CPM’s Kozhikode Congress cuts the Last Thread Connecting it to Tantriki Sruti’s Tradition

Com Sharad Patil

While terminating its 20th Congress at Kozhikode in Kerala the Marxist Communist Party (CPM) excluded V.S. Achuthanandan from its PB, the only member of the first generation of Kerala Communists headed by E.M.S. Namboodiripad. VS was the CM upto the recent Assembly elections. The State Secretary, Pinarayi Vijayan, had persuaded the PB when it met at Thiruvananthapuram not to field VS in the Assembly elections. But the people demonstrated and forced the PB to field VS in the Assembly elections. Had Vijayan succeeded in persuading the PB, Kerala would have shared the same fate as West Bengal. But Vijayan will not stop in his anti-VS activities and will not rest until he removes VS from the post of the Opposition leader. He is in reality a don. Communist politics has deteriorated to that level. VS is reported to belong to the Ezhava caste. The great social reform role that Jotiba Phule of the Mali caste has played in Maharashtra, the same role was played by Narayan Guru of the Ezhava caste in Kerala. Had EMS related ‘Emperor’ Bali not to the Western myth of primitive communism, but to the matriarchal-gynocratical reality of Kerala, it would have given a revolutionary turn to Kerala’s and Indian history. Bali’s Onam is still the greatest festival of Kerala. In the Karna-parva of Mahabharata the historical quarrel that took place between the patriarchal Karna and his charioteer matriarchal Salya has still not been properly explained. In running down the equalitarian matriarchal and gynocratical nations of the time as ‘a-brahma’ (anti-brahmanical) Karna pointedly mentions Kerala as a-brahma. In his fulsome praise of the inequalitarian kingdoms he calls them ‘brahma’ (brahmanical). Kerala’s non-brahmanical movement was inspired by this great ancient a-brahma struggle that has come down to modern times in an unbroken equalitarian current and its paper Deshabhimani has been taken over by the communist movement. Though the CPM, and for that matter the communist movement, still considers caste struggle to be disruptionist, in its present resolution it promises to abolish the caste system to achieve socialism (p. 37), against which Ambedkar had warned in his Annihilation of Caste (1936). And the caste system even at that too late a period cannot be abolished without (anti-) caste struggle! Timely synthesis of caste and class struggles is unavoidable. But the Kozhikode Congress has cut down the last thread which would have helped achieve this by removing VS from the PB.

Omniscience of Marxism-Leninism

MY basis of this paper is ‘Draft Resolution on Some Ideological Issues’ of the Kozhikode Congress. As usual it has given more space to international issues, avowing therein that the omniscience of Marxism-Leninism has remained intact. (p. 3) In fact Stalin had claimed in his Lectures on Leninism that Marx’s prediction that the contradictions in capitalism would culminate in capitalism’s simultaneous collapse all over the world and usher in socialism has been outdated hence socialism would have to be built first in Russia. Marx did not strive for Enlightenment of socialism and neither did he solve the philosophical problem of socialist transformation of mind. With this background the Lenin-Stalinist Bolshevik leadership accomplished the proletariat-led bourgeois democratic revolution with the implicit understanding that socialism would come automatically after the socialisation of the means of production.

After teaching Indology for some years in the Leningrad University along with Sterbatsky, Rahul Sankrityayana came to India in 1946. He used to call the Soviet Union: ‘deva-bhumi’ (gods’ land). Communist organs also introduced him with the words: ‘Tell and fair like Indian gods’. In the same year the ‘All India Hindi Sahitya Sammelan’ was held at Mumbai in Marine Lines. It honoured him by electing him as its President. In his speech he appealed that Muslims should come into the mainstream. The next day the dailies carried the banner headline: ‘Rahul Sankrityayana expelled from the CPI!’ Rahulji could not return to the deva-bhumi, and the land of the Aryan gods tried to boycott him. Stalin had declared in his speech on Leninism that proletarian democracy had annihilated bourgeois democracy and that proletarian democracy was the highest from of democracy. Stalin had demonstrated the indefinability of this democracy by killing top Bolshevik leaders like Bukharin etc. by firing squads.

Thus operated this highest indefinable prole-tarian democracy dripping from head to feet with blood. It originated in Lenin’s definition of class struggle as visualised by the bourgeoisie and proletariat in which the latter accepted it on condition that it culminated in proletarian dictatorship. The governance of the Soviet Union and East European countries was conducted actually not by their Bolshevik or Communist Parties but by gangs headed by persons like Stalin. When these socalled socialist governments collapsed, it was realised that it was not due to foreign counterrevolution but by their own bankruptcy.

