Volume 6, No. 8, August 2005

 

From Pages of History

Sajanand Saraswati & CPI’s Revisionism

Chandrabhushan

The struggle for the independence of the country from the British has focused primarily on the Congress and to a lesser extent the socialists and the communists. In contrast the struggle of the masses has been treated only as an incidental aspect. The role of the peasants, workers, students has been viewed as an extension of the larger political groups. It is however necessary to go beyond the superficial observations and see the essence of the roles played in the anti-imperialist movement. While the Congress leadership were mere stooges of the British, even the CPI had no consistent anti-imperialist role and trailed the Congress and Gandhi.

Even today peasant struggles are vilified and at best Naxalites portrayed as robinhoods. The CPI of those days refused to learn from the historic Chinese revolution. It was Sajanand Saraswati who for the first time spoke of learning from the Chinese experience as early as 1940-41. While the communists (not to speak of the Congress and Socialists) refused to lead the peasantry against the landlords and in the anti-imperialist struggle, it was Sajanand who fought boldly against this wrong line.

Sajanand Saraswati pinned his hopes on the rural poor. In 1944, as president of the 8th all India Kisan Sabha meeting, held in Vijayawada, he was more forthright when he said " the more they are oppressed and distressed the nearer they are to the Kisan Sabha and the Sabha is nearer to them…..It is they, the semi-proletariat, khet mazdoor (agricultural proletariat), who have very little land or no land at all,and the petty cultivator, who anyhow squeeze a most meager living out of the land they cultivate and eke out their existence, who are the real kisans of our thinking…..and who will make and must constitute the kisan sabha ultimately". He wrote a book on the importance and role of the khet mazdoor in 1941-42, describing and analyzing the rural scenario in detail.

He further added that "the rural proletariat is becoming aware of its rights, duties and responsibilities; when it becomes fully aware, then there will be the final dance of destruction and then the present iniquitous agrarian system will start crumbling."

Sajanand Saraswati also fought against the CPI’s wrong line of allying with the Congress, where it theorized the Congress as the national bourgeoisie, that the revolution be a national democratic revolution, the need for a national front with the Congress and Gandhi as the national leader of the national front. On the other hand Sajanand Saraswati was for People’s Democracy, a united front, not with the Congress but of the peasants and workers (he wrote a book in two volumes on his understanding of the united front in India at that time). He was for a militant peasant struggle. His book on "Revolution and United Front" was ignored by the party.

The revisionist trend in the party being so strong it continued to dominate the CPI and though he did not have a comprehen-sive alternative line he was able to bring 18 left parties into a united front before his death in 1950. He died on June 26 1950 at the age of 61.

 

<Top>

 

Home  |  Current Issue  |  Archives  |  Revolutionary Publications  |  Links  |  Subscription

<<  Previous Issue  |  Next Issue  >>