- Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

Brief History

Communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th-century Europe. At that time, Europe was undergoing rapid industrialization and social change. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for creating a new class of poor, urban factory workers who labored under harsh conditions, and for widening the gulf between rich and poor. Foremost among these critics were the German philosopher Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. Like other socialists, they sought an end to capitalism and the exploitation of workers. But whereas some reformers favored peaceful, longer-term social transformation, Marx and Engels believed that violent revolution was all but inevitable; in fact, they thought it was predicted by the scientific laws of history. They called their theory “scientific socialism” or communism.

Marx was a German of Jewish origin who lived much of his life in exile in France and Great Britain. He found much to object to in the prevalent political philosophy of his host countries - a philosophy then known generally as liberalism. Liberals saw themselves as advocates of liberty, and by liberty they meant the right of individuals to do as they pleased with their own lives and their own property. Marx did not deny the close connection between personal freedom and property rights. Rather, he accepted their connection, and denounced both as manifestations of what he called "bourgeois freedom." The doctrine of the rights of man was faulty, according to Marx. For Marx, freedom of religion or the freedom to own property are hollow freedoms, or at least grossly inadequate stepping stones to something better. Marx's solution, the route to human emancipation, was Communism, which would give people the freedom that bourgeois society denies them.

The history of Communism as a practical movement begins with a single man: Vladimir Ilich Lenin. The meaning of the word communism shifted after 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia. The Russian Marxist movement preceded Lenin by two decades, but it was Lenin who split off a militant faction from the rest of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and forged it into a potent weapon for totalitarian revolution. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a repressive, single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies. The Communists formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union) from the former Russian Empire and tried to spark a worldwide revolution to overthrow capitalism. Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, turned the Soviet Union into a dictatorship based on total state control of the economy and the suppression of any form of opposition.

After World War II (1939-1945) civil war erupted between the Nationalists and Communists in China. The Communists expanded their support in the North with radical land reform and defeated the overextended Nationalist troops in the decisive battle of Huai-hai. The Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong moved into Beijing and established the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and sent millions of Red Guards through China to attack the "Four Olds": culture, ideas, customs, and habits. Top Party leaders were purged as "capitalist roaders," exiled, and killed. The worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution were blamed on the Gang of Four, who sought the implementation of communist ideology at the expense of traditional Chinese culture.

Regimes calling themselves communist took power in Eastern Europe and other regions in the post war period. The spread of communism marked the beginning of the Cold War, in which the Soviet Union and the United States, and their respective allies, competed for political and military supremacy. By the early 1980s, almost one-third of the world’s population lived under communist regimes. These regimes shared certain basic features: an embrace of Marxism-Leninism, a rejection of private property and capitalism, state domination of economic activity, and absolute control of the government by one party, the communist party. The party’s influence in society was pervasive and often repressive. It controlled and censored the mass media, restricted religious worship, and silenced political dissent. Communism came to be associated with undemocratic or totalitarian governments that claimed allegiance to Marxist-Leninist ideals. With its criticism of oppression and expectations of a better world, Marxist communism started as a rational eschatology, in many ways akin to restoration prophetic ideals. With the appearance of Soviet communism, however, the rational and eschatological setting was discarded and only the tyranny and atheism remained.

Communist societies encountered dramatic change in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as political and economic upheavals in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere led to the disintegration of numerous communist regimes and severely weakened the power and influence of communist parties throughout the world. The collapse of the USSR effectively ended the Cold War. Today, single-party communist states are rare, existing only in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Elsewhere, communist parties accept the principles of democracy and operate as part of multiparty systems.

Communists in India

The Communist Party of India was founded in the 1920s to create an alternative mass movement to the existing Congress anti-imperialist movement. The communist movement grew out of economic causes and was rooted against the propertied classes whether British or Indian. As far as communist parties world-wide were concerned the Communist Party of India, the CPI, was too conservative and ineffective. Due to its rather passive manner, in 1964 the CPI split, thereby forming a second faction known as the CPI(M)-the Communist Party of India (Marxists).