Before his martyrdom in the antifascist Spanish Civil War, Christopher Caudwell had proposed that Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the mind’s duality be included in Marxist philosophy in order to enrich it. But this fundamental change in the Marxist unilinear epistemology would have changed its nomenclature in full. Hence, after Caudwell’s death he was declared anti-Marxist and the Soviet Union raised the physio-logist Ivan Pavlov as an alternative to Freud. The Soviet Union resorted to the same anti-science dogmatism in genetics. Due to lack of democracy this dogmatism spread in all fields of knowledge and aesthetics. The understanding of socialist countries that the intensification of contradictions in capitalism would inevitably lead to its ultimate doom prevented the leaders of the socialist countries from seeking higher development of the Marxist philosophy or alternative new philosophy. The four communist-ruled countries of China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba have been unable to build socialism and hence they are suppressing the irrepressible demand for democracy.

In China, 30 Tibetan bhikshus have self-immolated themselves and discontent in the rest of China is growing. The clash of Marx-Lenin-Mao-Dengism with Dignagism might prove fruitful ultimately!

Inseparability of Caste-annihilation and Socialism

ALL the great acharyas of Mahayana were pilgrims of Andhra’s Sri-Saila, well known in those days as ‘Stri-rajya’ (gynocracy), while, on the other hand, they were struggling to create the philosophy and logic of caste-annihilation on Buddha’s commandment. The inseparability of caste-annihilation and gynocratic socialism had come to the fore from that period itself. The evidence for it is available even from the brahmanical side. The semi-Tantrika poet, Bhavabhuti (+7000), shows in his drama Uttara-Rama-Charita that when the beheaded Sudra Sambuka appears before Rama in divine form, Rama orders him to make his eternal abode in the glorious gynocratic (vai-raj) worlds which are ever full of joy, happiness and merit— “Yatra anandas cha, modas cha, yatra punyas cha sampadah/ Vai-raja nama te lokas taijasahsantu te dhruvah.”

It only remained to metamorphose Sambuka into caste-annihilation and Vai-raj into Indian socialism. But among Indian Communists nobody —except Dange and Debiprosad Chattopadhyay —cared to study Indian history and literature in the original and even on their necks sat unilinear class Marxism. They were also not free from the dogma of varga-brahma, according to which if you know class-brahma you automatically know other institutions of exploitation and administration like varna, jati, etc. Accoring to the Kozhikode resolution the essence of Marxism can be summarised in ‘concrete analysis of concrete conditions’. (p. 39) Though the present Indian society is caste-class, the CPM (and for that matter all traditional Marxists) does not consider caste as concrete and hence excludes it from ‘concrete analysis’. In their historical materialist ‘analysis’ varna also is not concrete and hence they impose on it class! Intensifying pressure of the caste system has forced the resolution to place the task of abolition of the caste system in ‘Socialism in Indian Conditions’. (p. 37) Ambedkar, the greatest leader of the social proletariat, warns against this escapism in his Annihilation of Caste in 1936 itself—

‘…He (communist/socialist) will be compelled to take account of caste after the (socialist) revolution if he does not take account of it before the revolution… You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform unless you kill this monster.’

The Kozhikode resolution’s form of democratic revolution is People’s Democratic Revolution. It being a class revolution, it cannot admit non-class caste-abolishing revolution. Socialist revolution being the most sacred classist revolution according to the resolution, it will not tarnish its class sanctity by admitting the caste-abolishing revolution. And the CPM’s longest serving CM Jyoti Basu had declared before his death, “Socialism is not practicable!”

Dignosis of Society and State by ML

THE resolution repeatedly affirms that the Indian state is bourgeois-landlord, which means according to class methodology it is semifeudal. In the Naxalites’ opinion, the globalisation of (neo-) imperialism in the context of the domi-nation of finance capital the Indian capitalist class has become compradore. Differing from it the resolution says that the economic policies of the Indian bourgeoisie being in consonance with the interests of the (neo-) imperialism it is neo-liberal. Though after World War II imperialism has been transformed into neo-imperialism, the resolution never uses the term, because it enables the resolution to pursue its non-revolutionary parliamentary path.

The CPM’s Peoples Democratic Revolution and the CPI’s National Democratic Revolution were not formulated after the study of Indian society like Mao’s New Democratic Revolution which was based on the study of Chinese society. No Communist leader has studied the present caste-class Indian society historically. The ML philosophy, in which Leninism is not a philosophy at all, considers such study unnecessary. The border armed clash between India and China in 1962 produced the first split in the Indian Communist Party and both the parties adopted their forms of democratic revolutions from Eastern Europe. After 1990 those ‘socialist’ countries from whom the CPM and CPI had borrowed their forms of revolutions turned capitalist; but the CPM and CPI continue to cling to their borrowed revolutions.

Though the Nehru Cabinet invited Ambedkar to frame the Constitution after the death of Gandhi, it is Vedantist like Gandhi. Vedanta is the philosophical religion of the caste system as the Srauta-Smarta is its penal religion. Any government in power—may it be secular or non-secular—has to remain subject to the caste system. That is why the Indian state is not neo-liberal but, as affirmed by Phuley, casteist semifeudal.

