INDIAN COMMUNISTS REFURBISH DANGE
By Kailas Chenéra 3
BOMBAY “~: ‘The Seventh” ‘Congress of. the Communist: party of. India (right-wing Dange faction) which concluded its ten-day session in Bombay on December 23 pledged itself to build "national democracy," within the capitalist framework of capitalism, in India “as a stage in which the growth of capitalism will be progressively restricted: and the prerequisites: ereated for: putting the country on ‘the road: to socialism," =. .
The "new programme" adopted. by. the party congress "olarifiea" the "dynamic process by which the National Democratic Front will emerge, and the vital role to be played :by the working-class in alliance with. the peasantry and the revolutionary middle class, in leading the front in which the patriotic section. of the national bour= geoisie will also find a place."
Non assuming power. and forming 4 the: National Democratic Front," said an official press release summing up the "programme," "the Front will.see to it that. the octapus grip of foreign monopoly and Indian monopoly combines is eliminated, ‘that all necessary land reforms. are fully carried out and . democracy is. extended and strengthened," © < Thus, ‘the building of: capitalism and not. socialism is. the. immediate programme: of the -"Dengeite" wing: of the CGPI which draws its inspiration from the broad strategy .of “peaceful coexistence" pursued by the Soviet bureaucracy in international politics, There were indeed amendments moved to the: programme, suggesting that the character of the Indian revolution is "peoples democratic” under.the "hegemony of the working class" (on-the lines of the programme adopted by the left. CPI at its Calcutta congress: in October ); and’ some amendments even characterised the revolution as “socialist. w. But alI of them were defeated. : .
There was also a “supra-right" tendency as represented by a former general: secretary of the CPI, P.C.Joshi,. who advocated a - "formal: alliance:with the ruling Congress Party: and a virtual -mer- © ger with it," perhaps as. a logical’ culmination of the steps to build national. democracy" in. India. This tendency was also defeated.
The outcome of the deliberations was a "personal triumph". for S,A.Dange. Not only has he been re-elected as the chairman of the GPI but he managed to "rehabilitate" his prestige, which had been badly damaged. by the. controversy. raised over the “letters” he wrote from prison: forty years ago to the then British Viceroy of India "offering" his services to. British imperialism. (Dange said that they were: "forged. ") 7
A great deal of money was spent. by: Dange to. make a spectacular show of the congress. Boris’ Ponomaryev, secretary of the Central
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Committee of the CPSU, led a big delegation which participated in the congress and if was even rumoured that the delegation stayed till the end to see that Dange was re-elected as chairman, not to give a sense of surrender to the left CPI which had made an issue of the letters, Ponomaryev also refused to meet an informal delegation of the left Opi.
Fraternal delegates from twenty-four Communist parties, all known for their pro-Moscow sympathies (including the CP's of italy, France, Argentina, Canada, Australia, the United States, Belgiun, Ceylon, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Mongolia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Uruguay and Yugoslavia) attended and messages were received from thirty-five pro- Moscow Communist parties.
The pro-Chinese parties, including ‘the GPC, the Indonesian CGP, the Japanese CP and parties of Albania, North Vietnam and North Korea were.not invited for obvious reasons,
Although the Cuban United Party of Socialist Revolution was invited it sent neither a: fraternal delegate nor a message.
oo It ‘was indeed an "ampressive" show, intended to make up for the lack of revolutionary fervour among the participants in the deliberations, in contrast to what was witnessed at the left CPI congress at Calcutta (which was preceded by a series of arrests of prominent CP leaders of West Bengal), Dange and his colleagues also carefully planned the selection of delegates and observers to the congress ‘to. ensure smooth sailing.
