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| Vol. 4, Issue 2 February 2012 |
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Exchange |
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Exchange |
Theory and Practice
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| Prakash Karat and Ramachandra Guha debate the past, present and future of Indian communism. |
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Published :1 November 2011 |
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Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), responds to Ramachandra Guha's essay 'After the Fall', published in the June issue of The Caravan
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AMACHANDRA GUHA is a well-known historian of modern India. What he writes is taken seriously. His essay on the past and future of Indian communism—‘After the Fall’, published in the June 2011 issue of The Caravan—demands more attention particularly as he claims to be “an anthropologist among Marxists” and a “student of Marxism by habit”. |
After the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal assembly elections in May, the first since 1977—“after a long span of 34 years”—much has been written about the fate of the communists, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in particular. Much of it is journalistic hyperbole.
But Guha is different. He seeks to analyse the causes of the defeat to the hidebound dogmas of the CPI(M) and the party’s inability to change with the times. He proclaims that “the central paradox of Indian communism is that its practice is vastly superior to its theory.” According to him, its theory is derived from Lenin and Stalin and is unable to come to grips with Indian realities. It is this claim that needs to be taken up and countered.
Guha’s conclusion about the theory and ideology of India’s communists stems from his own philosophical outlook. He is a self-confirmed liberal. He ardently believes in liberal democracy and liberal values. His intellectual aversion to Marxism arises from the bourgeois liberal standpoint—any revolutionary project is doomed to end in totalitarianism and unfreedom.
For Guha, as long as the CPI(M) grounds itself in a Marxist ideological world view, it cannot wipe off the stain of Stalinism. The only way out is the renunciation of Marxism and the embrace of social democracy. But we will come to that a little later.
In drawing his caricature of Marxist theory in India, Guha has targeted BT Ranadive, whom Guha describes as “One of the most influential of all Indian Marxists ... known as BTR, and these initials were whispered with respect, or might we say reverence, by party members past and present.” Guha has employed one of BTR’s texts as the basis for his argument about the dogmatic theory of Indian communists.
Guha introduces the text as follows:
The text that I am going to resurrect was written in 1978, a year after a Left Front government dominated by the CPI(M) came to power in the large and crucial state of West Bengal. It took the shape of an extended review of a book by the Spanish communist Santiago Carrillo, entitled Eurocommunism and the State. The review was published over 33 closely printed pages of Social Scientist, a Marxist monthly edited by scholars associated with the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Here, Ranadive attacked Carrillo as a renegade, the last in a shameful line of ‘revisionists’ who had abandoned the path of revolution in favour of the softer option of reform.
In dealing with BTR’s ideological writings, Guha displays none of the historical rigour and careful study that he has applied to the writings of other Indian national leaders in his historical works. The polemic against Eurocommunism by BT Ranadive is the sole text that Guha relies upon.
For Guha, Santiago Carrillo—who was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) till 1982 and one of the initiators of Eurocommunism—is a model to be emulated by Indian communists. Set against him is BT Ranadive, whose ideology and politics exemplify the ossified dogmas of the CPI(M).
There is a compelling reason why Guha admires Carrillo to such an extent as to exhort the communists in India to follow his example. A look at Carrillo’s political career will explain why. Carrillo became a communist in 1936 and fought in the Civil War against Franco and the fascists. He became the general secretary of the illegal Communist Party in 1960. In 1977, Carrillo was one of the initiators of Eurocommunism, the ideas of which BTR so strongly attacked in the article cited by Guha.
What Guha does not say, however, is that what happened subsequently is exactly what BTR had foreseen. Carrillo and his followers were expelled from the PCE in 1985. In 1986, they set up their own party but failed to win popular support and remained a tiny group until disbanding in October 1991, a significant year, as the Soviet Union ceased to exist then. Carrillo travelled through Eurocommunism to social democracy and eventually renounced his communist past altogether. In 1991, he declared, “The Communist movement as such has completed its historical cycle and it makes no sense trying to prolong it.”
