Communist party of India,:-a new revolt has broken out against the Dange leadership, led this time by the "centrist" A.K.Gopalan.
Leader of the Parliamentary Group of the CPI, Gopalan addressed a mamnoth rally at Calcutta September 28 presumably organized by the allegedly "pro-Peking" leftists in defiance of an official party directive advising all members not to associate with it. The rally and an earlier demonstration in the city were held under auspices of the "Democratic Convention," an organization sponsored by the West Bengal CP "leftists" to demand the release of political prisoners and to protest the Nehru government's “antipeople food price and tax policics."”
The National Executive of the CPI charged Gopalan with "violation of the party's discipline"; and a meeting of the National Council has been convened for October 14 to discuss the situation.
Another charge lodged against Gopalan is "deliberately defying the party exccutive directive during the presentation of the ‘great petition' to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha" [Lower House of the Indian Parliament] on September 13. Gopalan had protested against the non-inclusion of a demand in the New Delhi march for release of political prisoners.
Although Gopalan and Niren Ghosh (another CP member of Parliament), who addressed the Calcutta rally, denied reports that they were heading for "a split in the CPI," the Dange leadership appears to be determined to head towards a showdown. In West Bengal itself the Provisional Organizing Committee of the state unit set up by the Dange leadership is being openly defied by the majority of the members. The leftists now accuse Dange of trying to split the party. .
At the Calcutta rally, Gopalan said that the move to divide the "Communists as pro-Peking and pro-Moscow groups" is a “bourgeois device to throttle mass movements against the govern— ment's antipeople measures." He also said that "revisionism" is the main danger facing the CPI today.
Niren Ghosh, explaining why the "Democratic Convention" was _ formed, said that it was needed as an “expression of mass resent- | ment against the government's antidemocratic policies" and that. it would exist so long as the "people! ‘Ss leaders" remain in jail.
(The governments of West Bengal and Maharashtra are still holding a large number of leftists while most other state governments have freed them. Last week the West Bengal government released the veteran CP leader Muzafar Ahmad on health grounds. He at once publicly associated himself with the demonstration held in Calcutta.)
Meanwhile a document submitted by E. MoS. Namboodiripad, former general secretary of the CPI now undergoing "medical treatment" in Moscow, is being circulated among the leading members of the party. In this document, Namboodiripad, known for his "centrist" position in the Sino-Soviet conflict (he criticizes both the Moscow and Peking lines) says that "the real Communists are in a minority in the CPI." He also says that the "vices of bourgeois parliamentarism have penetrated deep into the party, which threaten the very existence of the Marxist-Leninist party."
Namboodiripad has also charged the party leadership with. hav-— ing failed to "proletarianise all party members who joined the
party from outside the ranks of the working class." According to him, the party's coming into position as a "leading opposition group" in Parliament and "power in Kerala" has "brought into the party certain corrupting influences." He further contends that post-independence intellectual activities of landlords , the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie conditioned the moce of thinking of "even the most advanced representatives of the working class.
The document by Namboodiripad, head of the former CP Ministry in Kerala and, an influential figure in the CPI, has stirred a big storm in party ranks.
Nemboodiripad's background is “not: completely Stalinist. In the thirties he wrote a pamphlét explaining how he became a Marxist under the influence of Trotsky's brilliant History of of t the Russian Revolution. Subsequently he recanted.
In a recent article about the Sino-Soviet conflict he referred to the rgreat debate" between Trotsky and Stalin in the twenties. He said that Trotsky was "mistaken" in his political positions as against Stalin.
‘The internal crisis of the Communist party of India is now breaking more fully into the open. Along with this a certain realignment of leftist and centrist forces is occurring. Against the Dange leadership, the centrists seem to have spearheaded the revolt, supported by the leftists, ostensibly with the object of saving the "unity of the party." In their general evaluation of the internal situation in India, the centrists are closer to the leftists but they support the Dange leadership in condemning ~ Chinese "adventurism" on the border question.