That is the message they left behind for democrats and revolutionaries in India
“It is a constitutional autocracy,” veteran communist revolutionaries, T Nagi Reddy and DV Rao, told a special court in 1971 December, when they were tried in the famous Hyderabad Conspiracy Case, under the most draconian sections of IPC, including the sedition law. We remember the immortal leaders on the occasion of death anniversaries (July 12 and 28) of both comrades.
Every July, the two veteran Telugu-speaking leaders are remembered across the two Telugu states, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Already several memorial meetings were held this July, as at their home towns, at Hyderabad etc. Speakers explained current political situation and tasks ahead, after the recent General Elections.
We devote this article to discuss,among other things, some aspects of how they faced Indira’s Emergency, and constitutional autocracy.The questions assume importance in the context of Union govt’s decision to observe every year 25th June as Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas (The day Constitution was murdered).
Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced in an X post on June 12 last:
“Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi throttled the soul of Indian democracy by imposing the Emergency on June 25, 1975, exhibiting her dictatorial mindset. Lakhs of people were jailed without any reason and the media was silenced. The Indian government has decided to observe June 25 as Samvidhaan Hatya Divas. This day will be dedicated to the sacrifice of all those who suffered inhuman pain during the 1975 Emergency.”
“To observe 25th June as Samvidhaan Hatya Diwas will serve as a reminder of what happens when the Constitution of India was trampled over. It is also a day to pay homage to each and every person who suffered due to the excesses of the Emergency, a Congress unleashed dark phase of Indian history,” he added. PM Modi conveyed a similar message.
No doubt it was a day of murder of a nominal democracy, even for sections of ruling classes. That was its speciality. Lakhs of people were indeed jailed without any reason and the media was silenced.
Even leaders of Jana sangh like Vajpayee, LK Advani were arrested. So was Modi, then an activist of RSS. So were leaders of CPI-M. But DV Rao and TN,who were then under police vigilance being on bail, jumped bail, escaped police, went underground, worked for people until last breath and died incognito.They guided cadres of younger generation to do likewise. It is the revolutionary tradition as opposed to ‘courting arrest’ Gandhian style, glorified by historians of comprador ruling classes who ‘fought’ only to strike a deal with imperialists.
Communal organizations including those of Muslims and RSS were banned during Emergency. Unlike some leftists who supported such bans, TN and DV were opposed to the bans that included ban of CRs including UCCRI-ML, and several ML groups. Political-ideological struggles are the way, and bans only serve the ruling cliques, they held. That holds good even today. After all,it is they who are now ruling.
Even today,we see repression of ruling class leaders, even arrests of CMs in office. Censorship is routine, often it is self-censorship by media.
We discussed some issues involved in a recent article,titled:
Recalling the day Indira Gandhi’s election was set aside: A verdict of “great courage,” but which led to Emergency of 1975 (13/06/2024)
“Modi-led BJP is fond of recalling ‘Congress’ fascist dictatorship,’ only to emulate and use it in ever new ways,” we concluded in it. Today, apart from hundreds of lawless, ‘encounter killings’ – begun by Congress rulers- lynchings and bull-dozing are aplenty. Yes, even today, it is inhuman pain, Amit Shah must know.
Ever since Indira’s defeat in 1977 elections, post-Emergency, Indian ruling classes opted the ways of undeclared Emergency.
Modi-led BJP regimes perfected the same. No single day needs to be devoted. Everyday witnesses murder of even nominal democracy.
India under Modi remains a Constitutional autocracy in spite of all new Samhitas (law codes) that came into effect on July 1. The samhitas, with Indian nomenclature, are a rehash of Indian Penal Code and CrPC of 1860 colonial vintage.
Constitutional autocracy is in full play,and top courts are by and large falling in line, where even bail, after years of detention without an FIR being filed, has become a luxury. The top courts played a similar role during Emergency which they upheld, and had said the Right to Life and Liberty remain suspended. Thus it is murder of democracy, with judicial approval, then or now.
