stood that the former must always be subordinated to the needs of the
struggle we would have maintained our strength and probably in-
creased it tenfold. In the process we would have been dismissed from
office, as we were in any case, but we would have been in an im-
measurably stronger situation and we could have educated the masses
in the limitations of bourgeois democracy. Real revolutionary con-
sciousness could have been developed. None of this was done and at
the same time Namboodiripad made speeches predicting a civil war,
which flowed logically from his view that the working class had taken
the power. These speeches were then used by the Congress leadership
to further attack and weaken the government. It soon became obvious
from press reports and statements by Congress leaders that the Centre
was considering the imposition of President's Rule and the dissolution
of the government. The growth of the reactionary-led mass movement
within Kerala was also reaching its peak. It soon became difficult for
CP leaders to go anywhere without being stoned and this included my-
self. It was at this time that Nehru decided to visit Kerala and see the
situation for himself. He was besieged by petitioners demanding the
immediate dismissal of the government. Of course he also met us. He
had a number of separate meetings with the government ministers and
a delegation of the state committee of the CP. I was one of the members
of this delegation. I remember in his discussions with us the first ques-
tion he asked us was: ‘How did you manage to so wonderfully isolate yourself from the people in such a short space of time?' He then sug-
gested that the communist government could continue on the con-
dition that there would be new elections in order to let the electorate
decide. The state committee convened a special session to discuss
Nehru’s proposal and on Namboodiripad’s insistence decided to reject
the proposal. We were prepared to accept new elections only in the
event that they were held in all the other provinces! I felt even then
that it was a wrong decision. We should have accepted Nehru's pro-
posal, won ourselves a breathing space and then entered into battle
with the opposition, which in any case was a motley collection of
reactionaries, bandwagon opportunists and social-democrats. Second-
ly the elections would have been held with the communist govern-
ment in office which would have neutralized if not completely impeded
the intervention against us by the state apparatus: the use of civil
servants and the police. In any case we refused and in 1959 the govern-
ment was dismissed. But in the next election, held a year and a half
later, we increased our share of the popular vote though we got fewer
seats. So while we were defeated electorally it was not a real defeat in
the eyes of the masses. And this despite all our errors and mistakes.
The electoral victory in Kerala undoubtedly made the CPI into a
national force; its prestige increased tenfold and communist enthu-
siasts answering the stale headlines of the bourgeois commentators
replied: ‘After Nehru, Namboodiripad!’ The importance of Kerala in
that sense was the feeling that Congress could be defeated and that an
alternative existed, namely, the Communist Party of India. This was
not an unimportant factor given the international situation. Of course
even within the CPI there were criticisms of the way in which the
E.M.S. ministry had condoned the killing of workers. The state com-
mittee of the West Bengal CPI wrote a letter criticizing the Kerala
party. But despite all this Namboodiripad drew larger crowds than
any other CPI leader and had become a national figure in his own right
as the leader of the successful Kerala CPI. The CP Congress in Amritsar
in 1958 also treated him as a hero and announced that power could be
taken electorally, a view which was facilitated by the positions being
developed by the Soviet party. There were some amendments to the
main resolution and a few comrades expressed doubts, but by and
large there was a consensus. The Amritsar line was to be applied
nationally.
Was there never a real discussion within the leadership , even after 1959, of the
problems posed on a strategic level by electoral victories won by parties pledged
to some form of socialist transformation. Surely one of the key weaknesses of the
CPI in Kerala, the CPM in West Bengal and, later , the Popular Unity in Chile
was that there was no understanding of the necessity of helping to stimulate and
create organs of popular power of a Soviet type which could organize the masses
independently of the bourgeois state and coidd be utilized to challenge the state
when the need arose. This whole dimension has been absent from the strategy of
the Communist parties for many decades.
These problems you mention are very important and vital ones, but I am sorry to say that they did not enter into the discussions which took place. One of the results of Stalinism has been precisely that the key importance of organizing the masses through their own organs of power, such as soviets, has disappeared. The party has been seen as the sole representative of the masses.
