A score and five years ago a party was born that was destined to rewrite the history of the Indian communist movement. That party was the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
Though the inner party struggle within the erstwhile CPI led to a split in 1964 resulting in the formation of CPI(M), it was only with the emergence of CPI(ML) that the historic struggle between the revolutionary and opportunist lines within the party reached its logical culmination.
Since then CPI(ML) has come to be known as the harbinger of revolutionary struggles in contrast to the parliamentary cretinism of the CPI(M) and CPI. This is how the division between the two segments of Indian communist movement is broadly comprehended by the Indian people.
This division conforms, in general, to the division between revolutionary and opportunist wings in every major socio-political movement in history and to the division between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the history of Russian revolution in particular.
For the last 25 years this struggle between the two streams of Indian communist movement has gone on unabated, sometimes openly and directly, at other times in a concealed and indirect manner. Its spirit permeates each and every form of struggle including joint endeavours.
The CPI(ML) has shown tremendous resilience and has literally risen from the ashes. In the process it has undergone an internal metamorphosis whereby liquidationist and anarchist trends got dissociated from the party mainstream. The two extremes of liquidationism and anarchism, however, share several propositions in common.
In the first place, both negate the all important task of party building. The Party, for them, is nothing more than a federal hotch-potch of different factions. Ail their grand unity efforts ironically only give rise to so many more factions and petty squabbles among them.
Secondly, both reject the need for mass political actions. While liquidationists remain confined to local level economic struggles, anarchists engage themselves in senseless armed actions which often degenerate into killings of ordinary people and communist cadres.
Thirdly, lacking the communist vision of national level independent political initiatives, both enter into opportunist political alliances with the parties and leaders of the bourgeois opposition.
In order to cover up their reneging on the cause all such groups specialise in hurling abuses on our party, but this has hardly helped them to stem the rot that has set in in their own factions. It is only through a relentless battle against all these alien trends that our party has consolidated itself, gained in strength and is recognised as the biggest M-L faction defining the party mainstream.
We have all along given primary importance to party building and have virtually rebuilt the party basing firmly on the principles of democratic centralism. We have neither denounced the revolutionary heritage of the party nor parroted old slogans in new situations. While remaining firm on our principles we have shown enough flexibility in adjusting our slogans and tasks with the needs of changing times.