If nationalism, as the historian Jack Gallagher was fond of quipping, devours its parents, communism consumes its own ideology. Communism was born under the sign of internationalism. The project of world revolution did not recognize national boundaries. Thus, it is funny to see Indian communists today positioning themselves as great protectors of national sovereignty.
Indian communists have always had a very uncomfortable relationship with nationalism. Some of the major debates and divisions within the Communist Party of India have revolved around the question of nationalism and the national movement. And, if the truth be told, these debates do not exactly hold up the comrades in an edifying light. On the scorecard of nationalism, the performance of Indian communists is poor to say the least. (On internationalism, their score is irrelevant, since a world communist revolution is not even a pipe dream after the collapse of socialism and the exposure of the many crimes of the socialist regimes in Soviet Russia, in Eastern Europe, in China, in Albania, under Pol Pot in Cambodia and so on.)
To begin with the most notorious example that communists have never been able to live down: 1942. The CPI was officially against the Quit India movement. What needs to be emphasized here is that this decision of the CPI was not based on any understanding of the Indian situation by Indian communists. The opposition to the clarion call of 1942 was the outcome of a diktat emanating from Moscow
RE:THE RED BLUNDERS
by on Aug 28, 2007 05:30 PM Permalink
You don't have to travel as far as pre-independence time, they had opposed introduction of computers into offices, english education at primary level,globalization which they now have promptly accepted as blunders when situation seems otherwise. But the damamge is already done and it is the people who have suffered. Now accepting them as blunders will not make things rewind. All these shows how ideologically devoid and opportunistic they are. They oppose the same thing at center or other non-left states which they pursue shamelessly at West Bengal.
