Electoral Imperatives in the Indian Communist Party Split

Abstract

At the moment, India, with two Congress Parties, two Jana Sanghs, two Socialist Parties, two D.M.K.s, two Akali Dals and two Communist Parties (the third Communist Party—the C.P.M.L.—has been declared illegal after the present emergency), presents a picture with ‘splitism’ as the common denominator. The split in the Communist Party of India occurred at a time when the Communist movement all over the world was in disarray, showing polycentric trends on account of Sino-Soviet polemics. In addition to this, the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 also put serious strain on the party unity. Therefore, most of the studies that were undertaken on the C.P.I, split ascribed it either to the Sino-Soviet schism or to the Sino-Indian border war, or to both. However, an analysis of the authoritative pronouncements of two factions and an examination of their political resolutions indicate sharp differences on such issues as the character of the Congress Party, the nature of its government and the progressive and reactionary contents of its economic, home and foreign policy. The rightsts in the C.P.I, considered the national bourgeoisie Congress Party and its government as a progressive force and consequently advocated a policy of ‘Unity’ with it, in its fight against the parties of the Right reaction, such as the Jana Sangh, the Swatantra and the two variants of the Socialist Party.