Robe of secularism falls off
Sankar Ray 23 Apr 09 (http://thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&theme=&usrsess=1&id=251918)
The secular credentials of
Mr Pillai (who admitted his past RSS connections as an activist) said at a Press conference, organised by the Thrissur Press Club on 6 April, that a large section of the Church would support the CPI-M, and the Church, upholding secularism and democratic values, deserves to be engaged in a dialogue. He defended Mr Madani too and called for an "impartial probe" into the matter, "realising" after a decade that one could not be called a culprit on the basis of statements given by the police.
Mr Pillai pretends to be unaware that the police have been merrily fixing innocents exactly this way under the Left Front regime in
But Mr Vijayan and Mr Pillai should not be blamed. Rather they are behaving like politico-ideological legatees of EMS Namboodiripad who occasionally discovered progressive values in both the Muslim League and the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the BJP. Reviewing the 31st volume of speeches and writings of EMS in Malayalee Emsinte Sampoorna Krithikal, edited by EK Nayanar and published by party-owned Chintha Publishers in 2004, in a well-known daily mainly in circulation in South India, BRP Bhaskar quoted the legendary communist's words during the fourth national elections in 1967: "Examined in a broad context, the programmes and policies of this minority organisation are democratic." In fact,
The CPI did not endorse the logic. "In his political writings
It was on the imperatives for unflinching secularism that ideologically separated
Which was why in 1939, as the juniormost PB member of the party, he wrote in the CPI mouthpiece National Front where he blasted MA Jinnah who alleged that the Congress was trying to set up a "totalitarian and Fascist Hindu raj". Actually the boot was on Golwalkar's foot. The Muslim League, Ghosh shot back at Jinnah, "repudiated every one of the politically progressive resolutions that it (the Congress) adopted at its
He identified adherence to feudal ideology and practices as the common point between two variants of communalism ~ the entente between the "reactionary Hindu landlords" and Muslim League power-mongers ("allies of imperialism") who opposed the pro-ryot Tenancy Bill of the UP government and asked the Congress government to help Muslims get rid of "cultural and general backwardness".
The birth centenary of Ghosh (born
The CPI-M leaders in poll campaigns are launching vitriolic attacks against the Congress, quite rightly from the party's political psyche, but almost ignore the BJP. A former general secretary of the State Coordination Committee of West Bengal Government Employees' Associations and Unions told comrades at a general body meeting not to criticise the BJP strongly as the more votes the party would cut away from the anti-Left vote-bank, the easier it would be for the Left Front candidates to retain their seats in the 15th parliamentary elections.
It was he who had raised a furore by exposing the Indonesian conglomerate Salim group's past links with the CIA-backed President Suharto during the infamous massacres of communists in 1965-68.
Small wonder, the toxic vitriol and communal aggression in the hate speech of Varun Gandhi at Pilibhit in March-end was not very strongly condemned by the official communists.
Does the CPI-M ~ to an extent the CPI ~ retain a firm secular character? Or does it reflect "bourgeois dualism", like the party defending the capitalist path of Left governments in
(The writer is a freelance contributor)
Windows Live Messenger. Multitasking at its finest.
__._,_.___