On Some Striking Ideological-Political and Organisational Issues Behind the Boycott of a Minority from Party Congress
Sankar
[Com. KNR’s Letter to the Central Committee (CC) Comrades dated July 6 and Com. Sankar’s detailed 12-page evaluation entitled “Our Differences” dated October 16, 2022 had already thrown light on the facts connected with the organisational issues in CPI (ML) Red Star in the context of Party’s 12th Congress. Most of the issues involved in the untoward developments are already being taken up by them. This brief note is only a recollection of certain issues shared by the two PB comrades which needs striking emphasis- Editorial Board]
The 12th Party Congress of CPIML (Red Star) that held during September 24-29, 2022 has successfully completed with great enthusiasm. Party Congress has unanimously adopted all the draft documents and also elected Comrade PJ as its new General Secretary, as Comrade KN stepped down. Comrade KN led our party for decades and built a nationwide party from a small group which started its journey from Kerala in the seventies of the last century. Now it is the responsibility of the next generation to make further progress towards developing a united party of the communist revolutionaries in our country in order to take up the immediate task of anti-Fascist struggle and to go forward to build a socialist India. The Party Congress (PC) had elected a 34- member Central Committee (CC) and a 3- member Central Control Commission (CCC).
As reported in the October Issue of Red Star, based on a concrete evaluation of the international and national situation, the Congress has adopted the updated Party Program and Path of Revolution explaining the strategic steps for advancing towards democracy and socialism along with the Political Resolution that put forward the immediate tactical steps required for resisting and defeating RSS neo-fascism, firmly linking up with the moving towards people’s democracy. Along with the updating of the basic documents which were adopted in the 9th Congress in 2011 and amended in the 10th and 11th Congresses in 2015 and 2018 respectively, the 12th Congress adopted the necessary amendments to the Constitution too.
However, it is also a fact that 53 delegates (out of total 260 registered party delegates from 16 State Conferences starting from May 20 in Kerala and ending with Maharashtra on August 21, 2022) walked out of the delegate session that started at 5 PM on September 25 and declined to rejoin in spite of repeated attempts taken by the Party leadership at various levels, including the adoption of a resolution by Delegate Session requesting them to come back. And when Central and State Committees of CPI (ML) Red Star have started initiating disciplinary proceedings against this section comprising 7 erstwhile CC (including two Polit Bureau (PB) members for indulging in anti-party activities including the conening of a parallel state conference of the party in Tamil Nadu, some of them are reportedly in the process of forming a separate group/organisation. Hence this issue is no more an inner-party organisational issue but have wider ideological-political dimensions and a brief information on the whole issue needs to be passed to Party’s sympathisers, friends and fraternal organisations together with Party members.
At the outset, it should be stressed that over the past two years, there has been an intense ideological-political debate on many questions of international and national importance within the CC. Of course, there was no unanimity on them among those 7 who had basic ideological persuasions on many questions during inner-party debates. Hence the unity among them against Party position is to be seen as adhoc and that of an opportunist alliance devoid of any ideological-political cohesion.
Take, for instance, the question of the approach to Indian fascism. Even before the second coming of Modi with the most heinous Hindutva-fascist offensive, the Political Resolution adopted at the 11th Party Congress in 2018 itself, the Party had called for building up the broadest anti-fascist movement clearly upholding the independent ideological position of the communists in relation to the class interests of the workers and all oppressed. Hence, along with the anti-fascist task, the 2018 Political Resolution of the Party Congress called for building up Party and class/mass organisations, unity among Communist revolutionary forces and developing of a Left Core. Fully knowing the tactical nature of the anti-fascist front with ‘non-fascist’ forces, this approach of the Political Resolution adopted by the Congress implies the Party’s ideologicalpolitical independence to criticise and expose the neoliberal policies against working class and oppressed pursued by the ‘non-fascist’ parties. But those who walked out opposed this correct approach argued that such an independent position upholding the class interests of the workers and oppressed would weaken the anti-fascist movement. During the drafting stage of the Political Resolution, one erstwhile PB comrade from Bengal who from a sectarian position vehemently opposed the building up of an anti-fascist front, also took the opportunist position of abandoning the Communist Party’s relevance altogether. On the other hand, earlier he had even characterised the fascist take-over in India as an exaggeration only.