Though the Buddhist dhamma was not of the laity, the gahapati-seethi capitalists and craftsmen, who were then not castes and being organised in supra-caste sreni, followed the trinity: ‘Svatantrya, Samata and Metta’ of the monastic Samgha. After Harsh (+600) all kings were brahmanical and the Samgha was driven out of India. Today’s Bania caste has become compradore because of its casteism, long before the economic causes. In his great work on logic ‘Pramana-vartika’, bhikshu Dharmakirti (+700) declares that accepting the authority of Veda, supposing the creator of the world, believing that holy dip gives religious merit, parading pride in casteism and torturing the body for eradicating sin are the five signs of utter stupidity—

‘Veda-pramanyam, kasyachit kartivadah, snane dharmeccha, jativada-avalepah/ Santaparah papa-hanaya cheti dhvasta-prajnane panchalingani jadye.’ In the pre-British period Brahmanas were the highest jati and a ruling or sub-ruling caste. In the post-independence period they have become a caste-class like all other caste-communities, and along with the Bania capitalist caste-class have become rulers.

In the pre-British period Mirasdar peasant castes were the ruling or sub-ruling castes along with the Brahmana caste. In the post-independence period the dominating peasant caste-class—except in West Bengal and Gujarat—have become rulers. As the power of the Bania caste-class consists in its caste as well as capital, the power of the dominating peasant caste-classes and upper caste-classes consists in their castes as well as in the vast lands they own—not less than 40 per cent of the cultivated land. The institution of class was brought in India for the first time by the British capitalist imperialism. But it conducted census upto 1931 caste-communitywise. It was started classwise by the Nehru Government. This was a tactic of safe-guarding the caste system. Census should be conducted caste-classwise.

That is why the present Indian state is not the classist bourgeois-landlord, but of the caste-classes of the three caste-collectives. Its merely class understanding by the people in the nationalist revolutions will never rouse the masses for total revolutionary uprising.

Philosophical Metamorphosis

THE problematique is of making the caste-ending revolution which is totally different from that of the class system. I had recognised this in Marx’s death centenary year of 1983. The caste feudal monarchies of Magadha, Kosala and Ujjayini were born in Buddha’s lifetime. The rest of the advanced India was covered by nonmonarchical (arajaka) samgha-gana states. Buddha accomplished his varna-dasa-ending revolution in the caste feudal states; but performed his nirvana in the sala sacred grove (gamak-khetta) of the Kosinaraka Mallas. He had told Ananda that his dhamma (philosophy) would last for five hundred years. He hinted that the caste-ending revolution would require a new philosophy.

Though the Tripitakas call Sakya, etc. samgh-gana jatis, the varna-dasa-system-ending revolution led by Buddha had brought to a close the epoch of samgha-ganas. The samgha-gana epoch was based on blood kinship (sa-lohita) right from the matriarchy-gynocracy age. The jati epoch is also based on an imaginary relationship, asserts the Paninian grammar by quoting as evidence the term ‘jata-bhai’!

The chatur-varnya rajaka (monarchical) gana states and the two varna samgha-gana states were governed respectively by sabha-parishad and sabha. The feudal jati society, after the extinction of sreni (+300), has been administered by six characteristics: 1) heredity of caste, 2) heredity of occupation, 3) caste restriction on food, 4) caste localities, mainly between sa-varna and a-varna, 5) caste panchayat and 6) caste restriction on marriage. In spite of all changes in these characteristics, caste marriage continues and it reproduces the caste system. The murder of her pregnant daughter who had married a low caste Sikh youth by Jagir Kaur, the ex-president of the SGPC, ‘Honour killing’ by the Khap (panchayat) of the Jats, murder of their daughters who tried to marry alien caste youths by their Maratha and Dhangar fathers in Maharashtra etc. show that the reproduction of the caste system by caste marriages cannot be stopped by Phuley’s social reform method. It can be stopped only by enacting a punishable caste abolitionary act accompanied by unprecedented Enlightenment and Land Revolution comprising redistribution of above-ceiling surplus land among the landless and landpoor SCs, STs and OBCs.

This Enlightenment will take decisive effect only when made by the new aesthetics of Socialist Sauntrantikism. The only aesthetics on the proletarian side was the Soviet Union’s Socialist Realism; but it disappeared even before the disintegration of the SU. Due to the persistence of the caste system India has not been able to transcend its Alankaras-asastra. In the West aesthetics could struggle up only because their bourgeois democratic revolutions abolished the gulf between aristocratic writers and labouring artists. Buddha’s varna-slavery-abolishing revolution brought the brahmanical writers and Sudra craftsmen-artists on equal social plane and the sreni united them econo-mically, which enabled Dignaga to erect the first aesthetics in the world. Kalidasa admits the defeat of his poetics by Dignaga’s aesthetics in his Megha-duta-Dignaganam pathi pariharan sthula-hasta-avalepan.’

Though the Brahmana writers continued to cling to the feudal poetics and royal courts, Buddhist writers like Asvaghasha, Sudraka and Harsha composed anti-feudal and anti-caste works.

