LEFT=-WING COMMUNISTS WITCH-HUNTED IN INDIA
By S. R. Singh
NEW DELHI -- At long last, Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda placed before the Indian parliament (February 18), a 45-page printed statement entitled “Antinstional Activities of Pro-Peking Communists and Their Preparations for Subversion and Violence,” as a poor substitute for the "White Paper" he had promised to the nation in justification of the mass arrests of Left Communists all over India-in December. This has come as a big disappointment to the Communist-: baiters.
The long-awaited statement gives lengthy extracts from documents distributed. by the party, both openly and "clandestinely," speeches of its leaders made at public and “secret meetings," Chinese publications and comments of the spokesmen of the Rightist Dangeite Communist party sbout the ideological stand of their “erstwhile colleagues."
In an introduction to the printed statement, Nanda has re-~ iterated that the government took action against the Left Communists only because it was convinced that their “plans and activities" had developed into a threat to the national security.
Nanda also trotted out the usual charge that the Left CP had been sustained "ideologically, morally, as well as financially by China." The government, therefore, was convinced that in the "final crisis" the Left CP could "count upon Peking's powerful support."
According to the statement, "in a procession taken out during the Trivandrum District party Conference in October 1964, one of the slogans shouted was 'Let four. months pass, let the Chinese come, we shall rule the country and teach you a lesson}!"
E.M.S.Namboodiripad, leader of the left CPI, campaigning on behalf of the party for the mid term elections in Kerala scheduled on March 5, immediately denied the charge and said that the. allegation was a pure fabrication. He has demanded that Nanda should place all the charges against his colleagues, now under detention, before a court of law. : .
Nandats statement is divided into five chapters with the following headings: "Support to China over Tibet and Border Questions"; "Disloyalty During the Chinese Invasion"; "Dissemination of Pro-= Chinese and Anti-National Documents"; "Split at Peking's Call"; and "Preparations for Subversion and Violence." The last chapter includes a report on the activities of the Left Communists in the Northern border region.
The statement claims that the party workers in the Punjab
had been told to "concentrate" at places like. Dalhousie and Manali, where a large number of Tibetan refugees could be “recruited as agents for the party work on the other side of the border. Hare~ kishan Singh Sur jeat, a Punjab Communist leader is alleged to have emphasized the need "to start as many secret cells in the border areas as possible to maintain direct links with the Chinese,
“The attempt obviously is to establish that the Left Communists broke from the Dangeite faction because they were directly instigated to do so by Peking. An allegation has also been made that the China Bank which was operating in India till the border conflicts took place in October 1962 had advanced substantial amounts to the > Left Communist leaders. This again has been strongly refuted by Namboodiripad.
Another "chare™ levelled against one Shankar Dayal Tiwari, a member of the National Council of the CPI [Communist party of India], is that he allegedly told a meeting that “the Chinese aim was not to gain territory but to help with arms and ammunitions in the likely event of a civil conflagration in the country.” Tiwari is further alleged to have cited this as the reason for the State committees of West Bengal and Punjab, the two States close to the border line | wr the control “for not regarding ‘the Chinese action as aggression,"
The Home Minister Nanda has sought again to create a new mystery out of his statement by suggesting that it "contained only a part of the matter available with the Government." He has said that "it is not in public interest including the interest of the security to disclose at this stage more than what has been furnished in the statement.
The truth, however, is that even parliamentary Congress party leaders who had earlier met to scrutinise Nanda'ts statement were not convinced about the seriousness of the charges he had made to justify the arrests of the Communist leaders. Some Congress MPs are believed to have said that the charges mentioned were known theoretical positions of the Communists on important questions and not neces~ sarily “actionable.” .
But the official statement: has alleged that the left Commun-. ists are "firmly committed to the cause of promoting Chinese de-~ signs" and "in furtherance of her grand strategy of establishing hegemony over Asia and her declared aim of world revolution."
"The evidence of their (CPI) plans to launch a violent revolution and struggle which they hope will synchronise with a fresh Chinese threat to our borders cannot be tightly brushed aside," Nanda has claimed.
The statement also referred to the "trail of death and des-
truction to life left by the Communists in Telangana." This is an oft-repeated canard. It is alleged that "this was the grim and tragic role that the Left Communists were attempting to repeat." fhis is a reference to the peasant uprising in Telangana in 1948-50,
Another allegation is that the Left CPI was “in full agreement with-the Chinese view that the concept of peaceful transition to socialism had little more than tactical value and that on:the contrary that peaceful path would bring dangerous results and weaken the will of the proletariat,"
The statement alleged that before the arrests of the Left CPI leaders on December 30, the "militant action” decided upon at Calcutta (October 1964) had been "rapidly transmitted to party cadres at all levels." “It was explained at various state and district committee meétings." Party leaders’ were supposed to have emphasized that "the Calcutta Congress had made a radical departure from their past views and it had come to the conclusion that it would be able to achieve people's democracy in India only through a violent revolution.
