RSP is not willing

On Monday, the Revolutionary Socialist Party withdrew its member from the UPA-Left coordination committee headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

On Monday, the Revolutionary Socialist Party RSP withdrew its member from the UPA-Left coordination committee headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. However, the RSP has decided to continue to be a part of the UPA-Left coordination committee on the nuclear deal. Though other Left parties have tried to downplay the RSP8217;s move, it has surely added to the confusion in the ranks of the Left regarding the Left parties8217; relationship with the Congress-led UPA government.

The political implications of the RSP8217;s move may well exceed its political presence, or electoral strength. Here8217;s looking at the party:

8226; The RSP was founded on March 19, 1940 as a 8216;non-conformist Marxist party8217;. It has its roots in the Bengali liberation movement, the Anushilan Samiti, and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. The 8216;Anushilan Marxists8217; had worked within the Congress Socialist Party, albeit preserving a separate identity and maintaining documents of their own. When Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose broke with the Congress and launched the All India Forward Bloc, the Anushilan Marxists supported him although they didn8217;t join his new party. Its founder is Comrade Tridip Choudhury who was the private secretary of Subhas Chandra Bose.

8226;According to the party Constitution, 8220;The party decided to toe a different line from that of the CPI as it found the CPI subservient to the Soviet Union. It seeks to lay special stress on the basic ideological point of difference of RSP with other leftist parties in the country 8212; Socialist and Communist. This difference consists in the acceptance by RSP of the goal of Proletarian Socialist Revolution as its immediate political and historic objective in contrast to the goals of National Democratic CPI or People8217;s Democratic CPM Revolution advocated by the other parties.8221;

8226; The RSP is part of the ruling coalition of Left parties in three states 8212; West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura 8212; and has 6 ministers in these fronts. It has a total of 4 MPs 8212; 3 in Lok Sabha and 1 in Rajya Sabha and a total of 23 MLAs in these three states. The RSP has its state committees in 13 states and its youth wing, the Revolutionary Youth Front, is active in several of these states.

8226;The RSP, though one of the junior members in the Left Front, has always been the most vociferous one. On issues ranging from price rise to the Indo-US nuclear deal, the RSP has been the most vocal critic of the UPA Government on the ground that it is following 8216;neo-liberal8217;, policies against the interest of the 8216;common man8217;. It demanded that the Left must stop supporting the government last year itself, but had to succumb to the pressures of the other major Left parties who wanted to continue in the present arrangement.