As for my own political development, I continued to develop doubts
after 1956. The question of Stalin was resolved for me by Khruschev’s
speech, but on international issues I was to remain totally confused.
For instance on Hungary my position was completely orthodox. I
even wrote a pamphlet called ‘What Happened in Hungary’ to answer
the widespread attacks on the Soviet Union in every bourgeois news-
paper. So, in spite of 1956, the change in my thinking was gradual. I
felt fairly regularly the need to read more, but then the material avail-
able to one at that time in India was also very limited. I thought in 1956
that I had broken with Stalinism, but looking back it is obvious that
this was not the case. The Amritsar line, the Kerala government, all
strengthened my doubts, but that is the level on which matters re-
mained: personal doubts, many of which were not expressed even
internally within the party. I am convinced that this must have been the
case with many a communist militant in those days. But there was no
revolutionary alternative to the line of the CPI.
A further change took place in 1958 when I had the opportunity to
visit the Soviet Union. I visited Tashkent in 1958 as a member of the
Indian Writers’ Delegation to attend an Afro-Asian writers’ conference.
The Chinese delegates were also present and were quite open about
explaining their difference with the Soviet Union. But I also had an
opportunity to see the Soviet Union and while the tremendous advan-
ces made cannot be denied, there was another side which made me
uneasy. In Moscow there was a special reception for the Indian dele-
gates which was attended by Khruschev. During this there was a
cultural show and to my surprise I discovered that the empty chair next
to me had been taken by Khruschev. So I used this opportunity to
discuss with him and attempt to clear my doubts. At that time you may
recall the Pasternak case had excited a great deal of attention. So I
asked Khruschev how he justified the treatment of Pasternak. How
was it possible that, fifty years after the Revolution, the Soviet govern-
ment still felt threatened by a novel written by Pasternak. I explained
that as a writer I could not justify the treatment meted out to him even
though, as a Marxist, I disagreed with his political line. I explained to
him that in a country like India where many anti-imperialists had been
sentenced to prison for their writings including poems and short
stories, it was impossible to justify and genuinely defend the Soviet
party on the Pasternak issue. Khruschev denied all responsibility for
the episode and claimed that it was done by the Writers’ Union and
suggested that I discuss the matter with them. It was obvious that he
was not anxious to discuss the issue. We then discussed the problem of
drinking in the Soviet Union and I asked if he had considered prohibi-
tion. He replied that they had, but if there was prohibition then im-
mediately illegal distilleries would begin to spring up and it would
create graver problems. I responded by suggesting that similarly if
they continued to ban books illegal distilleries of books would spring
up and could also create problems. Extremely irritated by now he
suggested that we concentrate on the ballet! I began to understand the limits of 'destalinization’. Attempts to discuss Yugoslavia and China
were also unsuccessful. Discussions with the officials of the Writers’
Union were more vigorous, but equally disappointing. As a result my
disillusionment began to deepen.
Did you visit any other countries apart from the Soviet Union. Did you , for instance, have an opportunity to visit the People’s Republic of China, where the revolution was more recent and in one sense more relevant to the problems confronting India?
After my trip to the Soviet Union I got more opportunities to travel
outside and discuss with foreign comrades. This was very vital for my
political evolution. For example, in i960 I attended the Third Congress
of the Vietnamese Workers Party in Hanoi. Harekrishan Konar and
myself were the fraternal delegates from the Indian party. I gave the
fraternal greetings from Indian Communists to the Congress and after-
wards discussed the situation with numerous comrades from different
countries. It was a very exciting period. The NLF was about to be
formed in the South and the Sino-Soviet split was beginning to domi-
nate communist gatherings. The Soviet delegation invited us to dinner
to explain their views, with which we were in any case familiar. The
discussion was continued the next day as both Konar and I subjected
the Russians to some extremely critical questioning. The positive
features of the early period of the Sino-Soviet dispute was that it allow-
ed the possibility of debate and discussion on fundamentals inside the
communist movement for the first time since the twenties.
