By Eva Cheng
The Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (Liberation) (CPI-ML) emerged in the late 1960s from the peasant revolts in the Naxalbari region of West Bengal (known as the Naxalite movement). At first, the party relied heavily on armed struggle as the means to seize power and achieve socialism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting demoralisation of the Indian left, the CPI-ML rose from the underground to forcefully counter the capitalist propaganda offensive that declared socialism dead. Prior to, and since, its emergence, the CPI-ML has reexamined many fundamental questions.
According to Balasubramanian Sivaraman, a CPI-ML politburo member and editor of the party's journal Liberation, the party used to consider underground work "a matter of principle" for revolutionaries. Since the mid-'80s, however, the party has concluded that it is tactical and dictated by circumstances.
The party experimented in different locations with various mixes of underground work and open mass mobilisation. Even now, the party retains an element of underground work in some areas to protect cadres from political killings, which are common in India.
"Under a certain balance of forces, the entire party may have to go underground again", Sivaraman told Green Left Weekly. "A special party department is devoted to preparing the party to make that switch — overnight if necessary."
While the main thrust at present is to function openly as much as possible, Sivaraman said, the CPI-ML has not abandoned militant tactics such as the formation of people's militia, arming the people with traditional weapons, training the youth for armed resistance, "disarming the enemy" and organising militant confrontations. He stressed that the party takes great care not to isolate itself from the masses with such tactics.
The CPI-ML has made big gains since concentrating on open activity, such as achieving greater internal co-ordination and a higher national profile for its mass organisations. The party can respond with "quick reflexes" to new challenges, Sivaraman said.
Previously concentrated in central Bihar state, the CPI-ML now has a stronger presence throughout Bihar and has expanded considerably in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Orissa and Jammu and Kashmir, as well as pockets of influence in other states.
Another gain is the party's increasing influence among intellectuals. The other left parties' poor record of reaching "new generations of students and youth" meant they were not becoming "radicalised ideologically", explained Sivaraman. "The CPI-ML has been successful in attracting educated students and youth. We have many youth in our party ... We are a party of the future", he noted.
The Soviet Union
Since its inception, the CPI-ML has been critical of the bureaucratic degeneration in the Soviet Union. It used to characterise the USSR as "social imperialist" based on a rejection of its aggressive foreign policy and the view that it was a bureaucratic form of state monopoly capitalism.
However, the CPI-ML became increasingly uneasy with this position, leading to a reassessment. In the 1980s, the party acknowledged that a socialist order did exist in the Soviet Union, despite its degeneration and distortions. The party welcomed glasnost and perestroika since they appeared to be attempts to address the fundamental problems within the Soviet system. However, as the liberal character of these changes became clear by 1987-88, the CPI-ML expressed its concern.
This reassessment removed a barrier to potential cooperation with the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). Both have significant mass support despite their opportunist and social democratic politics.
In India, like in many other countries, the left was subjected to a blanket ideological attack after the Soviet collapse. "We had to bear the brunt of it", Sivaraman said. But despite this, he added, the collapse itself did not create a noticeable demoralisation within the CPI-ML's ranks. The CPI-M — the largest left party in India — also survived the Soviet collapse without major losses due to its relative independence. On the other hand, the pro-Moscow CPI, which was heavily dependent on Soviet aid, suffered desertions in droves.
Nationalism
There are nationalist movements in Assam and the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. The CPI-ML supports the demand for national self-determination in Kashmir even to the point of secession, but it discourages secession. However, the party rejects a similar demand for Assam.
Sivaraman explained that the CPI-ML's position on Kashmir is derived from Lenin's views on the national question. "While acknowledging the right to secede, you are not calling for secession but actually discouraging it and working to prevent it" because "this is the precondition on which we can unite different nationalities in a common struggle for socialism", he said.
Nationalism, said Sivaraman, must be examined on the basis of its concrete historical content. He identified three distinct stages.
In the context of small nations' fights against feudal monarchy, nationalism was progressive, facilitating the rise of capitalism. In the face of imperialism, national independence often became the precondition for the development of capitalism in colonial countries and conditional support to national independence in those places was warranted. In the current phase, when the struggle against imperialism is widespread, many variants are possible and specific judgements must be made on what might be the best course to promote socialist integration.
In the last phase, "We uphold the right to self-determination, including the right to secession, only to prevent secession ... it's only a means of integration, not a means of division ... The right of self-determination may be taken as an end in itself by the masses of a particular nationality, but Leninists must not do that", said Sivaraman.
"The particularity of Lenin's position is that it only begins after this recognition (of rights)", Sivaraman continued. "Simply upholding this right is a very passive stance. We have a certain responsibility to integrate the people of all nationalities, including those of Jammu and Kashmir, in some kind of socialist union of different peoples."
While there are different nationalities in India, the CPI-ML does not recognise all of them to be separate nations. Tendencies toward separation vary between national movements.
Sivaraman told Green Left Weekly that a revolutionary party must not stop at the general recognition of rights. In Kashmir's case, the nationalist forces want to open talks with the Indian government to regain certain rights which existed before 1953. "Who are we to say that you can't talk and must go for separation?", he asked.
Assam
Sivaraman said the petty-bourgeois nationalist movement in Assam had already faded before it turned to terrorism. At the movement's height, the CPI-ML stood by it and was the only left party to do so. "With this movement now on the fringe, the workers cannot carry on with their nationalist illusions and must confront the real problems of capitalism and neo-liberalism."
A main objective of the Assam movement was to resist the influx of settlers from Bangladesh after 1971. The Assamese people, who belong to the Hindu religion, felt deeply aggrieved at being reduced to a minority in their own land by Bengali-speaking Muslims. Those who ruled the Assamese on behalf of the British colonialists before independence were also Bengali-speaking Muslims.
"The Assamese movement demanded that the newcomers be expelled, but we did not support that. We argued they were merely poor people moving from a poorer region and can settle in other Indian states", Sivaraman explained.
"When the Indian government tried to impose an election on the region without reaching an accord with the nationalist movement, the situation turned explosive."
The CPI-ML proposed that those who had settled after 1971 should be taken off the electoral roll.
"We recognise the problem faced by the Assamese people and acknowledge that they should not pay a price at the expense of their identity in their own land", Sivaraman told Green Left Weekly. "We are sympathetic to the Assamese movement and work with them though we hold some qualifications, criticisms and draw some demarcations with them."
The CPI-ML advocates a socialist confederation between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Such a federation could overcome the Hindu-Muslim divide, as well as other damaging legacies from the partitions of the Indian sub-continent.
Sivaraman stressed that the CPI-ML would not accept a confederation dominated by India, the most powerful of the three countries. Because this fear is widespread in the smaller countries, the socialist confederation slogan is not suitable at the moment and has to remain a perspective.