Volume 5, No. 5, May 2004

Why Election Boycott?

A Theoretical, Historical Analysis

Elections are here again, declared nine months before the expiry of the actual term of the Lok Sabha. The media has been trying to whip up hysteria against the Naxalites because of their call to boycott elections. In Andhra Pradesh Naxalism is the major election issue, while in many parts of the country Naxalites have taken up a big campaign to boycott the elections. The Central and state governments and some columnists in a section of the media seek to portray this as the most undemocratic act and that the Naxalites are anti-democracy and anti-development. They say that the gun can never solve the problems of the people. But then who can?

Will the host of film stars who have descended on the electorate in this election, solve the acute problems of the masses? Will any of the parliamentary parties solve the problems when all are united on implementing the policies of economic reforms, which is the chief cause for pushing the masses further into the abyss of destitution? Which party has the backbone to stand up to the US vultures that are swarming over every aspect of the country’s life, to say "GET OUT"? Which party has the guts to stand up for the sovereignty of the country and demand the kicking out of all the foreign robber barons taking control of the entire finance, commerce and industry of the country? Which party is prepared to stand up against state terror and the inhuman massacre of innocents through curable diseases, poverty, hunger and starvation and now even suicides? And which party is willing to oppose the massive funds extorted in the name of elections and as future members of Parliament and the legislatures?

For whatever may be the reasons, none of the parties are willing to stand up for any of the above and much more. So the question before us is not merely that of voting or boycotting, but the very future of our country and the possible method of realizing it. If boycott is then the most practical alternative during the electoral process to take the masses on to a new path for their emancipation why should not the people of this country have as much democratic right to boycott as to participate? Why should the powers that be get so paranoiac when someone begins campaigning for the people to boycott the elections? Surely if they say that there is free choice, there should be equal rights to participate or to boycott.

As revolutionary Marxists, (not terrorists) in this article we seek to analyse the political, ideological and also the practical reasons for the Naxalites to boycott the forthcoming elections, the reasons behind their boycott and the alternatives they seek to put forward before the people of this country. We start here with the background to the debate.

Way back in 1871 Marx made a devastating criticism of parliamentarism. The parliament as a body is formed once in three or six years to decide which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress people. Lenin wrote that professional Cabinet Ministers and parliamentarians, the traitors to the proletariat and the "practical" socialists of his day had left all criticism of parliamentarism to the considered bourgeois anarchists, and, "on this wonderfully reasonable ground, they denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as "anarchism"!!"[V.I.Lenin, State And Revolution, In Marx Engels Lenin, On Historical Materialism, p.355]. Lenin added this in a mood of exposure: "To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament – this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary – constitutional monarchies, but also in most democratic republics." [Ibid, p.355].

Lenin bitterly criticized the revisionist cowards of Russia who opposed the steady revolutionary preparation for insurrection. He wrote: "One of the most vicious and probably most widespread distortions of Marxism resorted to by the dominant "socialist" parties is the opportunist lie that preparation for insurrection, and generally the treatment of insurrection as an art, is "Blanquism". [Ibid. p.579]. Lenin adds that Bernstein also accused Marxism of Blanquism. [Ibid. p.579]. Blanquism means the ‘seizure of power by a minority’. It is an utterly revisionist view preached by Indian revisionists that the actual preparation for the revolution will start when the majority of the people switch over to the revolutionary front. The situation for the revolution in Russia was created by the objective condition and mainly by the bold non-parliamentary preparations made by the Bolsheviks. Even in April 1917 Lenin anticipated two possibilities: "Possibly the peasantry may seize all the land and all the power" and that "…. It is possible that the peasants will take the advice of the petty-bourgeois party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, which has yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie, has adopted a defencist stand, and which advises waiting for a Constituent Assembly…" [From V.I.Lenin, Letters on Tactics, Marx Engels Lenin, On Historical Materialism, Ibid. P.517.] Comrade Lenin did not bother when the Socialist Revolutionaries charged the Bolsheviks with Blanquism for making the preparation for the materialising of the upsurge.

Lenin’s Bolshevik Party participated in elections in the European context but such participation was not obviously for ‘providing relief’ from within the exploitative system but to root out the illusion of bourgeois parliaments. Indian social democrats like the CPI, CPI(M) etc. have had enough of experience in parliaments, legislative bodies in India but is there any voice heard to expose parliamentary democracy? Rather we find the reverse i.e. how to add to the dangerous illusion itself. They even dream a false dream of social change by using the Parliament in India. Could anyone hear any real voice or a semblance of protest and/or a public awareness campaign from the CPI(M), etc., against the politics of rigging elections? They cannot launch such a campaign in order to tenaciously cling to the politics of winning seats, be it in parliament, or the state legislative or in the Panchayats. The CPI, the CPI(M), etc. have also joined the ministry in the crisis-ridden semi-feudal, semi-colonial set-up.

When the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Mensheviks joined the bourgeois ministry Lenin made a devastating criticism. Lenin said "…Revolutionary democratic phrases to lull the rural simple simons, and bureaucracy and red tape to ‘gladden the hearts’ of the capitalists this is the essence of the ‘honest’ coalition".[Ibid p.557, Emphasis by Lenin]. This is also the actual role of Indian social democratic parties. And if one ransacks the huge body of CPI or CPI(M) literature one hardly finds such Leninist critiques of parliamentary politics. Revisionists cannot change themselves. They only justify participation in the so-called democratic process of semi-colonial semi-feudal India, which actually needs agrarian revolution through protracted people’s war.

Political parties emerged in the age of capitalism. And every political party represents particular class interests. A communist party in this sense is the advanced detachment of the proletariat. However, some parties under a communist signboard do not necessarily represent proletarian class interests. A revolutionary communist party must carry on class struggle, fight for revolution and must be prepared for the violent overthrow of the existing society based on exploitation and ruled by the exploiting classes. A communist party also may degenerate into a revisionist organisation by serving the existing system and maintaining the stability of the exploiters rule preaching class peace and the non-violent parliamentary path. Only a revolutionary communist party can lead the masses in revolutionary battles to save a country like ours from chronic crisis and build up an alternative democratic system moving towards socialism.

Hitler attempted to capture power in Bavaria in the early 1920s by a coup when the communists enhanced their strength formidably in parliament and outside parliament. But he resorted to constitutional electoral means plus terror tactics with the full-throated backing and material support of racist sections of the bourgeoisie. Thus pushing aside and traumatizing the communists and other anti-Fascist forces, the Nationalist Socialist Party of the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag in 1931 and 1932, and was installed as chancellor by President Hinesburg in 1933. And then the edifice of the bourgeois parliamentary system exposed the skeletons in the cupboard when electoral competition was finally abolished. Obviously this was an extreme situation of acute crisis of the capitalist system. And it should be stated that Hitler had already Storm Troopers and Mussolini’s party had set up fascist militia.

How communist parties allow erosion of strength and support their base, can be best illustrated by the example of the Communist Party of France (CPF). Like other Western European Communist Parties, the CPF had long attached far more importance to winning parliamentary elections. The CPF was against the Gaullists. This party’s electoral performances also nose-dived over years with its inactive policy of parliamentarism.

The present parliamentary system that emerged prominently in England and European countries during the anti-feudal struggles played some role during bourgeois democratic revolutions. Such parliaments at that stage reflected some democratic aspirations of various classes of people. Those parliaments have long past lost their old roles and people also bother least about elections.

The most fundamental task of elections is legitimizing the right of some parties and individuals by any means to serve the existing system. An atmosphere is created by the state and all parliamentary parties in India including the CPI, CPI(M), that the upcoming election brings in Himalayan responsibilities on the people to exercise their precious right and as if their failure shall push them towards doom’s day. The Indian people have grown habituated to such rhetoric during every election. Even after so many elections in quick successions and the general trend of a steep rise in negative (called anti incumbency) voting in absence of a powerful alternative, it continues to act as a ‘safety valve’ to divert the masses from the path of struggle.

Elections, stability of the system, providing a semblance of democracy are all state matters. No class rule behind the state can afford to ignore the very crucial task of winning the support of the people. ‘Participatory democracy’, Parliamentary democracy’, ‘Greatest democracy’ and all such rhetoric have come up to strengthen the stability of the existing class rule. We can not also ignore the fact that with all sorts of corruption, rigging, winds of communalism, booth-capturing, media coverage and brinkmanship by criminal politicians to create a ‘Sonia wind’ or ‘Feel-good’ satisfaction etc. the Indian body polity has been immensely successful to win by rewards or by force many of the contrary forces into the so-called parliamentary mainstream. From the Central Home Minister L.K.Advani to the CPI(M) C.M. Buddhadev Bhattacharee, the very common denominator lies in the love for the parliamentary stream. Those fellows repeat the old cries urging the North East militant nationality forces, the CPI(ML) People’s War, MCCI or such others who reject these parliamentary politics of stability of this system, to join the ‘mainstream’

Social democrats preaching revisionism cleverly try to make it a point that many people in India do still have expectations from the existing parliamentary system to deliver the goods. Well, we do accept that despite frequent elections and all their murky features many people still cast their votes. Several factors lie behind such false consciousness and it is a fact that the reactionary parliament will still continue.

Firstly, the state, the political parties in parliamentary politics and particularly the crude parliamentarism preached by the CPI, CPI(M) like parties are to be held responsible for such misplaced hope.

Secondly, the lack of a strong revolutionary alternative will take some sections of the masses to the polling booths or are coaxed into voting by the leaders of the ruling class parties and even forcibly led to the polling booths by their goons.

Thirdly, in the stage of protracted people’s war with the existence of two state powers, one the highly powerful Indian state of the ruling classes and the other the burgeoning alternative revolutionary power centers in the villages, expected to gain strength through battles with the former, many people, except the conscious sections, shall not altogether reject the existing state along with its organs at one go, particularly the legal, administrative and parliamentary system.

Fourthly, and what is most important is, in the path of people’s war in a country like India with extreme unevenness in the economic, cultural, social and political spheres, it does not lead to a simultaneous explosion of the crores of oppressed people throughout the country, or to a series of revolutionary upsurges within a short span of time in the early stage. In the long-drawn armed struggle, the parliamentary system of the bourgeois-feudal classes, particularly in a country like ours, will continue with all its perverted as well as increasingly refurbished features for many years like caste, communal and varied other factors. Here it is in order to state that even after the great October Revolution in 1917 capturing the main power centers in the cities, the revolution had taken a few more years to crush the remaining bourgeois power centers in the villages.

It is an utterly revisionist view preached by the Indian revisionists and neo-revisionists that the actual preparation for the revolution will start when the majority of the people switch over to the revolutionary front. The situation for the revolution in Russia was created by the objective condition and mainly by the bold non-parliamentary preparations made by the Bolsheviks. Even in April 1917 Lenin anticipated two possibilities: "Possibly the peasantry may seize all the land and all the power" and that "…. It is possible that the peasants will take the advice of the petty-bourgeoisie party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, which has yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie, has adopted a defencist stand, and which advises waiting for a Constituent Assembly…" [From V.I.Lenin, Letters on Tactics, Marx Engels Lenin, On Historical Materialism, Ibid. P.517.] Comrade Lenin did not care when the Socialist Revolutionaries charged the Bolsheviks with Blanquism for making preparations for materialising the upsurge.

