Opinion View from the LEFT

Recalling Basu’s contributions in an article appeared in party dailies,General Secretary Prakash Karat exhorted comrades to work towards realising Basu’s dream and consider it his last wish. Basu used to point to the need for strengthening the party outside the three traditional strongholds. “It is our responsibility to make his dream come true,” Karat said.

All the five dailies of the CPM carried articles by senior leaders recollecting the contributions made by the former West Bengal chief minister. In Deshabhimani,the CPM’s Malayalam daily,Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said Basu was always an inspiration for comrades in Kerala. He also recounted his long association with Basu — starting from his first meeting with him in 1958 when the two were members of the undivided Communist party’s National Council — while state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said Basu’s memories would inspire the CPM to fight the all-round attack against it in Bengal.

Ritual purging

In the latest issue of party mouthpiece People’s Democracy,Karat tries to bring some clarity on the party’s position on its cadre practicing religion. One of its former MPs recently resigned from the party opposing a diktat barring leaders from organising religious ceremonies or personally conducting rituals.

Karat says the CPM does not bar persons who have religious faith from joining the party and many of its members do go to temples,mosques or churches. But party members should eschew all social,caste and religious practices that are alien to Communist norms.

“Party members are not being asked to give up their religious faith or practice. But if there is any religious custom or practice which goes against Communist norms such as practice of untouchability,depriving women of equal rights or obscurantist customs such as preventing widows from remarriage etc. which are given religious sanction — these are to be given up,” he says.

As far asleaders are concerned,they have been asked not to organise religious ceremonies or personally conduct religious rituals. “Leading party cadres such as leaders of state committee,district committee,zonal or area committees etc are expected to uphold progressive values in their personal and social lives. They should not organise religious ceremonies,or,personally conduct rituals…Communist Party leaders cannot profess something in public and do something else in their personal life.”

Frontier logic

For once,the CPI has given a thumbs up to New Delhi’s foreign policy. In an editorial in party weekly organ New Age,the CPI says India’s effort to improve its ties with Bangladesh including the one billion dollar line of credit augurs well for relations between the two countries.

The editorial talks extensively about the joint communiqué issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina Wajed and treaties inked by the two countries during her visit and sarcastically remarks that these positive reports were pushed to the inside pages by leading dailies for obvious reasons.

“A section of the Indian media is once again playing the old dirty game on foreign policy matters”,it says pointing out that while the media treated the attacks on Indians in Australia as a “routine matter”,the happenings on the Indo-China and Indo-Pak border is reported out of proportion. It says the tirade against China is not much different from what was witnessed a couple of months back when stories about Chinese intrusion published and relayed in Indian media were so unfounded and cooked up that the foreign ministry officially snubbed these stories and threatened the journalists with legal action.

On improving Indo-Bangla ties,it says “from the point of view of New Delhi,softening at least one source of trouble in our neighbourhood will allow the government to take up issues with our other neighbours.”