On Buddha’s commandment Mahayana’s bhiksha philosophers struggled to create caste-ending philosophies and logic. Their philosophies and logic reached their climax in the Dignage school. Dignaga’s philosophy of Sautrantika Vijnanavada was based on the epistemology of the duality of mind, that is, sa-vikalpaka (consciousness) and nir-vikalpaka (subconscious). He developed Buddha’s dialectics of a-nityata-vada to its ultimate possible extent—kshanikavada. He defined every phenomenon as sva-lakshana (unique), which put an end to the possibility of similarity being questioned to identity. Dharma-kirti took Dignaga’s reform in formal logic to its ultimate extent, that is, to two-membered syllogism; but his researches into the subcons-cious were restricted by the individual mind. He could not connect the duality of the individual mind with the social mind. I discovered that they unity and struggle of the two constituted Dialectical Logic. The title does not convey the full sense. Therefore I named the new Logic: Janiva-Neniva-anveshi Tarka-sastra.

Socialist change of mind depended in this Dialectical Logic. In its absence European socialism collapsed and the four Communist-led countries stand perplexed in the task of the socialist transformation. With the help of this dialectical logic the new aesthetics of Socialist Sautrantikism will be able to accomplish the caste-ending Enlightenment.

Nevertheless, unless Enlightenment and caste-abolition is not accompanied by Land-redistributionary Revolution, the anti-caste-feudal revolution with not be fulfilled. For the rulers of the caste system govern it on the strength of owning 40 per cent of the above-ceiling surplus land. Its redistribution among the landless and landpoor SCs, STs and OBCs can be made only by a national uprising. These land-hungry SC, ST and OBC masses will have to take the lead in intercaste marriages. The caste-ending law will then implement the remaining tasks of the revolution.

The Indian revolution is made up of two revolutions: caste-annihilation and land-redistribution. The former is social and the latter economic, and their execution simulta-neous. That is why the borrowed and exclusively class forms of revolutions of the CPM, CPI and Maoists will never be able to accomplish this double-tasked Indian revolution. Marxism is in world crisis and the ecological crisis intensifies it. It can solve the Indian crisis only by synthesising it with Dignagism, out of which has emerged the pure and applied philosophies of Sautrantika Marxism and Multilinear Historical Materialism, the aesthetics of Socialist Sautran-tikism and the Logic of Janiva-Neniva-anveshi Tarkasastra.

The author is the General Secretary, Satyashodhak Communist Party, Dhule (Maharashtra)

Electoral Results Unlearnt

[The following article had reached us quite sometime back but could not be used earlier due to unavoidable reasons. —Editor]


The present plight of the communist and Dalit movements brings to mind a Mahabharatan myth. Brhadratha, the king of the rajaka Magadha state, was sonless. He got a fertility fruit from a sage, which he gave to both of his queens. They delivered the halves of an infant. Furiously they were thrown on a dung heap. The mother-goddess Jara saw it and joined them. And Jara-samgha came to life.

With British rule Indian society became a caste-class (jati-varga) society instead of the former caste society. In its Marxist unilinearism the communist movement still adheres to its maxim ‘caste struggle divides class unity’, while the Ambedkarean Dalit movement sticks to its anti-brahmanical caste movement. Both the halves have lost their revolutionary goals. The Naxalites are implementing their New Demo-cratic Revolution among the forested adivasis. Ramdas Athavle’s Republican Party has united with the casteist Shiv Sena and BJP. And Mayawati has changed her Bahujan Party to the brahmanical Sarva Jana Party.

The Pune session of All India Brahmana Conference again passed a resolution demanding abrogation of the Tenancy Act. The Jat gentry persist in ‘honour killing’ of the couples who marry in contravention of their customary gotra law. Manu’s statue in the Jaipur High Court waits for the final triumph of the brahmanical counter-revolution.

Marxism Panacea
Communist Parties the world over persist in treating the Marxist philosophy as a panacea even after the collapse of European socialism. All articles dealing with the LF’s and LDF’s defeat in West Bengal and Kerala respectively refuse to take into account that the present Indian society is caste-class since the advent of British rule and hence their unilinear, class understanding of the Indian society offers no solution.
Mao first studied the class structure of his home province and on its basis formed the concept of the New Democratic Revolution. No Indian Communist leader has studied the caste- class structure of the Indian society in order to form the concept of the Indian Bourgeois Democratic Revolution. Only E.M.S. Namboo-diripad studied his home State, but that too from the class point of view. The same is the case with R.P. Dutt and Soviet scholars. The ‘Quit India’ national uprising threw up the ‘Patti Sarkar’ (parallel government) in the undivided Satara district led by Nana Patil, who was a product of the non-brahman movement which had merged with the National Congress in the forties. After independence Patil became a Communist, relinquishing his anti-caste heritage. Te-bhaga (three shares to the tenant and one of the feudal landlord) in the undivided Bengal and Telangana in the feudal Hyderabad state broke out on the threshold of independence. A participant in the former reminisces in Social Scientist that in contrast to the bhadralok the SC and ST tenants were most self-sacrificing. P. Sundarayya’s classic on Telangana declares that the great (class) struggle abolished untouchability. He self-criticised by saying that had the CPI not committed the blunder of opposing ‘Quit India’ by ‘People’s War’, the national and class anti-feudal struggles would have merged into a revolutionary conflagration.

