Communists and Congress Should Give Birth to ’Red Indians’

The Communist parties and the Congress (I) are toying with the idea of
coming closer to form an alternative political dispensation. The
biggest accomplishment of such a miscegenation could be, of course,
showing the door to the BJP-led chaos in Delhi. The upshot of it all
may also include Congress getting back its reformatory vigor, the
Communists occupying the political center stage, and the country
gaining a new political climate and orientation.

The ideological travails of Congress have been so long and arduous
that the social radicalism and reformatory zeal were gradually lost on
the way. From 1934 onwards the party had an inner group called the
Congress Socialist Party of Jayaprakash Narayan and others even as
Mahatma Gandhi was replacing the "gentlemanly class" as the main voice
of Indian nationalism through large-scale mobilization and
organizational activism. The CSP that claimed to have come to apply
Marxism correctly to the Indian situation had to exit the Congress
soon after independence. Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru set out to transform
the country into an industrialized, secular, liberal democracy with
Western rationality and science along with Gandhian values and vision
that completely contradicted the former.

Indira Gandhi, who inherited her father's centralized economic
planning, ended up centralizing Indian politics as well. With the
Nehruvian model aground in the 1980s, it was all downhill for the
Congress party. Having lost the confidence of both minority and
majority communities all over the country, the party stands completely
discredited with accusations of corruption and inefficiency. The
party is trying to revert back to their traditional dynastic
sycophancy and to prepare a road map for their aimless political
journey under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi. It is definitely in
their best interest to join hands with the Communists and inject some
radical ideology into their otherwise sterile politics.

Communists, on the other hand, have often lurked in the margins of
national politics. The Communist Party of India itself was formed
almost 40 years after the Indian National Congress came into being. As
per the policy reversal of the Sixth Congress of the Communist
International in 1928, the CPI heeded on building themselves up rather
than cooperating with the nationalist organizations in the
independence struggle. This kind of "sectarian mistakes" which had
kept the party aloof from the mass movements of the period did not
offer them a good start. Broadening the concrete Congress-led
national struggle for freedom to a vague Soviet-led international
struggle against imperialism, they marginalized themselves even
further.

However, the mainstream Communist parties have overcome some of the
unfavorable assessments of the public and begun to play seminal roles
in the national politics. They are no longer seen as Moscow-bent or
Beijing-slanted fire-spitting rabble-rousers. Nor are they considered
anymore as hard-headed ideologues lost in their rhetorical Utopian
fantasies. They are rather well respected pragmatic politicians who
combine revolutionary agenda and responsible governance. They are
successful Chief Ministers, earnest Home Minister, potential Prime
Ministers, and respectable elder statesmen to whom the country can
turn for advice and direction.

Despite the mutual contempt the Congress workers and Communists have
for each other, they do share some commonalities. Congress has gone
far away from Mahatma Gandhi who wanted the party to be disbanded on
achieving independence. Communists have not lived up to their
ideology quite strictly either. Both groups have varying degrees of
corruption, opportunism, confusion, dilution of political will, and
lack of a viable political program. However, if there are some
sincere patriots and genuine ’possibilists' left in India in the midst
of all the gloom and doom, many of them must be in these two camps.
Communists and the Congress have a reasonably good number of leaders
with mature political background, personal integrity and commitment.

The Congress-Communist alliance may bring one of two things to the
country. If the Congress sticks to the Gandhis of lower order, and
Communists stay tuned to distant borders, India may suffer yet another
political miscarriage and will have a near-sighted government for a
short period of time. On the contrary, the country may gain much more
if the former decides to look higher toward the original Gandhi and
the Communists look down at the subcontinental ground reality they are
faced with. However, such a union may not result in bringing about
Gandhian Marxists or Marxist Gandhians for obvious reasons.

Late veteran Communist leader E. M. S. Namboodiripad commented (in a
1997 edited volume Gandhi and the Future of Humanity) on the
complementarities and contradictions between Gandhians and Communists.
While Gandhi was committed to nonviolence in his fight against the
British, the Communists's were for the revolutionary overthrow of the
British rulers and their Indian minions. Their motto was "nonviolence
if possible, violence if necessary" which was in direct contrast with
the Gandhian position. Nampoodiripad explained at length how Gandhi's
non-violent means "meant the subordination of militant mass action to
the requirements of a negotiated settlement with the British rulers."