Here in India, the great worshipper of parliamentarism, the CPI(M), reiterate formulas senselessly learned by rote to kill Marxism by presenting a somewhat soft, state-friendly version of Marxism in the name of these great Marxist founders. In 1964-65 after its formation, at least on paper, the CPI(M) occasionally roared against revisionism particularly of the CPI. When the Naxalbari upsurge brought forward the Chinese path for making Indian revolution rejecting participation in parliament, a barrage of charges were let loose against Naxalbari politics. The CPI(M) leaders resorted to the cunning way of quoting from Lenin’s book "Left-wing" Communism – An Infantile Disorder, written against the wrong tactics of some European parties working in a specific context, deciding to skip participation in the bourgeois parliament. Such revisionists never pointed to the wealth of Lenin’s Writings concentrating on building a revolutionary party, making preparations for revolutions and also the need for boycotting elections during the revolutionary upsurge. Even in that valuable book meant for correcting the mistake of the West European Marxist parties (i.e. in the insurrection path), comrade Lenin stated the possibility for such participation in parliament "to expose, dispel and overcome these prejudices…" [‘bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices" of the peasantry and workers [V.I.Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism – An Infantile Disorder, In Marx, Engels, Lenin. On Historical Materialism, Ibid. p. 656] This too was in the context where the seizure of power by armed force was the central task of the revolution and any occasional participation was linked to it. Besides, in the Russian experience the Bolsheviks sometimes participated sometimes boycotted, utilizing whatever tactic served the central task best — ie preparations for the armed uprising. But here, the revisionists while utilizing Lenin’s quotes, participate day-in and day-out in all parliamentary/legislative elections without any link to the armed struggle.

Leave alone the question of revolutionary preparation, have the CPI, CPI(M) and such parities, using Lenin’s name to pass themselves off for communists, any mentionable history, over 50 years of participation in parliamentary politics, done anything to really expose, dispel and overcome the parliamentary prejudices of the masses in India? Just the reverse. They have been more charmed and sedated by the rosy prospect of parliamentary politics than the common backward masses in India. All such parties CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML)(Liberation) etc; even nurture a fond hope of overhauling the existing system using the Indian parliamentary system. The CPI and CPI(M) have further revised their programmes to join even at the central government. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao – all the great Marxists repeated that states in the class society serves to coerce the exploited masses and so they gave the call for the need of destroying such states. Indian revisionists, as devoted follower of Bernstein or Kautsky, never focus on this basic fact on the question of state and the need for its destruction by force. Comrade Lenin had this to say, "This definition of the state (as given by Marx and Engels) has never been explained in the prevailing propaganda and agitation literature of the official Social-democratic Parties. More than that, it has been deliberately ignored, for it is absolutely irreconcilable with reformism and a slap in the face for the common opportunist prejudices and philistine illusions about ‘peaceful development of democracy’." [V.I.Lenin, The State and Revolution, in Marx, Engels, Lenin . On Historical Materialism, Ibid. p. 539].

Unfortunately some rightists within the M-L movement also think that they can use the election platform in India to further the revolution. Though most of them have little mass base, they feel that the masses can be prepared for revolution through such participation. But, the essence of their political line is not to prepare for the "seizure of political power by armed force" (the central task of any revolution) but to indefinitely continue the ‘preliminary tasks’ of ‘exposure’, ‘propaganda’, ‘agitation’ around partial demands, etc etc with no qualitative leap towards armed formations and armed struggles. Even their mass struggles are generally kept within the confines of ruling-class-set legality, restricting them from the intensification of the class struggle. The last two decades experience has shown how far they could advance utilizing this parliamentary line compared to those leading people’s wars!!

What is People’s War?

Way back in 1926 Stalin summed up that the Chinese revolution was fighting armed counter-revolution. Mao developed his theory of People’s War on the basis of the peculiarities of the Chinese society in the light of Stalin’s formulation. This was a development of Marxism in regard to its successful implementation in backward countries. This people’s war is not related to the politics of participation in parliament. The leaders of the CPI never gave proper importance to Mao’s twin-theory of People’s Democratic Revolution and People’s War. The CPI(M) speaks of People’s Democratic Revolution but such acceptance on paper is dismissed by justifying the Transfer of Power in 1947 as ‘national freedom’ and thereby, like the CPI, since its formation in 1963 the CPI(M) began to plunge into electoral politics supposing it to be an expansion of democracy by the new rulers. What the CPI(M) suppresses or hates to consider is that the present Indian parliament is basically a blessing of the colonial rulers with their stamp of approval to the Government of India Act 1935. However, the question of boycott of electoral politics lies in the very line of People’s War. Electoral politics is the reverse of People’s War.

The question of tactics is very important and it is dependent on the obtaining situation. Tactics are subject to change. Marxism teaches us that tactics are resorted to by a Marxist party with the sole aim of serving the strategy for the unleashing of attacks on the ruling classes and the state machinery (i.e. the seizure of political power by armed force). But, there are tactic and tactics. Some may change very fast, changing with the fast changing situation, others may assume a long-standing character. Such tactics naturally appear like strategy. If it is accepted that Indian revolution has to pass through a long period of protracted people’s war and that such question of war of different dimensions have to be initiated from the very beginning against class enemies and their protectors, the very question of participation in parliamentary politics – the issue of the degree of democracy or the nature of parliament and its emergence, etc. are irrelevant – does not simply come up.

In addition to this, struggles of the workers, peasants, youth, women, nationalities would be organized to link up with the ongoing people’s war. The slogan of election boycott and the relentless exposure of Indian parliamentary democracy, which merely means who amongst the rulers will rule for a certain period, is not a negative approach. The alternative would have to be put forward and people be taught the path of people’s war and through it the call for replacing the present fake democracy with the setting up genuine people’s democratic power as the only positive (and possible) alternative to the existing ridiculous game of elections.

The political propaganda will go in tandem with various levels of movements of the people. This political propaganda against the electoral farce would always have to contain the strategic presentation of developing alternative democratic peoples’ power in the form of peoples’ committees elected through gram sabhas, where the masses exert their right to recall. This is an ideological/political battle to uproot the peoples’ wrong concept of ‘democracy’, drilled into their minds day-in-and-day-out by the establishment. As the path of people’s war is a protracted one, there will be many twists and turns, set-backs and leaps. Whatever may be the situation, there does not arise the question of participation in elections in the course of the continuing people’s war. And in the course of the people’s war there will be overlapping forms of boycott in the obtaining situation and contexts. After all, it must be realized that in a country like India the holding of elections (or imposing elections) has been considered by the ruling classes as the most suitable and effective means to continue with this highly exploitative system in acute crisis. One just has to take the example of Kashmir, where the rulers are just desperate to get the people to vote, whoever may be candidate.

In this connection, it is a very relevant question to consider as to where lies the major strength of the Indian State. In the post-second world war period, in many erstwhile colonial countries, power was transferred to the neo-colonial rulers to continue unabated imperialist exploitation in new forms while semi-feudal relations continued exploiting the people in various ways. The ruling exploitative classes and even the colonial rulers always try to get state affairs going as smoothly as possible. Everywhere the ruling classes try to win over as many people as possible by eliciting their consent through a complex network based on economic, social and cultural ties; and the state, which is an instrument of class oppression, must simultaneously resort to other means to neutralise the agitations and demonstration of anger of the people. And here lies the very important role of the parliamentary system. In India the rulings classes have excelled in refining and smoothing this system far surpassing the ruling classes in many other countries. When the parliamentary system, even in the advanced capitalist countries show off glaring signs of gross failures and uselessness, the Indian ruling classes have been putting in great efforts to save this system as a tested arena to diffuse one after another crisis of the Indian state itself.

History has belied the CPI(M)’s off-repeated articulations particularly after the ruthless dance of death by the Indira-led fascist forces in 1975, that the Indian ruling classes shall dismiss the parliamentary system itself. It is the brazen truth that the CPI, then the CPI(M) and later the renegade CPI(ML)Liberation and some small outfits in the name of Marx and Lenin have rendered yeomen’s service to the state by generating and buttressing the false hope of democracy under the parliamentary process in India. The Congress, the traditional party of the ruling classes, in the 1950s arrogated to itself many of the slogans of the CPI, and the battle-fearing CPI came to glorify the Congress role and the possibility of change in a peaceful way through this so-called democratic system. The CPI(M) was born out of the disgruntlement of the militant activists amidst a chronic crisis more and more engulfing the country. The CPI(M) betrayed revolution, under a string of left verbiages, incorporating in its 1964 Programme not only its faith in peaceful change but also the politics of alliance and dalliance with the Indian big bourgeoisie and their parties.

The CPI(M) Polit Bureau member P.Sundaraiah, soon after the CPI(M)’s formation derived glorious satisfaction to keep it on record that he had dispelled the unnecessary fear of the then Congress Government by personally meeting the Central minister Guljarilal Nanda. Sundaraiah assuringly told him not to believe in police reports. "We are not thinking about any armed struggle" said he, adding that the CPI(M) was not going underground to once again resurrect the Telangana type of armed movement. [Sundaraiah Answers Nanda, People’s Democracy, September 19,1965] The latest entrants in this anti-Marxist way of deceiving the masses with the shameless acceptance of the parliamentary way as against the arduous, painstaking and glorious path of armed struggle are the CPI(ML) Liberation, the COI(M) of Kanu Sanyal, etc.

The Vinod Mishra-led Liberation group abandoned armed struggle and conceived of a "Left and Democratic Confederation" and even rallying the CPI, CPI(M) like parties towards forming a "single communist party". What is notable is that in the grand programme for such merger of rotten social democrats Vinod was blatantly frank not to consider non-parliamentary revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, i.e. the communist revolutionaries, as communists fit for such a dream scheme. It was natural and effortless for the new lover of parliamentarism to recant Naxalbari politics and its followers. Like the CPI or the CPI(M) leaders the Vinod Mishra group announced, in its 1992 Calcutta Party Congress, that "social change and revolutionary transformation are not on the national agenda". As an alternative, the CPI(ML)Liberation jumped on to the bandwagon of stressing "legal and parliamentary forms of struggle." [Frontier December 20, 1992]. And recently its leader Dipankar Bhattacharyee disclosed about Vinod Mishra’s topsy turvy, "… For the best part of the 1970s he in fact made his best efforts to resurrect Naxalbari. Even when he became convinced of the impossibility and futility of such attempts, and the focus shifted to what he called the rectification movement…" [Liberation, December 2000, p.9]

The Kanu Sanyal group which now feels relieved to forget all about the armed path of Naxalbari declared way back in 1993 to form "a broad based front of all Leftist and other parties truly committed to democracy and secularism". [Telegraph January 2, 1993]. They are all in the same boat for saving and justifying the parliamentary system as a counterpoise against the revolutionary path of protracted people’s war. Such an alternative parliamentary path stands diametrically opposed to Naxalbari politics for the fundamental change of this system through developing protracted armed peasant struggle in the vast countryside to set up democratic people’s power. It is note worthy that despite some convenient left vocabulary and occasional howling against this or that step of the Central or State governments all the fellow travelers of the social democratic path, the organizational structures, demands, etc. basic activities are oriented to electoral gains. Be it the CPI or the CPI(M) or the CPI(ML) Liberation the very common thread that binds such organisations is the firm belief about the impossibility of implementation of the fundamentals of Marxism and Leninism in India at present and even in the immediately unfolding decades. While petty bourgeois restlessness leads to a rash drive for completing revolution here and now (as was the line of the Liberation in the late 1970s), the perennial petty bourgeois (or bourgeois) fear of revolution deliberately thwarts and stabs such movements for revolutionary change, by projecting for India the efficacy and glory of the parliamentary ‘mainstream’.