The India-China conflict split the CPI into the CPI and CPI-M, the former declaring its form of revolution to be a National Democratic one and the latter a People’s Democratic one. Lack of historical study of the caste-class society of India compelled both the parties to borrow their forms from Europe. The same unilinear mistake was continued by the Naxalites, who broke from the CP-M in the concluding part of the sixties and borrowed from the CPC its New Democratic Revolution.

Nepal’s Maoist Party has stopped after abolishing monarchy and it is looking perplexed at the caste-class Hindu state. Indian Maoists are implementing their New Democratic Revolution among the forested Adivasis. Though the Adivasis are Ati-sudras, according to the Dharmasastra, they were not considered to be the Social Proletariat by Ambedkar. ‘Iron Lady’ Sharmila Chanu’s brother told me two years back in Pune: “We, adivasis are not concerned with the caste system!” That confirmed my lifelong experience of movement among the Adivasis.

Though the non-brahman movement’s legacy and implementation of the OBCs’ reservation has saved the LDF from the LF’s devastation in West Bengal, the caste system, which has brought Christianity and Islam on their knees, stays put. Ambedkar had warned that untouchability cannot be ended by legal means. Only abolition of the caste system can bring it to an end. After a top Dalit bureaucrat retired on the eve of the Assembly elections in Kerala, his cabin, car and residence were purified by his staff with cow urine! About 80,000 acres of above-ceiling surplus land still remain to be redistributed in Kerala; it may be more.

Gangsterism and Revolutionary Crisis
Murder Incorporated, written by the Chief Judicial Officer of the USA, tells us that gangsterism was imported from Italy by corporate capital to counteract trade unionism. The Mafiosi functioned in a feudal way. Buddha represented the revolutionary outcome of the varna slave system of the oligarchic samgha-ganas, while the dacoit (likhitaka) Angulimala was its negative outcome. Angulimala turned a bhikkhu which means that the varna slave system was in a revolutionary crisis.

Marx’s conclusion that the British capitalist imperialism made the first and only revolution in Indian history is wrong. The British regime tried to perpetuate the age-old caste system. It was Buddha who made the greatest revolution in Indian history by abolishing the varna slave system.

Not only that. In pursuance of the Master’s commandment that the new jati system would be abolished by a new philosophy, galaxies of philosophies were generated by the Mahayana, the greatest of which was the Dignagean School. Its philosophy of Sautrantika Vijnanavada produced the anti-caste logic which verged on the dialectical logic and a-brahmani aesthetics with which Dignaga defeated Kalidasa in a public debate. His epistemology was made up of the dualism of consciousness (sa-vikalpaka) and subconscious (nir-vikalpaka) and he defined that every phenomenon is unique (sva-lakshana). He developed Buddha’s dialectics of general imper-manence, ‘Sabbam aniccam’, to unconditional momentariness: ‘Yasmin eva lshane utpad-yate, tasmin eva kshane vinasyati’, and thus laid the philoso-phical foundation of modern software.

The Dignagean School has thus laid the Enlightenmental foundation of the Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution. In spite of his profound humanism, Buddha was patriarchal. The Mahayana acharyas were pilgrims of the Stri-rajya (gynocracy) of Shri-shaila. The Maha-vihara of Nalanda began its studies each day after worshipping the statue of Hariti Devi installed in its great gate. As earth mother she was the deification of a queen of some gynocracy in the tradition of Rashtri-devi Nirrti of the Indus civilisation, on the etymology of whose name the public duel between grammarians Gargya and Sakatayana was fought. Utopian Socialism was sung by the Sunyavadin bhikshu, Santideva (+700), of Saurashtra.

This enlightenment has been neglected by the Ambedkarist Dalit movement and literature as well as the communist movement, as a result of which the former has surrendered to the brah-manical political parties and literature while the latter has deteriorated to gangsterism. The CPM’s Kerala State Secretary, Pinarayi Vijayan, could not have isolated the CM, Achyuthanandan, to the extent that he could persuade the PB not to field VS in the Assembly elections without resorting to gangsterism. The Indian Express reported that a parallel economy rules the roost in Kerala due to which ‘supariwalla gangs’ can be hired for any criminal job. No less a person than D. Bandyopadhyay, the former Revenue Commissioner of West Bengal, in his lurid accounts in Mainstream reported the carnage carried out by the CPM gangs during the long- drawn-out rule of the LF. A leading Naxalite bearing the sir name of Bhattacharjee gave an interview to the Indian Express in which he proudly said that only Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could give away his 1000 acres to its cultivating tenants. West Bengal is the only State in India which is still ruled by Brahmanas and Kayasthas. In the rest of India gangsterism is employed by the elites of mirasdar or dominating peasant castes, who themselves gang up under brahmanical Central rule.