Communists are committed to only their ideologies and have no hesitation in harming the nation if it is required to impose their views. The history of the Communist Movement in India is replete with instances of this very fact. In 1939 the Communists deserted Subhas Chandra Bose's Left Consolidation Committee and later, after he formed the Indian National Army, called him a "Quisling". In 1942 when Gandhiji called upon the British to Quit India, the Communists betrayed the Congress and the country. Between 1942 and 1944, the CPI also betrayed several Congress underground workers to the police for which it was liberally paid by the British Government.

But the most shocking example of all came in 1962, when China attacked India. The Indian followers of Mao within the CPI called India the aggressor !! The CPI(M) shamelessly and traitorously criticized its own country. Mao Zedong was raised to sainthood in Calcutta. Mao has been practically disowned in his own country but not by the CPI (M). It was the CPI, under S A Dange that supported the insufferable Emergency in 1975. Throughout its turbulent history the Communist Party has been anti-national and when it has not been pro-Soviet Union it has been pro-Communist China but never pro-India.

This being the track record of the Indian communists, one was not really surprised at their reaction to the country's nuclear blasts. With the Chinese Communist Party roaring its protests against India going nuclear, it was quite natural for the Indian communists to react in similar fashion. Had it not been for the fear of losing votes in the elections, they would have taken a harder line.

The Maoist guerrilla groups continue to fight for Maoist revolution in India, despite China's withdrawal of overt support. Maoists in India also are known as Naxalites, after the remote northern district of Naxalbari near Nepal where a Chinese-led communist insurrection took place in the mid-1960s. These groups have adopted the tactics of Mao's "people's war", a strategy of "the encirclement of the cities from the countryside". This initial stage theoretically leads to socialist revolution and eventually the formation of a communist state. Extremist organisations in Andhra Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Maharashtra and even Orissa have for long killed people after branding them as "class enemy." Of late, such violence has been rising in some areas. In Bihar the Maoist Coordination Committee is notorious for its macabre killings.

The main problem for the communist movement was that no one encouraged the joining of the peasant castes, the landowners, and the middle class proletariat into one large revolutionary group. No real national spirit existed amongst them. The main concern of the communist movement was of a socio-economic nature for each individual group of people - not for the good of the working man in general. Many supporters of the movement knew nothing about Marx and Engels; they were simply using the communist movement to show their economic frustration. This failure to unite and create a new national identity is what led to the failure of the communist movement.

Communist Conspiracy of Distorting History

A pernicious hidden agenda has been in operation in treatment of the entire gamut of Indian history. A select group of leftists came to control academic institutions of national importance and invented a course of Indian history of their choice. The one perverse objective of this group of intellectuals in authority was to destroy Indian institutions and whatever was sacred to multitudes of Indians. To them, books and textbooks on Indian history which repeatedly degraded Indian culture, heritage and values were perfectly acceptable. To them the Aryan invasion theory was the lifeline which connected them to their masters in the West. This subservience provided them lecture tours, fellowships and presence in international conferences. To them India had nothing worthwhile to boast except the unsocial practices perpetuated by the caste system and sati and the exploitation of the majority of the population by the Brahmins. The history which presented that India was modernised by the British and by the earlier invaders, was the only worthwhile history. They ridiculed Indian samskaras, spirituality, the culture of tolerance and acceptance and the unique balance in Indian society. Briefly put, leftist historiography has systematically worked for the dissolution of the Hindu community and the dislodgement of Hinduism from its pivotal position in the land of its origin.

The Marxists, in the true tradition of Macaulay, wanted to create a generation totally delinked from its past. They made concerted efforts to de-link India from its ancient ethos and make the national identity culturally and spiritually neutral. They knew that the most successful approach to demoralise a nation would be to demoralise the young generation. That could bring about a red revolution. It was considered vital to destroy all edifices of which India could be proud of. The best strategy would be to make them ashamed of their past. The end result has been to disarm and emasculate Hindus and thwart their just aspirations.  

Conclusion

Communist ideology runs counter to our basic principles of democracy as embedded in our Constitution. Communists believe in and practise sabotage and armed violence to overthrow our democratic state to establish a proletarian dictatorship. They wish to destroy all our social, cultural and religious institutions and aim at burying the individual and, on his tomb, erect a monstrous structure of dictatorship by a ruling clique. They want to turn man - the free thinker - into a mechanical biped.