(This is the speech delivered by Comrade Provash Ghosh, General Secretary, SUCI(C), at the CPI (M) Party Congress in Vishakhapatnam on 14 April, 2015)
Comrade President, Comrade Prakash Karat, General Secretary of CPI(M), members of CPI (M) Politburo, leaders of other left parties, and comrade delegates,
I greet you on behalf of my party Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist) and I like to offer thanks to you for extending invitation to our Party to attend this inaugural session of your Party Congress.
Comrades, your Party Congress is being held at an unprecedented critical hour of our country. Yours being the biggest left party in the country, the future course of Indian left movement depends much on your decisions and subsequent implementation.
Long back great Lenin observed that once capitalism was attached to democracy and individual freedom, but in the stage of imperialism it is more attached to bureaucracy and militarism. Great Stalin, just before his demise, pointed out in the 19th Conference of CPSU that the bourgeoisie had thrown overboard the banner of liberal democracy. Now, we see that parliamentary democracy is nothing but a shameless hypocrisy; the much trumpeted free and fair election is a total deception. Not the verdict of the people, but the verdict of the bourgeoisie decides everything in election. The ruling bourgeoisie selects, appoints, reappoints and replaces one faithful political servant by another in the name of election. The last vestiges of bourgeois democracy have already been demolished. Dark fascism in diverse forms and in different degrees is now the order in almost all advanced and backward capitalist countries.
Fascism has three characteristic features– concentration of capital or increasing monopolization, centralization of executive and bureaucratic power and regimentation of thought through a fusion between spiritualism and technical aspects of science in the realm of culture. All these features are present in our country. According to the need of the ruling bourgeoisie, the Congress was replaced by the BJP. The BJP is committed, on the one hand, to continue and to help further intensification of the ruthless bourgeois economic exploitation and monstrous political oppression, and on the other hand, to accelerate the ongoing process of fascisition in our country.
Perhaps you know when fascist Hitler was condemned by all great personalities of the last century like Romain Rolland, Einstein, Bernard Shaw, Rabindranath and others, it was M S Golwalkar, the Guruji or the ideologue of Sangh Parivar who was effusive in praise for Hitler and said that by purifying the German nation by driving away the Jews, he had shown as to how to purify the Hindus in India. Golwalkar had criticized Indian Renaissance and freedom struggle because it was not a Hindu national struggle and directed only against the British rulers. The BJP is the inheritor of that tradition. It has launched severe attacks in the sphere of ideology and culture. The RSS-BJP are reviving, highlighting and encouraging old obsolete medieval religious ideas and culture. They ridiculously claim that all modern scientific truths were discovered in ancient Hindu India.
They are replacing science by mythology and accordingly school text books and even syllabus are being rewritten with the object of fomenting Hindu jingoism, ancient traditionalism and destroying scientific bend of mind and reasoning faculty to inculcate blind faith. This is a very dangerous attack. On the other hand, they are instigating and actually organizing communal riots and precipitating tension to divide the exploited people over religious faiths in order to obstruct the growth of mass struggles and to create Hindu vote bank. This is their sinister design.
Further in the interest of capitalism, they are concentrating attack on the field of culture to destroy all human values, ethics and morals. They are demoralizing the young generation. It is not accidental that eve-teasing, rape, gang rape, murder and even rape of girl children and old women are growing menacingly and rapidly. Is this the land where once Rammohan, Vidyasagar, Phule, Rabindranath, Saratchandra, Premchand, Subramania Bharati were born? It is complete ruination of the country. This is the darkest period of our country.
