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Chengara Struggle, Janadesh and Agrarian Revolutionary Struggle
For Land
S Majhi
Aug. 2008
During past 12 months we saw some ‘land struggles' in some parts of India with the demand ‘land for the landless', which, according to the organisers, focused on land hunger amidst the Dalit and Adivasi people. Obviously, these land struggles differed a lot from Nandigram, Kalinganagar, Jagatballabhpur or Singur struggles where people fought attacks of corporate-party-government nexus grabbing land from the peasantry. Some co-fighters and well wishers of the former category of struggles labelled these as ‘new land struggles', highlighted the question of ‘land right' etc, with famous author-activist Ms Arundhati Roy branding Chengara struggle as the ‘most revolutionary struggle that is going on in India' because there, unlike the Nandigram peasants who were defending their land against corporate encroachment, Dalits are making inroads into corporate lands. The CPIML (Red Star) group came to the support of struggling people in Chengara, who are overwhelmingly Dalits, from the early days of the struggle and stood by the fighting people. At a later stage the CPIML warned against the NGO infiltration, their vile campaign again the communists in general and in relation to that struggle in particular and cautioned about the possibility of this struggle or such struggles getting steered in a wrong direction (see Kerala: NGOs Try to Hijack Land Struggle in Dec 07 issue of Red Star). The other struggle or rather a 26-day march of 28000 people was the Jandesh Yatra of thousands of people from Gwalior to Delhi organised by Ekta Parishad demanding land particularly for Dalits, Adivasi people and the development-displaced ones. In this demonstration, it is said, hundreds of foreigner delegates joined, and also many of NGOs. This was greeted by many parties of the establishment and was culminated in a mass meeting in Delhi where topmost CPIM & CPI leaders and a rising star of Congress were seen on the dais with the prime minister himself proposing a committee to look into the subject. This movement got very good media coverage. The CPIML exposed the Janadesh Yatra type ‘struggles' as NGOisation of land struggle in the same Dec 07 issue of their journal. We would request the readers to read the Red Star commentaries. It may appear that further elaborating on this subject is not that necessary after those commentaries in Red Star. But, for the sake of elaborating a few additional points (not all possible points that may arise) and some viewpoints we would like to examine those struggles.
But at first we give a short account of Chengara struggles for readers who do not know much about it. The Chengara struggle or the land struggle at Chengara, Kerala started a year before starting with 300 landless families, mainly Dalit and also a few Adivasi people, by occupying a part of the Harrison Malayalam Estate, India's largest rubber plantation (now owned by the RPG group) at Chengara in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala. The organisation leading the struggle, Sadhu Jana Vimochana Samyukta Vedi (united front for liberation of poor people), said that the lease period of the company had already been expired and hence the govt must evict the company and give the land to landless peasant families. Besides, they claimed that the company was holding illegally much more area under its operation than they were legally permitted. They demanded 5 acres of land per family and a monetary sum of Rs 50,000 per family for initial expenditure. The Vedi president Laha Gopalan claimed that Chief Minister had given a written assurance to the Vedi leaders at a meeting held in Thiruvananthapuram on September 27, 2006, that land would be allotted to the maximum possible landless families by December 31, 2006, and to the remaining families as per the list provided by the Vedi, by August 1, 2007. But as the assurance was not fulfilled they occupied the land themselves. On the other hand, it was heard that the court has given a ruling in favour of the company, held the SJVSV liable for illegal land encroaching and ordered the state to evict them peacefully. Police encircled the area and sealed all possible entry points making it difficult for the Vedi people to bring in essential supplies of food, water and medicines. But the Vedi workers had also threatened self-immolation if the police tried to forcibly evict them at any point of time. Several Dalit, Adivasi organisations like NCDHR etc and CPI(ML) came in support of the movement. Ultimately the Vedi members occupying the plantation could resist the forces of the multinational company. A shift of their hutment area after Onam festival to an area with older rubber trees (not cut for latex any more) helped in erasing tension between rubber workers and the occupiers. The Court specifically ordered ‘no bloodshed' and the SJVSV also puts ‘no bloodshed' in the top of their demand list. The CPIM govt also hesitated to repeat a Nandigram like situation there, though the main opposition parties didn't vigorously take up the Chengara issue, whatever may be the reasons. Slowly the apparent success drew more landless families at Chengara and by end February 2008 almost 7000 landless families from other parts of the state assembled there and started living. All of them live in temporary hutments which are simple structures covered by plastic sheets and they go outside to nearby places to do manual work and earn to have something to eat. Lack of nutrition, sanitation and healthcare are reigning there.