*** ***
Arrests and cases, of TN-DV, were more after the new Constitution 1950 came into effect
The Hyderabad Conspiracy Case was in the fashion of Kanpur (1924) and Meerut (1929) Conspiracy cases foisted by the British imperialists. Theirs was the first such major case framed by the new ruling classes post-1947. Parvatipuram Conspiracy case soon followed, and TN played a key role in organizing Defence of that case at a time Charu Majumdarites had ‘boycotted bourgeois courts,’ abandoning over hundred adivasis etc in jails.
DV Rao was known for his role in Telangana Peasant armed struggle (1946 July -51 October) which was the basis of the revolutionary mass line TN and DV founded and represented. They too were critical of ‘bourgeois courts,’ but used them to whatever extent possible, so as to expose the state and mobilize people. TN for instance had organized a public campaign, and raised over Rs.one lakh (in those days) to defend the adivasis and their struggles.
Details are note-worthy…
The Hyderabad case was foisted against the two leaders and 40 others by the Indian State, on the basis of an “Immediate Programme,” that propounded the line (see below) they had adopted and declared in April 1969. Both were former Loksabha MPs (1957-1962) who had faced worst repression:
Com DV (1917-1984 July 12) spent around 17 years in underground activities and about 5 years in various jails in his 45 years of political life and work as a communist revolutionary. Out of that, if the pre-1948 September Nizam rule is excluded, the ex-MP spent more than 10 years of UG life and all of jail life after the New Constitution of 1950. He had died while underground.
In over 35 years of his turbulent political life, Nagi Reddy (1917-1976 July 28) was imprisoned about 10 times, spent almost as many years in jail, and over five years underground, most of it in the ‘democratic republic’ of India, post-1947. He fell sick, and died incognito in the Osmania General Hospital, Hyderabad. He was registered as Venkata Ramayya in the Government hospital.
Details are note-worthy and of interest to those in Civil Rights movement how the Rule of law always worked in India against those who fought for people. DV Rao told the Court that all the Fundamental Rights vanish whenever the oppressed put up resistance. The details justify why they called it a Constitutional autocracy. Most often TN was an elected legislator (MLA thrice or MP during 1957-62) when he was arrested.
“Strikingly similar to the colonial 1935 Govt of India Act,” TN told the Special Sessions Court, “The Constitution was intended to perpetuate the existing social and economic foundation of imperialist exploitation and feudal landlordism” (India Mortgaged p.48).
Arrests of TN, a great agitator in defence of the exploited people, were as follows:
1940: TN aged23 was arrested, soon after his return from BHU as a student, for his writing a booklet on War and its Economic Effects, and was awarded RI for an year. That was Second World War period, and the youngnman who had just become a communist was opposing the war.
1941: He was re-arrested in as he walked out of the Thiruchirapalli prison,and detained as a detenue under the draconian Defence of India Rules (DIR).Andhra was under Madras Presidency then.
1946: he was detained under (CM) Prakasam Ordinance that proscribed communists. Released in 1947.He went underground as repression intensified, also in Andhra, due to raging peasant armed struggle (1946-51 Oct) in adjoining Telangana, then part of the Nizam’s Hyderabad state.
1951: After four years of UG life, he came into the open before the 1952 elections, the first under adult franchise. He was a candidate to the Assembly from constituency where his rival was Neelem Sanjiva Reddy, who was to become CM of AP and President of India. He won the election from inside the prison as a detenue.
1955: He was arrested during mid-term polls of Andhra, for defying sec.144. Congress feared communsists would win: they indeed polled more votes than in 1952, but lost most seats.
1962: arrested under DIR during India-China war, like hundreds of communists across India.
1964-65 : detenue under DIR during 1965 war with Pakistan.
1969: Arrested under PD Act, soon after his resignation as MLA; released on Dec 1.
1969 December 19: Arrested in Madras, along with DV Rao etc, and framed up in Hyderabad conspiracy case. The two leaders, along with others, were convicted and imprisoned; they were released in May 1972 on bail, with stringent conditions, pending an Appeal before the High court.
1972 : Arrested under PD Act as a detenue during Jai Andhra movement, which he opposed.
1975 June 25: Together they had founded the UCCRI-ML in early 1975, only to be banned during Indira Gandhi’s emergency (1975-77). CRs faced undeclared Emergency later on. Both DV and TN decided and skipped bail, escaped police, and went underground and both died incognito.