Parliamentary Marxism sometimes raises the question of immature condition of the revolutionary struggle, sometimes posits the Indian parliamentary system as provider of ample scope for establishing an alternative system and even sometimes shows acutely keen interest in saving the parliamentary system if people or some groups disdainfully refuse to join the electoral process. The tamasha of the Kashmir elections is a case in point. The holding of elections there under the military boot is quite known. In Punjab, elections were held in the 1990s through pressure tactics. In Naxalite influenced areas the state wields all its armed might to ensure the holding of elections. Important ruling class parties and media go on a massive propaganda drive asking the people to cast their votes. What is notable is the role of the parliamentary Marxists, which lend their voice to this effort. So, parties like the CPI(M) frequently appeal to the boycottist Naxalite forces to join the parliamentary mainstream. The CPI(M) Chief Minister of West Bengal surpasses all others by making frequent calls to the revolutionary Naxalite forces like the CPI(ML)People’s War and MCCI. to abandon the path of armed resistance and mingle with the mainstream i.e. the parliamentary ‘democratic process’. In India such politics of capitulation only strengthens the exiting exploitative system under the signboard of parliamentary democracy as if it were a means to resolve the problems facing the people. Over the last 50 years it has been quite clearly seen that none of the people’s problems have been solved (or even reduced) through parliament.

Comrade Mao repeatedly spoke of the importance of building and strengthening the people’s army. The communist party will have different fronts and during people’s war all such fronts shall ultimately serve the forward march of such a war. In such a strategy, struggle will pass through periods of ups and downs and it depends on the communist party leadership to transform temporary defeats into glorious victories. Such strategy cannot afford to take recourse to legal, parliamentary participation, disband armed units and expose the secret core of the party. It is the duty of the communist party to redouble its efforts in order to strengthen its armed forces and restart attacks on the enemy with renewed vigour. Obviously this does not mean adventurism. It is based on the line of people’s participation and people’s war. However, the parliamentary Marxists crying hoarse against the existing system, colonial or semi-colonial, shall brand all militant activities as adventurism. In the strategy of people’s war in general, there is no room for participation in parliamentary elections in India. In the strategy of people’s one we concentrates activities in the areas of strategic importance in order to spread and ultimately encircle the cities.

Imperialism’s Boon: Indian Constitutional Process

It should be remembered that the leaders of the Congress considered that British rule was necessary and a boon for India. The colonial government supported by the opportune-seekers portrayed a rosy picture of the ‘British sense of justice and fair play’. Under the growing pressure of the freedom movement, in the year 1861, the British government decided to install a legislative body in India. The Indian Council Acts, 1861 came into being. Right in the following year emerged India’s first legislature. In a state like Bengal, the Legislative Council of Bengal was born in 1862 and within 30 years its membership rose to 20, out of it 7 were elected. The colonial government introduced the process to derail the mounting militant outbursts and diffuse the tensions. The Congress leadership, by preaching non-violence and demanding even dominion status with some limited law-making rights under colonial supervision, further smoothed the process of ‘democratisation’. The significant steps that followed were (i) Morley-Minto Reforms (1909) enabling one Indian to be a nominated member of the Governor General’s Executive Council, along with an increase in the representatives, to the central and state legislatives. (ii) The Montague Chelmsford Reform of 1919-20 creating two central houses and delivering some limited responsibilities to some Indians along with allowance of some responsibilities to the Indian ministers as regards states, an improved dual-rule system and (iii) the most important, the Government of India Act 1935 — ironically that also constitutes two-thirds of the so-called free Indian’s Constitution — bringing about a change for greater participation of the natives in India. The 1935 Act, under the colonial system based on Lord Linlithgow proposals, was initially opposed by the CPI and the Congress but soon accepted as a step forward, marking a non-violent path to freedom and democracy. Indian business magnets and Gandhian leaders soon jumped at the prospect of ministry-making under this Act, with all its limitations, even "remaining silent about Dominion Status" [Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, Macmillan India Limited, New Delhi, p.338].

In the age of finance capital, imperialism, particularly stung by the world wars and national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America, changed its tactics to retain its control. This new tactics was evident in imparting formal independence to Egypt in 1922 and to Iraq in 1927 even by stationing the British army on its soil. After World War II this technique was seen in many countries like the Philippines in 1947, in Jordan in 1946, in Burma in 1947, etc. British imperialism saw its power decline significantly through the Second World War when US imperialism not only emerged prominently on the scene it also made inroads into British controlled states.

On the very next day of the RIN revolt, on 18th February 1946, the British Prime Minister Attlee announced the formation of a Cabinet Mission comprising Lord Pethic Lawrence, Sir Strafford Cripps and Mr. A.V. Alexander. The Cabinet Mission declared a plan on the future Indian constitutional set-up prior to the transfer of power. On June 26, 1946, P.G.Griffiths, leader of the European Group in the Indian Central Legislative Assembly, said in a speech: "India, in the opinion of many, was on the verge of a revolution before the British Cabinet Mission arrived. The Cabinet Mission has at least postponed, if not eliminated, the danger". On 6th July 1946, the Congress Working Committee approved the Cabinet Mission Plan. Later, on 5th March, 1947, Stafford Cripps said in the British Parliament that there were two alternatives before the British Government either to maintain British direct power in India by a considerable reinforcement of forces or to make a political transfer of power on the 1947 settlement. Cripps was candid to declare that the second option was the best possible option. This alone could ensure British presence through transfer of power to the Indian reactionary classes, making them junior partners in defending British interests and avoiding an anti-imperialist revolution.

The inter-war period also was characterized by the beginning of the transition from India’s ‘unilateral dependence’ on Britain to its ‘multi-lateral dependence’ on several advanced capitalist countries with US imperialism at the forefront. Great Britain was also by then losing the monopoly hold over India with the entry of other imperialist countries, particularly US imperialism. So, US imperialism too was keenly interested for a change in Britain’s direct rule over India.

British imperialism studied the gravity of the situation. The February Declaration of 1947 led to its expected end by dishing out the notorious Mountbatten Plan to grant Dominion Status with the partition of India. The February Declaration made it clear that no constitution for India drawn up by a Constituent Assembly be acceptable if not "in accordance with the proposals" contained in the Cabinet Mission Plan. Revealingly it further warned that if the Indian Constitution is not approved by Britain, the British government would have to "consider to whom the powers of the Central Government in British India should be handed over".

This notorious Declaration of February 1947 was the significant policy statement for the peaceful transfer of power on 15 August 1947. This makes it clear what role the Constituent Assembly in India could play, lacking in any power of formulating a Constitution for India. The very Constituent Assembly was also not formed on the basis of universal suffrage of the Indian people in a condition free from imperialist pressures, conditions and manoeuvres. It was not the sovereign will of the people and the preliminary preparations for the formation of the Constituent Assembly were carried out by the governors of provinces according to the directive of June 16, 1946 from the British Governor General. The legislatures formed under the Government of India Act 1935, had the so-called elected representatives based on property and qualifications along with membership of Princely states. What is notable is that the provincial governors, acting on the strength of the Government of India Act 1935, called the provincial legislatures into session to elect representatives to the Constituent Assembly. The more ridiculous side of this farcical democratic basis of "free India" is that the most important personalities like Jinnah, Nehru, Ambedkar, etc. were not even ‘elected’ members of such legislatures formed and dictated by the colonial rulers.

A few words are necessary to shed light on the CPI role vis a vis the above farcical process. Soon after the operation of the Government of India Act 1935 the CPI joined the anti-revolutionary process and could send, in 1937 itself, its leader Bankim Mukherjee to the united Bengal legislature. In 1945, Jyoti Basu, Rup Narayana Roy and Ratan Lal Brahman could become the members of the Bengal Legislative Assembly. And then the CPI had sent Soam Nath Lahiri to the Constituent Assembly. The training in the notorious colonial "democratic" process, in however small way, had ultimately helped in opening the floodgates of parliamentarism in the future. With no programme as such, revolutionary or otherwise, the CPI preferred to drift with the current of the British-dictated fake democratic policy of planting parliamentary "democracy" in India. In any case, the CPI won 9 seats and 7 lakh votes (People’s Age, May 12, 1946). The CPI leadership had shown a most servile role in this period. It is reflected in the 1946 C.C. meeting of the CPI, which bluntly stated, " The proper characterization of the Congress and League ministries is that they are popular ministries…" [P.C.Joshi, Sesh Sangramer Ahban, cited in Amalendu Sengupata, Uttar Challish, Asamapata Biplab, Calcutta, p.118].

The CPI not only accepted such ‘democracy’, it also considered, in June 1947, that the notorious Mountbatten Plan for India was "important concessions to India’s nationalist aspirations and (it) opened up new opportunities for national advance…." [In R.P.Dutta, The Mounbatten Plan for India, Labour Monthly, 7th July 1947, Cited in Sandanand Talwar, Under the Banyan Tree, The Communist Movement in India, 1920-46, New Delhi, 1985, p.249].

The transfer of power or ‘freedom by consent’ by the already weakened British power materialized on 15th August 1947. The ingenious formula of retaining British interests by recourse to transfer of power to trusted native hands was implemented in one after another country after the Second World War. British imperialism effected responsible government from ‘self-Government in Malaya’, ‘from responsible Government to Dominion Status’ in Australia; and ‘from Dominion status to Commonwealth partnership’ in India. Incidentally all the above countries became members of the Commonwealth.

Since then India changed its status from direct control under British imperialism to dependence on different neo-colonial powers. However, the prominent British presence and dependence basically on it continued for some years, only to come mainly under the US grip and later under the Soviet Union; and now, after the fall of the Soviet Union, mainly under the US neo-colonial stranglehold. Soon after power transfer in 1947 Britain ensured India’s remaining under the Commonwealth, presided over by the British Queen or King. More than that, after 15th August 1947, two Dominions, India and Pakistan emerged and lord Mountbatten became the first Governor General of the Indian Dominion. Nehru became the head of the Interim Government formed before the transfer of power. Dhirendra Nath Sen, the prominent scholar, wrote the following bitter facts in his book from Raj to Swaraj that, "Under British rule we were all British subjects, and not citizens; and if some of us had franchise, we had it as subjects of His Britannic Majesty. That was our position when the transfer of power took place in 1947. It continued until the inauguration of our new Constitution in January 1950, when for the first time the term ‘citizenship’ was introduced as part of our law… On the transfer of power India was an ‘independent dominion’ in terms of the Independence Act, but it was, curiously enough an independent of Dominion of British subjects. It had no citizens in a technical legal sense. Gandhiji died as a distinguished British subject, and precisely in that capacity Pandit Nehru led the Government of India as our first Prime Minister for about four years…" [Dhirendra Nath Sen, From Raj To Swaraj, Vidyodaya Library Private Limited, Calcutta, pp.43-44].