This is the path Guha hopes the CPI(M) will travel, too—towards social democracy and acceptance of liberal democracy as the ultimate objective of humankind.
Guha does not refer to any other writings of BTR except the Eurocommunism piece. As a historian, Guha would like to freeze BTR in the mould of general secretary in 1948, when a Left sectarian political line prevailed. BTR, who played a key role in the leadership of the CPI(M) since 1964, was a Marxist who had cast away the sectarianism of the early post-Independence period. One has only to read his historical appraisal of Jawaharlal Nehru, or his assessment of the 40 years of Indian independence, or how he evaluated the role of the great social reformer Jyotiba Phule, or his analysis of caste, class and property relations in India to recognise that he was not the person or the type of Marxist that Guha portrays him to be.
I would like to cite just one text: an evaluation of Jawaharlal Nehru by BTR on the occasion of his birth centenary. It appeared in the Marxist, the theoretical quarterly of the CPI(M) in 1989. Referring to the making of the Indian Constitution, BTR wrote:
The Constitution of India is a remarkable document considering the fact that it was drafted mainly by the representatives of the bourgeoisie of a newly liberated country in a period when capitalist society was on its decline. The bourgeoisie prepared a Constitution which declared fundamental rights, adult franchise, elected Parliament and its supremacy, right of free speech and agitation and freedom of conscience, etc. This is all the more remarkable because the dominant leadership of the Congress was still steeped in revivalist outlook. There is no doubt that Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role here.
| COURTESY CPI(M) ARCHIVES |
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Armed
peasants of the communist-led Telangana struggle, which began
in 1946 in the princely state of Hyderabad. |
BTR saw the existence of the parliamentary democratic system as a major advance for the Indian people but unlike Guha, he did not idealise the bourgeois democratic system. Recognising the class nature of the Indian State, he explained how democracy is restricted and the democratic system subverted by the interests of the ruling classes.
BTR has been misunderstood by Guha before. In his book India After Gandhi, Guha commits an error by calling BTR a Brahmin—he was not—in order to neatly counterpose one Maharashtrian Brahmin to another: RSS chief MS Golwalkar. The brahminical nature of BTR’s orthodoxy is a widely-held misconception, perpetuated since the 1950s, and is best laid to rest.
As stated earlier, Guha fails in maintaining elementary historical accuracy when it comes to writing about the communist movement in India. A glaring example of this is the untruth he has stated about the Telangana armed struggle.
Describing the tactics of the communists after Independence, Guha has written that BTR led a “radical faction of the CPI”, which pushed aside then-General Secretary PC Joshi (“a cultured, sensitive man who understood that freedom had come through the struggle and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Indians”) and “asked that the party declare an all-out war against the Government of India”.
Guha writes that BTR “saw in the imminent victory of the Chinese communists a model for himself and his comrades”:
A peasant struggle was already under way in Hyderabad, against the feudal regime of the Nizam. Why not use that as a springboard for an Indian revolution?
On 28 February 1948—four weeks after Gandhi’s murder—the CPI leadership met in Calcutta, and confirmed that the revolutionary line would prevail. Joshi was replaced as general secretary by Ranadive, who declared that the Indian government was a lackey of imperialism, and would be overthrown by armed struggle. Party members were ordered to foment strikes and protests to further the cause of the revolution-in-the-making. Bulletins and posters were issued urging the people to rise up and “Set fire to the whole of Bengal”, to “Destroy the murderous Congress government” and move “forward to unprecedented mass struggles. Forward to storm the Congress Bastilles.” [...]
It took some more time to restore order in Hyderabad, where a recalcitrant Nizam was refusing to join the Indian Union, egged on by militant Islamists (known as ‘Razakars’) who were making common cause with the local communists.
According to Guha, the Razakars, owing allegiance to the Nizam of Hyderabad, made common cause with the communists. It is in fact the opposite. The Telangana struggle began in 1946, and it was a peasant armed struggle led by the communists against the landlords who were the pillars of Nizam rule. The armed militants of the communists fought against the Razakars and the police of the Nizam. It is by routing the Razakar-Nizam forces that more than six thousand villages were liberated from feudal rule. Incidentally, this struggle began two years before BTR became the general secretary of the party. Guha’s rather scrappy knowledge of communist history comes through when he accuses BTR of trying to foment a Chinese type of revolution in India. On the contrary, BTR was known for his disapproval of any Maoist tactics at that time.