Readers of countercurrents.org are familiar with the life and work of the two veterans thanks to a good archive built by dedicated Editor, Binu Mathew. See links provided in the following:
https://countercurrents.org/2016/07/tarimela-nagi-reddy-remembered/
https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/comrade-dv-rao-unique-role-in-indian-communist-movement/
TN’s classic work, published in 1978 as a book, INDIA MORTGAGED (See cover page) was written in jail and submitted to a Special Court in December 1971.
Every now and then, referring to poor quality of debates in legislatures, Telugu media remembers TN who was an expert on Indian economy and his Budget speeches were keenly heard by the ruling classes too. When he was an MP, he was a Member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), and utilized that for a keen and deep study, based on official data, about imperialist grip on Indian economy, and his magnum opus, India Mortgaged was a product of that. At one time, most of India’s universities valued it as a standard work, and kept it in their libraries.
Given the above experiences, TN and DV Rao, as CRs after splitting from CPI-M in 1967-68, decided to shun parliamentary path, and combine legal, semi-legal and illegal methods of work, and adopted suitable tactics.
They believed revolutionaries should not be at the mercy of a fascist state. Both skipped bail when Emergency (1975-77) was clamped by PM Indira Gandhi, went underground, and died incognito.
*** ***
Revolutionary tactics are meant to help shed Constitutional, legal and parliamentary illusions
The revolutionary path and the election-participation tactics are compatible. That was the view TN held, and explained, among other things, also in his classic Court Statement in 1971 December. It was published in book form, in 1978, as India Mortgaged (570 pages). Several editions and re-prints appeared subsequently, in many Indian languages. The book was so popular that Pawan Kalyan, founder of Jana sena party, now Deputy CM of AP, claimed he was inspired by that, only to join BJP and NDA.The book was shown and used in a few popular Telugu cinemas.
Liberation Can Succeed Only Under the Leadership of the Proletariat,TN held. The Indian ruling classes successfully created a myth of democracy through a farce of elections, which are only a small part of democracy. Given the way they are held, some called India an ‘electoral autocracy.’ It is part of constitutional autocracy.
The task is to help shed Constitutional, legal and parliamentary illusions, including on electoral autocracy, and to shun parliamentary path; Lenin called itparliamentarycretinism. That path was what TN and DV Rao stood for, and advocated. They insisted participation in elections is a matter of “necessary tactics” to advance the revolutionary mass movement. The path and the tactics are compatible.
They declared their opposition to left adventurism, including on elections. DV Rao and TN had even face-to-face discussions, during 1968-69, with Charu Majumdar: The far Left ML trend advocated a boycott of elections as part of strategy. It remains a non-starter except in a few hamlets. Even in places called as guerrilla zones, large number of people (around 65-70 percent voters) are voting.
A senior, Left-leaning academic recently raised questions regarding participation in elections by communist revolutionaries, when UCCRI-ML founded by TN and DV Rao, fielded candidates even while rejecting parliamentary path.
Is it permissible, as per TN?
He said to a friend : ‘You need to counter/demolish TN’s statement in which he said that instead of wasting time in the talking shop called Assembly, better go out and mobilize people…Why, then, did TN resign in 1968? Why did he not contest, participate again later? If you want to tread another path, it is your choice…Don’t drag TN into this and try to reap reflected glory..”
The discussion calls for a close re-reading the statement/speech (published in countercurrents.org) by TN in the AP Assembly, in March 1969 more carefully.
The Speech nowhere indicates a dogmatic view. Its key theme is to educate and mobilize people, to educate through political and economic struggles, tasks performed by communist revolutionaries. The task is to help shed illusions, including on electoral democracy, and to shun parliamentary path, advocated and practised by the CPI, CPM and others of the parliamentaryLeft.
It was TN who said it’s a matter of tactics, variable, meant to educate people, also during elections by suitable, necessary and possible tactics. He quit Assembly to make a break with past parliamentary path. He suggested other tactics too..TN opposed boycott as a strategy, as adopted by far Left, and that proved futile. We should be with and at the head of the people. Varied tactics were used in Russia by Bolsheviks led by Lenin, we were reminded.
It was decided by CRs led by TN and DV that election is part of tactics, and is a secondary form of political struggle. The forms and slogans, as part of tactics, vary from time to time.