The CPIM perhaps was at a fix: Dalit is a touchy issue nationally and internationally; then, the Chengara occupants voiced enough loudly that by the so called famous land reform of Kerala (and CPI, CPIM) Dalits and Adivasi people were not as benefited as other social groups—the truth in it can be crosschecked with latest NSS data. (If there are 1000 households in an statistically average Kerala village, then out of the 123 Dalit households there 116 or 94% have something between 0.011 acre and 1 acre each while 6 families, or 4.8%, have lesser land while only 1.1% have 1 acre or more each – as says the latest NSS report! For non-SC/ST/OBC households, 29% of them have 1 acre or more and 67% have something between 0.011 acre and 1 acre each. Our learned statisticians in NSSO know it well that for a densely populated state much reliant on agricultural economy like Kerala, it is better to have much smaller and if possible equal ranges of land distribution, particularly ranges like 0.11 to 1 acre and then 1 to 2.5 acre, to form an idea of skewness in land distribution. But why they do not do that only they can tell!) Though the very process of discrimination as presented by Dalit intellectual Sunny M Kapicadu in his speech at the night vigil in support of Chengara can be debated. On the other hand, it will be a big problem for any party of the establishment sitting in the govt chairs to bow its head to movements of lower strata of the society—according to the logic of parties of establishment – because then others will jump in the fray soon and the situation will go out of control! But CPIM did everything they could to vilify the movement from discovering foreign funded NGOs right up to US imperialism behind the struggle, behind fomenting trouble against CPIM which is so much an anti-US force in India etc (!sic) and even their media said Vedi president Laha Gopalan himself was not landless, forgetting how much property the family of initiator-leader of land reform movement in Kerala had (and what a blogger rightly and squarely placed it regarding NGO infiltration — to put the rape victim on the dock and question her character—as if anyone deserves to be raped if her character is ‘questionable' —(Delhi is not far away from Chengara by Bobby Kunhu, at http://www.mail-archive.com/greenyouth@googlegroups.com/msg03446. html) CPIM showed ugly Brahminic culture entrenched in them when their women's wing re-sanctified the road surface in front of the secretariat building with broom-sticks and cow-dung where some Dalit and NGO activists performed their night vigil!
The news of govt action regarding them as available so far is form a report in Hindu (of 27th June 08) where from we came to know that the District Super of Police and the District Commissioner visited the spot and signalled a process of survey of the caste and land ownership status of all the families there. On the other hand, Vedi is preparing for the first anniversary of their occupation; a program will be held where leaders of several big parties, distinguished persons and NGO bigwigs will address, etc as we learn from internet sources. Then, a team of CPI comprising one MP and five MLAs from Kerala visited Chengara and met the fighting people there as per a report on The Hindu of 3rd Aug. The MP who is also president of Kerala Karshaka Thozhilali Federation told that the team would present a report to Chief Minister V.S.Achuthanandan as well as Revenue Minister K.P.Rajendran soon. But just after that day the plantation workers' union led by CITU went to their extreme to obstruct the anniversary program at Chengara scheduled on 4th August forcefully for two consecutive days by blocking all entry points to Chengara so that no other can visit the SJVSV program. Even police forces helped CPIM-CITU in that! The CPIM goons deflated the tyres and smashed windscreens of cars taking SJVSV guests. Some persons went to the District Collector to get permission to go to Chengara after being road-blocked by CPIM supporters. However, the collector refused permission on law and order grounds! It was just like a Nandigram Version-II. We were also reported on 8th August by newindiapress.com that the CPIML had told Vedi to keep distance from religious organisations and NGOs and “organise state-wide unity movement of land agitators”. But let us focus now on the subject matter of our discussion and so we will skip further reports.