The Chinese delegation invited us to go to Peking for a lengthy dis-
cussion. We were flown to Canton and from there in a special plane to
Peking. We spent a total of four days in the Chinese capital including a
5— hour session with Chou En-lai and other party leaders. The main
item of discussion was the Sino-Indian border dispute. An hour was
spent with the most intricate details relating to old maps, border trea-
ties and the like to establish China's claim to the border lands. I stated
my views quite openly. I said to the Chinese comrades: Legally, geo-
graphically, historically you may be correct. The question which con-
cerns me is what political purpose does this dispute over uninhabited
territory serve. You have come to an agreement with Pakistan and you
have given up some land. Why not do the same with India. It will
prevent the reactionaries from whipping up anti-Chinese chauvinism
and it will strengthen the Left movement in India. We will be able to
demonstrate the superiority of the method by which socialist states
settle border disputes. We could utilize this to strengthen the bond
between the Chinese revolution and the Indian masses. I explained that
this had been Lenin’s attitude when dealing with bourgeois govern-
ments such as Finland or even pre-capitalist monarchies such as Afghan-
istan. By doing so Lenin strengthened the Russian revolution and its
appeal to the broad masses. Immediately Chou said, ‘Lenin did the
correct thing’. But he explained it in terms of the Soviet state’s isolation
and the non-existence of a ‘socialist camp’. I responded by arguing that
while I did not have the texts on me there was considerable evidence
to show that Lenin’s motives were in reality to develop friendly rela-
tions with the peoples of these countries and not to allow the ruling classes to paint the Soviet Union as a big power gobbling up their
countries. Finally Chou said that he could not agree and that we should
agree to disagree on this point. I had an extremely soft spot for the
Chinese comrades and their revolution so I didn’t want to leave matters
there. I asked Chou: ‘Is there any danger of the US imperialists attack-
ing you through these disputed border territories?’ He replied in the
negative and said the threat was from the Nehru government and not
from the Americans in this instance. The next point of discussion was
on the Sino-Soviet dispute.
Here Chou stressed the betrayal they had felt when the Soviet Union,
because of political disagreements, had withdrawn their technicians from
China overnight. He was extremely bitter about this and complained
that they had even taken the blueprints away! I felt that the Russians
had been completely wrong, but I did not speak my mind as I did not
want to take sides between the two giants. I returned from the dis-
cussion fairly depressed with what the Soviet Union had done, but I
was not satisfied with Chou’s answers on the border question. I couldn’t
help feeling there was a trace of chauvinism in his attitudes. Konar
was much more sympathetic to the Chinese and on his return to India
he organized a number of study circles to explain their views.
Qual era a atitude dos camaradas vietnamitas naqueles dias?
The position of the Vietnamese then was what it remains today. They
saw in the dispute then the seeds of further and growing discord which
they felt could only aid imperialism. On that level they were not so
wrong and the attitude of both China and the Soviet Union towards the
Vietnamese struggle was not as it should have been. Before I left for
Peking we had a lengthy discussion with Ho Chi Minh in the course
of which we discussed Vietnam, India and the Sino-Soviet dispute. On
the last question he told us that he agreed neither with China nor the
Soviet Union and felt that their quarrels were reaching a stage where
they could harm the working-class movement internationally. He was
extremely anxious and apprehensive and he suggested that nothing
should be done to exacerbate the conflict. I asked why the Vietnamese
did not publish their positions in their press as it could be a useful way
of keeping the movement united, but he replied that they had decided
not to interfere in the dispute at all. He made a few jokes about the
Third World War theses and said that Vietnam was a small country
and even if a few people survived in China after the war there would
be no one left in Vietnam, so from pure self-interest they could not
support the theses. But all this was said in a semi-ironic vein. I must
confess that I found him the most cultured and charming of all the
communist leaders I have met. He impressed me a great deal by speak-
ing in six languages to welcome the delegations to Vietnam: Chinese,
Russian, Vietnamese, French, English and Spanish.
