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Dissent surfaces at Marxists' meeting

Dissident leaders of the Communist Party of India-Marxists are circulating private letters and critical documents to thwart revision of the party programme that more than 400 Marxist leaders are fine-tuning at an extraordinary conference in Trivandrum.

Though ouster of popular party leader Saifuddin Chowdhury from the West Bengal CPI-M unit overshadows the special conclave, Chowdhury's silent supporters in the party are keeping a low profile at the conference.

Chowdhury's liberal friends like Samir Putathunda and Subash Chakraborty are attending the conference, but have been told to shut up or face action.

But that has not stopped the dissidents from airing their views at the party forum. "The tragedy is that as the party is attempting to change the programme to suit modern times, it is stifling basic rules of intra-party democracy," a supporter of Chowdhury told rediff.com.

Despite warnings, liberals in the Kerala CPI-M unit are circulating open letters and documents -- prepared by expelled party leaders - that criticise the party's attempt to update its 36-year old programme.

A critical document doing the rounds among the party members is a detailed paper written by K Vijayachandran, who was expelled from the CPI-M in 1998 for alleged involvement in the 'Save CPI-M Forum'.

Castigating the updating of the party programme as an ideological circus, Vijayachandran's note says that the CPI-M has not learnt lessons from setbacks to socialism during the last decade.

"The CPI-M has failed to accept that forces of socialism have been defeated by forces of imperialism," Vijayachandran told rediff.com. "The CPI-M has lost touch with the grassroots party workers. It has failed to understand the global reality. The leadership has become insensitive to working class ideology and politics," he added.

Vijayachandran's documents says that the new draft of the CPI-M programme is "pretentious, shabby and a clever attempt to push revisionist crimes under the carpet by resorting to all sorts of mystification."

Few CPI-M leaders who are attending the meeting dare to come out in support of the documents supplied to them by dissidents like Vijayachandran. But privately they agree that the country's largest communist party has failed to properly explain the role of monopoly capital in the modern world and the way information technology is being used by the imperialistic forces to place developing economies under their hegemonic command.

M V Raghavan, expelled from the Kerala CPI-M in 1986, has also submitted an open letter to CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet. The letter says the CPI-M's hasty decision to amend the party programme is only intended to help it come to power at the national level.

"It is a remorseful action at having missed the chance to come to power in 1996. Instead of simply proclaiming that it is willing to share power at the Centre, the CPI-M is indulging in an ideological circus in the name of the proletariat and armed revolution," he said in the letter.

Another dissident group that is active among the participants of the conclave is the E M S Samskarika Vedi (a cultural council in memory of communist patriarch E M S Namboodiripad). The Vedi members alleged that the updated party programme has not been discussed at the grassroots level.

"Most branch committees and ordinary members were denied the opportunity to discuss the draft as it was not circulated among us. The CPI-M, which boasts of a high stand intra-party democracy has violated it," Vedi president V S Mathew told rediff.com.

Dissidents like Mathew say the CPI-M is committing historical blunders at every party congress. "Those who opposed power-sharing at the Centre have been ordered to shut up here. It is denial of freedom and democratic rights," he remarked.

While the CPI-M bosses are taking special care to manage dissent and pacify dissidents and liberals at the conference, many believe that the passage of the undated party programme on Sunday evening will not be easy.

But senior CPI-M members claim the revised programme will be adopted without disagreement. "Those talking about violation of intra-party democracy are trying to spoil the party's image," politburo member Sitaram Yechury told rediff.com.

"Our party is not plagued by dissent and dissidents as it is made out to be. The CPI-M offers absolute freedom, liberty and intra-party democracy to all its members," Yechuri claimed.

He said the party was updating its programme in keeping with changing times. "There has been a political metamorphosis in the country in the last few years. We can no longer remain in the old world. Therefore, it is imperative that we change our anti-monopoly theory," Yechury added.

Quelling dissent has been a deft quality that the CPI-M has displayed over the years. Thus, though liberals and dissidents are questioning the party's new programme, it is unlikely that the leadership will succumb to them during this special conference.

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