A forgotten communist and revolutionary by Sankar Ray
Ajoy Ghosh, an outstanding communist ideologue, and the general secretary, Communist Party of India, who foiled the bid to split the party at its Sixth Party Congress (Vijaywada, 1961), the last jamboree of undivided CPI, was born on 22 February 1909.. It would have been a pleasant surprise for many of us, veterans, if CPI whose headquarters Ajoy Bhavan is named after him organized a meeting to begin the centenary year of one whom Boris Ponomaryov, alternate member of the now-defunct Communist Party of Soviet Union for about two decades, described as a 'sterling leader', produced by the Communist International alongside Ho Chi-Minh, Dolores Ibaruri, the legendary leader of Republican struggle of Spain, French communist stalwart Maurice Thorez, Antonio Gramsci's comrade-in-arms Palmiro Togliatti, German communist leader Walter Ulbricht and the British scholar-communist Rajani Palme Dutt among a few others. But mandarins at Ajoy Bhavan have kept up the painful tradition of pushing the comrade-in-arms of Bhagat Singh to oblivion after his death on 13 January, 1962
Top brass of CPI, whose power to intervene in the national politics has been waning beyond recognition during the last decade or so, has practically sent Ghosh to the recycle bin of history – at least for the vast majority or rank and file who joined the party after the split in CPI (1964). Ghosh fought against both the lines inside CPI in the 1950s and until his death – national front-liners ( those who remained with the CPI) and democratic-front-adherents (those who split and formed the CPI(M)) . EMS Namboodiripad and A K Gopalan were with Ghosh until his death before completing 53 years of life. However, CPI(M)'s founding polit bureau member M Basavapunnaiah characterized Ghosh, 15 years after his death, as "the skillful architect of Indian revisionism" in a pamphlet CPI(M) and the Right CP. Dr Sen , a PB member between 1952-56, refuted this. "Comrade Surjeet, Comrade Sundarayya, Comrade Basavapunnaiah all voted for the draft political resolution moved by Comrade Ajoy at the Palghat Congress in 1956. An alternate draft was placed by Comrade P C Joshi on behalf of NF-liners. If Ajoy were a revisionist, why was MB silent? Why the rebuttal came from Ajoy? EMS of course gave a sober and solid reply to Comrade Bhowani Sen who spoke in favour of PCJ", Dr Sen told this scribe who served as his private secretary in his twilight years. Dr Sen was a member of the first CC (1933) of undivided CPI and the lone communist to have been uninterruptedly in the CC (later national council) until the CPI split in 1964.
The majority of old guard and sympathisers of yesteryears are disillusioned with the mandarins of Ajoy Bhavan , led by its octogenarian general secretary A B Bardhan who opposes even friendly ideological debate with the CPI(M). Ajoy Bhavan is virtually a dependant entity under the A K Gopalan Bhavan, the seat of CPI(M)'s national leadership. Bardhan did not care to humiliate Dr Sen in his twilight years. Nonagenarian communist requested Bardhan in June 2001 to publish an article -Relevance of Ajoy Ghosh in the Indian Communist Movement in June 2001 to Bardhan in the CPI central organ New Age ( incidentally, with this writer as his junior co-author). The article suggested initiation of friendly ideological debate with the CPI – emulating Ghosh – to pave the way for reunification of Indian communist movement. The Shah-en-shah of CPI wrote to Dr Sen to say that the article would "open a pandora's box of controversies and mutual attacks, without, in our view, helping in any way to further the process of unity" and gave it a pass. Dr Sen, former AITUC president shot back, "Our Party began shrinking gradually. Now it is a very small party and truly speaking, under your leadership, CPI is a satellite of CPI(M), thanks to your leadership." The article remains unpublished although Dr Sen told me to publish the piece in my name. Pitiably, CPI's subservience to CPI (M) is deeper . The AITUC general secretary and CPI's Lok Sabha group leader Gurudas Dasgupta's speech at the Lok Sabha defending CPI(M)'s capture-Nandigram operation of November 2007 confirms the depressing depth of subordination to the CPI(M) top brass. His speech disrobed himself of his usual firebrand style the viewers of LS TV have been accustomed with.
Imprisoned along with Bhagat Singh in the Lahore Conspiracy Case, Ghosh opposed both Hindu and Muslim communalism while agreeing that the Hindu variant was a much bigger threat to the democratic polity. A few days before breathed his last in an article, For the Unity of our Motherland, in CPI weekly New Age , he wrote, Hindu communalism was permeating India's ' social and political life' and 'is even more dangerous' , but he did not spare other communal variants. "When I say communal parties, I have in mind all communal parties, whether Hindu, Muslim or Sikh". He categorically said, "any opportunistic association or alliance would be a positive disservice to the cause of national integration". This unalloyed secularism is missing in the lexicon of CPI and CPI(M). The CPI(M) central organ, People's Democracy, in an editorial on 7 October last wrote proudly, "We had continuously exposed the illegitimate nexus between imperialism's trimurti – the World Bank, IMF and WTO –and the communalism's trishul." The silence about the threat from Islamic fundamentalist reflects the party's disingenuous commitment to secularism. African Marxist economist Samir Amin in an essay in Monthly Review (December 2007) wrote - "Political Islam in the service of imperialism", Amin wrote that 'radical secularism' is a contribution of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution."Atheist or agnostic, deist or believer, the individual is free to choose, the state knows nothing about it", he added. Ghosh's position t, unlike the CPI(M)'s, was identical with Amin's.
A CPI PB member in the late 1930s, Ghosh wrote in party organ National Front (1 January 1939) an article, Communal Unity , exposing the entente between the 'reactionary Hindu landlords and Muslim League biggies ('allies of imperialism') in opposing the pro-ryot Tenancy Bill of the UP government and asked the Congress government to help Muslims rid of 'cultural and general backwardness'. The Left Front government in West Bengal did very little for the Muslims. Only 2 per cent of government employees in the state are Muslims who account for over 21 per cent of state's population. The sham sympathy for the Muslim community is evident in CPI(M)'s national outlook. In 43 years, no Muslim could find a place in the PB. Even Mohd Ismail who was for sometime West Bengal state committee secretary of CPI in the very early 1950s was ignored.
Moscow, not CPI, published Speeches and Writings of Ajoy Ghosh , after his death. But he never wooed the CPSU leaders. In 1956, New Times, carried a piece A non-capitalist path for underdeveloped countries by Modeste Rubinstein who found elements of socialism in Nehruvian concept of democratic socialism (Avadi resolution). CPI monthly New Age reprinted the article alongside Ghosh's rebuttal.
Cynics inside the CPI used to say that the party headquarters was named after Ghosh to please Moscow. This may be a conjecture but he remained ignored as now. When this writer was private secretary to Dr Sen, he was fond of saying that Ghosh " was head and soldier above all the general secretaries before and after split, even in the CPI(M), as an ideologue specially in inner-party politico-ideological struggle ". In the preface to Marxism and Indian Reality: Selected Speeches and Writings by Ajoy Ghosh in 1989, CPI leader S G Sardesai who brought him to the communist movement in jail wrote, " How I wish Ajoy were with us today when the unification of the Indian communist movement has once again become an urgent need of history!". The late Sardesai's wishful thinking dies down in the cacophony of Ajoy Bhavan's canine subservience to CPI(M).
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