Cornered by successive electoral reverses, Left parties on Tuesday drew inspiration from the recent successes of their counterparts in various parts of the world, and said the people of India had not written off the Communists.
Invited to the inaugural session of the 21st Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the smaller Left parties were given prominence by the host leadership. The leaders of all the six Left parties present, including the CPI(M), were one on the need for coming together on a broad Left platform.
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“It is by forging a strong Left unity that we can rally all other democratic forces and go forward towards building a Left and democratic alliance,” said CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat in his inaugural speech.
This was the first time four of the Left parties were invited to the Party Congress. While the CPI was present at the last Congress in Kozhikode, the two long-standing allies in the Left Front — the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Forward Bloc — received invites for the first time as did recent entrants, the CPI (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation and the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist).
While CPI general secretary Sudhakar Reddy stressed the need to draw inspiration from the resurgence of the Left elsewhere and the admission by the U.S. that the blockade of Cuba was a mistake, Forward Bloc’s Debabrata Biswas said his party expected the CPI(M) to take the initiative in building Left unity nationally.
SUCI general secretary Provash Ghosh was appreciative of the efforts made by Mr. Karat personally to reach out to a small party like his while pointing out that his organisation had always been in favour of Left unity, even through the years it carried out struggles against CPI(M) governments.
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