People are now increasingly lured by schemes including huge freebies. Modi-led BJP is second to none though he indulges in platitudes. CRs need to resist this tide and sustain themselves for further work. But the academic remained skeptic. For such friends,the following lines should be helpful.
In a series of interviews in Blitz on 15th May 1968 and to Swedish journalists on 16th March 1969, after the resignation, he explained many things including tactics. TN explicitly said:
“ We had been carrying out the working class struggles in its revolutionary form during these 16 years..we could probably have also used parliament, even while an agrarian revolution was going on in some places. We can go in for armed struggle in a relatively large area and still sit in parliament in other areas where no armed struggle was going on. This would combine parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle.”
We can appreciate it if we realize the unevenness in the level and form of mass movements, at varied times with ups and downs, in various areas of India, a country continental in size.
TN stressed on the need of combining various forms of struggle, legal, semi-legal and illegal, keeping in view the unevenness in political and economic spheres, consciousness of people and level of movement in India’s vast semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. TN continued, ”We will enter the assemblies to expose them, but not join any coalition govt.” He stressed on the need for building a mass agrarian revolutionary movement and completing the People’s Democratic Revolution.”
The above lines are published as an appendix in India Mortgaged.
Thus the revolutionary path and the election tactics are compatible.
In recent (Dec2023) Telangana Assembly polls, and later elections to parliament in AP and Telangana, in 2024 summer, UCCRI-ML had fielded candidates in 10 parliament constituencies (each contained 7 assembly segments) that incorporated 37 Assembly constituencies. Over 15 lakhs of pamphlets were distributed in around 4000 villages and 100 towns. A few thousands of activists joined in the political campaign. The pamphlets nowhere created illusions on parliamentary system or path.
One can see the pamphlets make no ‘promises if elected’ as others, even Left and some ML groups do. They don’t even give an illusion of victory. They only seek support for the revolutionary line and practice of struggles. One may or may not agree, but should try to understand the tactics that helped sustained work by CRs in Telugu states, where the Lefts, and the MLs were driven into a corner. Practical politics call for such flexible tactics, without at the same time creating illusions.
The following article gives some idea of a massive political campaign that avoids pitfalls of creating illusions.
*** ***
The Success of the Revolution is Assured
That is the title of the last chapter of TN’s India Mortgaged. Success is assured only if revolutionary strategy and tactics are pursued diligently.
In the “Immediate Programme” it was stated:
“India is a neo-colony. The people of this country are suffering from the exploitation of imperialism.. Along with imperialism, feudalism is also an important exploitation force. 70 percent to 80 percent of the people living in rural areas suffering from various forms of feudal exploitation. In these circumstances, Indian revolution will be completed in two stages. Today we are in the stage of New- Democratic Revolution.”
That was the charecterization of India post-1947 August, he explained in the Court Statement:
“How true this objective analysis is in the case of India is evident without any further explanation. This process of compromise by the leading representatives of the colonial big bourgeoisie with imperialism reached its final completion in India with the transfer of power.”
“In the course of my statement, I have explained as to how the Indian big bourgeoisie betrayed the revolution and how it has allowed foreign finance capital to exploit the country in various forms much more intensively than even in the colonial period. I have also explained how the Indian big bourgeoisie allied itself with feudal landlords and princes and helped them to intensify even feudal exploitation along with growing capitalist relations.
“ Therefore, it is clear that the Indian democratic revolution can succeed only under the leadership of the proletariat.”
TN explained the class character of the Indian state thus:
“This classical process of compromise exposes the true character of the Indian state, as the biggest dependent semi-colonial country. It has clearly exposed that national liberation revolution cannot succeed under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. Stalin had warned that “Independence does not come as a gift”..
“In India today the fight for national liberation is intertwined with the struggle for democratic, anti-feudal revolution. Only after completing these two tasks can one talk of the completion of Socialist task.
“In fact, the two revolutionary tasks are already linked. It is wrong to regard the national revolution and the democratic revolution as two entirely different stages”.
TN continued:
“I have explained how the main task of the anti-imperialist revolution still continues in India, since imperialist exploitation is no whit less than it was under direct colonial rule and hence national liberation is yet to be achieved along with anti-feudal democratic tasks.
