Putting down roots
International Viewpoint #259 September 1994
IN 1967 a peasant uprising in Naxalbari, West Bengal sparked off agrarian struggles throughout the Indian countryside. Out of these emerged the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), adhering to "Mao Zedong Thought". Always more of a movement composed of a number of groups than a party, most of the groups plunged themselves into armed struggle, seeking to replicate the Chinese model in Indian conditions. From around an original 60 groups, who tended to attack one another as violently as they did landlords and police, there are now five major groups. Earlier this year K. GOVINDAN spoke with B. SIVARAMAN, a central leader of one of these organisations: the 50 thousand strong CPI (ML). While we do not endorse everything said by Sivaraman - much of his historical analysis is at odds with our own - we believe that readers will agree that his party's evolution is not only interesting (particularly in relation to China), but healthy. INTERVIEW London, 13 May 1994
C an you explain why
there has been a rise in workers' struggles recently?
All across India, trade union disputes and direct political action by the working class have been on the upswing. In the last two years we have had three general strikes. For example, on 5 April more than 200 thousand workers laid siege to the Indian parliament in opposition to GATT. This was violently broken up, injuring sixty-nine seriously. The earlier strikes 28
### INDIA were a response to the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the Congress (I) government.
What is the NEP? Why was it introduced?
We are in the fourth year of a structural adjustment programme dictated by the IMF. In 1989/90 there was a serious economic crisis in respect of the balance of payments and runaway inflation, which reached 18.3 percent - very high by Indian standards.
Throughout the 1980s we had an average of 8 percent industrial growth and 5.6 percent GDP growth, again exceptionally high by Indian standards. But this growth was fuelled by massive external and internal borrowings and by 1989/90 there was a foreign debt of US$33 billion — a figure which has now almost doubled .A bubble grew, only to burst at the end of the decade. So the crisis was partly structural and partly cyclical.
The economy was opened up to foreign investment, there was liberalisation of the financial sector and privatisation of banks and other public sector companies. Loss-making state companies were closed. Under the "exit" policy, workers can be hired and fired without the relative job security they had in the past. Throughout Indian industry there is a process of restructuring, rationalisation and flexibilisation.
In the so-called "sun-set industries", such as textiles, jute and so forth., the technology is outmoded. Employers are shifting to new areas of production and trying to close down these industries. Here new forms of struggle are developing, for example, the occupations of the Victoria Kanoria jute mills in West Bengal. The workers try to sustain these struggles in ingenious ways.
Every political party in India has its own trade union affiliate and there are many unions with a regionalist or factory-based character. The urban proletariat has been described as "a house divided".
The left trade unions have come together to form a joint committee. Our union, the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), which organises 160 thousand workers, is part of this, along with the unions of the CPI and CPI (M) and smaller unions.
The problem with the AlTUC and CITU, unions of the CPI and CPI (M) respectively, is that they ceased to be revolutionary unions long ago. They have become huge bureaucratic apparatuses steeped in the spirit of social democracy.
Through our own trade union centre we have found it easier to achieve left unity and to play a key role in the working class movement.
The Indian working class is asserting its own role and is becoming a powerful political actor in its own right.
What are the implications of the completion of the Uruguay round of GATT for
India?
It is going to cause major disruption to Indian agriculture. More than 250 million Indians are categorised as "small farmers", cultivating between 1-3 hectares of land. Here there will be sharp polarisation due to integration with the open economy.
The differentiation of the peasantry in India, which was very slow compared to the West, will now happen rapidly.
Due to a rise in cotton prices last year, millions of handloom weavers couldn't afford yarn and many starved to death in Andhra Pradesh state. This was a consequence of GATT and is understood easily by its victims.
Hindu communalism and its electoral arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been a major campaigning target of the Indian left following the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya and the wave of anti-Moslem riots which followed.
Communal forces are temporarily down but not out. They were defeated in state legislature elections in 1993, including three out of the four states which they previously governed. But they have won 33 percent of the vote in some states, and could bounce back at any time.
From our party's point of view, the rise of the right wing communal fascistic forces is organically related to the economic crisis. As the crisis deepens these forces will gain a new lease of life.
International Viewpoint #259 September 1994
Their temporary electoral set-back is mainly due to a social back-ground where lower castes rallied under reactionary populist forces to defeat the upper caste ВJP.
There needs to be more serious class mobilisation of the rural poor and agricultural labourers and the winning-over of better-off peasants from the influence of reactionary forces.