He gave a characteristic reply when I asked him how in his view the
Vietnamese party, which in the thirties was not much bigger than the
Indian party, had succeeded whereas we had failed. He replied: ‘There
you had Mahatma Gandhi, here I am the Mahatma Gandhi!' He then
went on to explain how they had utilized the anti-imperialist struggle to build their hegemony over the masses. They had become the leading
force in the anti-imperialist struggle and moved on to socialism. The
clear implication was that in India it was Gandhi and the Congress who
had kept control and that the CPI was at fault. He also explained as did
other Vietnamese leaders the endemic weaknesses of the Vietnamese
bourgeoisie, which of course contrasted very vividly with the strength
of the Indian bourgeoisie.
It was trips abroad which undoubtedly opened my mind, even though
in the beginning these trips were mainly to the Soviet Union and other
non-capitalist countries. I remember visiting the Soviet Union again in
1962 for health reasons. While in prison during 1940—5 I had managed
to learn a bit of Russian, enough to read Pravda, albeit at a snail’s pace.
The period I was in Moscow coincided with some anniversary com-
memorating Napoleon s failure to take Moscow and his subsequent
retreat. The very fact that a Tsarist victory was being celebrated was
odd enough in itself, but what compounded the error in my view was
the lengthy diatribe against Napoleon in the pages of Pravda. The
nationalist fervour of the article was horrifying to me. Of course
Napoleon was a counter-revolutionary in the context of the French
revolution, but in a war with Tsarist absolutism if one had to retro-
spectively take sides, it would be with Napoleon not the Tsar. After all
he was carrying the bourgeois-democratic revolution, even in a dis-
torted and impure form, to the territories being conquered. The whole
of reactionary Europe was arraigned against him. If anything, there is
an analogy with the Red Army's sweep into Eastern Europe at the
conclusion of the Second World War and the abolition of the capitalist
mode of production. I was lying in the hospital reading this article, and
I did not have much else to do, so I decided to write a letter to the
editor of Pravda expressing my shock and dismay at the reactionary
nature of this article. After that I used to grab eagerly a copy of Pravda
every day to see whether or not it had been printed and every day I was
disappointed. After a week I was visited by a member of the Central
Committee of CPSU who ostensibly came to inquire about my health.
And then he informed me that he had read my letter to Pravda. I asked
how he had read it, if it had been addressed to the Pravda editor. He
preferred to ignore this question and proceeded to defend the Pravda
assessment of Napoleon. I cut the discussion short by saying I would
be happy to discuss with him or any other comrade in the columns of
Pravda, but I would rather be spared a heavy-handed lecture in my
hospital room. Of course all these things are symptomatic of a more
serious disease, but this was the way in which my eyes were opened. If
you want to you can learn a lot in the Soviet Union!
This evolution continued in the years which followed and I visited
Western Europe twice in the period 1967—9. In Italy I discussed not
only with some of the Communist Party leaders, but also with com-
rades of II Manifesto, in France with dissident communists such as
Garaudy and some comrades of the new Left. I also personally ex-
perienced the after-effects of May 1968 and then I visited Britain. It
was coincidental that I happened to visit Western Europe at a time
when it was experiencing new upheavals and a mass radicalization,
but nonetheless once there my political evolution continued. I wanted to study developments taking place with an open mind and so I met all
the representatives of different currents which existed and discussed
with them. I witnessed for myself in France the differences on the
streets between the extreme Left and the PCF and I must confess I was
inclined to sympathize with the courage and conviction of the far Left
demonstrators, even though I could not completely agree with them.
Qual foi a base para a cisão no comunismo indiano que levou à existência de dois grandes partidos — PCI e CPM? Seria um reflexo parcial da cisão sino-soviética? Considerando que o PCI perdeu Kerala e Bengala, seus dois principais redutos, para o CPM, qual foi o impacto da cisão dentro do PCI?