Besides the means, Gandhians and Communists also differed on the ends.
Although Mahatma Gandhi was committed to the cause of serving the
poor, he did not want the poor to be the ruling classes. He was,
according to Namboodiripad, "thinking of replacing the alien rulers
with India's own ruling classes." The Communists, however, wanted the
complete economic and political emancipation of the industrial and
agricultural workers, the working peasants, toiling middle classes and
other oppressed and exploited sections of the society.

Though critical of Gandhi's method of leading the freedom struggle,
his compromises with the British rulers and his partiality for the
Indian vested interests, the Communists hailed his service to the poor
during the post-partition violence. His admitting ’failure' in his
mission in life "shows how great he was as a person." Namboodiripad
concluded: "We Communists, therefore, hold him in high esteem, even
while continuing to be critical of his ideology, politics, strategy
and tactics."

Some of the other differences between Gandhi and Communists could be
their understanding of state, economic development, social evolution
etc. As Bhikhu Parekh contends in his 1989 book Gandhi's Political
Philosophy: A Critical Examination that Gandhi spent all his life
fighting against the state and he shared the rebel's deep suspicion
and biased view of it. For him, human as a soul and the state
(organized along the lines of modern science) as a 'soul-less machine'
could not co-exist. This product of material civilization was
particularly unsuited to India because it had a spiritual
civilization. So Gandhi felt the need for a "a new type of non-statal
polity" which he called 'enlightened anarchy.'

Under this 'ordered anarchy' socially responsible and morally
disciplined men and women would enjoy maximum freedom with minimum
necessary order. This polity would be based on non-violence; place
people at the center; build up courage, autonomy and a sense of power
among them; foster strong and vibrant local communities; and
regenerate Indian society and culture. It would have a central
government but no centralized structure of authority; it would
cultivate a sense of nationality but rely on autonomous and
self-governing local communities.

Gandhi never considered himself as a visionary or a philosopher but as
a ’practical idealist' who tried to combine high moral standing and a
series of 'experiments with truth'. His ’Truth' was neither
positivistic nor absolutistic, and his efforts were ongoing
experiments from which he kept learning valuable lessons all the time.
He had a unique knack of communicating with the people of India by
using indigenous metaphors and methods that had been there on the
Indian masses' psyche. Equipped with such flexibility and ingenuity,
he could easily motivate the people of India for mass political
action. That is why even today invoking the Mahatma's name turns
people's heads in India, and Marx or Mao means little to most people.

An impartial scrutiny of both Gandhi and Communists would reveal quite
a few holes in both their politics. Neither of them is perfect.
Informed Gandhians would readily admit that. Communists have been
forced to face that fact. Now that independence has been achieved and
that we have come a long way from 1947, some of the basic differences
between Gandhians and Communists can and should be overlooked. After
all, mainstream Communists are not engaging in "class war" or random
acts of violence, and the largely marginalized Gandhians are not
colluding with the ruling classes either.

Combining the strengths of both Gandhian and Communist politics and
building up on their shared interests such as Ahimsa/nonviolence,
Sarvodaya/egalitarianism, Satya/emancipation, and Satyagraha/organized
struggle, they can and should steer Indian politics to a dignified
destination. Both groups need to upgrade themselves and become more
user-friendly. We are not looking for an unprincipled mega-merger but
a strategic joint-venture to accomplish a specific objective: to
create a favorable political climate in the country that will help the
healthy human seeds sprout, grow, and bloom into Gandhian Leftists and
Leftist Gandhians. (To adapt a quote of Swami Vivekananda) A few
millions of such ’Red Indians' fired with the zeal for social justice
and fortified with eternal faith in human dignity and freedom should
go over the length and breadth of India preaching and practicing the
gospel of salvation, the gospel of socioeconomic-political
emancipation, and the gospel of true independence.