On August 15, when India claimed the country back from the British, midnight meant different things for different sections of people.
For Jawaharlal Nehru, it was independence from the British regime as he delivered his famous speech, ‘Tryst with Destiny’ at the Red Fort. For people uprooted by the hurried lines drawn for the tragic partition between India and Pakistan, it was chaos, violence, and fleeing home. For the Communist Party of India, then undivided, it was a false ‘independence’, as freedom, they stated, could not be won without an armed revolution.
As Marxist ideology espouses, non-violence cannot win true independence in the absence of an armed class struggle.
Then CPI Chief, B T Randive, had echoed Yeh Azaadi Jhooti Hai, (this independence is fake), and since then the Communist Party (now CPI(M)), had rejected the popular practice of hoisting the national flag on August 15, according to The Print.
However, 74 years later, the CPI(M) wants to embrace the habit as new notions surface during recent party meets.
The CPI(M) says it wants to revive the freedom struggle now as it aligns with the need of the hour, and has decided to hoist the tricolor from every party office. The party says the idea of India is under threat from fascist forces and the freedom movement needs to be remembered to fight such forces. The role of the Left too must be remembered.
“The Central Committee decided that the Party will observe this anniversary highlighting the role of the Communists in the freedom struggle; Communist Party’s contributions to the building of modern India and consolidating the ‘Idea of India’; the complete absence and at times collaboration of the RSS with the British during the freedom struggle; and the vicious undermining of the Constitutional secular democratic Republic of India today,” read a communique issued by the party on Monday.
“This year, we will be formally launching a comprehensive and intensive campaign to deliberate on the real issues related to India’s freedom struggle because this is the first time in the past 75 years, we are feeling that the ‘Idea of India’ is under threat,” Nilotpal Basu, a politburo member of the CPI(M), is quoted by The Print.
Following the ideological rift born out of the friction between the Soviets and China at the peak of the Cold War (both professing a different kind of socialism/communism), the CPI too split in India, as beliefs bifurcated in 1964.
Basu told The Print that the CPI(M) had abandoned the “erroneous understanding about independence” and “abandoned the political positioning” regarding flag hoisting following the party split.
It’s going to be a new chapter for the party as it hoists the tricolour this independence day, envisioning a new freedom struggle in its contemporary rendition.
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