Isn'tthere any way to bring the Communist Party to its senses? Throughout the years since first the party was established, in India around 1929, it has played a divisive and sometimes murderous rule. Particularly repulsive was its stand on the Quite India Movement. It is not necessary, in this context, to separate the CPM from the CPI. They are twins and share the same DNA. Violence has been in their blood and the Communists, whatever their internal differences have been, have revelled in murder. The violence indulged by the CPM in Nandigram is consistent with its character. The murderous role of the Maoists is only too well-known for reiteration.
The CPM came to power in West Bengal through violent techniques. It has stayed in power for the last three decades also through consistent use of violence. As Sunanda Sanyal, president of the Ganamukti Parishad wrote in Mainstream ( December 27, 2007) ?the fact is, such a party as the CPM cannot survive in power without knocking hell out of the lives of the people?. So infuriated were the intellectuals of Kolkata over the Singur and Nandigram events that 10 million of them marched on November 14, 2007, in unison, in Kolkata, to express their anger.
According to Mainstream, itself a Leftist paper, ?free India has rarely witnessed such a huge rally of intellectuals?. But the Nandigram massacre almost pales into insignificance in the context of the brutal killings in Kannur, a district in Kerala, where the CPM has been going crazy. Its target is the BJP and the RSS, both of which are steadily gaining ground in the state. In the first week of March, CPM goons hacked to death four RSS men while the police looked on helplessly. As a report in The Pioneer (March 8) noted, ?Police stood helpless in Thalassery, Koothuparambu, Panoor and other areas of Kannur District known for the murderous politics of the CPM?. In one village, Dharmadom, houses of two RSS workers were bombed by CPM goons. The former were compelled to retaliate.
According to Shri L.K. Advani, five BJP and RSS workers have been hacked?yes hacked?to death by the CPM murderers since March 5. One RSS worker, who was also a teacher, was recently killed right in front of young students when he was taking a class. The scene is best not described in all its gory details. The Congress keeps mum. It wants CPM'ssupport to stay in power, even when its Leftist ally threatens to withdraw it on the issue of signing the 123 Agreement. No self-respecting party would have accepted Communist support, considering its bloody role in the past. Is Sonia Gandhi, for instance, aware of the CPI'srole during the Quit India Movement? Peoples? War, the then united Communist Party'sorgan ridiculed the Quit India resolution and denigrated the clarion call issued by the Mahatma to ?Do or Die?. The paper went on to damn the Congress as a fascist organisation, naming as guilty not just the Mahatma but other Congress leaders as well. Subhas Chandra Bose who had escaped to Japan was similarly condemned as a Fascist?what else?
To curry favour with the British, CPI leader P.C.Joshi submitted to the government 120-page report on how the communists have been disrupting the Quit India Movement in province after province, with total dedication. That Report could not have been improved upon by any other collaborator of the British. Joshi was so anxious to prove his party? utility to the British rule that he claimed that he was doing a better job of stemming the Quit India Movement than the British government itself! What is even worse, the CPI, in a thesis proclaimed that India was a one nation, but not collection of separate nationalities, that the demand for Pakistan was a just and democratic one and that the Congress must concede to the Muslims the right of self-determination. In addition, the Communists helped police to arrest several hundred Congress volunteers who were actively participating in the post-1942 freedom struggle and had them tortured.
During 1942 the Communists were more loyal to the British than the King of England. They heaped insults on Gandhiji, Subhas Chandra Bose and Jayaprakash Narayan, ran down the Quit India Movement as an indication of bankruptcy of ideas and sided with China in the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962. That, surely, was the most traitorous act, and so far, no apology has come from the party. The CPM turned out to be just an Indian branch of the Chinese Communist Party. In the last week of June 1967, Radio Peking announced that ?a phase of peasants? armed struggle led by the revolutionaries of the Indian Communist Party has been set up in the countryside in Darjeeling district? and that ?this is the front paw of the revolutionary armed struggle launched by the Indian people, under the guidance of Mao Tse-tung'steachings?. Yes, Mao'steachings, not the Mahatma's! China hailed the emergence of this revolutionary armed revolution, in the actual words of Radio Peking.
Is Sonia Gandhi reading this? While the first sparks of so-called revolution were being lit in Naxalbari, another group of Marxists, under the direction of CPM leader B.T.Ranadive were preparing for action in Andhra Pradesh. Their leader was Tarimala Nagi Reddy, who proclaimed the futility of the parliamentarian path and deliberately took to violence. The Nehru Government had to respond by arresting and detaining as many as 50,000 CPM workers and sympathisers. The CPM today will argue that internal rivalries within the Communist movement as a whole led by different segments of the original party to various forms of violent activities should not be used to condemn Communism in toto. That is poor excuse. For the ordinary people, unaware of the niceties of ideological differences, all Communists are the same?violent prone, and it really does not matter whether different segments call themselves as CPI, CPI(M) or CPI (Marxist-Leninist). There was a time when gherao was the prescribed form of throttling private enterprise in West Bengal. It was frightening.
Today, violence takes other forms. The CPM, shockingly, now dictates to the Congress in the central government in matters of foreign policy and the Congress submits to pressures, meekly. It is to this sad state of affairs that the Congress has been reduced. At every period of Indian history, since 1929, Communists have shown their true colour. First, they served Soviet interests. Subsequently they were to serve Chinese interests, which the CPM still does. Who can forget how the CPM described itself during the brief Sono-Indian War? It declared Chairman Mao as its own chairman and it gave both overt and covert support to him. It is this party that is presently holding the Congress to ransom. Congress quivers with fear and helplessness. But what can one expect from a party whose sole objective is not serving the country but staying in power? What do Sonia Gandhi and her sycophants know of India'shistory for us to expect from them a sense of self-respect? A party once known for Gandhian non-violence is at the mercy of a party whose professed ideology is endless violence. It is to this sorry state that we have today come. Jai Hind. Jai Bharat.
