I think this interview in Ind Express is important to understand extreme Left world view. Shades of this view color the other leftists to liberals.
Ind Exp Interview with D. Bhattacharya CPIML
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->âOnly Buddhadeb can give away 1000 acres of fertile landâ
Dipankar Bhattacharya at the EXPRESS
Posted online: Sunday, December 10, 2006 at 0000 hrs IST
<b>Dipankar Bhattacharya is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist),</b> which has had a bit of a late start on the Indian electoral scene. Seen as the ultra-Left, the party contested its first election in 1989 and sent its first MP, Rameshwar Prasad, the same year.
Starting out from the Indian Statistical Institute, Bhattacharya may have been thought of an unlikely candidate to take on the job he holds at present, but it was during the Emergency that he came into his own. <b>And since Bhattacharya took over from the legendary Vinod Mishra, his party has been trying to find a middle ground â from being at odds with the system to one that has now come to terms with parliamentary democracy. The CPIML today still claims to be, in his words, âthe Left opposition to the Leftâ. </b>
Bhattacharya joined the Express team for lunch this week and candidly discussed what drives his party nearly 40 years after Naxalbari erupted in 1967, how the changes in Nepal have impacted his party and, most of all, what he feels about big brother CPM. Excerpts:
DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA: I have just returned from our central committee meeting in Chennai and these are some of the things we discussed: In 2007, we are planning a big, countrywide campaign, which will be slightly different from the campaigns we usually have. One part of the campaign will deal with âburning issuesâ of the day â the question of SEZs, farmer suicides, atrocities on Dalits, exclusion of Muslims, the NREG, that is more on paper than on the ground.
These are issues that we have been involved with and have been campaigning on, very vigorously. <b>But next year, we will try and link it with history and history will become a matter of popular struggle, because history we believe is not to be treated as something of the past or settled. What India really means, what Indiaâs national identity should be, is still a matter of debate in this country. Which is why I think the 150th anniversary of 1857 gives us an opportunity and it is also our duty to celebrate the glorious tradition of peoplesâ revolt in this country, especially with all these new interpretations of 1857 coming up â like looking at 1857 through the prism of âclash of civilizationsâ and the post-9/11 kind of discourse.
We also have the centenary year of Bhagat Singh. And for us, the 40th anniversary of Naxalbari (May 25) is equally significant, as you have continuity â right from 1857 through Bhagat Singh to Naxalbari in the post-Independence era. Basically, the same tradition and glorious heritage of peoplesâ revolts in this country. We are going to try and link the two things â the popular issues and the whole question of Indian history, and develop them into a new plank for a powerful peoplesâ movement.</b>
In our own areas of strength like Bihar, Jharkhand and UP, the movement is growing, but recently, we have also seen growth in other states. In Punjab, for example. Similarly, in Andhra and Orissa, which have not been our strongholds, we are having a positive kind of growth. We have the land struggle growing on the Andhra-Orissa border, we have fisherfolk struggle around Chilka, which is a powerful movement, and has a big role for us to play.
<b>On the issue of SEZs, the kind of displacement we are seeing on a countrywide scale, there too we have a big movement waiting for us. </b>
Bihar has definitely entered a new period after 15 years of Lalu rule, but the recent by-elections show that people are not satisfied with Nitish Kumar, either. Beyond a small camp of upper-caste feudal forces, I donât see any celebrations, any euphoria in Bihar. I think the conditions are still quite favorable for the rise of a third force â and the third force can only be the Left in Bihar and Jharkhand. This is where we would like to have greater cooperation with the so-called mainstream Left parties â but that has not yet happened.
Bengal too remains a bone of contention. Our stand is pretty simple: We want to confine Bengal to Bengal as far as possible. We know Bengal is not India and in the rest of India, wherever possible, we would like to have joint action.
Right now, we have only five MLAs in Bihar, one in Jharkhand. In Assam, where we had developed a sort of strong electoral base, we had to suffer a temporary setback. There was a split in the autonomous state movement, engineered by the BJP and there is also this whole phenomenon of militant state-sponsored outfits.
I feel that in the states where our party has some kind of mass presence, the state is particularly directing its energy against us. In Bihar, we find that even a local thanedar or DSP, SP tells us very clearly that either you have to behave like the CPI or CPM. If you want armed struggle then be like the PWG, set up by the Maoists. Donât try and be propagators of a militant force of peoplesâ movement within the mainstream political arena, they say. This message is very clear and we can see how at this juncture, the concept of democracy and democratic rights, constitutional rights and liberty all come to an end.
UNNI RAJEN SHANKER: For a party which believed in armed struggle, howâs the experience of working within the framework of parliamentary democracy? Has your party been able to make effective policy interventions?
I donât know what you really mean by effective policy intervention, but we have been highlighting to the best of our ability the pressing issues that are now confronting the people, all those issues on which you now have some kind of legislations coming up. Like the NREG, an unorganised sector Bill, domestic violence legislation, etc. These are all issues that have been central and integral to our political agenda. I would like to believe that these legislations have got some connection with the actual movements on the ground.
So we have played some role, but the bigger role is to come because these legislations mean nothing unless they reach the people in need of them the most. I donât expect to influence the policy discourse in this country overnight, because there is a definite policy orientation.
SEEMA CHISHTI: You will be marking 40 years of Naxalbari. Has there been any thinking or suggestion from your cadres for reforms from within? Have the events in Nepal and the line that the Maoists have now taken there impacted on your fundamental ideological beliefs?