Many people have written that the CPi/CPM split was a pure reflection
of the Sino-Soviet dispute. This is not correct. A more substantial
factor was the attitude towards the Sino-Indian conflict. As I have
already told you, I was not at all convinced by Chou En-lai’s explana-
tion of the Chinese position on the border dispute. I still think that the
CPI was correct in opposing the Chinese line. However, there is a big
difference between not supporting the Chinese position and supporting
your own bourgeoisie. I’m afraid that the statements of some of the
CPI leaders were totally chauvinist and merely parroted the speeches
made by the Congress leaders. There were even racist slurs of the
'yellow peril’ variety directed against the Chinese leaders and some of
the articles written by Dange attacking China and defending the Indian
bourgeoisie were outrageous, even for a communist leader steeped in
Stalinist traditions. Many of the comrades who left with the CPM were
disgusted by this and correctly so, but even this was not the main
reason for the split, which took place in 1964, some years after the
Sino-Indian border clashes.
In my view the major reason for the split was internal differences
related to the question of electoral alliances. Ever since the fall of the
Kerala ministry a discussion of sorts had been taking place and it
reached a head in 1964. If you study the party documents from i960 to
1964 you can trace the real causes of the split. There is a consistent
theme running through all these documents: parliamentary cretinism.
On this there are no major differences between the two sides. There is
agreement on the need to win more elections in the states and more
seats in the Lok Sabha. That is the road to communism in India. There
is a supplementary slogan embodied in the formula: ‘Break the Con-
gress monopoly’. It is around this that differences develop. Some party
leaders state that the key is to break the Congress monopoly, even if
this means having the Jan Sangh or the Muslim League as a partner.
Others state that the best way to break the monopoly is by aligning
with the progressive sections of the Congress against its right wing.
Thus the debate which led to a split in Indian communism was not on
differences around how best to overthrow the existing state and its
structures, but on how to win more seats. In my view it was tactical
differences which led to a split.
Other differences were there: on the Sino-Indian question, on an
assessment of the Soviet Union’s policies, but the main reason was
differences on the implementation of electoral tactics. The immediate reason for the walkout by the comrades who became the CPM leader-
ship was the affair of the Dange letter. This was a letter supposedly
written by Dange in 1924 to the British authorities offering his services
to them and a copy of this letter appeared in the national archives. The
CPI National Council set up a commission to investigate the whole
business. The majority of this commission absolved Dange by stating
that the letter was a forgery, but a minority stated that there was no
proof to indicate that Dange had not written the letter. One-third of
the thirty-two members of the Council left the meeting. They were not
to return. Of course it was clear that the Dange letter was merely the
pretext, but it was also clear that there were no fundamental differences.
I think the evolution of the two parties since that time has confirmed
this fact. While on the National Council the CPI had an overwhelming
majority, the situation in the state councils of the party was different. In
West Bengal the CPM had the majority and in Kerala the CPI had a very
narrow majority. But even this could be misleading. I'll explain why.
If you went below the state council to the district committees the
CPM had a majority in some, but if you went even lower down the scale
of branches and cells you would see that the CPI was virtually wiped out.
A large section of the base went with the CPM in Kerala. In Andhra
Pradesh the situation was roughly similar. In those areas where the
CP represented a mass current, the CPM gained the upper hand. The
reason for this is that many of the CPM leaders after the split and the
bulk of their middle cadres, including those who would in the following
years break with the CPM and align themselves with Peking, explained
the split in terms of the CPI being the 'Right Communists' who strug-
gled for reforms via electoral victories whereas the CPM struggled for
revolution. Many of the CPM’s middle cadres obviously believed this,
but the CPM leadership was engaged not in revolution, but in trying to
win elections. Their behaviour after the election victory of 1967 in
West Bengal showed this very clearly. But the bulk of those who
joined the CPM after the split did so because they genuinely believed
that the latter was going to lead them towards the revolution. In
addition many of those who were opposed to the line of the CPI and
the CPM nonetheless went with the CPM because they believed that the
latter had greater potential in the sense that it had taken with it the
best and most revolutionary sections of the base. So in all those areas
where there was a communist tradition the ranks went largely with
the CPM.