We have gained notable success through this strategy. 7 thousand of our comrades were arrested in Uttar Pradesh state, fortress of the BJP. Our student wing defeated their organisation in three university elections, and also at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Our main difference with the CPI and CPI (M) is that they lionize bourgeois centrist leaders, saying that the left is too weak to fight communalism on its own. Their logic is,ultimately, we are weak and we will engage in an approach which will make us weaker. It's a vicious circle.
How do you assess the mainstream Communist parties, the CPI and CPI (M)?
What is your relationship with them?
The CPI was formerly pro-Moscow. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union it is facing a serious internal crisis. Several important sections of the party are going over to the bourgeois camp, for example in Uttar Pradesh the state leader has joined a centrist reactionary party. At the CPI's last congress it moved closer towards social democracy, abandoning even formal Marxist positions. It has declared its mass organisations to be independent of the party and merged its trade union with a syndicalist union (HMS), led by Lohiates. It is fast fading into insignificance
This leaves only the CPI (M) and ourselves as the two main poles of the communist movement. The CPI (M) has been running the government in West Bengal for fifteen years and before then in Kerala. Its method of government has become the main bone of contention for the Indian left.
For the sake of political unity, the CPI (M) has told us that we must give up independent mass mobilisation against its government - which as revolutionary communists we can never accept.
The CPI (M) is involved in anti-people measures. In rural areas its base is shifting to rich peasants. There is large scale alienation of agricultural labourers, who are coming over to us. After a panchayat (village council) election where we won 320 seats the CPI (M) unleashed a reign of terror in Karanda, killing five of our comrades and burning eighty houses where agricultural labourers lived.
We are not tactically opposed to communists forming governments at state levels for temporary periods, but we visualise that, through drastic revolutionary measures, these governments will come into violent conflict with the central authority and will become centres of insurrec-
Since 1967 the CPI (M) has never won an election outside of West Bengal and Kerala. In other states they have trailed this or that bourgeois party. They shun alliances with the revolutionary left. We don't rule out seat adjustments with sections of the bourgeois opposition, so as to concentrate on the main political enemy, but electoral tactics are different from programmatic unity with the bourgeois opposition. There is an increasing contradiction between the communist facade and social democratic practice of the CPI (M).
The CPI (ML) came out openly after the fifth party congress in December 1992. What are your origins and present activities?
Our party was born in the course of the struggle against modern revisionism represented by Kruschev and in the course of the debate between Mao Zedong and the CPSU. This was a time of world-wide upsurge in revolutionary movements and an acute crisis in India, which took the form of an armed peasant struggle.
Many things have changed since that time. Those groups which did not want to change and remained dogmatic have disintegrated, vanished or are moving in the direction of self-destruction. Those which moved too far have gone over to the bourgeois camp. We, on the other hand, have emphasised the need to retain principles and adapt step by step to the present situation.
We have made important tactical changes, from a focus on armed struggle towards mass struggle. We entered the political mainstream leading concrete struggles and have discarded many generalisations and abstractions which didn't suit current revolutionary practice.
We don't want to make a fetish of armed struggle as do some other Marxist-Leninist groups. Rather we subordinate it to mass political struggle. In spite of this there are more people with arms now than when we were waging purely armed struggle. This is because we stress the need for the formation of militia, arming the people and helping them acquire more arms.
India is not like the China of the 1920s and 30s. When we study Indian conditions we see possibilities for worker insurrections. The final outcome of the Indian revolution will be decided through an armed revolution. However, under exceptional international and national circumstances there would also be the possibility of revolutionary forces taking power in a relatively peaceful way.
Our party membership is almost 50 thousand. The combined membership of our peasant associations comes to 750 thousand, with 450 thousand of these in Bihar. Our trade union, AICCTU, organises 160 thousand and our student wing, the All India Student Association, has 60 thousand members. In March we consolidated our women's organisations to form the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA), which has 40 thousand members.
There are two approaches within the AIPWA. In some areas, for example with garment workers or rural women, we place more emphasis on economic issues. Among urban women there is greater emphasis on gender-related issues. There is lively debate and dialogue among women comrades about the emphasis, priorities and perspectives of feminism.
Despite much apprehension in left circles and within our own party we have floated a Moslem organisation, Inquilabi Moslem Conference. This, we believe, is an unprecedented step in the history of the communist movement. Moslems face a tremendous crisis of survival, let alone identity. They are being courted by obscurantist forces within their community and bourgeois centrist forces are also trying to win them over.
We have a good base among Moslem artisans and small peasantry. We want to mobilise them on class issues but also to defend their cultural identity. In these, special, times, we believe that they should be organised as an oppressed religious community. Seven hundred delegates attended the first conference last year, where there was debate over whether the priority should be class or cultural issues. This is a healthy debate and should continue in a living democratic movement.