POINT ONE: Land Reform through Land Ceiling Acts
When Sunny M Kapicadu raised a point that: “The crux of the land reforms that were put forward by the government in 1957, which were implemented on 1 January 1970 was the fixing of ceilings on the amount of land that a family could possess, and the promise that surplus land would be taken over by the government and redistributed among the landless. However, the plantation sector was exempted from land ceilings. We have to realize that once the plantation sector was exempted, all that was left for redistribution were some paddy land towards the west, some land in the midland areas, and some fallow fields that belonged to the Nilambur royal house” (Emphasis ours). Thus, he didn't contest the idea of land reform through land ceiling law as such, only criticised its limitedness, its leaving aside plantation land. Then: “The SJVSV says that Dalits and Adivasis could not benefit from the land reform of 1970s since its major focus was on conferring land to the tenants. In Kerala's context the caste and cultural hierarchy, with strong oppressive segregation of these communities, did not allow them to be tenants; which is why many of them could not avail the benefits.” (A Report on Chengara Land Struggle in Kerala, Peoples' Movements Solidarity Team, availed from http://sanhati.com/articles/535/, also available from greenyouth pages. Emphasis ours) So it effectively means they have no objection against the idea of land reform through manoeuvring ceiling laws and giving ceiling-surplus land to landless tenant peasants. And this is precisely behind what Sunny M Kapicadu said “Ten years back, such a struggle would have been unthinkable. Ten years back we all thought that there was no scope for another land struggle in Kerala. That there was no land to be redistributed in Kerala. Even social activists thought that all the land that could have been legitimately redistributed had been exhausted.” This metaphor acts in all CPIM-ruled states where they say, like —where are the landlords… they are no more there… there is no more land to confiscate… etc. CPIM, CPI and other left parties naturally thinks so regarding Kerala and West Bengal. And precisely here the JANADESH rally points to; EKTA PARISHAD, a big NGO and the chief organiser of the march, too demanded lowering of the ceiling measure to bring more land in the surplus pool. These eminent and learned persons, parties and organisations think land reform and abolition of feudalism only in terms of land ceiling act, strict enforcement of that act and subsequent distribution of the surplus land vested to the govt to the landless peasants, the very terms pointing to peasants working on somebody else's land or tenant farmers.
This metaphysical idea measures feudalism by amount of land hold per household (and/or concentration of land ownership) and not at all by relation of production, by the amount of rent extorted and not by the nature of rent extorted; that means owning less than certain amount of land, i.e., ceiling, makes a landlord no more a landlord. For them, both expropriation of landlords by revolutionary seizure of land without compensation by the peasantry and establishment of peasants' power in the countryside are no more necessary conditions for uprooting feudalism! Rather the peasants should be advised to wait peacefully and/or vote for a pro-poor party, wait for change in land laws for feudalism to be moderated as much can be done under the present system, or, if such law already exists then to demand for its strict implementation; and hence peasants be kept dependent on a govt and/or a party of the establishment!!
These learned persons may ask us ‘then wherefrom will you get a surplus pool of land for distribution to so many people' without the necessary step of lowering land ceiling? And we are ready with definite and possible answer. But we'll go that point if at all necessary only later because that is only a minor point and the future peasant revolution is capable of solving that ‘puzzle' themselves without any external help. In this connection, interested eminent persons may go through the ‘242 mandate' prepared by the peasants in the course of Russian revolution without the interference of either academic economists or even Bolsheviks. (See Lenin's illuminating discussion on 242 mandates in his “A Publicist Diary”.) They may also go through the history of Chinese revolution to know how the peasants started the process of solving this question in China. Anyway, in such land reform programme as of CPIM, people's role is relegated only to (1) acting as a pressure group for land reform laws from a ‘pro-people' govt and (2) acting, of course, in a legal way to ensure that the laws are abided by one and all. Taking advantage of existing land reform laws they advocate raising demands for legally available cultivable land, and if situation permits, they even instruct land occupation which will only later have the legal stamp of the govt. As for example, SVSJV repeatedly said the land they occupied was legally not the plantation's leased-in property, legally that lease period expired, the plantation held that much land illegally, so and so and hence the govt should give the occupiers legal land titles there.
