Title: 'Dissident' CPI(M)
leader for departure from Soviet model
Author: Hasan Suroor
Publication: The Hindu
Date: January 7, 2000
The "dissident" CPI(M)
leader, Mr. Saifuddin Chaudhury, who is in the dock for alleged "breach"
of organisational discipline, reiterated today that the party needed to
"open up" and change its "closed" style of functioning.
Calling for a "radical"
departure from the Soviet model, he said the present inner-party culture
was responsible for alienating the "comrades" and pushing them into the
arms of the "enemies". The notion that the party knew best was also beginning
to tell on its traditional supporters.
That people who had been
voting the CPI(M) to power for over two decades were now inclined to move
away should have been a matter of concern for the party, but nobody was
asking why was this happening? On the contrary, there was a tendency to
frown upon even healthy and constructive criticism, he said.
Talking to The Hindu
here, Mr. Chaudhary denied the charge of party indiscipline and said that,
in fact, he was raising issues which had a bearing on the future of the
CPI(M) as a vehicle of progressive change. He maintained that he had done
or said nothing which would hurt the party's interests. When he met the
West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr. Jyoti Basu, about two weeks ago, the latter
wanted to know if his activities would damage the party's image or interests.
"I assured him that nothing
could be dearer to me than the interests of the party and told him that
I was simply talking about issues which were worrying many of our comrades",
Mr. Chaudhury recalled.
Yet, a few days later
the West Bengal state committee decided to give him a show-cause notice
for alleged breach of party discipline. Two others - the State Transport
Minister, Mr. Subhas Chakraborty, and the district secretary of North 24
Parganas, Mr. Samir Putatunda, - were "reprimanded" for airing similar
views.
Until Thursday, Mr. Chaudhury
had not received the notice but he was pretty certain it would arrive.
And, of course, he was clear in his mind how he was going to respond. "My
views are well known and I refute the charge that they amount to party
indiscipline," he said pointing out that he had grown up in the party and
its interests were uppermost in his mind.
Mr. Chaudhury, who was
one of the CPI(M)'s more vocal Lok Sabha MPs, was denied the party ticket
in 1996 and dropped from its central committee for "hobnobbing" with the
Congress(I).
The charge followed Mr.
Chaudhury's advocacy of a softer line towards the Congress(I) in order
to fight the BJP at a time when the CPI(M)'s official position was to keep
an equal distance from both parties.
Since then, of course,
the CPI (M) has gone beyond Mr. Chaudhury's formulation and accepted the
Congress(I) as an ally in the fight against the BJP and its allies.
Mr. Chaudhury said the
party was afraid of admitting its mistakes, and rectifying them. He wondered
how it could claim both decisions - the line of equidistance in 1991 and
a softer approach now - were right.
"If the earlier decision
was right then why was it changed?" he asked. The party should have the
strength to admit its mistakes. To some extent, there was a connection
between the CPI(M)'s "wrong" tactics and the rise of the BJP, he felt.
He denied that those
who were not happy with the party's style of functioning and its approach
to the changed realities, both in the political and economic fields, were
"dissidents".
They had been forced
to speak up because they genuinely felt that the party was not moving in
the right direction. He hoped that the "updated" party programme, being
drafted would be more responsive to the demands of a "multi-party," Political
system, and the compulsions of a "multisectoral" economic environment.