As communists we have to make bold experiments. We are confident that at least we will always learn from any mistakes.
In the days to come the focus of the party will be on mobilisation against GATT and Hindu communalism.
Whilst the CPI (ML) was underground, open party work was conducted through the Indian People's Front (IPF),
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International Viewpoint #259 September 1994 which has recently been restructured. What role do you see it playing in the future?
The IPF performed a dual role: partly it was a platform on which to unite with a whole range of democratic forces and social movements and partly it allowed open political work by the party. There was always this dichotomy.
In the 1980s there were some within the party who advocated dissolving ourselves into the Front. We termed this a "liquidationist" scheme and defeated this tendency. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxist-Leninists were coming under ideological attack and we felt that it was important at this time to assert an open identity and declare that we were here and that we were strong and growing.
There are two other left parties in the IPF, the Lal Nishan Party (Leninist) and Rajasthan Kisan Sangathan. There are also three organisations of national minorities of a regionalist character, Karbis, Jharkandis and Uttrakhand, and the Dalit Mahasaba — an organisation of oppressed castes — as well as radical health and environmentalist groups. Medha Patkar, who is a leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the campaign against the Narmada dams scheme, is associated with the IPF in an individual capacity.
We believe that the IPF should be reconstituted as a federal structure of different organisations with a minimum common programme of action, where the constituents can operate as independent entities, including in the electoral arena. It would be a united front, taking common action against imperialism, particularly GATT and the communalist threat.
We are even prepared to discuss a change of name if this will draw in new forces. We are negotiating with Professor Najundaswany of the Karnatka farmers' movement and it may well join the IPF.
The CPI (ML) recognises the need to interact with forces outside the Marxist-Leninist movement, including non-class democratic organisations. There will be a tension in our relationship but perhaps it will be a creative tension. The IPF provides a framework for collaboration.
How does your party view national struggles, bearing in mind that the mainstream communist parties proclaim their belief in the unity and integrity of India and take positions little different from bourgeois parties? 30
We support the right of oppressed nationalities to self-determination up to and including the right to secession. This should be part of a package of expropriation from the big bourgeoisie, radical land reforms and reform of the Indian state, including new Centre-State relations, a federal India with maximum possible autonomy to nationalities, and so forth.
Only in the case of Kashmir do we support the right to independence. A military victory by the militant groups over the Indian State is unrealistic and only by integrating their struggles more closely with people in the rest of India can they win their struggle for freedom. It is tragic that there is total insularity between the Kashmiri struggle and other struggles. We are perhaps the only political party which has held high-level discussions with the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front.
We have raised the slogan "For a Democratic Confederation of the peoples of South Asia". It is a long-term slogan but is the only real framework for genuine peace, stability, and development in the region without the interference of imperialism.
What is the reaction of your party to the economic reforms in China since 1979?
We welcome the general direction of these reforms. At this historical juncture no socialist country is able to carry on in the old way. The conception of socialism has had to be reconsidered in areas such as ownership (public or collective), the coexistence of private and State sectors, and so forth.
We don't say that we support each and every measure in each package of reforms, whether Chinese or Cuban. Unlike in the West, rapid industrialisation is on the agenda in countries such as China.
These reforms are pregnant with two possibilities. Either they will lead to the complete restoration of capitalism, as happened in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, or they will strengthen the material basis for socialism.
Our main criticism of the Chinese CP is that there is no powerful ideological initiative from them in respect of mobilising people to safeguard socialism and prevent the restoration of capitalism. We also believe that, although mass organisations have a very important role to play in the process, these are lacking. What is central is a reassertion of the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, not only in the period of the transition from socialism to communism, but particularly in this present time of risky and complex reforms.
How has the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe affected your struggle in India?
The restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union has not had a serious impact on our movement as we come from a tradition which has always been critical of the Soviet Union.
A powerful opportunist current within the Indian Communist movement - not only within the CPI but also within the CPI (M) - went over to the Kruschevite thesis and began supporting the Indian bourgeoisie. The CPSU made some communist parties dependent on them.
We feel that the contradiction between imperialism and the Third World is a fundamental one. The collapse of the Soviet Union means that one source of derailing national liberation struggles has gone. Revolutionary movements can no longer expect support from abroad, so they must put down roots in their own countries and stand on their own two feet. This is a good thing.
One lesson which we have learned is that, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, there must be a multi-party system, freedom of the press, internal democracy within the party in the Leninist tradition, and so forth. We hope that the Chinese Communist Party will also move in this direction. * iteration
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