Indian Scene

In Memonry of Comrade Souren Bose
K.N. Ramachandran

It was on the 17th August night in 1998 comrade Souren Bose left us following a massive heart attack at Mumbai. He had gone to Mumbai for a seminar on rebuilding the Marxist-Leninist movement and to attend a study class of Party activists. As comrade Sanjay Shinghvi and other comrades with him in the flat he was staying stated, he was happy about the programmes and had talked about the need to intensify the offensive in the ideological field and to carry forward Party re-organisation. He had to leave next day morning when his death happened. He lived the life of a revolutionary till his last day, inspiring the comrades through his activities.
When the inner-party struggle started developing within the CPI(M) following its 7th Congress in 1964 under the leadership of com. Charu Majumdar in West Bengal, especially in Darjeeling district committee, along with coms. Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal and others com. Souren Bose was also in the forefront as a district committee member. He played a significant role with others in mobilising the landless-poor peasants of Naxalbari area for the great uprising of 1967. In organising Naxalbari Krishak Sangram Sahayak Samiti and later in the formation of All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries also his role was significant. Wanted by the police he had gone underground. Following 1968 Burdwan Plenum when the neo-revisionist line of CPI(M) was fully exposed in its approach to Great Debate against Soviet revisionism and through the functioning of the United Front government in West Bengal which refused to go for revolutionary land reforms and suppressed Naxalbari uprising, along with comrades Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal, Sushital Roychoudhary and a large number of CPI(M) members he had left CPI(M) paving the way for formation of the AICCCR.
In the ideological struggle that took place within it for the formation of the CPI(ML), he was with com. CM and when it was formed on 22nd April 1969 he was among its front ranking comrades. When the 8th Party Congress took place in 1970 he was elected to the polit bureau of the Central Committee. Soon he was assigned with the responsibility of going to China for a discussion with the CPC along with two other comrades. Though both of them could not reach China, he reached and held detailed discussions with leading comrades like Chou-Enlai and Kang Sheng and briefly could meet Mao Tsetung before his departure. He succeeded to return safely and give the report of his discussions to com. Charu Majumdar. But soon he was arrested. He was charged with com. Kanu Sanyal and others in the Parvathipuram Conspiracy case and spend long years in Visakhapatanam and other jails till 1978 when he was released after the CPI(M)-led ministry came to power following the revocation of emergency rule.
After his arrest in 1971, in the jail he also became critical of com. CM for not convening the CC and presenting the CPC suggestions for discussion. He also signed the letter of the six leading comrades from jail calling for a rectification of mistakes including the pursuit of annihilation line. In spite of these criticisms, unlike com. Kanu Sanyal, he did not denounce com. CM or the formation of the CPI(ML). So when he came out of the jail he did not join hands with all those who denounced com. CM alone for the severe setbacks suffered by the movement and the formation of CPI(ML). At the same time, even while maintaining comradely relations with all the CPI(ML) groups and other Communist Revolutionary organisations, he did not join any of them. He remained active in the Prisoners’ Release Committee and in the struggle for democratic rights. After 1990 for 4-5 years he became the president of IFTU, the trade union front led by CPI(ML) New Democracy, but did not join ND. He was in search of an ideological-political line overcoming the weaknesses of the line adopted by the CPI(ML) in its 1970 Congress.
It was in 1994 I could meet com. Souren Bose for the first time in his DumDum house where he was staying with a sister and her son. His wife had died earlier and he had no children. Thereafter I became a regular visitor to his house. Though I was in West Bengal from 1968-’72 working in Farakka Barrage Project and was a firm supporter of the communist revolutionary forces, I was not directly involved in the movement. I was only assisting it as a supporter. By 1972 immediately after Charu Majumdar’s martyrdom when I took the decision to resign the job and to become a full time activist of the CPI(ML) going back to Kerala, most of the senior comrades were either killed by the state forces or were in jail. So I could not meet any of them.