In February 2004 the Indian dailies published the news that the United States is not too happy with the functioning of Indian democracy. It is really intriguing that U.S. imperialism, the notorious destroyer of all democratic norms in Iraq, in Haiti, and all over the world, sheds crocodile’s tears for the weaknesses of India’s parliamentary "democratic" functioning. The real concern of the US is about it, smooth functioning of the parliamentary system and the maintenance of the façade of democracy in India against the forces growing stronger in India, Nepal and some other countries poised for the destruction of this edifice.

This suspicion is not without foundation. Just within one month of that report of the U.S. concern about Indian democracy the Kolkata Statesman highlighted the visit of U.S. secretary of State Gen.(retd) Collin Powell to provide India "a cache of futuristic weaponry for commandos fighting behind enemy lines and related equipment from the U.S.A." The report states, "The new purchases will be of different kind and purchases will include weapons rarely used by the armed forces in India and not manufactured here". The pertinent question is Powell’s visit to South Asia is related to "Afghanistan’s nascent democracy", "India-Pakistan peace process", "furthering the Indo-US strategic bilateral partnership", nuclear proliferation, etc. [The Statesman 15 March, 2004]. It goes without saying that commando operations in the Indian sub-continent is now basically related to tackling insurgents, be it in Kashmir, North-east or Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Dandakaranya and such other Naxalite influenced states.

It is in order to add that U.S. imperialism has already devastated Iraq, massacred thousands of Iraqis, destroyed the political sovereignty of Iraq under the rolling U.S. tanks and occupied Iraq. This terrorist imperialist no 1, the U.S.A., now shows its acute concern to impose a "democratic set-up" after its choice. The U.S., like the British in India, is busy fashioning a Constitution for occupied Iraq and its subjected people recognising "freedom of expression, assembly, religion and free elections".

With the signing of the Constitution by the U.S. lackeys it is declared to the world that "sovereignty will pass on to the Iraqi people on 30 June as planned by the USA, though its military presence will continue for an indefinite period. The interim Iraqi government will hold election by 31 January 2005 for a new national assembly, which will be charged to frame a permanent Constitution." [The Statesman, 17 March 2004. All emphases added are ours] what a beneficent and democratic spirit of U.S. imperialism anxious to give democracy a chance!

Right at this moment freedom loving Iraqis have been unleashing one after another attacks on the occupation army. Iraqi guerrillas are now fighting a powerful resistance movement against the barbarous occupation armies. What will India’s parliamentary CPM, CPI, Librationetc. who bark against the US attack on Iraq from a safe distance say to the Iraqi people? Should the Iraqi people resist imperialist armies or accept the American conspiracy to impose the so-called democracy and its Constitution?

Alongside class divisions, Iraqi society is riven by such identities like Shias, Sunnis, Assyrian Christians, Kurds, etc. The terrorizing American imperialism is desperately trying to pit one section against the other and utilizing anti-Saddam elements for this Constitution-making process. A section of Iraqi population will also be readily available, another section will also be persuaded to join this ‘participatory democracy’ under Uncle Sam’s supervision, and still another section will be coerced into joining this fake democratic process and electoral fray. Many people will reject the U.S. sponsored farcical electioneering game. Yet the resistance against imperialist forces and their agents will continue unabated. Iraq is a third world country with the forthcoming elections under imperialist domination. Only flunkeys, pro-U.S. forces and parties against anti-resistance, will submit to the drama of American-sponsored spurious democracy.

The scenario has some similarity with post-world war II India, when the Indian National Congress, Muslim League and the CPI, etc., fearing revolutionary struggle to destroy imperialist presence in India, swallowed the British sponsored arrangement of Constituent Assembly and elections to lend apparent legitimacy to the democratic farce and opposed the forces rejecting all such maneuvers. The ideologically crippled CPI obviously dished out the argument that the majority of the Indian population were not prepared for an alternative violent path to real freedom. In an extremely uneven country with disparate identities alongside class divisions, India could well have chosen the Chinese path to revolution. The weak ideological foundation, cowardice of the CPI leadership and the gripping spirit of Bernstein and other social democrats stood in the way to embark on a revolutionary course for the emancipation of the Indian people.

Revisionism in the grab of parliamentarism was also obvious in France and Italy after the rout of fascism in World War II. During the period of the anti-fascist war, the French Communist Party organized a 500 thousand (five lakh) people’s armed force at the one time liberated Paris. Thorez, the modern revisionist general secretary of France (CPF) returned to France in November 1944 after a period of self-exile abroad and handed the armed forces to the bourgeois classes in exchange for an official covetous post of vice-premiership and participated in the elections. It was the first National Assembly in November 1945 under the auspices of the de Gaulle government. France was, till then, seething with wrath against the new set-up. The CPF did not ask the people to boycott elections, it participated in it and formed the "Left majority" in the Assembly. But the fond hope of the revisionist leaders was shattered within years with the amendments to the electoral law by the ruling French bourgeoisie. The CPF saw a downturn in the elections of 1951 securing 103 seats but lost 79 seats. In the ensuing elections in 1958 with a further revision of the electoral law and the loss of the earlier militant role of the CPF, it secured only 10 seats. In 1968 when the youth movement spread to France the CPF lost its prestige and credibility further by its calculated indifference and evasive role. The CPF, which had a glorious role in the anti-fascist resistance struggle, is now a paralytic parliamentary force in the arena of electoral politics.

Like Thorez in France, Togliatti and his trusted coterie in the Italian Communist Party derailed a great prospect of advancing towards socialism after the fall of the fascist regime of Mussolini during the World War II and after. The Italian Communist Party boasted of a 256,000 strong armed guerrillas and insurgent workers. They liberated Milan, Venice and more than 200 other large and small cities and executed fascist chieftain Mussolini. Like Thorez, Palmiro Togliatti, the general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, returned from abroad after 18 years to Italy and began to preach the dangerous capitulationist line of bringing in socialism "not by resorting to force and insurrections" but by going through the process of reforming the social structure. His parliamentarism, like that of Thorez, later received the praise from Khrushchev and other revisionist parliamentary parties like the CPI in our country. Togliatti too destroyed the huge potential of advancing towards socialism after the heroic resistance by the party’s armed force and militant workers against the fascist Mussolini regime.

The Chinese Khrushchev Liu Shao-Chi too advocated a similar line after the war of resistance against Japan ended in 1945. He too preached that "armed struggle in general has come to a stop" and that "the main form of struggle in the Chinese revolution has now become peaceful and parliamentary, this is a legal struggle and parliamentary struggle" and "all political issues should be solved peacefully". [Quoted in Satya Ghosh, "Boycott Elections" some Lessons of Recent History, Liberation, 3 January 1969]. Had Mao Tse-tung and the revolutionary leaders of China not bitterly fought and rejected such capitulationist parliamentary politics China would not be transformed into a People’s Democratic Republic on 1 October 1949. It is necessary to add here that the new parliamentary revisionism everywhere argued that the balance of forces had gone in favour of socialism after the emergence of a number of communist party-led states through the earth shaking victory of the Soviet Red Army against fascism. Khrushchev theorized his peaceful parliamentary path to socialism citing the above convenient argument.

So also the revisionist leadership in the CPI readily accepted such a capitulationist theory in 1950s and then the CPI(M) too theoretically and practically accepted such parliamentary revisionism adding some catchy left phrases. And now Indian parliamentary revisionism of the CPI or of the CPI(M), etc. has grown into a dangerous enemy of revolution in this country. When the CPI(M) or the CPI cries for saving and strengthening ‘Left’ governments in West Bengal or Kerala it actually furthers the cause of parliamentarism in India. In the course of history from the stream of ML parties the CPI(ML)Liberation and CPI(ML)New Democracy, etc. too abandoned revolutionary Marxism and joined the opportunist stream of electoral politics.

The CPI guided by the British Communist Party leaders R.P.Dutt and Bradley and their thesis, known as the Dutt-Bradley thesis, signally changed its earlier stand to plunge the party into electoral polities. With the elections round the corner in 1936 the CPI leadership readied itself for the experiment in electoral politics, a position that spelled doom for the Marxist movement in India. The CPI argued with great jubilation "….we want to utilise the election for furthering the anti-imperialist struggle and raising it to higher level that we want to utilise the occasion clarifying the issue before the masses to sharpen their consciousness and make elections a lever for consolidating the forces of anti-imperialist masses". ["On Election, Circular No. 5, PBCC", In Arindam Sen and Partha Ghosh (eds), Communist Movement In India, Vol. I (1917-1939), A CPI(ML) Liberation Publication, 1991, p.613]. The CPI also laid down its vague policy to oppose reactionary candidates like Zamindars, communalists, Justices and liberals who stood in opposition to the Congress because the latter "are more progressive than others." [Ibid, p.614].

Even at that time, being too eager to choose the peaceful parliamentary stream, the CPI arrogantly criticised "The policy of boycotting the present elections as sectarianism." To fall in line with the Dutt-Bradley Thesis, the CPI made another turnaround by affirming its faith in "The Constituent Assembly As an expression of The Unity Movement." One can imagine the most favourable national and international revolutionary situation after the fall of Fascism, the emergence of revolutionary governments in East Europe, the march of the Red Army over vast areas in China, armed struggle and successes in Vietnam, outbursts of the Indian masses every where. Instead of giving the call for freedom from the colonial yoke, the CPI called upon the cadre and masses to court the British-sponsored Constituent Assembly!

The crucial as well as trend setting aspect was the way of argumentation for electoral politics in the colonial period. The same vocabulary the Indian masses became too familiar with in the post-47 period in each and every election was repeated, all in the name of Marxism. With the 1935 Act for so-called democratisation of the electoral process there also came the ruthless Defence of India Act in 1939. The CPI leadership perpetually remaining in an aimless, programmeless state, however, mastered the art of occasional roars against the anti-people steps and war efforts. So without any preparation and revolutionary spirit during the out-break of the World War II, later gave verbal calls to "Break through the shackles of Gandhian technique" and to "Raise national struggle to a revolutionary level", etc. to arouse the masses. [Statement of the Politburo on the CPI Policy and Tasks in the Period of War, In Subodh Roy(ed), Communism in India, Unpublished Documents 1935-1945, National Book Agency, Calcutta 1976, pp. 134-135].