The famous Brazilian Sem-Terra (landless) Movement (MST) has some striking similarity with constituionality–legality based land struggle as is explicitly shown by Janadesh Yatra type campaign. “Guided by the slogan “Occupy, Resist and Produce,” the MST initiated a direct action model of land reform wherein landless peasants occupy an unproductive parcel of land, petition the Brazilian government for land rights, and operate the settlement as a collective enterprise ” (http://www. thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Land_Reform_Brazil.html). It should be taken in cognizance that keeping land tract unproductive for years is legally impermissible in Brazil, govt can confiscate that. Anyway, to acquaint our readers about MST, we further add: “The MST's work doesn't end with the acquisition of land titles. The movement, which is at once decentralized and highly coordinated, also provides its members with basic social services that the Brazilian government is unable, or unwilling, to supply. The MST's 1,600 government-recognized settlements, spread across 23 Brazilian states, boast medical clinics for members and even training centres for health care workers. The movement's educational programs are especially impressive. Twelve hundred public schools employ an estimated 3,800 teachers serving about 150,000 children at any one time. Adult literacy classes are offered to 25,000 people through a UNESCO grant, and the MST also sponsors technical classes and teacher training. The landless workers have even established their own college in the southern town of Veranópolis. The MST gives some students scholarships to attend other universities. Naturally all of this takes cash, and the MST has been very adept at making money and supporting its programs. MST enterprises generate an estimated $50 million (more than Rs 200 crores!) a year. Most of this money goes directly to member families; a share is used to support the MST's $20 million budget for its social services and other infrastructure ” (http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01jan-feb/corp2.html). Though we must add here that it would be imprudent to form an idea about MST from only this aspect only.
POINT TWO: Jünker vs. Revolutionary: The Paths of Agrarian Transformation
So we have already arrived to point 2 :– we were discussing in the previous point that if anybody holds the deceptive notion of land reform in reformist line and yields to present day laws, judge legality vs. illegality etc from that outlook, then s/he, in general, sanctifies land ceiling law, sanctifies bourgeois “property right” along with bourgeois legality, and what is more, s/he sanctifies bourgeois land reform program in Jünker line. We shall concentrate on the last clause of the sentence first and then move to the remaining part in the next point
What if a feudal lord family or a plantation or etc owns land legally as per the then laws? Will the revolutionary peasant movement have to abandon confiscation of such properties? Lenin, in case of Russian revolution, thought otherwise; he was even in favour of peasants' confiscation of feudal estates and capitalist ones too in case of Russia! (as for example see Revision Of The Agrarian Programme Of The Workers' Party by V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, V10, P176-77, www.marx2mao.com) He clearly differentiated land reform in peasants' path from land reform in landlords' path, peasants revolutionary path from Jünker reformist path respectively. His arguments in “Agrarian Program of Social Democracy in the First Russian Revolution 1905–1907” (LCW, Volume 13, Moscow edition or from http://www. marx2mao.com/Lenin/APFR07.html) are much relevant nowadays as there is a lot of illusions among Indian lefts regarding Jünker reform. Of course the peasant movement at present in our country cannot think of confiscation of such ‘legal' properties when there is no tide of revolutionary movement at all, rather, when a very low ebb of class struggle is still continuing in spite of only a few sparks of new struggles in new directions. But to preach in favour of confining peasants' movement within occupation of legally possible land-parcels, calling that revolutionary struggles, not presenting to them the full vista of revolutionary peasants movement in agitation-propaganda is simply reformism. Militant and Revolutionary are two different words having two different meanings.
Moreover, post World War II the USA and then the World Bank kicked off Jünker Reform program in some countries after its launch in Japan and South. As if to ridicule the Indian lefts, the South Korean land reform transferred more than 80% of agricultural land from hands of landlords to peasants' hands whereas CPI(M) led West Bengal's score on that count is a dismal much-less-than 8% for which CPIM takes so satisfaction! Later since the early/mid of 1980s CPIM slowed down the distribution of surplus land already in govt pool and of which much was even acquired before they came to power. CPIM did another travesty of land reform in the garb of operation barga , which was essentially a compromise by just giving legal assurance to the tenant that he cannot be evicted but the ownership of the land remained in the hand of the owner and the tenant has to pay a rent (fixed at 25% of the produce if the tenant meets all input costs). Taken as a whole, agrarian policy of CPIM was always in the Jünker reformist line—even in their so called ‘heydays' of peasant movement of mid-late 1960s in WB. Even many times we find Communist Revolutionaries faltering with the reformist and paltry land reform move of CPI, CPIM and certifying that as progressive: as for example, in that mentioned ‘NGOs Try to Hijack Land Struggle' in the Dec 07 issue of Red Star we find a sentence starting with: “Hiding the progressive character of land reforms initiated by the communist party led ministry in 1957, … …”. This is indeed a very disturbing hesitation as well as misunderstanding forgetting the true agrarian revolutionary line and its difference with the reformist-counterrevolutionary Jünker Reform program led by USA and then particularly the World Bank after WW(II), of which Wolf Ladjenisky was an architect, which was directed to derail revolution in the making. Mr Ladjenisky was also an advisor of Indian govt in this regard for some time. In some of his theoretical writings Wolf Ladjenisky did not hide his intention of saving a country from communists led revolution. (One may go through the voluminous collection of his works: Agrarian Reform as Unfinished Business, Published for the World Bank by the Oxford University Press and Update, Series 12.)
