I have come across a Communist Party of India poster seeking to begin the party's centenary year celebrations on January 2, with D Raja, the party general secretary, as the chief guest. In Hindi, the poster has been released by the party's Bihar unit, which used to be one of the strongest in India, but like rest of the country, it too appears to have gone phut.
Reproduced on a Facebook page, two things particularly struck me. First of all, at the very top embellish Lenin, Engels and Marx, in that order. No quarrel with that. However, as a former CPI cardholder, I wondered, why even 40 years after I left the party to pursue my journalistic career as a person not attached with any political party, they have not been able to identify even one Indian Communist whose photograph could be put on the poster.
And secondly, ironical though it may seem, while CPI is celebrating its centenary year, the other, bigger Communist party, CPI(Marxist), is not. A visit to the social media of both the parties shows, CPI(M) has no mention of the centenary year, while CPI has several photos of the celebration.
This took me back to my student days. I was somewhat actively associated with the CPI(M) student wing, the Students' Federation of India (SFI), which lasted for five years (1971-75). We were told that the Communist party was formed much earlier. No without reason, it marked the centenary year in 2019-20, coinciding with the formation of the Indian Communist Party (ICP) as an émigré unit in Tashkent by the Second World Congress of the Communist Third International in 1920.
I am left wondering. Why do the two Communist parties even now differ on such trivial a thing. Why is there no celebration by the CPI(M) on the formation of the party in 1925 on the Indian soil? Or is it because CPI, which claims to be the "original party", didn't take part in the CPI(M)'s celebration of the formation of the Indian Communist group in Tashkent in 1920?
Interestingly, yet another Communist party (there are several of them across India!) which can claim to have some mass base, too, CPI (Marxist-Leninist), agrees with CPI that the party was formed in 1925, and not in 1920. Its website carries what is called a presentation by its general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, under the heading, "Centenary of the Communist Movement In India: Achievements, Lessons and Challenges", pointing out at least on the year 1925 he agrees with CPI.
Let me put facts straight. CPI believes that the party was formed on December 26, 1925 at the first Party Conference in Kanpur. SV Ghate was its first general secretary. Meanwhile, several communist groups had already been formed across India, including the one in Bombay (led by SA Dange), Madras (led by Singaravelu), United Provinces (led by Shaukat Usmani), Punjab, Sindh (led by Ghulam Hussain) and Bengal (led by Muzaffar Ahmed).
However, CPI(M), which split from CPI in 1964, disagrees. It considers October 17, 1920 as the founding day of CPI. On this day, MN Roy, Evelyn Trent-Roy, Abani Mukherji, Rosa Fitingov, Mohd Ali, Mohamad Shafiq, and MPT Acharya met in Tashkent to form the communist movement in India, it believes.
Amidst so much talk of Left unity and the alleged fascist onslaught that India is experiencing today, what stops the two or three or even more Communist parties to come together under one umbrella? They talk of "democratic centralism", the term I learned way back in early 1970s on how the party functions from within. Theoretically, all differences are allowed within the party, but you must agree to what the central leadership, "elected" at the party congress every five years or so, has to decide upon.
I have always wondered: doesn't democratic centralism prohibit views and practices relevant for progressive movements to come in from the "outside" world? Or does one have to wait for what the Central leadership has to say in the matter?
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