“Thus the people’s democratic revolution is an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution of the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat. This revolution is a new type of democratic revolution.”
The Question of State Power
When we say that the democratic tasks of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution can be accomplished only under the leadership of the proletariat, the question of state power is posed directly. Which class holds power decides everything; up to now, the state power is held by the big bourgeoisie in alliance with imperialism and feudalism. We have found that it cannot in any circumstances fulfill the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal tasks. This bourgeoisie adopts all kinds of deceptive practices to hoodwink the people. When it is compelled to make any particular concession, it does so only to begin withdrawing them the following day. It hands out promises left and right.. ”only to fool the people by a show of honest coalition”. “In words it claims to be a popular, democratic revolutionary government, but indeed it is anti-popular, undemocratic, counter revolutionary, bourgeois government.” (TN cited Lenin, ‘One of the Fundamental Questions of Revolution’)
Indian bourgeoisie is adept in fooling the people by loud proclamations of revolutionary slogans, like ‘curb the monopolies,’ plans for ‘ceiling on urban properties’, and legislation on ‘land ceilings’ and implementation of ‘crash programme for the distribution of Banzer (fallow) Land’.
Thus the proud declarations of anti-imperialism, the insistent talk of ‘remove poverty’ and all such revolutionary words are a psychological bait to the masses. And the bourgeoisie knows it.
We now see PM Modi claiming to shed vestiges of colonialism. The nomenclature of IPC, CrPC etc are Indianized even as all draconian contents are retained and beefed up.
*** ***
TN during Emergency (1975-77): Mere anti-fascist popaganda was not enough, he stressed
Within a year of the formation of UCCRI-ML (in 1975 April), problems began to occur in the Unity Centre. Those with different political understandings and orientations had merged; so the old understandings were reflected and differences arose.
One resolution, “One year Emergency and situation” was adopted by the C.C. in May 1976, a few weeks before his untimely death, that discussed among other things, the contradictions of the ruling classes that had reached a bursting point, and that led to arrests of almost one lakh people, including the ruling class representatives.
Not all struggles are revolutionary, TN and DV held.
Comrade TN had submitted a report to the the Central Committee of the UCCRI(ML) held in May 1976. The note contains his observations regarding the state of organisation and mass movement in Rajasthan and Delhi, formed after his tour of the North in January 1976.He travelled incognito.
That dealt with the nature of the farmers’ movement in Rajasthan, one similar to that by farmers (mostly from Punjab,Haryana and West UP) a few years ago, during Modi regime. It shows that Com. TN ardently desired that peasant struggles should be organised as anti-landlord class struggles and not merely as non-class movements moving around some general issues.
He wrote:
“ The peasant movement even though it has moved thousands into action and has had an influence over hundreds of villages is not an anti-feudal movement. It is a general democratic upsurge (to an extent spontaneous) even though Kisan Sabha gave an organisational shape to it. The basic question— anti-feudal— has not gripped our organisation. If there is no landlordism, then does it mean that small peasant economy dominates the villages? If it is so, do capitalist relations dominate the rural scene? What is the role of the money-lenders? How many peasants in the village who own land, also own cattle to till the land? Why do thousands of villagers leave the rural areas to the cities and better developed areas like Delhi and Punjab? In my opinion it is the immediate and fundamental duty of the comrades to study Rajasthan’s rural economy and formulate concrete basic class tasks as otherwise the peasant movement will be moving round the vicious circle of general demands like fertilizers, pesticides, better seeds, fair price(MSP), rural finance and so on; these can never give depth and intensity to the peasant movement. ”
Almost 50 years later, recent reports showed how landlordism reigned Punjab, despite capitalism in agriculture, despite Green Revolution. The rural poor, including dalit landless peasantry, were left behind, as agrarian revolution and land to the tiller were glossed over, including by the Left.
(Extracts from Comrade TN’s Note, Dated 8/5/76, around ten weeks before his untimely death.. taken from The Proletarian Line No-42-February- March 1984.)
The second extract deals with the problem of educating the cadre. In this connection, he makes it clear that a keen study of Comrade DV’s documents, embodying the principled ideological struggle against the various right and left deviations and concretely summing up the experiences of the Indian revolutionary movement, is a must to gain a clear understanding of our fundamental line.