Lenin called this type of land reform through constitutional-legal methods carried on ‘from above' by the govt. in a bureaucratic way—as if the benevolent govt is handing out some concessions to its poor peasants— a reformist land reform of Prussian type or Jünker reform (as he qualified the Stolypin agrarian reform program in Russia from 1907-1913)! In his words, such a reform brings forth “the utmost preservation of bondage and serfdom (remodelled on bourgeois lines), the least rapid development of the productive forces, and the retarded development of capitalism; it implies infinitely greater misery and suffering, exploitation and oppression for the broad mass of the peasantry and, consequently, also for the proletariat”. In another place of the same booklet he wrote, “The pivot of the struggle, we repeat, is the feudal latifundia. The capitalist evolution of these is beyond all dispute, but it is possible in two forms: either they will be abolished, eliminated in a revolutionary manner by peasant farmers, or they will be gradually transformed into Jünker estates (and correspondingly, the enthralled muzhik will be transformed into an enthralled Knecht ).” (see The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy In The First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907, Lenin Collected Works, V13, Chapter 1, Section 6, Pp 243 & Section 5, Pp 242 respectively. Page numbers given tallying with web version of www.marx2mao.com)
Perhaps we could explain to our readers that according to Leninist perception, occupying land by some households or persons or corporate entities as an isolated event do not at all signify any revolutionary struggle or a germinating revolutionary struggle however militant those may be. In this regard too the communist revolutionary activists working among the peasantry must remember that forcible occupation of govt vested land by peasants may signify a militant move of the peasants, but, as such, can never signify a revolutionary move. But the same land seizures can be a part of countrywide revolutionary peasant revolutionary wave when peasants are confiscating agricultural land owned by ‘non-peasants'.
It may seem to be a perplexing term—this ‘non-peasants', we mean. Let us visit Lenin's works to get a meaning of that term according to Marxist Leninist parlance. Lenin, even in the burning days of War Communism (roughly from summer 1918 to spring 1921), never supported the idea of ‘confiscation' or ‘expropriation' of rich peasants (or Kulaks). But this was not he case for capitalist farmers. Why? To him, a rich peasant is a peasant, which means that kulak himself and/or his family member(s) takes part in major agricultural activities —we know what they are – ploughing, sowing, harvesting, weeding etc along with hired labourer/labourers. Whereas a capitalist farmer is not a peasant, he manages the agricultural operation with hired labourers while himself not performing any peasant's activities. And if somebody doesn't give a damn about how agriculture is being carried on the land pieces owned by him and is just content with the ‘rent' extorted – he do not deserves the title of ‘capitalist landlord'; his economic behaviour, class character puts him in the ‘feudal' category! Further explanation of these terms can be had from Mao's famous piece of writing on class analysis of the then China. Of course, how the kulaks would have to be dealt with in the phase of transition to socialism, then, what Lenin envisioned and meant when he said (in his 10th Congress Speech)—when the proletarian state will be able to give the rural economy machineries … they (kulaks) will automatically be wiped out, etc are separate questions and we should not distract ourselves from the subject we are dealing with.
We hope readers may get a hint of available to be available for being distributed by the revolutionary peasants' committees after the agrarian revolution.
