> 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.
I forwarded this comment to a professor friend in Delhi, who is a student of the history of the Indian communist movement. His response is posted below. No doubt Ulhas is an expert on many things, but unfortunately he pretends to be one on yet more.
john mage -----
Ulhas has indulged in a sweeping condemnation of Indian CPs. He cites no evidence to support his propositions. I still think a brief response may be in order.
Caste has not received the attention it deserves from Indian CPs. But that does not mean that Indian CPs have neglected the struggle aginst caste as an ideology and as an institution. The ideology of caste has fragmented peasant movements and workers’ struggles led by CPs. In more recent decades the CPs have had to deal with ‘caste associations’ and ‘caste-based’ political parties as economic interest groups. These latter organizations have further fragmented class struggles led by the CPs, including the Naxalite CPs.
Marxist and non-Marxist intellectuals (the latter, for instance, M. N. Srinivas and Andre Beteille) have recognized important elements of class in the caste system, for instance, the caste which owns land exercises effective dominance, despite a lower ritual status. There is also a close interconnection between caste and class, with the ‘untouchable’ castes generally landless laborers. With this brief background, let us briefly get to the facts.
Let us focus on the rural poor – bonded laborers, wage laborers and sharecroppers. India is a huge country, so one would expect a lot of diversity in the way the CPs have attempted to take up the cause of the rural poor. The context also has to be kept in mind. For instance, during 1934-39 the effects and fallout of the Great Depression affected the rural poor the most. The Civil Disobedience movement was on, and this was a time when the socialists in the Congress party and the communists coordinated their activities. But the Congress’ attempt to use the Kisan Sabhas for gaining electoral advantage during 1937-38 divided the ‘left’. During 1937-39, the CP activists of Andhra pioneered in organizing the wage laborers (mainly dalits) on such issues as minimum wages, and even managed to get the support of poor peasants against the landlords in some areas. Communists in the Kisan Sabha in Bengal organized the dalits of Mymensingh against the bonded labor system and supported the assertion of the rights of the dalits to enter temples there. The communists in north Bengal led an anti-feudal movement, organizing sharecroppers, who then had no tenurial rights. In all such cases the CPs targeted the sarkar-zamindar-sahukar (the government, rich and powerful landlords, and the usurious moneylenders) nexus.
The period 1940-45 has to be seen in the context of the Second World War and its political and economic effects. In 1940-41, the CPI demanded remission of rent and land revenue, moratoriums on debt repayments and interest payments, price controls on essential items of consumption of the poor. This was a time when the CPI focused on the abolition of landlordism and “land to the tiller”. For instance, the CPI gave a great deal of importance to the unity of the peasantry against the landlords in Kayyur (Kerala). It was in the Quit India Movement that the anti-feudal struggle took a back seat, but thereafter the CPI became very active among dalits in Andhra, and what are now Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In what is now Maharashtra, the CPI organized the Worli tribals who were bonded laborers, wage laborers and sharecroppers against some of the worst forms of oppression and exploitation.
The period 1946-51 in the context of decolonization witnessed the major movements of Telangana and in Bengal of Tehbaga. The Telangana movement led by the CPI witnessed large-scale guerilla action (“Peoples’ War”). In liberated districts caste oppression was punished as criminal. These movements raised the possibility of realizing “land to the tiller”.
In all the struggles mentioned, and many more, say in Travancore and so on, it would be absurd to claim that the “untouchable” castes or the lower castes did not have a voice. In independent India, the CPI and later the CPM, in their areas of influence, have played an important role in land reform. The Naxalite movement from the late 1960s onward has consistently fought for “entitlements” of the rural poor, especially dalits and tribals, to material resources and izzat (dignity). This movement has had many martyrs, among them the dalit poor and Naxalite activists, including dalits.
It was Voltaire who said: “We owe respect to the living To the dead we owe nothing but the truth.”
I'd like to remind Ulhas about this.