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T IS NOT ONLY BT RANADIVE who exemplifies the dogma and bankruptcy of Indian communist theory for Guha. In an earlier book, Guha had trained his theoretical firepower against EMS Namboodiripad, who as chief minister of Kerala became the leader of the first democratically elected communist government in the world. In An Anthropologist Among The Marxists
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(2001), Guha devoted a short chapter to EMS Namboodiripad, which was titled ‘Stalinist and Indian’. Here we find the matrix of Guha’s thought. Communist leaders are good but their theory stinks.
If we wish to clearly understand the line of thinking that Guha adopts in his Caravan article, it is necessary to devote some attention to his text on EMS. In his portrait of arguably the most creative Marxist leader India has produced, Guha denies that EMS had any theoretical significance or intellectual achievements. Consider the following quotes, which should make clear Guha’s peculiar dialectic regarding EMS’s theory and practice:
EMS Namboodiripad who died in March 1998 was a fundamentally decent and public spirited man whose mind was messed up by too much of JV Stalin and VI Lenin.
In his writings, Namboodiripad was a craven follower of a crude despot, but as a practicing politician EMS was one of the finest in the land.
When one considers what kind of man EMS was, one must consider it a great pity that he mortgaged his mind to Stalinism.
Here again, we see Guha’s prejudices cloud his own claim, in The Caravan, that he has produced a “detached, dispassionate analysis”. Guha’s aversion to the Marxist critique of the Indian state and of the leadership of the Indian National Congress makes him blind to some of the seminal work undertaken by EMS. Guha, being widely read in Marxist writings on India, cannot be unaware of EMS’s note of dissent on the Malabar Tenancy Commission in 1939. It is a classic study of agrarian relations in Malabar using the Marxist method. This study became the basis for the practice of the communist movement in Malabar in the struggle against landlordism. It is a theory that led to the growth of a powerful movement in Kerala for land reforms. EMS wrote original pieces on the nationality question, on decentralisation of powers and the role of caste in society in various historical phases. None of this shows the mind of a “craven follower of a crude despot”.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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tssunder
25 November 2011
05:25 PM
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it is good
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kinu goala
17 November 2011
06:15 PM
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1. As to Guha's claim of EMS being a Stalinist: In one of his many essays published in "Frontline", EMS has perhaps posed the most valuable critique of Stalin- the man and his policies. He has criticised the creation of the 'Stalin cult' and the bureaucratic apparatus that grew from it. However, he has been fair enough in acknowledging the contribution of Stalin in building the first modern socialist economy. This constitues a part of the stand of CPI(M) on the "Stalin Question" in Salkia Plenum in 1978.
2. The decision not to join the coalitions in 1996 and 2004 was apt and politically prudent. What Guha envisages as steps that "enhanced human dignity and diminished social suffering" is just a cosmetic change that truly the liberal bourgeoisie may hail as "revolution" in their spirit of charity and philanthropy. It may also garner votes. However the Left world view and its vision for the working class does not emerge from any project of philanthropy or charity. Its based on the inevitability of the contradictions between classes whose interests at the core are contradictory due the very material conditions that exist viz. relations of production. The model of "relief" of the Left governments in WB, Kerala or Tripura has been based on the comprehensive land reforms, expansion of the democratic space through decentralization of power and widening of social security net. These steps albeit not strong enough to change the relations of production (certainly not possible under the constitutional frameowrk that it has/had to work) did indeed break the feudal stranglehold in the rural economy, boosted productivity and laid foundation for long-term empowerment of the masses. These were not cosmetic. Until and unless Left is ina position to influence any coalition to implement its core agenda, it must never join it to pull some cosmetic reliefs. That might suit the project of social democrats but not communists.