Electoral politics, occasional (hypocritical) calls for the need for revolutionary struggle, without any preparation or effort for such a preparation, making lashing verbal attacks on Congress or other parties’ leaders for misdeeds, etc. have continued for several decades. The CPI’s and later the CPI(M)’s hobnobbing with the Congress has a long history. Parliamentarism, support to the ruling classes and their parties, betrayal of the people’s just movements, are all the hallmarks of Indian revisionism. With the change in the CPI line on World War II, the CPI’s ‘Memorandum on Communist Policy and Plan of Work’ only expressed the desires of "the Indian Communists" to "do all they can to co-operate with the existing war efforts under the present government…"[Party Letter no. 56, Resolution of the Politburo, December 13, 1941, In Subodh Roy (ed). Communism in India… Ibid. p. 269]. As a result, the British government soon lifted its ban on the CPI and its representative Sir Stafford Cripps came to India with another basket of constitutional proposals. The CPI without taking any lessons from Chinese or Vietnamese Communist Parties greeted the Cripps proposal "as a suitable basis for a settlement, inadequate though they are" and appealed to the Congress and the League to set up a "national government" to rally the people for defence. [Quoted in Suniti kr. Ghosh, India and the Raj, 1919-1945, Research Unit for Political Economy, Bombay, 1995, pp 335-36]. Such government formation under the colonial yoke or the support to the Congress during Nehru, Indira Gandhi periods and much later in the early 1990s the decision taken first by the CPI and later by the CPI(M) to join the Central government, obviously a hotch potch coalition with reactionary ruling class parties, were all the culmination of parliamentary revisionism in India.

Comrade Mao pointed out that "protracted people’s war was possible in a country like China because of its uneven development, turbulent political situation, its backward economy and its decentralized system of communication. He contrasted these conditions with those in advanced capitalist countries, which require protracted legal struggle to precede armed revolution." [ Mao And People’s War, Vanguard Multi-Media Foundation, India, 1999, p.3]

Vietnam, a small state having an area of 330,000 sq.km. and a population of 3 crore under the leadership of its communist party started armed struggle against colonial rule since the beginning of the World War II. To paraphrase General Giap’s words: The Indo Chinese Communist Party was formed in 1930. After 10 years of relentless political struggle, at the beginning of the World War II the party directed to get prepared for armed struggle. Direction was also given to embark on guerrilla struggles for establishing base areas against Japanese imperialism for national freedom. Thus the party reached the glorious days of August Revolution in 1945. [Bho Naguen Giap, Jana Yuddh o Ganafauz, Bengali Translation, Nabajatak Prakashan, Kolkata, 1973, p.23]

The CPI rejected the Chinese path of People’s War. It also refused to learn from the experience of Vietnam.

With the end of World War II, the Labour Monthly carried an article strongly projecting the CPI view by the Communist Party of Great Britain for "A Constituent Assembly for India" as a lasting democratic solution to India’s problems. [Michael Carriot, "A Constituent Assembly", Labour Monthly, November 1945, pp.342-45] And the Constituent Assembly was also sponsored by the British Government with the elected member of political parties, including the CPI, by the consent of a microscopic representation of basically rich, educated people, princes and royal families under paramountcy. The Indian Constitution that emerged from the apparently fierce debates in the Constituent Assembly took great care and precision to retain two-thirds of the Government of India Act 1935. The central pillar of India’s farcical democracy is this Constitution. It was also a time when rumblings of anti-British movements and unleashing of attacks on the colonial state literally scared British power. The Tebhaga struggle, Telangana uprising, revolt of the peasants in Punnapra-Vayalar, The RIN Mutiny, Struggles of the Warli Adivasis, peasant revolt in Burma Valley, Tripura tribal movements, country-wide unprecedented working class strike actions etc. shook the British empire. The CPI still had firm faith in the Congress and Muslim League to lead India to freedom. The CPI not only toed the Congress and Muslim League, it betrayed the Indian people’s outbursts in the form of volcanic eruptions.

It is curious to note that U.S. imperialism and its agents are now vocal against guerrilla violence and the resultant bloodshed in Iraq in the name of restoring ‘democracy’ and electoral politics. Indian deputy prime minister and criminal, communalist L.K.Advani during his Rathyatra in Andhra Pradesh on 18th March 2004 "lashed out at the Naxalites and called on them to shun violence and join the mainstream" [The Telegraph, 19 March, 2004].

On the same day the CPI(M) Chief Minister of West Bengal and the great worshipper of parliamentary mainstream, Buddhadev, told the West Bengal Assembly that the Centre had recently set up a cell comprising Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar to rein in Naxalites of the People’s War and MCCI. "We have also joined the cell," added Buddhadev [The Telegraph, 19 March, 2004]. What a common concern for ‘democracy’, ‘parliamentary politics’ and about how to crush all resistance against imperialism and /or neo-colonial states among people like Bush, Advani and Buddhadev!

The CPI leadership never shrank to give the vague, practically impotent calls like "Break with the British", "Clear Road For Final Assault", "Forward To Freedom" and so on. Against the path of the parliamentary road, the Andhra comrades fought their way to implement the Chinese model through the Telangana Uprising. And it should be kept in mind the Telangana struggle was opposed by many leaders in the CPI. So this struggle was stabbed in the back by the CPI leadership itself from within, when Indian military butchers, peasants along with Nizam’s Razarkrs were, at that time, massacring the ordinary peasants.

The founder and prominent leader of the CPI(M), A.K.Gopalan, in his press statement on 23 October, 1951 on behalf of the CPI C.C. advised the "fighting partisans to stop all partisan action to mobilise the entire people for an effective participation in the ensuing general election to rout the Congress at the polls" [Cross-roads, 26 October, in Mohit Sen (ed) Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, Vol. VIII, 1951-56, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, pp.59-60]. The journey in the path of social democracy had already started and so the CPI adjusted itself to the post-1947 semi-colonial, semi-feudal situation marvellously rapidly and the CPI secretary Ajoy Ghosh watered down the revolutionary spirit of the post-war rebellious mood and sacrifices of the peasants, workers and other sections by declaring on 7 November, 1952, to focus on the "Key issue of democracy as the structure of a democratic state", etc. [Ajoy Ghosh. "Some of Our Main weaknesses, In For a People’s Democracy" 7 November 1952 In Mohit Sen(ed), Documents, Vol. III, 1951-56, Ibid. p.185]. The extended plenum of the CC of the CPI, held from 30 December 1952 to 10 January 1953, ‘inspiringly’ stated "The entire party went in the election campaign" immediately after the all-India party conference held in October 1951 and that "Not only party members but tens of thousands of supporters and sympathisers plunged into the election campaign…" [The Extended Plenum of the Central Committee", in Mohit Sen(ed) Documents, Vol. III, 1951-56, Ibid. p.199.].

Thus the Telangana model, or in other words the Chinese path, was abandoned in favour of the parliamentary path for India. The CPI had already chosen the opportunist way of both extending support to the Nehru government on some fundamental issues and criticism on some others. The Madurai Party Congress of the CPI in 1953-54 officially endorsed this position what the CPI, and then the CPI(M), had ludicrously followed in the following decades even after the death of Nehru and during the Indira regime and thereafter. It is wrong that the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, officially pleading for the parliamentary path to socialism, only inspired the CPI leadership to put the CPI on the rails of parliamentarism. The trend was already visible as stated above. The CPI had already enjoyed resounding victories in the 1952 elections particularly in the regions swept by the Telangana uprising and Tebhaga struggle with Ravi Narayana Reddy (from Telangana) and Kansari Haldar (from 24 Paraganas in West Bengal, where Tebhaga movement was assuming the dimension of a mini Telangana) receiving the maximum number of votes in India. P.Sundaraiah, who later became general secretary of the CPI(M), declared that in consideration of the electoral victory in Andhra that "we are confident of forming a government" [P.Sundaraiah, For Victory in Andhra, CPI Publication, 1955, New Delhi, p.41].

The CPI was by then well committed to parliamentary politics and expected government formation in states. And with the Khrushchev’s line of peaceful, parliamentary path to socialism in the 20th Congress of the CPSU going public, the CPI 4th Congress in 1956 endorsed that dangerous line affirming faith in the "fundamental social change" in a number of "capitalist and former colonial countries" through "winning a stable parliamentary majority backed by a mass revolutionary movement" of the working people. The CPI general secretary went a little further while endorsing the parliamentary path, adding clearly that such a peaceful path was applicable "even in a country like India and Indonesia". [Report of Ajoy Ghosh in "The Palghat Congress on 20th Congress of CPSU," The 4th Party Congress documents, In Mohit Sen(ed) Documents, Vol. VIII, 1951-56, Ibid. p.505 and p.508]. While in India parliamentarism swallowed the CPI, CPI(M), etc. in Indonesia lakhs of communists were massacred by the U.S. lackey Suharto regime in 1965. In Chile the parliamentary path i.e. winning a majority in the parliament was a miscarriage, with the killing of President Allende and his followers in 1973.

The same argument has been adduced again and again by the CPI, CPI(M) and now even the CPI(ML) Liberation, adding some left phraseology. In any case when E.M.S. Namboodiripad became the Chief Minister in 1957 in Kerala, the revisionists in the CPI were further inspired and the Kerala model was projected as the ideal in India for people’s relief and democracy in the bourgeois set-up. The CPI was split after 1962 but the new party, the CPI(M), never abandoned the Kerala model and the fundamentals of the CPI were retained under cunningly woven left phrase mongering. The pivot of parliamentarism, fashioning the CPI(M) Programme of 1964, soon became obvious with the formation of the United Front government in 1967 in West Bengal and Kerala. The years from 1965 to 1967 witnessed the bursting out of people’s spirited mood through strong anti-Congress hatred and unfolding waves of movements of workers, peasants and other sections. The new party, the CPI(M), which emerged ostensibly to fight the rightist position of the CPI, exposed its insatiable hunger for ministry making in West Bengal with parties ranging from the openly pro-jotedar Bangla Congress, a splinter outfit of Congress, to the communalist Jan Sangh, the present BJP. The kitchri coalition led by the CPI(M) – the largest party in the U.F. – unmasked its revisionist reactionary character by sending state armed forces to gun down the struggling peasants of Naxalbari. Parliamentarism led the CPI(M) to commit reactionary acts of directly putting down the heroic peasant movement of Naxalbari in league with the Indira Gandhi-led Central government. And now it has pushed it into the lap of the BJP Deputy Prime Minister communal fascist, L.K.Advani, to crush the peasant movement, particularly in West Bengal.

The politics of elections is a dangerous illusion that has caused incalculable harm to the communist movement in India. Instead of taking up the Maoist path of initiating armed struggle from the beginning to gradually develop local parallel power centres the CPI, CPI(M), etc. have always spun theories conveniently using some quotations from Lenin’s or Stalin’s writings to participate in elections.

The Indian communist movement was vertically split when armed agrarian revolution was launched on Maoist lines in 1967, through the Naxalbari uprising. Thus it also initiated the great ideological battle between two lines or two paths i.e. between the parliamentary path and the path of people’s war. The CPI(ML) that emerged, soon under the leadership of comrade Charu Mazumdar correctly analysed the Indian condition and announced the path of people’s war, giving the clarion call of boycotting the farcical elections in India. Before Naxalbari, only for a brief period, was the path of people’s war practiced in Telangana in 1946-51 by the revolutionary communists, but the CPI leadership made a forced withdrawal of that glorious struggle for participation in elections in 1952.
Even after the set-back in the CPI(ML)-led struggle in 1972 some frustrated and nervous leaders like Satya Narayana Sinha once again raised the old argument of tactics in Lenin’s name to join parliamentary politics. Even after Naxalbari people like Nagi Reddy, Pulla Reddy, etc. dished out the same old argument of a preparatory parliamentary phase towards armed struggle.