The impact has been that it has corroborated our fundamental ideological belief. In Nepal, for 10 years they were involved in what they call âpeopleâs warâ, and now they are more into this arena of political initiatives. What they have achieved in Nepal is quite remarkable in the context of Nepal but I donât see how one can draw any conclusion of universal significance. I donât look at it from the point of view that since USSR collapsed and China is facing some ideological problems, we can automatically turn to Nepal and find the answer.
In the context of Nepal, I think what they have done is quite remarkable as it shows that it is possible to combine various forms of struggle. Even in this way, it is possible for people to come out on the streets in hundreds and thousands and dethrone a US-backed monarchy. Maybe for the Maoists in India, this shift has been a setback as they would have been happy if there were a linear culmination of the peopleâs war in Nepal, a continuation of the struggle the way it was rather than their coming into the parliamentary arena.
But for us, the important thing is this combination â they were involved in armed struggle when it was necessary and they have also shown the political vision and flexibility to come into politics and triggering the âpolitical crisisâ that led to the resetting of the political agenda in Nepal.
VRINDA GOPINATH: What has been your partyâs experience in West Bengal?
We play a difficult role there. We constitute the Left opposition to a Left Front government. If we had not been there the BJP, Congress and TMC would have monopolised the whole opposition. But being the Left opposition is not an easy thing to do. Many good things like Operation Barga, Panchayati Raj and all the land reforms have taken place in the state. But now there is certainly a growing area where we are forced to confront the government.
This is what we have been doing and for which we are being badmouthed. It has been propagated that here is a party that considers the CPM to be the biggest enemy, a bigger enemy even than the BJP. But then that is just an occupational hazard that we have to face. We have been successful in keeping alive the peoplesâ belief in the Left.
In the last election, you saw the CPM doing exceptionally well because for people there, it is the Left which can deliver. There is no Congress leader around who can do this. Only Buddhadeb Bhattacharya can go about giving away thousand acres of multi-crop land (to the Tatas in Singur). Pranab Mukherjee canât, nor can Mamta Banerjee.
PAMELA PHILIPOSE: One of the criticisms of the Left parties has been that their class struggle does not take into account caste stratifications. How does your politics reflect the wisdom or the lack of it, on this?
I find this a bit strange because if you read The Communist Manifesto, the first sentence says it is society that is divided into classes not the economy. But somehow, it is always believed that when you are talking about class, you are only talking about economic status or economic rights. So for us it is not a bit of gender, a bit of caste, a bit of economics and a bit of politics combined into a class struggle. I think when you are talking about class struggle, you are basically talking about a fundamental transformation in the polity and society, you want the oppressed to become the dominant or the decisive force.
COOMI KAPOOR: Can a party like yours be an electoral success with less than 12 MLAs all over India?
I think it can, the whole point is to prepare yourself for that kind of situation. There are new parties that have evolved, the electoral scene in India has been one of the most dynamic in the world. The parties that have made it big in the electoral arena are the ones that have been easily co-opted into the whole scheme of things.
Take the BSP, for example. The other day I was talking to some of their leaders. They said: âAmbedkar had gotten into too many things. He talked about land nationalisation and public sector, etc. Whereas we are single-minded about power. We also have our economic agenda but we are keeping it hidden. It will come to the fore only once we come to power.â
In the process, the BSP has managed to gain a captive Dalit base and an active aggressive upper-caste base. That probably gives it immediate electoral success, but it is confined to UP. If we, in the name of winning elections give up our struggles and ideology, we will be at loss. Then we will lose our USP, we will no longer be the CPIML. Why would then anyone come to us?
KAVITA CHOWDHURY: Do you think the uneasy memories of the Naxalbari movement in West Bengal prevent the common man from accepting your ideology?
I donât think people are allergic to Naxalbari, neither are we dogmatic about Naxalbari. We are certainly not telling the people of Singur that âsee we told you soâ, that 40 years ago Naxalbari said this. So you first understand what Naxalbari is and then you will understand what happened in Singur. When we went there, we found that people were very receptive and they knew that here is a Left party that has been in the thick of land struggles and they probably found us more credible than Mamata Banerjee, going there and using all the rhetoric, all the talk of peasantry, land reform, etc.
MANINI CHATTERJEE: <b>How does the post-reforms China affect your worldview? </b>
China does not affect our worldview. What we find unique about China is that they are much more down-to-earth than the Soviet Union was. The one thing good about China is that they say they have a very elementary form of socialism, though there are certain policies we do not agree with. Where we would like China to be different is if they could have a more proactive political presence in the arena of global politics. Their multi-polarity is more an economic multi-polarity rather than a political one. If capitalism can have a wide range of models from Adam Smith to Tony Blair, why should socialism be confined to a single type of model?
As for West Bengal, the more we are able to stick to our role as a Left opposition the more we are able to strike some chord and resonance within the CPM. That is why they donât want this to happen, that is why attacks on us take place. We have been particular about demarcating our distance from the Trinamool Congress, too.
VARGHESE K GEORGE: <b>It is said that Chinaâs is a new form of capitalism or is it socialism gone wrong? </b>
This is what China is saying: âWe are in a very elementary stage of socialism and building capitalism and we have a kind of socialist state.â But then you need to look at the kind of capitalism India has and the kind China has â they are able to exercise a greater degree of sovereignty in terms of their own planning and decision-making. That much you will have to grant to China, which we cannot grant to many other Third World country.
That is why I do not invest China with a lot of socialist theory. The Chinese kind of capitalism, the special kind of capitalism you see evolving there interests us. We consider them to be an ordinary socialist country, without adjectives.
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