(Here is piece from Times of India, May 8, 2010)
How and why the Left movement in India is in a state of terminal atrophy is exposed to broad daylight in a privately published book released in Delhi earlier this week. Friends, admirers and close relatives of Mohit Sen, a communist of rare vintage, along with P C Joshi, pay tribute to his uncommon gifts of head and heart. The book also includes Sen's correspondence with some of the 20th century's leading minds whom he had met first while he studied at King's College in Cambridge in the 1940s and later when he was a full-time worker of the Communist Party of India.
These reminiscences serve to emphasise yet again that India's communists, much like the Bourbons, will learn nothing and forget nothing. They drew no lessons from Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's brutal regime at the 20th congress of the CPSU in 1956. The dictator had murdered innocent people on a scale that wasn't rivalled even by Hitler's evil pogroms. He had sent millions suspected of defying the Party to the Gulag where most of them perished. But the Indian communists, like most of their comrades elsewhere in the world, remained tight-lipped.
Nor did they raise a little finger to denounce Moscow's suppression of the revolt in Hungary in 1956 or the Prague Spring in 1968. Attempts made by some west European parties in the period that followed to strike a balance between social equality, economic growth and democratic freedoms did not impress them the least bit. Tito's efforts to find a middle way between the market economy and socialism in Yugoslavia generated derision, insult and ostracism.
The Indian communists did not care to candidly acknowledge the reasons for the implosion of the Soviet empire. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear the reasons were all too obvious: state control had atrophied the economy, lack of freedom of thought and expression had asphyxiated creativity in most fields, fear of the secret police stalked every nook and cranny of the Socialist Paradise.
But none of this was of any consequence to the Indian communists. All they did was to tom-tom the achievements of the Socialist Fatherland: full employment, social welfare that took care of the needs of every citizen from the cradle to the grave, a hundred per cent literacy rate and so on. And they missed no opportunity to flaunt Moscow's anti-fascist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist bona fides. This, in their view, exonerated the regime's 'aberrations'.
Even after the collapse of the Soviet empire the Indian communists chose to remain cloistered in their dogma. They continued to extol two regimes which swore by the eternal verities of Marxism-Leninism: Cuba and North Korea. And they cried victory whenever any party anywhere in the world railed against US 'imperialism'. That included populist parties in Latin America and the radical Islamic republic of Iran, not to mention Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Equally galling has been the mindless and misleading enthusiasm of the Indian comrades for China. They spoke not a word about the depredations resulting from Mao Zedong's policies including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Nor is there a squeak from them about the post-Mao policies. China's unbridled capitalism, its crass exploitation of raw materials and energy resources in many developing nations and its increasingly cosy relationship with the American 'imperialists' are, in their eyes, of trivial importance.
In the wake of the Soviet empire's implosion several communist parties began to address the flaws in the ideology that sustained it: neglecting or underestimating the strength of nationalism, the significance of ethnic, religious and caste loyalties, the potential of technology and entrepreneurship to inject dynamism in the economy and, not least, the huge benefits of a democratic system. The Indian communists showed little sign of engaging in such an exercise.
Mohit Sen, a man who for long years had justified communist tyranny, was nevertheless open to fresh ideas. He was eager to bring together all forces that were opposed to communalism and iniquitous growth, fiercely committed to patriotism and democracy and tried to breach the walls of communist dogma. The party he had served with exemplary devotion chose to do what came naturally to it: it expelled him without ceremony.
These reminiscences serve to emphasise yet again that India's communists, much like the Bourbons, will learn nothing and forget nothing. They drew no lessons from Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's brutal regime at the 20th congress of the CPSU in 1956. The dictator had murdered innocent people on a scale that wasn't rivalled even by Hitler's evil pogroms. He had sent millions suspected of defying the Party to the Gulag where most of them perished. But the Indian communists, like most of their comrades elsewhere in the world, remained tight-lipped.
Nor did they raise a little finger to denounce Moscow's suppression of the revolt in Hungary in 1956 or the Prague Spring in 1968. Attempts made by some west European parties in the period that followed to strike a balance between social equality, economic growth and democratic freedoms did not impress them the least bit. Tito's efforts to find a middle way between the market economy and socialism in Yugoslavia generated derision, insult and ostracism.
The Indian communists did not care to candidly acknowledge the reasons for the implosion of the Soviet empire. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear the reasons were all too obvious: state control had atrophied the economy, lack of freedom of thought and expression had asphyxiated creativity in most fields, fear of the secret police stalked every nook and cranny of the Socialist Paradise.
But none of this was of any consequence to the Indian communists. All they did was to tom-tom the achievements of the Socialist Fatherland: full employment, social welfare that took care of the needs of every citizen from the cradle to the grave, a hundred per cent literacy rate and so on. And they missed no opportunity to flaunt Moscow's anti-fascist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist bona fides. This, in their view, exonerated the regime's 'aberrations'.
Even after the collapse of the Soviet empire the Indian communists chose to remain cloistered in their dogma. They continued to extol two regimes which swore by the eternal verities of Marxism-Leninism: Cuba and North Korea. And they cried victory whenever any party anywhere in the world railed against US 'imperialism'. That included populist parties in Latin America and the radical Islamic republic of Iran, not to mention Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Equally galling has been the mindless and misleading enthusiasm of the Indian comrades for China. They spoke not a word about the depredations resulting from Mao Zedong's policies including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Nor is there a squeak from them about the post-Mao policies. China's unbridled capitalism, its crass exploitation of raw materials and energy resources in many developing nations and its increasingly cosy relationship with the American 'imperialists' are, in their eyes, of trivial importance.
In the wake of the Soviet empire's implosion several communist parties began to address the flaws in the ideology that sustained it: neglecting or underestimating the strength of nationalism, the significance of ethnic, religious and caste loyalties, the potential of technology and entrepreneurship to inject dynamism in the economy and, not least, the huge benefits of a democratic system. The Indian communists showed little sign of engaging in such an exercise.
Mohit Sen, a man who for long years had justified communist tyranny, was nevertheless open to fresh ideas. He was eager to bring together all forces that were opposed to communalism and iniquitous growth, fiercely committed to patriotism and democracy and tried to breach the walls of communist dogma. The party he had served with exemplary devotion chose to do what came naturally to it: it expelled him without ceremony.
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