Left re-examines its view on the contribution of the Father of the Nation

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) marked Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary by inaugurating a school in the national capital to train its cadres, and admitting that it has reexamined its view on the contribution of the Father of the Nation.

CPI (M) chief Sitaram Yechury, along with other party leaders, inaugurated the Surjeet Bhavan, named after late Harkishan Singh Surjeet, by paying tributes to a portrait of Surjeet as also that of Gandhi in the auditorium of the newly constructed building.

In an article in the latest edition of party mouthpiece Peoples Democracy to be published later this week, Yechury has said all that Gandhi stood for as the leader of India’s freedom struggle is now coming under assault, including his anti-imperialism, upholding secularism; his struggles against untouchability and for social justice.

“Notwithstanding the political differences between Communists and Mahatma, during the ups and downs of the freedom struggle, his adherence to the above principles is both acknowledged and noted,” Yechury has said.

“Whatever many say about his espousing khadi and the spinning wheel (charkha) as being 'anti-modern’, the fact remains that economic self-reliance and the protection of our economic sovereignty in this age of neo-liberalisation; and, the Modi government’s aggressive pursuit of the same, remains an important aspect,” Yechury has written.

The CPI (M) chief has said observing Gandhi’s birth anniversary must be based on re-doubling the resolve to safeguard India’s constitutional order and the principles Mahatma Gandhi stood for.

Yechury, however, noted that Gandhi’s ability to rouse the masses into action and at the same time to check their militancy, which could turn against their exploiters, eminently suited the emerging ruling classes of independent India in establishing their class rule.

“However, once their class rule was established and India became independent, the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes found Gandhism and his methods as a hindrance. They no longer required Gandhiji to control the militancy of the masses; they now had the police and the army,” Yechury has said.

Former party chief Prakash Karat, writing in the publication, has said that Gandhi, if he was alive today, would have sat on an indefinite hunger strike against mob lynchings.

Karat said Gandhi supported the need for a secular state in India and was of the view that religion and state should be separate. “Significantly, he was against the proposed state funding for the renovation of the Somnath Temple in Gujarat.”

The former CPI (M) chief said the Left had a radical critique of Gandhism, but at the same time “acknowledged his stature as the unparalleled leader of the national movement and appreciated his idealism, patriotism and courage.”

Karat has said the assassins of Gandhi and the ideology they followed –Hindutva - are seeking to appropriate him. “While putting Gandhi on a pedestal, the BJP-RSS does so after stripping Gandhi off all the secular-democratic values that he possessed,” Karat has written, adding that these forces stayed away from the freedom struggle led by Gandhi and reviled him for being pro-Muslim.

“Not only Gandhiji, but the legacy of the glorious national movement for independence and the values it stood for needs to be protected and carried forward. This can only be done by resolutely combating the RSS-BJP ideology and politics,” Karat has written.