TN was keen on educating and training cadres to work under ground, using illegal and semi-legal methods, including such journals, to work under conditions of Emergency and of fascism. Mere anti-fascist popaganda was not enough, he stressed.
He wrote:
“ The question of education of cadre. This is an extremely important task. There is an extremely good, youthful cadre eager to learn and work, but education in the understanding of our line is the foremost task. To read a programme and understanding general principles is not enough. To generally agree on the strategy and basic tactical line as enunciated in our path is not enough. My firm opinion is that the education on programme and path on the basis of our experience of our own revolutionary movement is the basic necessity today. To that end full use of the following documents should be made. (emphasis original).
Then TN listed a series of polemical documents written by DV Rao that needed to be studied, particularly by serious activists.
“These documents should be fully made use of in our education of party ranks,” he wrote. “A quick and firm line of educating our ranks is of utmost importance. Our programme and policy should go to the ranks in its most concrete form.”
(Proletarian Line No. 94 Feb 2017.)
The above documents were published by the Proletarian Line Publications with the following titles respectively:
1. People’s Democratic Revolution in India – An Explanation of the Programme.
2. Left Trend Among Indian Revolutionaries.
3. Fundamental Line and Question of Unity.
4. Right Opportunist Trend Within the Party.
5. The Srikakulam review is included in the book — ‘Agrarian Revolution and Our Tasks.’
*** ***
“Parliamentary forms only serve to veil the reality of the bourgeois dictatorship”
Referring to Emergency rule in various parts of India, including Kashmir and Northeast, TN wrote:
“I can do no better than to quote the historic statement of the Communist accused of Meerut conspiracy case on this issue. They proclaimed that “democracy in fact is held to be unreliable in capitalist society because of the fundamental helplessness of the propertyless man,the parliamentary forms only serve to veil the reality of the bourgeois dictatorship by an appearance of popular consent, which is rendered unreal by the capitalist control of the social structure; and even this veil is set aside in moments of any stress by open assumption of emergency dictatorial powers”…
We “believe that the ruling class will use every means, political, economic and military, to defend its privileges and that the final decision will not be reached without open civil war. In support of this, they (the communists) quote evidence to show the readiness of the ruling class in many countries to fling constitutional considerations to the winds when their privileges are in danger.” (Pages 271-72, India Mortgaged.)
“This statement which was true then is truer today in Indian conditions. We have, during these 20 years and more of Indian democracy, witnessed emergencies declared all over the country and in various parts to openly and uninhibitedly use savage force against the workers and peasants to drown their just struggles in blood. We have noted how, (in) every province the landlord class and the government have thrown ‘democratic law’ overboard, massacred thousands, and used every method of savage brutality against millions. The ruling class in its own interests has become a moralist of vehement democracy in the name of the people.
“The ‘democratic’ Indian government which has unleashed Baranagars and Howrahs in West Bengal and innumerable police camps in Srikakulam to torture or butcher hundreds of people is capable of deceiving the people by shedding democratic tears…”
“Revolutions are locomotives of history” said Marx. It has been so from the earliest period of history, starting with the revolt of the slaves against slavery, the revolt of peasants and middle classes against feudalism, the revolt of oppressed nations against imperialism, and the revolt of workers against capitalism. ‘The right to revolution is, after all, the only real ‘historical’ right, the only right on which all modern states without exception rest.” (Marx, “Introduction to the Class Struggle in France”.) The American and French revolutions, the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the Vietnam and Cuban revolutions are only a few in modern history. No state of importance was ever established without a violent fermentation of revolutionary struggle. Therefore, it was that Lenin proclaimed:
“Whoever recognises class struggle cannot fail to recognise civil wars, which in every class society are the natural, and under certain circumstances inevitable, continuation, development, and intensification of class struggle. All the great revolutions prove this.”
Revolutionary Conditions Exist in India, wrote TN: This is a period of growth of the objective conditions necessary for revolution. But then the question is posed:
Are the subjective factors, too, as mature as the objective factors?