With mounting state repression the CPI(ML)Liberation also withdrew from protracted armed struggle in the 1980s. The same alibi in the name of tactics was submitted by this group disbanding its armed squads in Bihar to join the parliamentary mainstream.

Lessons form the past 60 years make it clear that parallel power can exist fighting against the more powerful state machinery receiving all support from imperialism. The small countries, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Laos in the 1970s, indubitably proved how such alternate power can exist, develop and ultimately win victories. Closer home, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, though not a Marxist organisation, has proved how it could grow from strength-to-strength fighting military battles against the Sri Lankan State due to its method of arming the entire masses for the armed struggle.

Way back on 27th January, 1950 in the editorial of the organ of the Cominform, For a lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy it was clearly stated, "The path taken by the Chinese people …. is the path that should be taken by the people of many colonial and dependent countries in their struggle for national independence and people’s democracy..".

While Indian revisionists always fought shy of accepting such a path, the neo-revisionists who identify themselves as Naxalites like the CPI(ML) Liberation, COI(ML), CPI(ML) New Democracy, etc. now deceive the people with the bait of parliamentary politics after their betrayal of the path of Naxalbari and pinning faith in electoral politics. It is not beside the mark to say that even in western countries elections after many decades of practice in parliamentary politics have been reduced to a lack-lustre, useless game with minimum interest of the common people. Turnout numbers even in the western countries clearly show that people over there feel little urge to cast their votes. Only 40% Canadians, 41% of Britishers and Germans and 48% of American voters bother to exercise their franchise. [The Times of India, March 29, 2004]. Use of comrade Lenin’s name for mere participation in electoral politics and practice has equated the parliamentary Marxists with Fabian socialists or social democrats of the 2nd International. The International situation has changed; people’s movements also nowhere remain within the confines of parliamentary politics. This reality cannot be ignored. The gigantic anti-war demonstrations in the West are witness to this.

Yet there is a world of difference between the bourgeois democracies of the West and those of countries like India that have not been through any bourgeois democratic revolution. Also, in the path of insurrection electoral tactics may have some relevance, if it is linked to the question of the preparations for the seizure of power by armed force. If not that too will lead to atrophy of the movement. But in countries like India where there is no relevance whatsoever for so call Maoists to partake in elections, under the guise that the conditions have not ripened is a plain hoax. For, situations do not ripen on their own; however good the objective situation, unless the strategy and tactic are not linked to concrete preparations for people’s war, there will be no advance of the revolution.

Specious arguments are often given that in this period when, according to the right-wing Maoists, the conditions have not yet ripened for revolution, participation in elections can and must be used to dispel constitutional illusions, is suspect. Suspect because most of these groups do not seem to be making any real preparations for the armed struggle for the seizure of political power — neither politically by intensifying the class struggle nor seeking to focus on the agrarian revolution; and even organizationally by preparing the party and cadres (even leaders for that matter) to take on the state machinery, which inevitably means underground functioning, if it is to survive. In addition the ground reality can clearly be seen that those who boycott elections and prepare the masses and the Party for armed revolution have continued to advance their movement inspite of loosing a large number of their cadre and even leaders to state repression. On the other hand those for participation continue to be fringe groups, that continue their splitting, with little mass base. So without going into any theoretical arguments it is evident even to a child that those who boycott and advance the class struggle have been more effective in winning over the masses to revolution.

Besides, if the path of protracted people’s war is accepted as the path to actualize the establishment of people’s democracy in India, there is no question of participating in a long legal process, including participation in elections. Many of the arguments put and their method of functioning smack of the path adopted in developed countries (do they do not say so) where these groups seem all set to work in the same fashion legally for an indefinite period, focusing primarily on urban work. The actual work at the grass roots of most of these groups is confined to reformist and economistic functioning, with occasional bouts of political propaganda to prove their political existence. Generally even militancy is lacking. They often say fascism is around the corner, but make no realistic preparations, either politically or organizationally, to face it — let alone preparations for revolution.

The forthcoming elections to the parliament and some state legislatures have been imposed at a time when the economic crisis is a stark reality despite the ‘Shining India’ propaganda. The extent of people’s desperation was to be seen in Vajpayee’s own constituency at the sari-for-votes road-show where a stampede killed a minimum of 30 people and injured many more. The NDA government has gone on overdrive to suppress the fact that under the BJP dispensation the national income has increased at the rate of 5.3%, not 8% as claimed. Agricultural growth has actually decreased below 2% and the employment sector records only downturns. [Ananda Bazar Partrika, 13th March 2004] Regular elections, at huge expense, with no real change in people’s lives only creates frustration and hopelessness, reflected in various forms of people’s demonstration of anger, which are evident everywhere. Organised and Unorganised protests against attacks of the capitalist class are found in many parts of the country. While the government has been spending many hundred crores on false propaganda of the country’s progress, the ruling classes desperately need this constitutional safety valve of this democratic smoke screen for the preservation of the status quo in a country like India.

Growing unemployment, lockouts, lay offs, decrease in actual wages, automation related hiring and firing, etc. are assuming dangerous dimensions. The per-capita consumption of textile in 2002 at 19 meters was below the world average. 60 percent of Indian households don’t have bank accounts (In rural India, that is 70 percent, according to the Census of India household survey). And where tens of millions of farmers live and die in debt. The fastest growing sector in India is not IT or Software, textiles or automobiles but acute poverty and inequality. At the height of misery in rural Andhra Pradesh in 2002, the hungry were forced to buy rice at Rs. 6.40 a kilogram. This is in drought-hit regions at a time when India exported rice at Rs. 5.45 a kg. [Frontline Feb. 28 - March 12, 2004, p.5]

Prof. Utsa Patnaik gives some devastating facts: " The average family is absorbing annually nearly 100 kg. less of food grain today than a mere five years ago. (That is) a phenomenal drop…. never have seen before the last century in India’s history" [quoted in Front Line, Ibid, p.6].

Prof. Utsa has shown, the absolute amount of per capita food availability for the year 2002-03 was lower than during the time of the Bengal famine. Hundreds of millions of Indian poor are now consuming less calories than before. Despite a set of methodological fiddles in the measurement of poverty, it is an indubitable fact that more or less half of the Indian population is below the poverty level. In the year from 1996-97 to 2000-01, close to 9 lakh organized sector jobs vanished. In just the single district of Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh, over 2000 farmers in debt committed suicides from 1997 to 2001. In the next two years the number of suicides mounted further in 2002. The Punjab CM told the press that about 600 farmers’ lost their lives from suicide in 2001 itself, while The Tribune placed the numbers of suicides in Punjab at 3000 annually. In U.P. it is the sugarcane farmers, in Maharastra it is the cotton growers who have been committing suicide. [Frontline Ibid. p.9]. Now in West Bengal under ‘Left Front’ rule the potato growers have stepped into this path of ending lives.

According to the Central Statistical Institute, the incidence of crimes against women has gone up sharply in the 10 years between 1990 and 2000, from 68,867 cases in 1990 to an alarming 161,373 in 2000. The reality is much more. The sharpest rise was in the incidence of cases of torture, which went up from 13,450 to 45,778. This was followed by molestation cases, which went up from 20,194 to 32,940. The victims of rape show astounding figures between 1999 and 2000 with an almost threefold increase in the number of victims aged above 50 years. [The Statesman, 6 March 2004]. The patriarchal system coupled with vulgar consumerism increasingly produces such victims. What is noteworthy is the alarming drop in the man woman ratio in the combined rural and urban figure from 1000: 97.2 in 1901 to 1000:933 in 2001. [The Statesman 6 Mach, 2004] All this shows the increasing death-rate of adult women as well as the girl foetus in the patriarchal set-up reinforced by inhuman ‘modernity’ creating a dangerous mind-set. The Brahminical set-up and the existing order of things make women easy victims.

In the so-called shining India in the past six years GDP growth fell by 2.2 percent, industrial growth by 5 percent and 5.1 million persons lost jobs or were turned away from the organized sector. [Hindustan Times, February 27, 2004]

The ballot will get a leg-up from business in these general elections, as is always the case. The Telegraph dated 13th March writes "Two leading groups – the Tata Group and the Aditya Brila group – have decided to revive their electoral trusts to contribute to the poll process. The head of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) Rahul Bajaj has already decided to fund political parties. Not only that, with a view to saving this dirty parliamentary democracy he has suggested the government also fund the major parties during elections." [Thehelka, March 20, 2004] Along with the Congress(I), BJP and the like, the CPI(M) is also receiving monetary blessings from the captains of industries. Already the main trading centre in Kolkata, the Burrabazar Businessmen’s Association has declared even to join the campaign for electing the CPI(M) and other ‘Left’ Front candidates. Similar support is extended by the United Textile Merchant Association [Sanbad Pratidin, 1 April, 2004]. The parliamentary political party–capitalist/ rich trader nexus is not new. In every election it is glaringly evident.

While the squandering of crores of public money is going on, India’s outstanding debt as on December 9, 2003 stood at Rs. 2,10,648 crore. [Hindu 5 March 2004]. For holding the 2004 elections the state will require to spend public money of Rs. 1200 crore, more than 3 times the spending during the 1991 elections. [Hindustan Times, 22 February, 2004].

Those in this country who can read newspapers are being targeted by the government, with a sort of systematic, relentless and unabashed extravagance, in its media campaign to highlight the extraordinary promises and achievements of the NDA. An entirely cooked-up version of reality is being spectacularly recreated in word and in image through the sheer use of publicity rhetoric. It is an ethical outrage how public money is spent to promote mostly dishonest and power-happy politicians.

Perhaps never before has such an expensive campaign for parliamentary elections taken place. The two major parties — the Congress and the BJP — show no restraint on propaganda. The court verdict granting permission to political parties for advertisements on TV has escalated the intensity of propaganda. Money flows like water; never mind if millions are sarving!

A top brass involved with the job of BJP propaganda has this to say: It costs rupees one crore to telecast a 30-second advertisement through all channels. It requires between 25 and 30 lakh rupees to work out such advertisements through professional firms. For full-page advertisements in premier national dailies it costs Rs. 2 crore. For half-page the charge is 1 crore. The matter does not end at that.

A number of surveys have been taken recourse to, by the political parties. The expenses for such surveys also reach staggering figures. As a whole, for the opinion of a single person it costs Rs. 100. In a parliamentary constituency, for even a small-scale survey it requires 1 lakh rupees. The BJP, on this occasion, has conducted pretty big surveys and at least 4 surveys have been made. In the competition, the BJP and the Congress are regularly sending SMS…. In the meantime Vajpayee’s message has reached 15 lakh telephone owners. The aim is beyond 1 crore. [Ananda Bazar Patrika, 29 March 2004] Never before have the principal dailies made such pointed reference to elections as in this year about the murkiest and most ridiculous height the entire edifice that the election drama has reached in India. Surveys conducted by the media in the newspapers, journals, letters sent to the Editors of dailies, etc. unfold the increasing trend of faithlessness in any political party, the farcical election promises, the disgust and yawning surprise of the people at the squandering of money for buying votes and most of all the loss of credibility of the electoral system itself in India.