Similarly after the emergency was withdrawn when from Kerala committee of the CPI(ML) we decidsed to meet the senior comrades who had come out of jail, our line that relations should be established only with those forces and individuals who have denounced the capitalist roaders in China who had usurped power there and their Theory of Three Worlds and who have a positive approach to ‘Charu Majumdar’s revolutionary line’ created obstacles for meeting and holding discussions with many of the comrades who had come out of jail, but had different approaches to Party reorganisation. Besides, the entry of com. SA Rawoof, a veteran comrade from AP with die-hard sectarian positions to CRC, CPI(ML) and he continuing in CPI(ML) Red Flag later till 1998 played the major role of a dampener in taking a creative approach to Party reorganisation even after 1982 Conference initiated an in-depth discussion on the concrete situation at international and national level. Com. Rawoof and those pursuing his line had created obstacles to contact comrades like Souren Bose whom they had dubbed as revisionist.
My first meeting with com. Souren Bose itself was very positive. I found him entirely different from com. Rawoof. He was ready to come out with full details of his experience in 1960s and 1970s in a self-critical manner. Though he was critical of the line pursued under the leadership of com. CM, he did not put CM entirely responsible for it as some others were doing. Similarly he upheld formation of CPI(ML) as a historic step forward. By that time he had already come to the understanding that the Dengists had degenerated China to capitalist path and it is no more a socialist country. Though he had attended a few programmes organised by some of his close friends who were working in NGOs or NGO-like organisations, he was very much critical of them. Similarly though he had participated in a programme organised by Narmada Bachao Andolan, he was critical of the stand taken by Medha Patkar and criticised it as an NGO stand which ultimately serve the ruling system.
In the course of discussion, the CPI(ML) Red Flag’s understanding about the dissolution of the Comintern, the need to reorganise the Comintern, the erroneous stand of obliterating the contradiction between imperialism and socialism from among the fundamental contradictions at international level, the transformation of imperialist plunder from colonial to neo-colonial forms in the post-World War II period, the counter-revolutionary nature of the ‘de-colonisation’ or transfer of power to imperialist dalals in the colonial countries and the changes that took place in India after 1947 under neo-colonisation were taken up and by 1996 com. Souren Bose almost came to agreement with the ‘Red Flag’ line. He agreed to become part of the CPI(ML) Red Flag and a West Bengal state organising committee was formed under his leadership. In 1996 he participated in a three-day discussion in Kerala on the changes that had taken place in the agrarian sector following the imperialist dictated ‘land reforms from above’ including land ceiling acts and the Green Revolution. Based on this discussion an approach paper for building a revolutionary agrarian movement was drafted with his participation. In drafting the international document adopted by the Fourth All India Conference (republished in Vol. 2 of The Marxist-Leninist) of CPI(ML) Red Flag in 1997 also he played an important role.
In the 1997 Fourth All India Conference process com. Souren Bose actively participated. The sectarian line put forward by com. Rawoof on all questions were overwhelmingly defeated. Com. Souren Bose was elected to the new Central Committee and its Central Executive Committee. In spite of his advanced age, he started actively participating in the ideological-political offensive and organisational activities. He visited many states as a part of it. He addressed a well attended seminar in JNU City Centre at Delhi in 1998 beginning on Post-War Changes in Imperialist Plunder and Marxist-Leninist Approach to Them also. It was in the course of these activities he had gone to Mumbai and he departed creating a big loss to the revolutionary movement.
The difference between com. Souren Bose and most of the those veterans of 1960s who have left us or who are still living is that unlike them when he found the semi-feudal, semi-colonial/protracted people’s war frame of the Chinese path mechanically copied by the CPI(ML) in 1969 under the influence of the left sectarian line which had come to dominance in the CPC during its 9th Congress in the name of Mao including the new era concept is contrary to the concrete conditions at international and national level, he had no hesitation to reject them and join CPI(ML) Red Flag which was trying to develop the Party Programme, Strategy and Tactical line based on the new understanding about imperialist plunder. He used to say that within the jail and after coming out of it he had started questioning the line pursued by CPI(ML) from its formative period. He was trying hard to arrive at a new perspective of Marxism-Leninism according to present conditions. “Since I have got it now I shall work with full spirit”.
It is a matter of great significance that unlike many others he did not surrender himself as a prisoner of the old frame of thinking mechanically copied as Chinese path which caused havoc to the movement. It is a great misfortune that he could not play a leading role in developing the Marxist-Leninist understanding and practice for long. The whole Party should observe August 17 as comrade Souren Bose Day taking up programs to highlight the ideological-political line put forward by the 2009 All India Special Conference of CPI(ML) through the four basic documents.