Some. interesting statistics were prow ded by the credentials committee ‘of the congress, Of the 581 delegates, 229 represented party bodies, 140 were from trade unions and 100 from the Kisan front. Out of these, 443 were "whole-time functionaries," Naturally their votes could be counted on as safe, since they would not oppose the leadership employing them,
There were other interesting details: of the total number of 593 delegates elected to the congress, 581 attended (because their travel expenses had. been met). Some 40 per cent belonged to the age group of 35 to 55. In the age group above 55, there were only 30 delegates. While 296 delegates joined the party before independence, 24 were members with over 30 years! standing. There were also 187 observers at the congress,
There. were some talks during the congress about Dange stepping down in favour of a less: controversial leader, Dr.G.Adhikari, the theoretician of the party. But the new national council of 101 which was elected by the congress decided that he should continue. C.Rajeshwar Rao of Andhra (who was the general secretary of the "united CPI" for a brief period in 1951) was elected as the general secretary. P.C.Joshi, who was the subject of a great deal of criticism at the congress for: being a "tailist" of the Congress party was
dropped both from the ll-member secretariat and the 25-member central executive committee although he finds a place in the national council. In the new leadership, Dange and his faction have made common cause with a- relatively "left" tendency associated with Bhupesh Gupta (who campaigned for rapprochement between the two (GPIs., in India) and Ra jasekhara Reddy of Andhra, me the leadership cleverly manoeuvred: to see that a report sub-_ mitted bya seven-member special commission on the "Dange letters" was not presented to the congress. The report was considered by the. outgoing national council which seemed.-to have given a certificate of good conduct to Dange. It was well known that the special commission was divided on the authenticity of the letters attributed to Dange. Although the majority of five had absolved Dange of the charge that he had worked for the British government (while not going into the question whether the letters were forged or genuine ) two of its members (Bhupesh Gupta and Sohan Singh Josh) had in a dissent ing note said that the letters were "not proved to be forged." The "letters" issue was brought before the congress at the fag-end of the ll-day deliberations, during a night session, and the congress adopt-. ed -= despite some opposition ~—- a national counedl resolution that the letters were "not genuine." ace
An attempt was made: by: Sohan Singh Josh ‘to get. the post of. chairman eliminated -- as a move to oust Dange from the leadership - “= when the congress was discussing amendments to the party constitution; but his move was: defeated. P.C.Joshi, it would appear, submitted a charge~sheet against Dange but the charges were never discussed,
On ‘the’ organisational questions, the CPI congress did take some positive decisions, demonstrating that it was breaking from its old bureaucratic practices perhaps as a concession to the social democracy. The newly amended constitution seeks to give the CPI the character of a "mass party," to “extend democratic functioning inside the party" and generally "tone up discipline and collective bargaining."
A provision has also been made to launch an internal bulletin, in various languages, and to start a central school for training cadres, There was a great deal of debate on the organisational structure of the party and the concept of inner-party democracy, especially in the context of the "post-Stalin" developments in the Soviet Union. This was possibly an indication of the growing ferment inside the right CPI on organisational questions, although the party ranks have not shown ‘a similar vigilance on the question of the strategy and tactics of the Indian revolution,
All the foreign fraternal delegates, except the Yugoslavs, avoided any direct reference to the Chinese CP and some of them,. including the Soviet delegation, called for "normalisation of the situation in the communist ‘movement. . . [to] facilitate the end of open polemics, especially in the forms it was waged so far," The Yugoslav
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delegate, however, declared himself against the “"hegemonistic, dog--. . matic, : sectarian and tearing policies of the Chinese leadership."
The. CPL congress, in its key document on the "ideological con~ . troversies in the international communist movement," however,.-did. not fail to open a broadside against the Chinese CP Me ene for. bringing the "international communist movement almost to the brink of a split." The document also emphatically expressed the CPI's disagreement with the positions taken by the Chinese leadership on all vital questions, "namely, the character and significance of the new epoch, war and peace, peaceful co-existence, national liberation movement, national democracy, forms of transition to socialism, oult of personality, and the unity of the socialist camp and world communist movement.
On the eve of the congress there were some vague talks about the possibility of a re-union between the right and left CP's in India, in the context of the changes in the Soviet leadership. A section of the "centrists" attached to both parties sought to bring about some understanding; but at the CPI congress itself no initiative to that effect was mooted, except to the extent of suggesting the creation of a united front of all left parties in Kerala (including the left CP, Revolutionary Socialist party, etc.) to fight the coming mid-term elections in the state scheduled in February. Even this limited. united front between the two CP's appears to be difficult.
For all practical purposes the two Communist parties, one wedded to the pro-Moscow policy of class collaboration in relation to the Indian bourgeoisie, and the other inspired by the Chinese line of thinking and advocating the necessity of militant class struggles to overthrow the present bourgeois-landlord regime of the Congress party, have come to stay, to serve as two poles of the working-class movement in India in the coming period.