In a massive survey conducted by The Times of India in cities and towns found that 40% people clearly and 30% not so clearly consider elections are a waste of time. [The Times of India, March 29, 2004] The same source makes it clear that in 1999 60% of the electorate turned to vote in India. One thing is clear that in towns and cities about 40% clearly and 30% not so clearly state that elections are a waste of public money. The same source also highlights the crucial fact that 50% of women in cities and towns do not know who their M.P. is. And that 34% of men and women could not recall the name of their parliamentary representative. [The Times of India, March 29, 2004]. In the pre-poll advertisement splurge the BJP led NDA expended Rs. 450 crore and this public money has already crossed Rs.700 crore. The Telegraph revealed that with Rs. 450 crore the government could build 2,25,000 houses for the poor, 652 100-bed hospital wards and 17,375 shallow tube wells. [The Telegraph, 10 February, 2004]. When a defensive T.S.Krishnamurthy, head of the Vajpayee appointed election commission, feebly spoke against the misuse of public money under protests and media criticisms, the arrogant Vajpayee stated that "But it is wrong to say…… tax payers’ money is being misused. This (ad campaign) is a part of the government’s responsibility." [The Telegraph, 10th February 2004] All such advertisement blitz only proves the losing ground of this government who is desperate to hoodwink the people for votes. Though it has not assumed such dangerous dimension some decades back, the process started in quite a big way during Congress rule.

The BJP-led NDA is head over ears in scams: the Tehelka disclosures about corruption in defence deals; misdemeanours in petrol pump allotment under the petroleum minister Ram Naik; prime plots in Delhi given to Sangh Parivar outfits; second stock market scam with broker Ketan Parekh at the Centre; collapse of the Unit 64 scheme affecting millions of investors; CD showing BJP minister Dilip Sing Judeo secretly accepting money; allegations of improper advance of loans by Hudco to companies and so on.

Regular murders of the Kashmiris by the security forces, killings in North-East India, fake encounter killings of hundreds of communist revolutionaries, arbitrary arrests, killings of minorities, spreading communal politics and communal violence reaching uncivilized heights, detention without trials and information, judicial exoneration of fanatic Hindu killers in the Gujarat barbarities, corrupt officials, killer politicians, poll violence as intrinsic part of electoral politics, corruption in courts and the entire judicial system, restrictions of religious freedom, saffronisation of the academic world, etc. have come up so poignantly as a general practice that Indian ‘democracy’, is now identified with and overwhelmed by these dark features. Despite a massive media propaganda blitz, building of roads and bridges with foreign money and the infrastructure built up first by the colonial rulers and then by our native ruling classes with imperialist backing for the legitimisation of the political system and the edifice of "Indian democracy" unfolds its horrible face each and every day. It is notable that the Indian people also have got used to such hypocrisy in he name of democracy.

The ruling classes and their parties want to establish parliamentary politics as ‘the mainstream of Indian democracy’. It is actually playing a hoax on the people. The democratic mainstream can only be created and sustained by revolutionaries in India. Even so-called democratic space can be achieved not by appeasing the fascists and state terrorists, but by confronting them and creating parallel power centers of the masses. The CPI(ML)People’s War, MCCI etc. are locked in bitter struggle to establish this revolutionary and democratic mainstream in India.

The favour shown by the electorate to this or that party, say Congress(I) or the BJP or some other formation in this election and some other in the next, only shows the restlessness of the masses in absence of a strong alternative trend. A study of the past elections has shown that the electorate in any particular election throw out two-thirds of sitting MPs. In the past six years, out of 25 assembly elections in states other than those of the North-east, only in five has the anti-incumbency factor not decided the results – West Bengal, MP, AP, Gujarat and Delhi. However in AP and MP, the incumbent barely managed to cling on. [Hindustan Times, Feb. 27, 2004]. The West Bengal and Gujarat elections under CPI(M) and BJP rule respectively, have only shown the sleazy and criminal face of the so-called Marxists and saffron leaders to win elections, where the rigging factor, absence of a real opposition in the fray and such other factors etc played a major role.

The instability in electoral politics is also obvious from the increasing trend of the loss of seats in the same parliamentary constituencies by the same party. A statistical analysis. [Tehleka, March 20, 2004] clearly shows that in the elections in 1991, 1996, 1998 and 1999, constituencies not re-electing the same party were in 231, 271, 272 and 263 number of seats respectively. With this trend, we have also to count the very important fact that more or less 40% voters have never bothered to cast their votes in each and every election in India. If the percentage of rigged polls is taken into account the number of non-participants in so-called democratic elections is a staggering figure.

What rises prominently is the general unsteadiness, lack of faith in particular party(ies) and the shifting sands on which the electorate stand in respect to the parliamentary parties. Add to all such things, defections, floor crossing and also forcibly keeping in segregation MLAs by this or that party lest they should cross the floor, and such other dirty factors shown to what depths the electoral system has degenerated. This election has seen an added factor of the vulgar display of film heroes and heroines for vote-catching on a big scale.

In any case, all political parties have, to a large extent, lost credibility in the eyes of the masses. In addition, even the educated segments in cities and villages have shown their shifting and unsteady support for those undesirable elements as mentioned above. And so it is not unusual for the same electorate to support the Congress(I) in this election and the BJP or any other party in the next election and so on. This also substantiates the prevalence of a rich objectively revolutionary situation needing proper subjective intervention.

For a backward country like India, in many cases election campaigns reach a crescendo by spending thousands of crores of rupees. Aggressive bands of toughs, popularly called ‘cadres’ or karmis, appear to have no other work than intimidating/funding people into attending meetings, thrusting flags and banners into their hands to crowd the place for leaders’ addresses. The overactive toughs may wear red headbands of the CPI, CPI(M) or carry portraits of Sonia Gandhi or Vajpayee. Now, with the steady decline in support base of the masses of the parliamentary Left or worshippers of Nehruvian politics, the cadres and followers of the CPM appear to be of the same breed as those of the Congress or the BJP. Whether the people, lured to vote meetings listen is not really taken care of: the toughs need the masses to crowd the venues. Crores of rupees is spent on posters, banners, loud speakers to din into the heads of the backward masses the polished politics of a bright future and the virtues of good government even when the country is passing through a veritable crisis. The cacophony of the electoral process makes the common Indian voters puzzled and in many cases are fooled into choosing between two or more undesirable leaders of the parliamentary mainstream in India.

Now India can claim to have the largest number of parties in the world operating in a single polity. The Election Commission reports a total of 650 parties registered with it, of them 169 contested the 1998 Lok Sabha elations. The 1999 Lok Sabha elections were contested by seven national parties, 40 state parties and 122 registered (un-recognised) parties. [Source Election Commission of India 1998 and 2002].

Though Congress’s one party domination first took a massive beating in 1967 itself, since 1998, the Indian political trend distinctly shows that a multi-party system has been significantly present throughout India. In the 1980s and 1990s some parliamentarians cried for the necessity of two-party system, the crisis of the body polity, the assertions of regional demands, castes, religious, etc. have silenced such voices. Unevenness in the Indian socio-economic-cultural system shows its forceful presence negating the powerful and forcible homogenization through Congress party rule in India. This also signals the weakening of the reactionary unitary political process in India. This further augurs well for the revolutionary camp. The routinised Congress dominance based on the pivotal role of the comprador bourgeois and feudal classes could not sustain on the bedrock of complicated religious, linguistic and caste cleavages in recent decades.

The situation has changed. The 1989 Lok Sabha elections removed the Congress from the Centre yielding power to the Janata Dal-led United Front government thus initiating a clear era of hotch potch coalitions and minority governments, thus opening the path towards minority governments in New Delhi. The endemic instability since 1989 – nine governments in almost as many years – can be formally described as the failure of one party hegemony. It is notable that the two major parties – the BJP and the Congress(I) – neither reach the majority mark and together accounted for 49.09 percent of the votes and 60.65 percent of seats in 1996. The comparable figures for the 1998 Lok Sabha elections were 51.35 percent and 59.37 percent respectively. [Source: Mahendra Prasad Singh, Whither Indian Party System, The Electoral and Legislative Dimensions, In Indian Social Science review, January-June 2001, p.83]. The Janata Party, actually a combination of multifarious political outfits ranging from extreme rightist Jan Sangh to the Lohiaites, bagged 41.2% votes and 54.42% of seats in 1977. The Janata Party then broke and the unending splinters like BJP, JD-U, JD-S, RJD, Samajvadi Party, SJP, Indian National Lok Dal, Biju Janata Dal and many other regional parties emerged, only to prove the reality that the perpetual feud and contrast in interests shall not allow hegemony of a big outfit. All this also indicates that ruling class contradictions are growing by the day, with increasing dog-fights for the declining economic cake.

India witnessed two Central governments one of the National Front and the other of United Front in 1989 and 1998. What is notable is that the CPI and the CPI(M), along with other ‘Marxists’ or non-Marxist parliamentary parties, extended support to them. Revealingly the BJP also supported the National Front; and the Congress the United Front. Not only that, the then CPI general secretary Indrajit Gupta became the Home minister of the U.F. government and the CPI(M) joined the co-ordination committee of the ruling front. The murky and dishonest roles of the parliamentary parties are too evident when many of the parties of the NF and UF changed sides effortlessly to cement an alliance with the BJP to form the NDA government later. The floor crossers are also now too active in the 2004 elections. What is also evident is that the Congress(I) leaders, the party on which the CPI, CPI(M) repose full faith against the BJP, are in fact themselves promoters of pro-Hindutva policies, in a milder form. And this process started in the late 1980s itself. In fact, parliamentary politics has been getting messier and messier with no substantial proof that even the social democratic parties like the CPI, CPI(M), etc. can stick to their toothless reformist positions against communalism, violation of democracy and steady attacks on economic rights of the masses.

The CPI(M) has further shown, during the last Panchayat elections in West Bengal, to what nadir it too can reach by killing even the members of its own Left Front constituents, intimidating the village people, effecting forced withdrawal of nomination of the opponents at the grass roots level of electoral politics. All the above bring to the fore the steady erosion of parliamentary politics in India and the loss of democratic image of the parties and leaders in public estimation.

What baffles many theorists of bourgeois democracy is, as to how the Indian political system survives despite violations and rape of democratic values and practices, despite scam after scam engulfing the parliamentary political process and despite people’s actual loss of faith in the honesty and ability of those parties and their leaders to deliver even minimum services. Some even express doubt about the continuity of such a system pointing to acute poverty, widespread illiteracy and extreme inequality. Their answer lies in spending crores of rupees to create an electoral atmosphere, and the vast efforts to give social respectability to the electoral process by political parties, particularly the CPI, CPI(M) and now even the CPI(ML)Liberation, under the supervision of the state. And now, in the present elections even NGOs, like the newly formed Medha Patkar outfit, are seeking to lend credibility by their fielding so-called honest candidates.