Indian capital is still compradore, not only because it is ‘dalal’, but because it itself is overwhelmingly Bania and hence it has ganged up with the brahmanical intelligentsia and the elites of the dominant peasant castes in the post-independence period. It is against demolishing the semi-feudal caste-class social structure and prefers to go with the G-20 led by the neo-imperialist G-8. Though the present gangsterism is generated by the caste-class establishment, the Dalit surrender to it and the Left gangsterism is the result of the Left’s inability to find its bearing in the new revolutionary crisis.

Revolutionary Theory and Revolutionary Philosophy
Lenin’s directive that ‘there can be no revolution without a revolutionary theory’ has helped China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea to make their bourgeois democratic revolutions verily because their societies were class ones. Their revolutions were successful because they were made in their ‘svakshana’ way and not like the Russian way. But India’s society is basically caste and hence its bourgeois democratic revolution can be made only by a new philosophy. Buddha had to make his varna-slavery abolishing revolution by the new philosophy of Pratitya-samutpada (Dialectical Realism) and he warned his Samgha that the new jati-feudalism would be abolished by a new Dhamma (philosophy). The Mahayana philosophers, beginning with Asvaghosha (+200), started the search for the appropriate caste-ending philosophy and the search ended with Dignaga’s Sautrantika Vijnanavada. I have dealt with the School’s contributions.

I have synthesised Dignaga’s philosophy with Marxism and through sublation arrived at Sautrantika Marxism. Dignaga’s ‘sva-lakshna’ overcomes Marxism’s unilinearism and homo-geneous mind’s epistemology by the dual mind’s epistemology of consciousness and subconscious. Vijnanavada is deleted and the dialectics of momentariness accepted. Unilinear historical materialism is changed into multilinear historical materialism. Primitive Communism is dropped and its place taken by matriarchy-gynocracy. Socialist Realism had already outlived itself and its place has to be taken by Socialist Sautran-tikism. Socialism could not be built without Dialectical Logic. My Vol. IV has formulated it.

The present Indian revolution can be charac-terised as Anti-neoimperialist Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution. Its economic aspect is redistribution of the above-ceiling surplus land amounting to 21 million hectares among the SCs, STs and landpoor OBCs. As the land is owned mainly by the elites of the dominant peasant castes, legislation of punishable Caste Annihilatory Act is assential; by this the following six characteristics of the caste system will be abolished—1) Cast is hereditary; 2) Caste occupation is hereditary; 3) Marriage within caste and subcaste; 4) Caste localities, main division between sa-varna and savarna; 5) Food within caste; and 6) Except capital crime all other cases decided by caste Panchayat. Marriage within caste has reproduced the caste system upto the present period. In spite of modifications by semi-capitalist development, the system stays put. In the pre-British period the Brahmana and the Mirasdar peasant castes were the ruling castes and during the Turkish period the Muslim Amirumraos became the main ruling community. In the post-independence period, the Brahmanical caste-class, the Bania capitalist caste-class and the elites of dominant peasant castes have become the ruling establishment. This dual caste-class aspect has so far been neglected by all Communist and Dalit parties and hence they have been unable to formulate the revolutionary pro-gramme of the annihilation of this caste-class society.

The above-ceiling surplus land of 21 million hectares of agricultural land is waiting for its redistribution among the landless and land-poor of the SCs, STs and OBCs since the Ceiling Act of 1960. But being owned by the elites of the upper castes and dominant peasant castes, no ruling party or parties dare undertake this agrarian revolution. The economic agrarian revolution and the social revolution of caste annihilation both being inseparable, this unique dual revolution can be accomplished only by the philosophy of Sautrantika Marxism.

Unique Revolutionary Enlightenment
After Dharmakirti (+700) the hardening of the caste system started, as a result of which Buddhism was driven out of India. The dark period pertaining to philosophy thenceforth extended to the emergence of the caste-class society and its revolutionary crisis. Hence the pressing need of hammering out the new philosophy, its applied philosophy and aesthetics and now the Dialectical Logic without which the new revolutionary Enlightenment cannot take shape.

Though the Dignaga School knew from their master, Vasubandhu, that the mind is dual and Dharmakirti developed formal logic to its ultimate extent, he researched the mind internally to find out the dialectical logic. The mind separates itself into the social world into their ‘Tantriki Sruti’ and ‘Vaidiki Sruti’ and with their social struggle starts its own developmental struggle of consciousness and subconscious. To trace this struggle upto the modern period and on its basis visualise the future desired development is the job of the Dialectical Logic, which I have named ‘Janiva-Nediva-anveshi Tarksastra’. Though Dialectical and Historical Materialism is monist, natural and social phenomena have to become dual in order to develop. This becomes clear in the first chapter ‘Commodity’ of Marx’s Capital. It is the greatest masterpiece of Dialectical Logic, though its actual realisation had to come long afterwards. I discovered it after completion of my Vol.IV: ‘Primitive Communism, Matriarchy-Gynocracy and Modern Socialism’. I was desperate and then it dawned. Had I not traced the struggle between Tantriki Sruti’s subconscious and Vaidiki Sruti’s consciousness upto date in my three volumes, I would not have discovered it.

