People's Democracy

  Commitments Fulfilled

E M S Namboodiripad

Excerpts from the article “Commitments Fulfilled” by E M S Namboodiripad published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the People’s Democracy, dated June 23, 1985.

OUR Party had the misfortune of being boycotted by almost the entire world Communist movement for the major part of the 20-year period. The Communist Party of China which maintained fraternal relations with us for the first few years, subsequently broke them. The CPSU had no contact with us for most of the time. Our adversaries had reason for their glee that we were isolated in the international movement.

Today however, fraternal relations with the Chinese Party have been fully restored, while our relations with the Soviet Party have become almost completely normal. We are considered as part of the world Communist movement. 

This change in the position of our Party in the world Communist movement is attributed in the bourgeois media, and even in the writings of the CPI press, to a supposed change in our attitude to the Soviet and Chinese Parties. We are supposed to have rallied behind the Soviets giving up our former “pro-China” positions. How divorced this is from reality can be seen from certain incontrovertible facts:

Firstly, in the very Seventh Congress where we declared ourselves as the real Communist Party of India – later the CPI(M) – we scrupulously confined ourselves to serious discussions on the internal questions of the Indian revolution, deferring for a more appropriate future the discussion on questions of dispute in the international Communist movement. This was done for the simple reason that we did not want to commit ourselves to a position on these questions before we had had time to make intensive studies of the problem. Further more, on the internal questions of the Indian revolution which we discussed in detail before adopting the Party Programme, we adopted positions which were at variance with those of the Soviet and Chinese parties. There is therefore no substance in the argument that we were originally with the Chinese Party on international and national questions.

Secondly, once we started discussing the questions of dispute in the international movement, our differences with the Soviet as well as the Chinese Parties became clear. It is not as if we were “equidistant” from the Soviet and Chinese Parties as is alleged in the bourgeois media. The fact is that on every individual problem every change in the situation, we took up our own independent positions, supporting positions which we found correct and opposing those which appeared to us as incorrect.

In the early days of the cultural revolution in China, for example, we generally were in agreement with it, but, as developments along the lines laid down by the Chinese Central Committee unfolded themselves, we became more and more critical. In fact we wrote a highly critical article on the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Party. We could not reconcile ourselves to the line, which was subsequently criticised by the Chinese Party itself.

As for the CPSU, lack of fraternal relations with us did not stand in the way of our appreciating the steps taken by the Soviet Party in relation to the counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor did we have any hesitation in reiterating our adherence to the Marxist-Leninist theoretical postulates of the dictatorship of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, the leading role of the Party, and so on, when these came under attack in the international Communist movement.

In the meantime, we were happy in welcoming the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation that came into force in the early 1970s. We were equally happy that the long isolation of the People’s Republic of China in the world bodies was broken and its rightful position in the United Nations restored. We welcomed the first hesitant steps taken by the Indian and Chinese leaders to normalise state-to-state relations between the two countries.

Thirdly, in the present day international political context we are appreciative of and extend our sincere support to the peace initiatives taken by the Soviet Party and government. This however does not mean that we are cent per cent in agreement with the Soviet Party on every question; we do have with our Soviet comrades but it is not these that are important thing is the urgency of having the broadest possible mobilisation for peace, in which the Soviet comrades are playing the leading role.

As for the Chinese Party, we also have our reservations and differences with them on important question. However, as the political Resolution of the Vijaywada Congress said: “those who simply denounce People’s China along with US imperialism and forget that it is a Socialist country, serve the cause of international disunity, and bring grist to the mill of imperialism…. The criticism (of China) must be made with the expectation that Socialist China will overcome its present-day aberrations and take its legitimate place in the fight against imperialism and strengthen the unity of the Socialist forces.”

We are, in other words, hopeful that the disunity in the international movement which still blocks the progress of the world revolution will be overcome.