Lenin had said: “It would be erroneous to believe that revolutionary classes always have sufficient strength for the accomplishment of the overturn at the time at which the conditions of the socio-economic development have rendered the need for that overturn entirely ripe. No, human society is not arranged so rationally and so ‘conveniently’ for its progressive elements. The need for the overturn may be ripe, but the strength of the revolutionary creators of that overturn may turn out to be inadequate for carrying it out. Under such conditions society rots and this rotting sometimes lasts entire decades.”
TN wrote:
“…But the subjective conditions necessary for a successful revolution do not arise automatically. Socialist consciousness does not arise automatically from working class struggles for their demands; it has to be imparted from outside by the party of the working class. That is what is meant by ‘political consciousness’. ..so long as the Communist Party does not “spread among the working class a concrete idea of the most probable course of the revolution” (Lenin).. the subjective conditions necessary for an armed revolution to be led by the working class will never be created.
“..We, the Communist revolutionaries, believe in the theory of people’s war. We have declared in the Immediate programme, our path. “Our revolutionary line—completely different from the revisionist parliamentary path”…“The vital aspect of this programme is to liberate the villages, encircle the towns and gradually liberate the urban areas”. In the successful implementation of this programme, “agrarian revolution plays the vital role”. Hence the need for revolutionaries to propagate the importance of land distribution and organise the masses for action on the question of land.
We say to the masses: “Do not trust any high sounding programmes…There is no escape from landlordism, no possibility of progress without a civil war.
*** ***
The inequality before law and the hierarchy of courts
TN continued:
“The political and social superstructure, built on the basis of mode of production, in any particular period, comprises the armed forces, the police, the administrative system, the educational system, and so on. The legal and judicial system forms part and parcel of the repressive machinery in the maintenance of the acquisitive society.
“ For a particular time the bourgeoisie succeeds in maintaining the appearance of justice and equality between the classes. This, for a certain period, works as a cover in the defence of its class interests. But this facade cannot last long.
H. J. Laski, the intellectual mentor of many of our liberal politicians during the first half of this century, summarises the machinery of justice thus:
“All men are equal before the courts; but they cannot enforce this equality save by the possession of wealth they do not possess. The humble tenant who seeks redress against the landlord, the servant girl who is dismissed without wages by her mistress, the workman injured in the course of employment and refused compensation by an employer who argue negligence on his part, all these are but instances of an inequality before the law which gives the lie to the democratic thesis of equality. The hierarchy of courts, moreover, may well swallow up in the costs of appeal even the pitiful redress the worker has been able to secure … the very fact that special legal institutions have been created which seek to alter the balance the present order maintains, is itself proof that the democratic claim is inadequate.” (Quoted by the Communists in their statement to the Court in Meerut conspiracy case).
TN wrote:
In our own country, the conditions are certainly no better, if not worse. For all practical purposes, the law of the jungle prevails as narrated in my statement.
…Never probably in the history of our country have so many conspiracy cases been instituted against revolutionaries as today. How constitutionally and legally the established government functions and how the so-called democratic governments throw overboard their own constitutional principles and law was the running thread of most of my statement. Even in regard to this case, in which we are all charged, every constitutional injunction has been buried deep by these who swear by sanctity by the Constitution. For example, Article 22 (2) of the Constitution lays down that the arrested persons should be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest. We have seen in the course of my statement how, in thousands of cases, this was not implemented.
…(So many leaders) were kept in illegal custody, for months together in the case of a few of them, and tortured before producing them in the court. And we have brought to the notice of the court the illegal and unscrupulous methods adopted to obtain 164 statements even though Article 20 (3) categorically states that no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself…
India is a vast continent of various nationalities. Objective and subjective conditions are not the same all over the country. So it calls for “flexible tactics and adoption of various forms of struggles”..
(The extracts are from the last chapter, titled “The success of the revolution is assured”..India Mortgaged-Pages 381-392. 1978 edition).
The struggle for Land, Democracy and Independence is imperative. It is the need of the hour. Divisive and diversionary movements must be exposed, and shunned. Unity of all positive forces for such a struggle is the need of the hour. Unity for struggle and struggle for unity are inseparably linked. That was a message conveyed by DV and TN, and it is one we should remind ourselves everyday.
*** ***
The author is a political observer who wrote regularly for countercurrents.org.