It is also to be noted that the Indian state as a rising imperialist power has been moving hand in glove with US imperialism, developing more close economic, political, military relationship with USA in its bid to expand Indian influence in South Asia, Indian ocean states, Middle East, Africa and other countries in order to export more finance capital and commodities. India, at the same time, is also keeping its partnership with BRICS combination to increase bargaining capacity with USA. So the situation demands a powerful, long drawn, militant left and democratic movement against the Indian ruling class, US imperialism and along with it, a powerful ideological and cultural struggle to resist BJP and RSS’s menacing ideological-cultural attack. I agree with Comrade Prakash Karat on the question of Left Unity. But here one point is very important. I raised this in the CPI Congress too. Who are left, who are secular and who are democratic? On this there is much confusion among the people. There must not be any vagueness and diffuseness in understanding. We think the parties who regard themselves as Marxist in spite of their fundamental differences in understanding and applications of Marxism are to be considered as leftists. Parties like the Congress and other regional, parochial, casteist combinations oppose the BJP in the elections. But that does not necessarily mean that they are secular and democratic. Concept of secularism came from the West. Historically it emerged at the time of Western Renaissance and bourgeois democratic revolution. Philosophically secularism means non-recognition of any super natural power and recognition of only nature and material world as reality. Politically secularism means that the state, political affairs, culture and education must be kept free from religious practices. State would neither encourage any religion nor interfere in the religious activities. Religion should remain a personal affair. During our freedom struggle, the national bourgeoisie being afraid of revolution not only compromised with British imperialism politically, it also compromised with religion ideologically and culturally and advocated secularism as encouragement to all religions which is nothing but pseudo-secularism. Democratic parties are those who uphold secular democratic values, fight communalism, casteism and parochialism, consistently oppose imperialism, support leftism and whether in power or in opposition, encourage democratic struggles of the toiling people. In the name of left, secular, democratic unity there cannot be any hotchpotch combination eyeing only electoral benefits.
I recall that just after independence there was a glorious period of left movement in our country. In those struggles many had shed their blood and became martyrs. At that time, the lefts were considered as the only alternative to the Congress. In those days left movements developed in continuation of the left current in the freedom movement and further strengthened by the powerful world communist movement led by Great Stalin and Great Mao Zedong. But today the situation is altogether different. On the one hand, the Lefts in our country showed serious deviations and committed serious blunders one after another creating distrust and confusions among the people. On the other, the revisionists as the agents of the bourgeoisie, attacked Stalin not only to destroy his authority but also to undermine the authority of Lenin and thus prepared the ground for restoration of capitalism and destruction of socialism.
But it is heartening to note that in the erstwhile Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries, thousands and thousands of people are coming out in the streets in demonstrations, carrying the portraits of Lenin and Stalin and crying for return of socialism. It is also to be noted that the scheme of globalization intended to save capitalism from crisis, has instead aggravated the crisis globally. World imperialism-capitalism is in the grip of unprecedented recession almost for a decade and now is put in ventilation to survive. There is no doctor who can cure the disease. Market economy is faced with crisis of ever shrinking market. There is unprecedented bursting of anger of the people. Surging waves of mass struggles are sweeping spontaneously across USA, Europe and everywhere. People are crying for leadership. The objective condition is prepared for revolution. The subjective condition i.e. the proletarian parties armed with the revolutionary teachings of Great Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin-Mao-Zedong are yet to come forward. Sooner or later they are sure to emerge according to the law of history.
Comrades, in our country too, whatever may be the political crisis there are sparks of discontent flying around us. There are periodic outbreaks of spontaneous movements here and there. Need of the hour is correct leadership to lead those struggles to logical culmination. Who can lead? Only the left parties jointly can lead. Movements are to be led by struggling ideology and higher ethics.
Our Party always was and is for united left movement. Previously we were in united left movements. But since 1974 we are not in unity with your party. When your party was in power in West Bengal and Kerala, we had differences with you and we had organized movements on people’s burning issues. Our relations became bitter. Unhappy things occurred. Yet, even at those times we tried to forge unity with you at the all India level and in other states. But our efforts were not successful. Now that phase is over. I appreciate and thank Comrade Prakash Karat who had taken the trouble to come down to Kolkata to meet us with the appeal of joint movement. We heartily responded to issue-based joint movement. We want unity not for deriving electoral mileage, but only for developing militant class and mass struggles. Yes, there will be ideological differences and accordingly there will be ideological struggle too, but not to weaken rather to strengthen the unity and struggle. Organizing militant working class struggles and mass movements on the edifice of higher ideology and culture is the need of the hour.
Before I finish let me recall Lenin’s teaching that the real strength of a proletarian party does not lie in the number of members in Parliament but only lies in the fire of class and mass struggles.
Red Salute to you all
Long Live Marxism-Leninism
Long Live Proletarian Internationalism
