Exactly 45 years after the split between Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (CPI-ML, Liberation), the CPI-M’s general secretary Prakash Karat said in Kolkata on Thursday that both would decide on a joint political programme at the national level to combat “neo-liberal and communal aggression.” The other left-leaning national parties have already met and decided to structure a common political programme to combat anti-left forces. West Bengal CPI-M will also meet more than a dozen State-level parties on Friday to address “rising communal tendencies”, according to the State secretary of the party, Biman Basu said.
Mr Karat visited Kolkata for a day to meet the secretary of Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), Prabash Ghosh. After the meeting Mr Ghosh’s reaction was guarded. Claiming that 161 SUCI workers were murdered during left rule, Mr. Ghosh said that at present only “issue-based alliance” is possible with the CPI-M in West Bengal. “During the Left Front era we have raised the issue with former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, but no action was taken,” he said. Interestingly, for nearly the entire tenure of the CPI-M in Bengal, SUCI opposed many of the Left Front’s decisions and policies. After the police firing in Nandigram in 2007, SUCI even aligned with the Trinamool Congress.
The other national-level parties, according to Prakash Karat are, CPI-ML, Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Communist Party of India (CPI), who will join hands on November 1 to announce a common political programme. “Modi government’s aggressive neo-liberal policy, massive disinvestment of state-owned companies and aggression of communal forces compelled us to come together,” Mr Karat said in Kolkata. CPI-ML started moving away from CPI-M after the police firing in Naxalbari on May 24, 1967 and eventually launched the party on April 22, 1969.
“We are just initiating some joint programmes, which we did earlier as well in Kolkata and other States, to combat imperialism and communalism,” a Central Committee (CC) member of the CPI-ML (Liberation) told The Hindu . Other Naxalite parties of Bengal feel connecting CPI-ML with the CPI-ML of 1969 party is “pointless” as CPI-ML is not harbouring the legacy of its founder Charu Mazumdar any more.