Another basic difference that emerged at the time of document drafting has been caste question. Obviously, the decision to update the Party Program was taken in the context of the emrgence of saffron-fascism whose ideological basis is ManuvadiHindutva according to which vast majority of the workers and toilers who belong to the untouchable and oppressed castes are subhuman. In the Program adopted in 2019 at the 9th Congress itself, based on a concrete evaluation, and fully comprehending the inseparable and integral relation between class and caste, the Party adopted Caste as a strategic question and put forward the position that people’s democracy can be achieved only through the annihilation of caste system for which appropriate politicalorganisational interventions are required. The Caste Annihilation Movement was initiated with this perspective. Since then, this issue has been a hotly debated one within the Party. The basic difference on this question became known even outside the Party as the articles written by CC members published in the March 2021 Issue of Marxist-Leninist, theoretical journal of CPI (ML) Red Star, in which the entire 112 pages of that Issue were set apart for debate on Caste. Again, in a CC meeting in 2021, regarding certain Party members’ soft approach to the inhuman caste system and their reluctance to uphold Party’ s accepted position on caste, heated debates took place, following which it was decided to move a Resolution on this issue in the 12th Congress. Accordingly, the 12th Party Congress unanimously adopted two resolutions in relation to caste: one, on the need of a code of conduct for Party Comrades’ approach to caste and, two, on giving up caste surnames by Central Committee comrades.
Similarly, on the approach to the transformation of colonialism into neocolonialism, on evaluating postwar imperialism, on the character of power transfer, and on the analysis of neocolonialism, etc., those who went out had differences, though at different levels. For instance, CPI (ML) Red Star upholds the evaluation of neocolonialism as “more pernicious and sinister” than colonialism put forward by CPC in the beginning of 1960s. But the other section upheld the Krushchevite prognosis of postwar situation as a “weakening of imperialism”, and when the updated Party Program, based on a concrete evaluation of the international and Indian situation accepted the formulation “formal political independence”, the minority demanded to replace it with “political independence.” And when the CC finalised the draft of the updated Program, the dissenting section resorted to a negative approach altogether.
Another strange argument was regarding the size and number of pages of the Party Program. For, quoting the Erfurt Program that could fit in 3 pages of A4 and advocating Lenin’s comments on the structure of a Program in a totally different historical context, it was demanded in a mechanical way that the updated Program of the Party should not be more than 4 pages. Interestingly, the existing Program of CPI (ML) Red Star comes to 21 pages, and the updated Program less than 30 pages. Actually, if one goes through the Programs of various parties ranging from the adventurists to the right opportunists, there is no hard and fast rule regarding the number of pages in a Program. For instance, the CPI(M) program is composed of 41 pages; that of RCP, USA more than 100 pages, that of CPSU 1960) more than 6 0 pages, etc. In connection with the pages, another criticism raised was regarding the Introductory Chapter introducing the Party before the people. In this part, the development of Party Line since the formation of CRC in 1979 to the 12th Congress of CPI (ML) Red Star (in which Comrade KN Ramchandran played the decisive role in uniting many revolutionary groups in to a nation-wide Party) is briefly put along with mentioning the names of various parties that merged with the mainstream over a period of four decades. The dissident group objected to this.
In spite of such serious differences, when the Central Committee meeting finalised all the documents, none of the abovementioned erstwhile 7 CC members, in spite of serious ideological-political differences on core questions, objected to the adoption of them as Central Committee’s draft documents for the Party Congress, nor they gave even hint on their plan to prepare ‘alternative documents’ for the Congress against the adopted documents. It was only towards the end of June when State Conferences were proceeding as scheduled that they informed their intention to move alternative documents. And the alternative documents actually reached Party Centre on August 22, just one month before the Congress, when all State Conferences were finished in time. Following this, the CC that met on August 25-26, had no option other than to reject them, as it is mandatory as per Article XIV, subsection 1 of the Party Constitution according to which among other things, it is mandatory to “release the draft documents for discussion by all party members/candidate members three months before the All India Party Congress.” However, taking into consideration, the need of carrying forward healthy ideological debate within the Party, a practice that we were pursuing since 9th Party Congress, the CC requested the dissident section to put their ‘alternative documents’, though rejected by the CC, as amendments to the adopted draft documents. And by September 14, they, in fact, send them as amendments, and on appropriately incorporating them, the Congress began as scheduled. The outgoing CC that put forward the proposal for the new CC panel, all those 7 were also incorporated as members of the new CC with the expectation that a healthy discussion would take place in the Congress.
However, as pre-planned, they tried to have control over the organisational proceedings of the Party Congress which the August 25-26 CC has approved, and were not prepared to accept majority decision on organisational matters based on the principle of democratic centralism. Their walk-out from delegate session, followed by many anti-party moves including the convening of a parallel state conference are already in the public domain. We appeal to all comrades to rise to the occasion and rally round with the Party to implement the decisions of the 12th Congress.