The present-day Indian society is caste-class. Communists approached it from the economic class side and Ambedkar from the social jati side. Half-realisation does not lead to the revolutionary solution of the Whole, Enlighten-ment apart. Both Communists and Ambedkarites have totally ignored that 21 million hectares of above-ceiling surplus land remain to be redistributed since 1960 and both have turned their back on the Indian bourgeois democratic revolution. This land is being owned by the elites of the upper castes and dominant peasant castes who control the rural caste system and hence it cannot be acquired for redistribution without abolishing the caste system, non-realisation of which has led the Ambedkarites to abandon their social revolution. As a results the Dalit movement has surrendered to brahma-nism politically and culturally and the communist movement has deteriorated to gangsterism. Cadres of both movements will have to salvage their movements for the Anti-neoimperialist Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution.

The social proletariat is the leader of this revolution. Ambedkar was not far from correct when he warned that this revolution is more difficult than the class-ending revolution. For the allies of the social proletariat—the economic proletariat, the OBCs, the mass of dominating peasant castes, the adivasis and the middle caste-class—are still not supporters of this revolution. They have to be made its supporters by allround Enlightenment.

Due to the peculiarities of the varna-slavery-ending Buddhist revolution, full potentialities of the a-brahmani cultural revolution could not be unleashed. To it has now been added the suppressed potentialities of the caste-ending cultural revolution. The total pent-up cultural revolution can be guided by the aesthetics of Socialist Sautrantikism. Writers and artists of this unprecedented Cultural Revolution will turn the vacillating allies of the social proletariat into firm supporters of the caste-ending revolution.

Matriarchy and Gynocracy

       

  (Excerpts from Com. Sharad Patil's Primitive Communism, Matriarchy-Gynocracy and Modern Socialism. Chapter- Matriarchy & Gynocracy)

         Eurpean feudalism had decimated the primitives and tribals and hence Bachofen based his 'Matriarchy' on the study of ancient European literature. Morgan, as an advocate of the American primitives studied them for several decades, wrote     'Ancient Society'. Since then the term 'tribe' has been applied to all primitives. Indian adivasis, including those of the Himlyan adivasi states, are termed scheduled tribes. Ancient Indian literature, including Sanskrit grammar, has a special term for tribe: gana. All other non-gana primitives were called mrga (wild animal), vane-cara, ātavika, etc. It will be shown later that the term 'gana' originated with gynocracy. Morgan has described the Iroquois tribe in detail and after him by Engels. Though the fifty clans were matrilinear, their sachems (headmen) were males. Their basic unit was family. The clan (kula) and phratry (jnāti) councils were constituted by males and the tribal council also was made up of the fifty sachems.² Treating Greek and Roman history similarly Engels intended to show that mankind's history since the rise of gens has been of liberty, equality and fraternity and monarchy came through usurpation by military commanders.³ Hence, socialism would come automatically after socialisation of the means of production. That is why, he concluded his book triumphantly-

'... The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career contains the elements of self- destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knoweldge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes. (Morgan, Ancient Society, p- 552.)' ⁴

             The matrilinear origin of the gens all over the world, as will be shown in the overview of the papers presented in the '1st World Congress on Matriarchy' held at Luxemburg in 2005, came at a certain stage of the development of the means of production. Engels (and Marx) inspite of being cofounders of historical materialism, have deleted this basic factor in their subjective efforts to show the origin of primitive communism. It is the invention of food plants, mostly rice, by women that gave rise to gens everywhere in the world. Woman, due to her fertility, was equated to the Earth Mother, while the sky, due to its barrenness, was equated to the males. The primitives believed that agriculture could flourish only if it is cultivated by women and would perish if even touched by men. The primitives believed that every productive act would fructify only if it was accompanied by magical chants. Thus came into being agricultural magic, the mother of poetics, arts and sciences. The gens, their council, was constituted originaly only by women. Surveying all known accounts of the primitives of the world Frazer has established this in his monumental 'Golden Bough.' But being patrirchal he stopped at male 'kings' and did not go further.

            Engels restricted his research on Greek gens of the heroic period which ended their gynocratic epoch. That is why he concluded that kingship was usurpation.

       R. Briffault, in his IIIrd volume of 'The Mothers', assumes that mankind everywhere started with matriarchy, meaning rule of mothers and not women. He does not link it with agriculture and agricultural magic. The great British Marxist G. Thomson, who expanded his 'Aschylus and Athens' (1966) into multivolumed 'Studies in Ancient Greek Society', vacillates between traditional Marxism and gynocracy and hence leaves the relation between matriarchy and gynocracy undecided. The Luxemberg ‘World Congress on Matriarchy’ is named after matriarchy and hence the tie remains. 

