Literature and Art
Marxist ideology examined-Arun Srivastava
Marxist ideology examined
Review by Harbans Singh
Red and Black: What’s Wrong with the Communist Party of India
By Arun Srivastava
Yash Publications. Rs. 900. Pages 304.
For much too long the common people of India have believed that the Communist Party of India (Marxist), popularly known as CPM, was the true manifestation of the communist movement in contemporary India. The uninterrupted rule of the Left Front under the leadership of CPM since 1977 and its intermittent rule in Kerala was ample proof of this. This party and its allies in the Front had believed that they had reinvented themselves and therefore survived the upheaval caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The survival had, in fact, strengthened its claim to being the anointed sentinel of Marxism in the country.
The past few years, however, have seen a relentless exposure of the chinks in its armour and the harder it has tried to assume the leadership role, greater have been its failings. The events that began with Nandigram have today snowballed and not only is the citadel of the CPM in West Bengal in danger of capitulating but also of yielding space to a force that should have been the focus of the Marxists but being ignored chose to chart its own course. Today it threatens to engulf the whole country because of the failure of the CPM.
Arun Srivastava, a journalist who has widely traveled the Naxalite-infested areas, evaluates the claim of the CPM being the main representative of Marxism and in the process brings out the ironical journey of the party to a stage where it is allied to the caste-based political outfits like the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. The party remains on the periphery in the Hindi heartland that even today is the homeland of the proletariat. The author also brings out the hypocrisy of CPM that became a coalition partner of the UPA in 2004 on the pretext of keeping the communal forces out but at a time of its choosing decided to withdraw support on the nuclear deal issue only to join hands with the communal forces to achieve its goal.
The book, however, is important as it helps in understanding the challenge that confronts the country today in the form of Naxal threat. There is little doubt that this threat has become ominous over the years due to the continued neglect and insensitivity displayed by the mainstream political parties that have ruled the states and the Centre but what is painful is to realise that it is the inability of the CPM to give space to the tribal people, landless labourers and sharecroppers that has given momentum to the armed struggle.
The author also analyses the rise of the middle class in recent years and the unfortunate development where the CPM too strove to become the voice and watchdog of the cacophonic middle class instead of the proletariat that has continued to languish. Not surprisingly, as recent events are demonstrating, the space of the CPM is being gobbled by the Naxalites at a much faster rate than it could have imagined. In the end the bitter truth that is emerging is that while the non-Marxist political parties were never expected to solve the problems of society, the CPM abdicated its role as it failed to use the tools of Marxism to find solution to the peculiarly Indian conditions. In the process, unable to withstand the winds that rose out of the so called economic liberalization and globalization, it was in a hurry to write its own epitaph.
There is not a subject that has not been dealt and examined by Arun Srivastava. It does not matter that it is done in the Marxist lexicon, for the failure of Soviet Union notwithstanding the fact remains that the issues that Marxism strove to address continue to plague the world. The greed engineered economic meltdown of recent times only accentuates the challenges and that is why a serious thought need be given to Arun Srivastava’s analysis of what ails the Communist Party of India (Marxism).
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20091108/spectrum/book6.htm
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