Why did you personally decide to stay with the CPIP
Because I was opposed to a split. I did not see that there were any
fundamental differences between the two groupings and I feared that
a split would further divide the trade-union movement, which is what
happened. Some time after the CPM split, the AITUC was also split, the
peasant organizations were split and the student organizations were
split. This weakened the Left considerably and enabled the Congress
and the parties on its right to strengthen their hold on the masses. It is
of course scandalous that the workers’ movement has to be permanently
divided in this fashion. Leaving aside the broader questions of trade-
union unity, at least the two communist parties could have maintained
a common trade-union structure in the interests of the class they claim to serve. The main reason they did not cannot simply be ascribed to
sectarianism. The reason is that given the weight they attach to elec-
toralism and the fact that they subordinate the extra-parliamentary
struggles to parliament, they need their own trade unions to gain
electoral support. Thus both parties utilize their respective trade-union,
student and peasant organizations mainly for electoral work. The basic
concept of unity against the class enemy on every front is lacking from
their politics. In any case I saw no reason to split from the CPI and join
the CPM and today I am still a member of the CPI. I still maintain that
my decision was correct.
There were rumblings in the CPI leadership over the invasion of Czechoslo vakia.
I know that the CPM defended the invasion without raising any doubts, but
within the CPI we heard that there was opposition and that this was not a
result of the desire not to offend ‘ democratic allies’ in India?
The National Council unanimously passed a resolution in 1968 approv-
ing the measures being carried out by Dubcek and pledging its support
to ‘socialism with a human face’. Then came the military intervention
of the Soviet Union. Immediately a discussion began and a number of
us visited the Czech embassy in New Delhi to collect all the materials
of the CPCz. There was an even split on the National Council. I think
that those who supported the Soviet Union had thirty-five votes and
we had thirty-four (it was not a well-attended meeting of the Council
in any case) with two initial abstentions. There was further discussion
and both the comrades who had abstained came over to our side so
that we now had a majority to oppose the Soviet intervention. Once
the party leaders realized that they were going to be defeated, they
became very conciliatory and suggested that we should not take an
immediate vote, but should open a three-month discussion period
throughout the party and circulate all the relevant documents. I agreed
because I thought that it would be a good thing if all the literature on
this question was discussed throughout the party. It could do us
nothing but good to have a real debate. But this promise was never
kept.
The next council meeting took place four months later. In that time
we had been deluged by visitors from the Soviet Union. Some of them
discussed with me as well, but I was not convinced one bit. In fact I
edited a book entitled ‘Whither Czechoslovakia?’ under a pseudonym
in which all the contributors were pro-CPI, but opposed to the Soviet
line. I made sure that not a single contributor could be attacked as an
'enemy of the CPi’. I do not know all the pressures that were applied.
In any case at the Council meeting the party apparatus had mobilized
all its forces and obtained a majority at that meeting. Immediately
afterwards I was questioned about the book and I admitted that I was
responsible for it. I was rebuked and an instruction was sent out that
this book was neither to be distributed nor read by any CPI members.
A public censure of me was proposed in the party press. A party leader
suggested that before the censure was published in New Age I should
be given fifteen days to rethink and recant. I said that it was they who
should have time to rethink. They nonetheless gave me fifteen days
respite and meanwhile some people came to see me and pressure me to apologize. They said that they didn’t want to censure me openly
because I was a leader of the party and well-respected. I refused point
blank. So the censure was published in a small corner of New Age. But
the very next day it was reported in great detail in all the bourgeois
newspapers that I had been censured for writing a book criticizing the
Soviet invasion and probably more copies of the book were sold than
would have been if the leaders of my party had ignored the whole
business. Despite all this, however, it is worth pointing out that a
discussion of sorts did take place inside the CPI in contrast to the CPM
which defended the invasion wholeheartedly.
Você pode me dizer quais são suas opiniões sobre Trotsky e o trotskismo?
