The CPI(M) and the CPI appear far from done with the debate over the 1964 split in the Communist Party.
While the CPI sought to reply to the attack on it by the CPI(M) organ Deshabhimani on Thursday with an article in the editorial page of its organ Janayugom on Friday, the CPI(M) kept the debate going with an article by party Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechuri dealing, among other issues, with the circumstances of the split.
In his article, Mr. Yechuri said that though those who indulge in thoughtless splits would get isolated from the people, conflicts and splits were inevitable if the leadership sought to take the party on the path of class compromise. “In India, total extermination of the Communist Party, as had happened in many countries, had not happened only because of the struggle against revisionism. Thus, the split in the CPI over revisionism and policies of class compromise had helped preserve the revolutionary content of the Communist movement and taken it forward,” he said.
However, writing in Janayugom , CPI leader Binoy Viswam said the inner party debates in the Communist Party fully complied with the Leninist organisational principle of the minority accepting the views of the majority until the Chinese Communist Party came on the scene. Once the Chinese party came in with its ‘divisive philosophy’, everything went topsy-turvy, he said.
Reacting to the CPI(M) accusation that the CPI had committed right deviation by joining hands with the Congress, Mr. Viswam reminded the CPI(M) leadership that their party had supported Indira Gandhi in Parliament when she was faced with threat from the ‘Syndicate’ Congress in 1969.
Referring to the Deshabhimani contention that the CPI(M) had fared better in the Assembly election held immediately after the 1964 split, he said, it should be remembered that the CPI(M) had fought the polls in alliance with the Indian Union Muslim League. “If vote alone is the basis for deciding right and wrong, we will have to accept the arguments of the BJP and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal to be true,” he told his CPI(M) counterparts.