POINT THREE: Demand of Land vs. Demand of Land Right
In history we have seen great peasants struggles for land (and for liberty and against foreign domination, against landlord's exorbitant rent and assaults, against brutal state, even for their right to observe their own religious belief system against imposed one, etcetera). But, have we seen great peasants' struggle for land ‘right' anywhere? Right is an abstract legal, political and also moral, ethical concept. The peasants naturally wanted, and still wants, a concrete thing—land, on which s/he can cultivate and sustain the family. The present writer still doesn't know what is actually meant by ‘land right' according to the right-activists. But this term sounds as if to proclaim a bourgeois property right. Can the land-right activists make it clear what they mean by ‘land-right'? Wikipedia defined this (as on 1st week of August) as “ Land rights are those property rights that pertain to real estate land.” Has it something to do with right of ‘buying and selling' of land or right of transfer of land titles? Did that ‘right' exist, in the sense of its modern connotation, in our country in the pre-British period i.e. just before 250 years or so, say, 500 years ago, or say in the Mourya empire in the history of our subcontinent? Is this right, like any other rights, something eternal? Readers with knowledge of history may please correct us—in the pre-British period this subcontinent didn't see buying and selling of land, or, in other words, nobody used ‘land right' to buy/sell land in the sense those things are carried on nowadays. ‘Land right', if there were any, meant only the right to collect rent from that land. In western countries also buying and selling of land appeared after a certain capitalist penetration in economy and society. As land is very uncommon commodity because no one can produce land as much needed, because land is limited, its price is also determined in a different way: in abstract and simple definition, it is the amount whose interest will be equal to the rent (both absolute and differential taken together). Bourgeois property right over land gives certain ‘rights' to citizens regarding owning land. This means everybody has legal right to own at least certain amount of land which is an inalienable property of that person, nobody, except in some cases, can infringe upon that right; if that happens, that can be challenged in a court of law; and only that person has the right to lease-out/rent-out sell/ her/his land. Is that what we want? As far as peasants are concerned, they generally don't think of selling land unless pressed hard by some dire situation.
Besides, bourgeois ethics is not at all averse to (rather keen as regards) the idea of ownership right over land and to the idea of buying/selling of land. But in the Russian revolution we saw that the peasants never wanted to be ‘owners' of lands with right of buying and selling land. They simply wanted that all persons willing to work in agriculture must be given land for cultivation. In many tribal societies, still now, land is viewed as nobody's property, but rather it is everybody's property, society's property; and if some system alien to this line of thinking imposes itself on the tribal people then they do not accept it heartily.
How will the Marxists look into the subject? In his Critique of Gotha Program, Marx showed how only Nature and Human Labour create all wealth; how private ownership over nature (things natural) is at the basis of capitalism, how products of Nature and Human Labour under this system become commodities; how capitalism permitting private property over land enables the owner of land to extract absolute and differential rents which lay hidden in the price of agro commodities, and so many things. Even if we leave aside Marxists' critique, this very capitalist economy which happily gives citizens land ownership right, cannot and does not stop pauperisation of poor peasants; this same economy speeds up depeasantization process. Give 5 acres a family to all the Dalits assembled in Chengara and see the result after 25-30 years. (And, another minor question the answer of which the present author doesn't know: can Kerala, not a land-abundant state, offer all peasants 5 acres of arable land per family?)
So far the UN declaration of land-rights is concerned, it seems that the UN tells its member countries to grant some sort of land-rights to urban and rural landless masses plus a certain quantity of land (like 1 cent or about 450 square feet per family in urban areas – sic! … what a land right!) to be given by forming a govt land fund. The UN knows the rising discontent among marginalized urban and rural masses in the so called 3rd-world regarding food, housing, unemployment and so many things … and this is one of the ploy, they think, to diffuse rising tensions in societies there.
POINT FOUR: Qs of NGO Penetration & How to Confront that
Now the point of NGO penetration must be dealt with. Here are two pertinent questions. (1) Why NGO people could come to the forefront, gain ground and exert influence on such or many such new movements? Why that role could not be assumed by the revolutionary communist forces? (2) What should be done by the revolutionary communist forces in this situation of influence of NGOs, their so called “vile propaganda”?
For Marxist-Leninists, it is a well established fact that NGOs represented a trend of, what Marx and Engels depicted as bourgeois socialism in their Communist Manifesto – though it is a totally incomplete description or definition. The capitalist sponsored NGOs tried to make the earth ‘a bit more liveable' for people made wretched by this very system run by capitalism. In the imperialist era, NGOs, knowingly (or unknowingly) serve the interest of imperialism and bourgeoisie of different interests and different countries and they are also part of a game-plan to dupe the people and divert them from revolutionary struggle. But why did they gain so much sway as is seen now? It was not so, quantitatively and innovatively, say, 40 years before! Though we are not starting a complete discussion here on the question of NGOs, we shall have to see some salient aspects.
