[Marxism] Fwd: [foil] P.C. Joshi Restoration Drama

["Sayan Bhattacharyya" <ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx>]

In connection with the recent discussions about Arundhati Roy and
"Westernized" elites and the communist movement in India, the
following is of considerable interest.

-Sayan.


The Telegraph
Calcutta
April 22, 2007

RESTORATION DRAMA
- P.C. Joshi rehabilitated means that Promode Dasgupta is finally dead

by Ashis Chakrabarti

Poetic justice?

I wonder how Promode Dasgupta would have reacted to his party, the
Communist Party of India (Marxist), finally rehabilitating P.C. Joshi
in the pantheon of communist heroes of India. None other than the
CPI(M) general secretary, Prakash Karat, signalled the change by
taking a leading part in the inaugural programme of Joshi's birth
centenary celebrations in Delhi last week and then by following it up
with a full-page article on the man in the party organ, People's
Democracy.

But the party that Dasgupta built and led in Bengal negated almost
everything that Joshi, the first general secretary of the undivided
Communist Party of India, stood for. Many of the problems Bengal has
to grapple with today are a result of Dasgupta's emphasis on mass
action. The CPI(M) alone may not be responsible for the decline of
the educated gentleman in Bengal politics. But the Dasgupta line that
banished "intellectualism" from mass politics institutionalized the
trend.

In Bengal, Dasgupta was the prime mover of the hardline faction, led
by B.T. Ranadive and P. Sundaraya, that tormented and eventually
hounded Joshi out of the leadership. Although Jyoti Basu became the
public face of the party in Bengal, it was Dasgupta who laid down the
rules of the party games, chose the players and assigned them their
roles. This was so even after Basu became the chief minister. And
also after Dasgupta died in Beijing in the winter of 1982: because
the party in Bengal continued to be controlled by the PDG boys.

Of their many differences, let me consider what I believe to be the
two most important ones. The first is related to the debate on what
political line the Indian communists would take about the Congress;
the second, on what kind of people would provide the best leadership
for the CPI.

But it was the debate on the qualities of communist leaders that left
the PDG stamp on the party in Bengal. Joshi was in favour of the best
and the brightest young men coming into the party and eventually
leading it. That explains why the earlier generation of CPI leaders
included so many people educated at Oxford, Cambridge or the London
School of Economics. Joshi's approach on this was best illustrated
when he inducted Mohit Sen, a bright young man from Cambridge,
straight into the 'party centre' in Delhi. In short, Joshi was an
'elitist'. Soon after the Left Front came to power in Bengal in 1977,
Dasgupta launched a feverish "anti-elitist" campaign, which Basu was
powerless to oppose and which has had a crippling effect on education
and other aspects of life in Bengal for the past thirty years.

In contrast to Joshi, Dasgupta represented the section of leadership
that was sceptical or even suspicious of the English-speaking,
Western-educated comrades from affluent middle-class families. I
never met Joshi, but I knew of Dasgupta's disdain for such comrades.

Soon after the Bengal government abolished the study of English from
primary education in 1982, I and a senior colleague from the
newspaper with which I then worked met Dasgupta at the CPI(M) office
on Alimuddin Street. The newspaper planned a three-part report on the
possible impact of the government's decision on the study of English
in higher classes and on higher education in general. Who needed
English, Dasgupta shot back when we questioned him on the wisdom of
the government's decision. But his most vitriolic comments came when
we referred to reports that it was more the party's (that is,
Dasgupta's) than Basu's decision. He paused for a brief moment, drew
a heavy breath and snapped, "We can do without English-speaking
people."

We have known the devastating effect of this 'anti-elitism'. The
cynical demolition of Presidency College as a centre of excellence
only symbolized the process. If the Naxalite violence of the late
Sixties and the early Seventies drove the best and the brightest out
of Bengal, the Dasgupta brand of anti-elitism made it impossible for
most of them to come back to the state in the subsequent years. The
government opened new schools and colleges in villages and small
towns. Education was said to have reached the masses. But teachers,
both in schools and in colleges, came to be used for party work as
never before. Loyalty to the CPI(M) became a prime consideration for
the appointment of teachers. Mediocrity and party loyalty together
made it impossible for better-quality people to work in this
suffocating atmosphere. It was a case of bad money driving away good
money.

The irony is that the CPI(M) itself gradually began to discard the
Dasgupta line. English was brought back to the primary classes in
stages. The duplicity of the party's 'anti-elitist' approach was
evident once again in its handling of the affairs of Presidency
College. On the one hand, the party delayed granting the college an
autonomous status. On the other, party leaders admitted their sons
and daughters to the college, hoping to gain an upward social
mobility for the next generation. In other words, they now sought
'elitism' for their children. It is another matter that the quality
of education at the college is now marginally better than in other
colleges. Party leaders now actually aim higher - some even send
their children abroad for higher studies.

At the national level, the party now has a Western-educated general
secretary in Karat and a number of 'English-speaking' members in the
politburo, such as Sitaram Yechuri and Brinda Karat. The problem is
that the party is now incapable of repairing the damage it has
inflicted on Bengal's education and politics.

Joshi would have loved the other signals of the CPI(M)'s change,
particularly the reformist zeal of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The chief
minister's transformation would have pleased him for another reason
as well. Bhattacharjee, like most other party leaders of his
generation in Bengal, has always been a PDG boy. Joshi would have
liked to see the PDG legacy being demolished by the latter's chosen
ones.

The ultimate defeat of the PDG line is, of course, signalled by the
CPI(M)'s support to a Congress-led government at the Centre. If Basu
had managed to persuade the party to join this government in 2004,
that would have been his ultimate victory against the long,
inner-party battle against Dasgupta. I have no doubt that he would be
happy with his party's rehabilitation of Joshi because it means that
PDG is finally dead.

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