Boycott of elections is a positive call related to building up of a new democratic system in India. It has both ideological and political implications. Ideologically this will inspire the people to understand the necessity of destroying the existing state system. Simultaneously, the practice in the form of destroying the limbs of the state to set up alternate governing arrangements in the fields of economy, politics and cultural, aided and protected by the people’s armed forces will convince the people about rejecting the class state of the comprador bourgeoisie and landlords, acting as agents of imperialism. Election boycott is closely woven with this ideology and practice. If the boycott election call is not linked up with those aspects it loses not only its cutting teeth and makes such calls a ritualistic exercise.

In India the question of people’s war is intrinsically linked up with the aspect of protractedness. Many years may pass before there develops strong alternative power centers in rural India. Now, with the growing strength of the Maoist parties, after continuous battles with the armed might of the existing state and its agents in various places in AP, DK, Bihar, Jharkhand etc., Maoists have gone into developing an alternative power system to a degree. These are not obviously base areas with total extermination of the existing state functions. So naturally many people are mentally and practically split by simultaneously supporting these organizational arrangements and the more powerful Indian exploitative state system and its multiple bodies of governance. The boycott call is direct intervention on the part of revolutionaries to make people understand the futility of the Indian electoral farce as well as to uphold alternative politics to destroy the existing set-up.

Yet, in nearby Nepal, the Maoists have actually set up alternative power with a proper functioning democratic process in the vast Base Areas of that country. It is a living example and not any utopian dream. Here, peoples democratic power is being asserted by the oppressed masses, led by the CPN(Maoists) and the exploiters and oppressors and their entire instruments of rule (police, army, judicial system, prisons, etc) have been smashed and a genuine democracy is there for all who care to see.

Some people rightly raise the very relevant question as to why our previous boycott calls have had insufficient impact on the people particularly in the struggling areas. The answer primarily lies in fact of the existence of two systems, a weak but gradually strengthening system of the revolutionaries, and the other, a very powerful state system controlled by ruling classes and guarded by a huge number of armed forces. The latter is also dependent on their imperialist masters, particularly the US, in all respects. Besides that, the illusion of parliamentarism still sits grippingly in the minds of crores of people. The strength of the parallel people’s democratic power centers and the strength of the people’s army, and the relentless fight against dirty but illusory parliamentary politics will gradually convince more and more people to reject this tamasha of electoral politics in favour of the alternative system being developed by the Maoists.

Some people hold a wrong notion that politics begins and ends with parliamentary politics. People’s movements are generally carried on outside the parliamentary arena and similarly some states can run with some cloak of democracy without a parliament. The present state in Nepal or Pakistan is a case in point. In fact, all existing class-based states are run not by parliaments, though Parliaments are projected as repositories of power, but through actual power wielded from behind the screen by the ruling classes. This is lately more crudely seen in India where policy is more openly being dictated by the US, multilateral institutions, TNCs, the Ambanis, etc etc. This is not only becoming an obvious reality, but is also a basic tenet of Marxism on the character of the state. The election boycott campaign can teach the common masses about this fundamental truth.

The boycott election call is being given by the Maoist Parties to the people, at a time when the parliamentary democratic façade has already nosedived, reducing elections to a comic drama staged with people’s money and muscle power of the state and political gangsters. Right at this moment, Maoists have formed the People’s Guerrilla Army (and PGLA), revolutionary mass organisations and revolutionary committees to counter defeat enemy forces, free the people from the clutches of the exploitative classes and to carry on economic, political and cultural activities related to the existence and development of people’s democratic power in India. The boycott of elections is a political call with a clear alternative policy of establishing people’s democracy in India through a protracted people’s war.

The call will be to boycott the elections and build the alternative people’s democratic power at the local level. This will be coupled with the exposure of the farcical character of ‘democracy’, the state terror on all sections of the masses, the democratic rise of Hindutva fascist forces, etc. — all highly undemocratic.

The call for election boycott stirs up the state into panic, and even if a section of the workers in the tea-gardens of West Bengal or people in certain villages in some corner of India decide not to cast their votes out of anger against the government, newspapers hold focus on such events. In fact the news of staying away from the electoral scene by a small population sends jitters in the state machinery. On the contrary, when boycott calls go in tandem with positive demands, like freedom of the Kashmiri people or for an alternative system of people’s democracy as made by the CPI(ML) People’s War and the MCCI the state machinery do not in any way tolerate it . People are subjected to brutal force for casting votes to ensure India’s parliamentary ‘democracy’ running. Votes are got at gun-point. Jammu and Kashmir has been under total military and para-military control for many years now. Yet from Rajiv Gandhi to Vajpayee all the PMs in India never compromised with the need for holding elections and re-establishing parliamentary ‘democracy’ in Jammu and Kashmir. National dailies published several photos and news items how military forces herd the boycottist people to the polling booths.

This time around, out of the estimated Rs. 1,200 crore (official figure) for state expenses for the current ‘democratic’ general elections a big chunk will go into moving security personnel particularly in the areas where the CPI(ML)PW and MCCI have been actively involved in rejecting elections for setting up an alternative system. Way back in 1991 and 1999-00 this cost alone was to the tune of Rs.158.16 crore out of Rs. 360 crore and Rs. 350 crore out of Rs. 948 crore, respectively. [Hindustan Times, 22 February 2004]. Now the dailies have been regularly highlighting the news of dispatching of the military, CRPF, BSF personnel in their hundreds to these areas in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Dandakarnya, West Bengal and other states where pitched ideological and military battles keep going on against the existing system and the forcible imposition of the current electoral farce.

In the name of holding elections and civil govt., Bush is keeping his army in Iraq. To monitor and supervise the so-called democratic functioning in many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin American imperialist armies are regularly being sent under the rubber stamp of the United Nations. In the last polls of the 13th Lokasabha, state legislatures and even of panchayats, military, para-military and state special and civil police were deployed in large numbers.

Once the forces were deployed in the name of conducting elections in a ‘smooth’ manner automatically a blanket certificate is also given to them to adopt the worst ever cruel methods in the name of maintaining law and order. Even the parliamentary opposition parties are not spared by the armed forces to safeguard the interests of the party in power.

Maoist and nationality movements have been facing such onslaught of the armed forces regularly. Whenever elections come near the ruling parties sit up to send extra forces to adopt crush-all-kill-all methods by letting loose all forms of state terror tactics against such forces. In the CPI(ML)PW and MCCI influenced areas open and legal activities of mass organizations also come under an undeclared ban and supporters of the revolutionary nationality and democratic movements’ activities including intellectuals come under the watchful eyes of the special forces. Every one’s movement has been restricted. When the poll schedule was declared more and more forces kept pouring in. All the candidates particularly who were exposed as anti-people will be given more security forces to counter the people’s angry protests.

Threatening and even ensuring rigged elections are carried on by the armed forces, whenever the N-E, Kashmir and Punjab nationalities and Maoists called for the boycott of elections, military and para-military forces played their vital role in rigging in favour of the ruling party – whereas in AP, Maharastra , MP, Chattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, states where Maoists are active, it has been a common scene since 1978 onwards to send heavy deployments in the name of countering violence and stifling the boycott call of the Naxalites. Political propaganda by Maoists, to express their voice as to why they are boycotting elections has been never permitted by governments. All the polling booths will be now declared as sensitive and deployment of forces will take place to crush the freedom of speech. After all, even in this fake democracy people should have the right whether to vote or not; whether to campaign for any candidate or for boycott. But this too is being denied.

In the last assembly elections to Chhattisgarh state 45,000 central forces and 35 army helicopters were pressed into service only for the Baster district. The CM of AP asked for 40,000 forces and a dozen helicopters whereas the ‘Marxist’ Buddha, for the forthcoming elections in West Bengal, asked for 5 to 10 battalions only for South Bengal. After the dissolving of the assembly in AP, all civil rights have been snatched and open mass organizations’ activists have been captured and tortured in police stations. In the election speeches made by the PM to the CMs certainly attack on Naxalites remain constant irrespective of the areas where the meetings are held. To counter the boycott call of the Naxalites, one of the main agenda for the parliamentary parties and for their security forces is to stop the boycottists in the areas of struggle.

The politician-mafia-police nexus provides lots of arms to all the parties to control their domain in the polls. Muscle flexing plays a vital role in many states and the BJP, CPM, RJD, Congress goons and criminal gangs in Bihar, West Bengal, UP, etc. create havoc in the minds of the voters to elect their candidates.

To resist these armed forces, revolutionaries are acting against the deployment of the forces and some times have been successful in pushing them back in strategical areas, where they have mass support in favour of boycott. In the on-going drama of elections the role of the state’s armed forces is the key. So, how come we call these bodies as elected and democratic, when these never adopt and respect the democratic values of the people? So the boycott call will be implemented by the people’s armed forces, mass organizations, etc. and the high handedness of the parties and government will be thwarted and opposed to establish real democracy in India.

The most fundamental task of elections is legitimizing the right of some parties and individuals by any means to serve the existing system. An atmosphere is created by the state, and all parliamentary parties in India including the CPI, CPI(M) that the upcoming election brings in the Himalayan responsibilities on the people to exercise their precious right, as if their failure to do so shall push them towards their doom. The Indian people have grown habituated to such rhetoric during every election. Even after so many elections in quick successions and the general trend of a steep rise in negative voting (the incumbency factor) due to the absence of a powerful alternative, elections in India cannot be termed as a pure democratic and conscious expression of people’s right.

Elections, stability of the system, providing a semblance of democracy are all state matters. No class rule behind the state can afford to ignore the very crucial task of winning the support (hearts and minds, in LIC language) of the people. ‘Participatory democracy’, Parliamentary democracy’, ‘Greatest democracy’ and all such rhetoric have come up to strengthen the stability of existing class rule. We cannot also ignore the fact that with all sorts of corruption, rigging, winds of communalism, booth-capturing, media coverage and brinkmanship by criminal politicians to create ‘Sonia wind’ or ‘Feel-good’ satisfaction etc. the Indian body polity has been immensely successful to win by rewards or by force many of the contrary forces into the so-called parliamentary mainstream. From the Central Home Minister L.K.Advani to the CPI(M) C.M. Buddhadev Bhattacharyee, the very common denominator lies their love for parliamentary stream. Those fellows repeat the old cries urging North East militant nationality forces, the CPI(ML) the People’s War, MCCI or such others who reject this parliamentary politics of stability of this system, to join the ‘mainstream’.

The CPI(ML)People’s War carries the legacy of the CPI(ML) by creatively implementing Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the concrete conditions of India. Organizations like the CPI(ML)People’s War and the MCCI are in the battle ground and boycott of elections is for carrying out people’s war to establish a real and genuine democracy in India. It is the call of class struggle for the overthrow of this highly exploitative system. To do this it is the task of the revolutionaries to transform the ongoing struggle into an all India revolutionary movement and to elevate the battlefronts of class struggle to greater heights into liberated zones. This was planned by the CPI(ML[PW} in its 9th Congress as a practical task. In the process the armed forces of the people would also get strengthened further, which will enhance the advancement of the revolutionary war for a true democratic system. For any genuine democrat, there is the utmost necessity to reject this fake democracy and lend a hand towards the real democratic future taking birth in the country under Maoist leadership.

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