3. As already mentioned by Shri Karat, the successive non-CPI(M) led governments in Kerala too could not dare to overturn the course adopted by it for the fear of loss of popular support. Its the CPI(M) led by that "Stalinist" who had worked for and created this "expectation" within the masses and had set the standards.
4. Guha could better cite some reference to corroborate his claim that the Communists opposed the joining of the state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union. The fight of the Left cadres with the Razakars is a matter of common knowledge which surprisingly Guha is ignorent of.
5. Finally, Bernstein!! Now, the cat is out of bag! The typical reference cited by the revisionists. What happened not only in France but in the West generally was that post WW-II, the private capital was not in a shape to paddle the international trade. It needed the support of the state in doing so. Therefore, arose the need for the welfare state, state capitalism and state-sponsored private capital (as in case of companies like Bayer et al.). The said models soon disappeared the very moment when the private capital gained enough strength to drive its own engine. What "socialism" did Guha find in them?? A 'socialist movement' aimed to "moderate the inequalities created by unbridled capitalism"?? Then Anna Hazare too is a socialist one may say! Socialism is a goal which cannot co-exist with capitalism. It leads to communism which is contradictory to the socialization of the past 2 thousand years of human history in terms of its world view and economic model.
Surely, expected a better counter from Guha. Guess he had none.
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A.Raghunatha Reddy
7 November 2011
07:37 AM
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Decent discussion. Karat's presentation is superb.
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Sabarish
4 November 2011
10:18 PM
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Beautiful debate...would love to see such thought provoking articles.
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Nithin Joseph
3 November 2011
08:58 PM
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Prakash Karat has done a commendable job in punching holes in Ramachandra Guha's article. Hope, Mr. Guha would be careful in avoiding factual inaccuracies in his future articles. Also, in his rejoinder Mr.Guha says Razakars were not around in 1946 but they came to the 'fore' only in 1947. This is quite strange. The role of Razakars in Nizam's obdurate opposition to joining Indian union is well documented and proven. So it's commonsensical to ask, how did Razakar's grew in strength in such a way to influence Nizam and muzzle opposition to Nizam suddenly if they were not around for sometime? I am no historian, but it is my native wisdom to think that Razakars were around in great strength pre- 1947 period . They might not have been conspicuous in the polity of Hyderabad during that period. After all we are talking about a spacing of just one year, 365 days from 1946 and not a long hundred years! I find it amusing in bringing a Left extremist to justify and possibly counter Karat's argument regarding Razakars. Maoists have always disbelieved in the federation of India and no wonder they lament Nizam's reluctant merger with Indian union. Sometimes, it is better to concede a mistake without much brouhaha. Once again, kudos to Karat in exposing the dull bias and ignorance of the so called liberal and 'anti-utopian' intellectuals against the Left movement and its history in India.
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Kasim Sait
3 November 2011
02:07 PM
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It is surprising to find that a historian like Ramachandra Guha can classify thinkers and philosophers as foreigners and impute the ideas emanating from them, as not not be conducive to Indians. How come an idea or philosophy can be claimed by a particular region of the Globe?Do not the ideas generated and discoveries made a result of the human evolution, as a whole?How can a historian sound so chauvinistic, like the RSS calling all religions other than Hinduism foreign and hence imputing their followers to be unpatriotic? Marxism and their various exponents are global as are all humans, who have been from the primitive age a migratory tribe,settling down as per the environmental and other suitable conditions pertaining to their times. This is what the scientific examination of the history of our human ancestors shows.
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Venkata Hanumanta
31 October 2011
07:14 PM
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Proof that Razakars aligned with CPI:-
Razakars did'nt want CPI to join Indian Union. A poet belonging to a splinter group says the same thing. CPI was vague about the merger(since there is no documentary evidence to claim so). So CPI was aligned with Razakars (even if they represented two different social groups with mutual antagonistic interests)? In symbolic logic it would be of the following form, X believes in Y. Z is sympathetic to Y. So X and Z have to be friends. If that passes off as reasoning, then such are times and reasoning abilities of our public intellectuals.
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