The Indian Communist has begun his search for a new Promised Land. With the Soviet Fatherland disintegrating, suddenly the Red Star over Beijing has become his new beacon, and leaders of both the CPI and the CPI-M have begun making tracks eastward.
As CPI-M central secretariat member Sitaram Yechuri says “Socialist China will always be a source of strength for the anti-imperialist struggle in general and the communist parties in particular”.
Such fulsome tributes from the CPI-M, which had maintained equidistance from Moscow and Beijing for a long time, are not altogether surprising. The Marxists, who had felt betrayed by the Chinese Communist Party’s recognition of the extremist Naxalite faction when it formally broke away from them in 1969, restored relations with the Chinese party in 1983.
But even the CPI, which had staunchly toed the Soviet line ever since the split in the party in 1964, has reset its compass. Just around the time the chips were coming down in Moscow, a CPI delegation Jed by its senior leader N.E. Balram, set off for Beijing in July, to “interact” with the Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership. Now another delegation of top CPI leaders is leaving for China next month. This new eagerness to exchange views with the Chinese acquires special significance in view of the fact that last year not a single CPI delegation visited China, despite a pending invitation.
The CPI-M, which still adulates Stalin had, not surprisingly, strong misgivings about Gorbachev’s reforms night from the beginning. And they too were quick off the markin putting their relations with China on a firmer footing. Days after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was disbanded by Gorbachev, Biman Bose and Anil Biswas both members of the CPI-Ms central committee left for Beijing to brief the Chinese leaders on the political situation in India. Among the topics they discussed were the reasons for the CPI-Ms lasting success in West Bengal and, interestingly, the impressive growth of the BJP.
As if to underline the new-found importance of China, the CPI-M is sending another high-powered delegation to Beijing in early October, consisting of Jyoti Basu, Harkishen Singh Surject and M.V,Basavapunniah. On top of the agenda for discussions will be developments in the Soviet Union.
Thus, for both the CPI and the CPI-M, all roads now seem to lead to China, their new land of hope and glory. Indeed, the world has become unipolar for the communists too.
Says, M. Farooqi, CPI national council member “They (the Chinese) have achieved considerable success in carrying out the reforms. Performance-wise they have done better than the Soviets. They seem to have the situation under control.”
But perhaps this new acceptability of China is more compulsion than a choice for the CPI today. The ageing CPI leadership, which desperately hoped that socialism would somehow survive in the Soviet Union, has come under sharp attack from the party ranks. This week some office-bearers of the party’s student and youth wings resigned, protesting the leaderships stand on the Soviet situation the CPI leaders remained mum when Gorbachev disbanded the Soviet Communist party. A.B. Vardhan, a senior party leader, reportedly disagreed with the leadership’s assessment of Gorbachev. Under the circumstances, Beijing seems to be the jast refugee of the beleaguered bosses. Today, the Indian Communists new rallying cry could well be, “The Soviet Revolution is dead, long live the Chinese Revolution.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 18, 1991