Não sou trotskista. Stálin era meu ídolo. Esse ídolo está em pedaços. Não quero substituir um ídolo quebrado por um novo, mesmo que não seja um ídolo quebrado, porque não acredito mais em idolatria. Acho que Trotsky, Bukharin, Rosa Luxemburgo, Gramsci, Lukács e outros marxistas deveriam ser seriamente estudados e avaliados criticamente por todos os comunistas. O marxismo ficará mais pobre se os eliminarmos da história do movimento comunista mundial. Não acredito na falsificação stalinista da história, na qual Trotsky foi retratado como um espião imperialista e um agente fascista. Parece que até mesmo os historiadores soviéticos abandonaram tais visões. Em uma nova história do PCUS publicada no final dos anos 1960, Trotsky foi criticado não por ser um espião fascista, mas por suas "visões incorretas". Mesmo essa mudança não é suficiente. Como disse Lukács, não se compreenderá a história da Revolução Russa se não se compreender o papel de Trotsky nela. Fico, portanto, feliz que "Dez Dias que Abalaram o Mundo", de John Reed, que oferece um excelente retrato dos dias turbulentos da Revolução Russa e do papel de Trotsky nela, tenha sido publicado recentemente na própria União Soviética, juntamente com a introdução de Lenin. Considero que algumas das importantes contribuições de Trotsky, como seu ensaio sobre a burocratização publicado no Inprecor em 1923, "Em Defesa do Marxismo", "Sobre Literatura e Arte", "História da Revolução Russa" e outras obras, são valiosas, e algumas de suas ideias ainda são relevantes. Isso não significa que eu concorde com tudo o que Trotsky disse ou escreveu. O desenvolvimento do marxismo precisa de um olhar crítico.
O senhor está envolvido no movimento comunista há mais de quarenta anos. Participa de seus órgãos dirigentes; representou-o no parlamento e em congressos de partidos irmãos, participou de seus debates, sem mencionar seu papel pioneiro em ajudar a lançar suas bases em Kerala, uma das duas regiões onde obteve maior sucesso. O senhor acredita que o movimento comunista indiano tradicional, no qual eu incluo o PCI, o CPM e os grupos fragmentados do Movimento Comunista Indiano (M-L), que, apesar das diferenças, têm uma base política e ideológica comum, tem futuro na Índia? Em outras palavras, esses grupos e partidos podem ser reformados ou há necessidade de um novo tipo de partido comunista?
Eu rejeitaria a visão de que todo o passado do comunismo indiano deva ser negado. Apesar de todas as deformações e erros, houve centenas e milhares de comunistas na Índia que lutaram e sofreram todo tipo de privações pelo socialismo e pela revolução. Uma série de lutas camponesas, lutas pelo sindicalismo e contra o imperialismo foram conduzidas pelos melhores militantes comunistas. A tragédia foi que a liderança, pelas razões que discutimos, foi incapaz de canalizar seus talentos e energias em uma direção revolucionária. Portanto, eu enfatizaria que toda a experiência não deve ser descartada. Há capítulos dela que precisam ser reapropriados por qualquer novo movimento comunista. Na base do PCI, do CPM e dos grupos de militantes comunistas, há milhares de ativistas dedicados que querem uma revolução socialista. Eles não podem ser ignorados. Além disso, muitos deles possuem experiências de lutas de massa. Muitos jovens militantes que não vivenciaram o stalinismo nos partidos tradicionais também estão se apresentando como marxistas e comunistas. Acredito firmemente que a unificação de todas as forças comunistas do país com base no marxismo-leninismo é essencial para o desenvolvimento do movimento comunista. Como isso será realizado, seja por meio de uma fusão ou unificação de todas essas forças sob um novo nome por meio de uma conferência, seja pelo surgimento de um novo Partido Comunista, etc., pode ser deixado para o futuro. Mas a unificação não pode ser alcançada quebrando a cabeça uns dos outros, mas apenas por meio de discussões baseadas em princípios, debates camaradas e ações unidas em prol de um programa comum. Isso só terá sucesso se as fileiras dos diferentes partidos comunistas elevarem seu próprio nível teórico e se capacitarem para intervir efetivamente neste grande debate. Sou otimista e tenho certeza de que, mesmo que os líderes da geração antiga e envelhecida falhem nessa tarefa, os revolucionários da nova geração estarão à altura da situação.
Entrevistador. Tariq Ali
May 1975