Another equally fantastic charge mace by Nanda, but against | "West Bengal leftists," was that they had circulated a document Guerrilla Warfare -- A Means, written by the Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara. The document reportedly said that "all Communists need not wait for all revolutionary. conditions to develop but should themselves create such conditions."
These are the other "charges" included in the statement: The Left CPI has started strengthening its "tech apparatus" in the states by recruiting "reliable and unmarked perty members for underground work"; and instructions have been issued for “infiltration" into government services. Thus "the decks were being cleared for action when the Government decided to intervene.”
Further, the statement claims that the Left CPI hed drawn up ‘plans "to develop and strengthen its underground apparatus." “Secret underground committees" were being set up and arrangements made "to provide shelters for important party workers to go underground, to maintain links among them through couriers and organise secret dens for the safe custody of records, holding meetings, and the clandes~ tine dissemination of literature, In some places funds, too, were provided for the purpose,"
Another extraordinary piece of "evidence" cited against the Left CPI, according to Nanda's statement, was to establish the "pronounced pro-Peking orientation of the party": “While they were jubilant over the atomic blast by China in October in sharp contrast to the reaction of the people of India who were deeply perturbed by the threat posed by the country's security by China's emergency as a nuclear power, the Left CPI advised India not to develop atomic bombs. This shows the sort of balance of military strength between
the two countries which the Left CPI would desire." Extraordinary, indeed, .
If Nanda is to be taken seriously, all those in India, including some Congressmen who have advised the government against making an atom bomb, should be jailed because they are thereby contributing to the military might of the Chinese workers! state against bour-= geois India! Yet another charge is that Mao worship, “with or without the aid of a picture," had become “a part of their creed."
Only the Swantantra leader M.R.Masani, in the Lower House of Parliament, gleefully demanded that the government should arrange to translate the statement into all Indian languages and ensure its wide circulation!
Hiren Mookherjee, leader of the rightist CPI group in Parliament, however, demanded that there should be a full discussion on the Home Minister's statement in the House. Bhupesh Gupta, the "centrist" Communist (in the rightist CPI), took strong objection in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) to the expression "pro=Peking Commun= ists" used in the relevant item on the agenda paper. The government's justification was that the expression had been borrowed from newspaper characterising Left Communists as "pro-Peking."
The capitalist press has received Nanda's statement with utter skepticism. Free Press Journal, an English daily of Bombay, in an editorial entitled TJneonvineing" (February 20), said rather sarcastically: "The main thing that strikes any discerning reader of the Union Home Minister's statement on the ‘anti-national activities of pro=Peking communists. .. ! etc., 'is how very little new it contains,'"
While stating that the government had made a "fairly competent job" of gathering and collating all published data relating to the ideological positions of the LCP, the Journal said that "whether these expressions of opinion, which are what they are, by the members of the Left Communist party amount to evidence of subversion and sabotage with a view to overthrowing the ‘State by violence still remains a matter of doubt.
"The arrests of the Left Communists, "the Bombay: journal adds, nay thus be explained as a preventive step, though it remains to be seen if any imminent danger of violence and threat to security of the state is obvious to the Government." It has also recalled that the CPI (rightist) was also no'believer in the parliamentary system until it adopted the Amritsar resolution “affirming its intention to function within the Constitution,” but the party had "neither been banned nor its members shut up in jail before the date of the Amritsar resolution.”
“While the Government must be given every latitude to extraordinary, even arbitrary steps in an emergency," the Journal contin-
ues, “it cannot hope to enhance the quality of Indian democracy by jettisoning civil liberties without poptlar approval. We remain convinced that the best way of exposing the anti-national activities of the Left Communists and of vindicating the high ideals of Indian democracy is to bring the arrested men to trial in a court of law."
E.M.S.Namboodiripad, the Left "centrist leader of the CPI" in a statement issued from Trichur (Kerala) said on February 22 that Nanda's statement in Parliament about the activities of his party was repetition of the slander which the Congress party had-let loose to msr the chances of the LCP at the Kerala poll. He said that the statement had not provided any proof to substantiate the charges made against his party and demanded that the Home Minister should place the facts which he claimed to possess before a court of law. | Namboodiripad also repeated his earlier offer to resign from the Left CPI if the "Government could prove the charges against it."