[lbo-talk] Roy on Indian election

[uvj at vsnl.com]

Dennis Redmond wrote:
> > Nevertheless, she goes in for the fashionable anticommunism that
> > characterizes so many progressive intellectuals in both the Third World
> > and First (*The God of Small Things* is politically unfair at times)
> 
> No, "Small Things" seems pretty accurate about the limitations of the
> 1960s Communist parties and Left movements. From what little I know about
> India, the comrades did many fine things, but they didn't have an answer
> for the problem of caste; identity-politics was thought of as a petty
> bourgeois distraction, which had to wait for the Revolution. 

CPs did not initiate any struggles against the caste oppression at any point in last 75 years. It's one of the biggest failures of Indian CPs. It's no accident that all major revolts against the caste oppression have been independent of CPs. They believed in a kind of "Marxism" (popular during the Stalin epoch) for which transformations in the relations of production were enough to change popular consciouness. Moreover, the struggle against the caste system was a distraction from the primary goal: the struggle against imperialism.

It has been argued that the upper caste background of CPs leadership was the main reason for the neglect of the caste oppression. But I am not convinced.

Ulhas