CPI (ML) Red Star’s Open Letter to all Communist Revolutionary Parties/Groups and Concerned People
Dear Comrades,
We would like to inform that we do not consider CPIML Revolutionary Initiative, a break-away faction from CPI (ML) Red Star, as worthy of being considered a Communist organization. Hence, we won’t keep any communist relations with this group. Our decision is based on both communist propriety and ideological issues. Our preliminary explanation for this is as follows
Comrades, it is a known fact that a tiny minority section (comprising 52 out of 260 registered delegates) went out of the 12th Congress of CPI (ML) Red Star that was held at Kozhikode in September, 2022. This break-away section later organized themselves into a group called CPI (ML) RI. This was followed by a bitter struggle centring around the question of the Party Centre.
Till 2010, our Party office was in Jungpura area of Delhi. But in 2010, the Central Committee of our Party gave a call to its State Committees to collect funds for our own Party Office in Delhi. In response to this call, all State Committees of the Party and class/mass organizations collected and sent money according to their capacity. TUCI, the trade union wing of CPI (ML) Red Star with its office in Mumbai has contributed a major portion of the money. And the building-property agreement was signed in the name of Sanjay Singhvi who at that time was the Central Executive Committee (Polit Bureau after the 9th Congress of the Party in 2011) member of Party and General Secretary of TUCI by virtue of that.
Since then, the Party used it as it’s office, while TUCI used it’s Mumbai address for all communications. Meanwhile, the Party mobilised the required fund for purchase of furnitures and all infrastructure development including construction of the additional first floor. To this day, all office expenses pertaining to water, electricity, gas, broadband, etc. have been paid from the Party account. Till the 12th Party Congress in September, 2022 the Party Centre question was not an issue, not discussed either within or outside the Party.
However, after the aforesaid split in the Party, issues connected with Delhi office also came to the fore. Sanjay Singhvi who was among the breakaway faction started to claim ownership of the Delhi Party Center, in spite of his having support only of a minority of the TUCI membership. Along with this claim, his close associates started nasty, despicable and heinous moves in the Party Centre. Three student comrades of our Party namely, Com Neeraja, Com Lenina and Com Niranjan have been staying in Delhi, Party Centre. Along with them Party General Secretary, Com PJ James and PB members Com Tuhin, Com Sankar and Com Urmila used to stay there on a rotation basis depending on their available time.
Three persons connected to RI, also claiming themselves as TUCI, namely Umakant, Vikash and Sunil used to stay there on the first floor of the building, where they were in the habit of taking alcohol almost on a daily basis. At the instigation of Umakant, Vikash was in the habit of abusing our students, especially Com. Neeraja, in the absence of our senior comrades. For instance, he used to comment on her dressing, questioning her coming late in Party office, and when she was staying with her classmates in their hostel, he was very particular to target her on this interpreting it as staying with somebody else. From a patriarchal mindset, he even used to ask her whether she had a boyfriend ! In that way, with tacit support of Umakant, all of them continued their ‘character assassination’ of women.
The situation became worse and horrific after three persons claiming as stalwarts of Sanjay Singhvi reached Delhi office from Mumbai TUCI office two months back. The Mumbai gang joined with Vikash under the patronage of Umakant who forcefully occupied the room where student comrades, Neeraja and Lenina were living, compelling them to sleep in the office room in the night. Arrival of the Mumbai team made the situation unbearable.
In spite of all these, to avoid a physical confrontation, which conveys a wrong message in the present context when the Communist movement goes through several setbacks, we tried our level best to handle the situation calmly. In the last month we gave letters to Sanjay Singhvi and Pradeep Singh Thakur narrating the inhuman approach of their men and urged them to take appropriate steps to stop these moves, but to no avail and the situation became more worse.
Meanwhile, three months before, through an online meeting of the TUCI Central Committee and that too without quorum, the Sanjay-gang suspended Com Manasaiya, the vice-President of TUCI, based on concocted allegations. We also realized that in this extraordinary situation, two hostile and antagonistic sections cannot work in a single class/mass organization. Therefore, we took the initiative to hold an all India Activists Meeting of TUCI in which leading TUCI activists from 11 states participated followed by the formation of a Central Coordination Committee of TUCI with Com R. Manasaiya as Coordinator.
As a result, when the Sanjay group called a CC meeting of TUCI in the Delhi office on 1st to 3rd September, we also called a Coordination meeting at the same time. On 31st August, the full Mumbai gang of TUCI including a full-time drunkard Aravind Nair reached. As soon as they reached the office, they started their unscrupulous behaviour like lumpens and hooligans. They had huge amount of alcohol with them. This gang of drunkards took control of the party office. The situation deteriorated further when Sanjay Singhvi and Alik Chakraborty reached on September 1st morning as leaders of this lumpen gang. They started irritating, abusing, and quarreling with our comrades including PB member Com Urmila and Com Lenina who were also there in the office at that time. One Nayek of the Mumbai team attacked one of our comrades, Comrade Shankar of Odisha (younger brother of our departed PB comrade, Com Shivaram). The situation was on the brink of a full-fledged physical fight.
In this critical situation, knowing that communists engaging in physical fight over a property is against communist ideals and against the interests of people, we decided to avoid a confrontation and took leave of the place, without going back from CPI (ML) Red Star’s claim of its office. And the lumpen gang immediately locked up the premises.
Dear Comrades and friends, from our experience, we have reached the conclusion that RI section, which claims as communist, has no communist quality or character. This lumpen gang will have nothing to do with the interests of the working class and oppressed and hence no role in a revolutionary transformation of society. We will not keep any communist relation with this group.
And if required, we will publish all our correspondence with this group during the past one year. In course of our further discussion on this issue, as and when required, we will continue to expose the ideological bankruptcy of this group including their non-Marxist and mechanical approach to the caste question, its opportunist position on surrendering the interests of working class and oppressed in the guise of fighting fascism and it’s erroneous position towards national and international questions.
With Revolutionary Greetings,
Polit Bureau, CPI (ML) Red Star
