The October Revolution was responsible for unleashing a wave against imperialism and setting in motion a new democratic system across the world, CPI (M) Polit Bureau member and former General Secretary the party Prakash Karat said here on Monday.
Mr. Karat was addressing an event to mark the beginning of the centenary year of the October Revolution. Mr. Karat also credited the Revolution for equality of women and equal wages that are considered the cornerstone of the labour movement.
“In India too, we have seen the direct impact of the October Revolution. From 1918 onwards, you can see how the working class began to organise itself all over India, and the impact of the October Revolution was spread across all the major cities, including Chennai. Within six months of the October Revolution, the first trade union in India – the Madras Labour Union – was formed. It was the impact of the October Revolution which produced the first Communists in India, including the first Communist in South India: Singaravelu (Chettiar),” Mr. Karat said, adding that Subramania Bharati’s poem, within weeks of the Revolution, was the first poem in praise of the Revolution.
Speaking on the occasion, G. Ramakrishnan, State Secretary of CPI (M), said the Tamil term for revolution has become a pejorative word and it has been appropriated by political leaders in power.
“ Puratchi has come to mean a bad word in Tamil Nadu. The head of a party that has used power to loot crores and crores of rupees has come to appropriate the term. Those like R. Nallakannu joined the freedom struggle for a fight to improve the situation of the people. Now, that is a revolution,” said Mr. Ramakrishnan. Mr. Ramakrishnan said that the failure of socialist governments in various countries was not the failure of the ideology itself; it was the failure of the party leadership in those countries.
“We have had the two Dravidian parties rule us for several decades. There will be the rise of a movement, led by our labourers, farmers and women that will come to replace this system. I remain hopeful that, either today or tomorrow, socialism will become a reality,” he said.
Journalist and film director Raju Murugan said that his exposure to the Communist ideology came via a copy of Maxim Gorky’s The Mother , gifted by his elder brother. He credited the Left movement for keeping in check caste atrocities and honour killings in the State.
Writer S. Ramakrishnan said that literature of Russia took off in the 19th century, as writers wrote of the circumstances that led to the Revolution and after. “Before the 11th century, all Russia had were folk stories. Russia contributed the best literature of the 19th century; if you take the best novels of the time, there would be a work by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky right on top,” he said.
