Bardhan’s rise will crush all forms of dissent in CPI

The choice of nonagenarian AB Bardhan as the chairman, programme commission by the 22nd congress of CPI is not welcome by the majority of those who joined the party before the 1970s. The reason is simple. The former general secretary was stubbornly opposed to any criticism of CPI(M). He consistently discouraged assertion of what is known as ‘independent class role’ in debate with the party.

Bardhan disallowed even Dr Ranen Sen, one of the members of the first central committee (1933) of undivided CPI, to write a friendly polemical article in the party’s central mouthpiece, New Age, as the article, “Relevance of Ajoy Ghosh in the Indian Communist Movement”, mildly criticised CPI(M) leaders for the party split (1964). An ex-MP and president of AITUC when SA Dange was its general secretary, Dr Sen was the only leader other than SV Ghate, founder general secretary (Kanpur conference 1925) who was a CC (later national council) member. Incidentally, I was a co-author of the article, submitted to Bardhan in 2001. We cited instances of how Ghosh, CPI general secretary (1953-62), used to wage theoretical inner-party struggle against both the groups – democratic front-liners and national front liners. The former was opposed to any truck with the Congress and the latter was for support to the Nehruvites.. Both the groups agreed that the foreign policy of the Nehru government was anti-imperialist.

Bardhan wrote to Dr Sen July 3, 2001, that the article “rakes up certain issues and events which will only open a Pandora’s box of controversies and mutual attacks without, in our view, helping in any way to further the process of unity ” He even inferred that the article presented the issues “subjectively and in a one-sided way” and declined to publish the piece.

Dr Ranen Sen reacted angrily: “To describe what was stated in the article as one-sided is to take an erroneous stand on the genesis of inner-party political and ideological struggle in the Indian communist movement.” He lashed out at Bardhan saying, “Our Party began shrinking gradually. Now it is a very small party and, truly speaking, under your leadership, the CPI is a satellite of CPI-M, thanks to your leadership”, but finally had to accept Bardhan's rejection.

Given this background, there is a strong apprehension that Bardhan will put pressure on the members of party programme update commission to push the party strategy towards CPI(M)’s people's democratic revolution and dump CPI’s national democratic revolution. In other words, Bardhan’s perception of reunification of communist parties is not merger on the basis of independent entities but amalgamation with CPI(M).

Top leaders who repented the decision to choose Bardhan to replace Indrajit Gupta included Gupta himself, Jagannath Sarkar, who led the emergence of CPI in Bihar as a powerful political entity in the 1960s, and Indradeep Sinha, former MP and an illustrious peasant leader. Sarkar’s elder son Gautam wrote to me, “Baba (father) was requested to head the Programme Commission by Indrajit Gupta several times. But he politely refused to do that, as he felt that in the new condition lots of research is required to prepare or update the new party programme.

Bardhan’s antecedents notwithstanding, the party congress reposed faith in him to restrategise CPI’s future.

The author is a veteran journalist, specialising in Left politics, history and environmental issues