If we look into recent history we shall see that the degeneration and failure of so called communist parties in our country were visible since 1970s. These parties really didn't give much attention to the problems of Dalits, Adivasi people, and ‘national problems' of the country. Old practices of domination of upper social strata continued in them. As for example, even scholars sympathetic to these parties admitted, “… both Congress and Communist Party dominated Governments in West Bengal have had a strikingly skewed caste composition. The caste of Ministers in Congress Governments in West Bengal between 1952 and 1962 was 23 per cent Brahmin, 31 per cent Kayastha, 24 per cent Vaishya, and only 2 per cent Scheduled Caste. In the case of Governments led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) between 1977 and 1982 there were even more Brahmins than in the Congress Governments, over 35 per cent; the number of Kayasthas (33 per cent) and Vaishyas (23 per cent) was almost the same as in Congress Governments, while Scheduled Caste representation was marginally lower at 1.5 per cent (Kohli 1990: 374). These figures must be read in the context of a State which has the highest concentration of Scheduled Caste people in the country - now almost 24 per cent ….” (from: Untouchable politics and politicians since 1956, Oliver Mendelsohn & Marika Vicziany, available at http://www.ambedkar.org/books/tu2.htm, we don't know whether the authors means ‘cabinet' ministers only or not). Bias against the Muslims also continued in CPIM ruled states, as the Sachar report has shown: In West Bengal 25.2% of population are Muslim whereas only 2.1% of State Govt employees are Muslim, after 30-years of CPIM led ‘left' rule!! In another ‘left' and ‘elite' Kerala, 24.7% people are Muslim and 10.4% of Govt employees are Muslim putting Kerala behind Bihar and Jharkhand! When a party, known by the people to be a ‘communist' one, does such blatant blunders sitting in the govt chair, the word ‘communist' becomes unpleasant, or, that may be projected as unpleasant to socially oppressed people—more so because those who really wanted to represent the communist ideology are socially so small a force to reckon with.
The expectation roused by the formation of the new party was harshly crushed and that party, mainly due to left deviations from inception and the state terror that it had to face, and that party got splintered. So pulverized it were that the pieces never could be put together again. In the international scenario, there were no worthy anti-imperialist battle of the people after the Vietnam days of early seventies with the late seventies raising many questions regarding post-Mao China and the decade ended with a war between Cambodia with Vietnam! The day to day struggle of the workers started becoming harder and harder with left trade unions behaving like stooges of capitalists, their task were to frighten the workers about closures and job losses and thus make the ground for humiliating black agreements. The right swing of the ruling class was pressing harder. Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Gandhi and Mr Regan—it seemed they got the same schooling! Deindustrialisation of old centres of industry, more and more contractualization of workforce and the resulting insecurity, rising unemployment and doing any odd jobs forgetting duty hours and what they beget became norm for many youth. The list is unending.
All these were happening at a time when there was not a worthy party showing a path of liberation who can claim to have some ideology. An ideological vacuum set in. this prospect helped the forces of Hindutva to steer ahead. Among many other things this very situation helps an idea grow—come on friends, lets do something positive, something concrete, which may be only a little, rather than waste time with useless intellectual discourses, philosohising, thinking of establishing an impossible (proved by history—wasn't that!) social system …. All this gave leverage to the NGO axis. So ground of increasing NGO influence got well prepared before the humiliating defeat of the first aggressive march of international communist movement openly, in front of the eyes of billions of oppressed people of the world through break up of Soviet Union, and almost simultaneously, the emboldened aggressive march of imperialism, capitalism through Globalisation, Liberalisation. “Socialism is a good scheme, but unpractical, impracticable”—was a sympathetic phrase coined by the bourgeoisie that permeated in the society, while a sour joke went like “Socialism is the quickest path from backwardness to developed capitalism.”
Of course the attitude and activities of CPIML in Kerala regarding NGOs are praiseworthy and everybody has much to learn from them, their books on this subjects and articles in journals. They showed how and why to keep distinctly and sharply different position from NGOs, their platforms, so called united struggles of them etc. But while thinking of dealing the growing NGO influence this objective condition that gave birth to such a situation must be remembered. Simultaneously we must remember the mistakes committed by the old communist parties in our country and be repentant for those one which also bring shame to us. We should learn Leninist theory of democratic revolution and agrarian lines, and accordingly, should not talk of ‘progressive character of land reforms …' etc. Rather we should have to find ways to win over the socially oppressed sections of people by our deeds.Home Page >> Workers' and Peasants' Struggle >> Chengara Struggle, Janadesh and...