            I have dwelt on the organic connection of matriarchy and gynocracy to show that gynocracy was not accidental and exceptional, but normal development of human society. Gynocracy's importance in the present context is not limited to its historical inevitability, but in the fact that the trinity of liberty, equality and democracy did not originate either in the patriacrchal tribal slave society or in the bourgecis republican society but in gynocracy, in which it was not formal but substantial. Tirbal society was based on blood kinship (sālohita). Capitalism has brought human society to extreme alienaton. Ties even in the nuclear family verge on alienation. Socialism will have to sublimate non-Kinship ties.  

Ref.:

1.      Stalin, J. ,Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1945,p.14.

2.      F.Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Moscow, 1968, pp. 83-98.

3.      Ibid., p.161.

4.      Ibid.,p.175.

5.      Ibid.,p.161.

L(D)F’s Irrevocable Tragedy in the Assembly Elections!

Com Sharad Patil
MAINSTREAM, VOL XLIX, NO 21, MAY 14, 2011

Unilinear Marxism is in world crisis. Jyoti Basu, the CPI-M’s longest serving Chief Minister of West Bengal, said before his death that ‘socialism is not practicable’. The Left (Democratic) Fronts of Kerala and West Bengal can no longer lay claim to the titles of Socialist or Communist. That is why irrevocable tragedies wait for both these Fronts in the coming Assembly elections. Disillusionment will seize their sincere cadres in the post-election period and they will strive to seek the cause or causes that have led to this catastrophe. 

The Causal Chain

DR PRADIP GOKHALE, the illustrious authority on the Buddhist Dignaga School, has reviewed my Vol. IV: ‘Primitive Communism, Matriarchy-Gynocracy and Modern Socialism’ in the fore-most Marathi monthly Navbharat. He admits in it that I have discovered Dialectical Logic (DL). Soviet scholars claimed to have discovered DL. But Marxism even today considers that the mind is homogeneous. Christopher Caudwell urged that Freud’s discovery of dual mind should be included in Marxism; but it was the dark age of Stalinism and after his death in the Spanish Civil War, Maurice Cornforth denounced Caudwell as anti-Marxist.

Dignaga’s (late 4th century) philosophy of Sautrantika Vijnana-vada was based on the epistemology of the dualism of the mind: sa-vikalpaka (consciousness) and nir-vikalpaka (subconscious). His great disciple Dharmakirti (7th century) took great strides in logic; but he could not reach DL, because his researches were limited within the confines of the mind and could not reach its projection into the two Srutis of Vaidiki and Tantriki, which later came to be known as the two currents of Brahmani and A-brahmani. The suppressed gynocratic (Vai-raj, Stri-rajya) current, with which originated the trinity of Sva-tantrya (Liberty), Samata (Equality) and Mitrata (Fraternity, Democracy), became the Subconscious of Indian history.

In the absence of DL, Formal Logic ruled the roost. Dialectics developed without its logic, and hence it was bound to be unilinear, class. Marxists or Communists in India hugged class, while the Ambedkarites remained votaries of caste. The representatives of the economic proletariat and social proletariat remained at loggerheads instead of uniting as the real revolutionary force of India. Both went on decaying and deterio-rating. The result is the predicted tragedy. Revolution and Reformism

GOKHALE thinks that the criteria of revolution and reformism I have presented respecting Buddha and Ambedkar upgrades Ambedkar also as a revolutionary and not as a reformist. All the revolutions that were accomplished beginning with the Russsian one to the post-World War II revolutions in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba, took place in class societies and were of bourgeois democratic type. Each of them required methodological uniqueness and Marxist philosophy permitted it. But the Indian anti-varna-slavery revolution that Buddha accom-plished, being a non-class one, required the new philosophy of Dialectical Realism (Pratitya-samutpada). After accomplishing it, Buddha declared in the Vasettha-sutra that the new jati society that took its place would require a new Dhamma (philosophy) to abolish it when its time would come. The Mahayana acharyas formulated caste-abolishing philosophies from Tathata-vada to Sautrantika Vijnana-vada and teaching at the Nalanda Mahavihara, lived as bhikkhu pilgrims of the Stri-rajya of Sri-saila. It was the unparalleled age of Enlightenment of the caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution. Though Ambedkar was a non-Sanskritist, he could have perused great works in English on this age and could have synthesised Sautrantika Vijnana-vada with Marxism. But instead he embraced the Neo-Buddhist religion, though Buddha had forbidden formulating a new religion. He has in addition fashioned a bourgeois Constitution to perpetuate the semifeudal caste system, in the mire of which his followers are wallowing. How can he be called a revolutionary after all this?

Buddha’s so-called reformism should be seen in the context of the revolutionary strategy of the varna-slavery abolishing Pancha-othamma. When Japanese imperialism invaded China, Mao halted the New Democratic revolutionary programme of abolishing landlordism in order to absorb the landlord class in the anti-imperialist front. It was a temporary tactics for strengthening the New Democratic Revolution. Buddha’s reformist programme for the oligarchies should be seen as a tactics in the varna-slavery abolishing revolutionary strategy.

Revolutionary Proletariot

JOTIBA PHULEY was the first revolutionary thinker of modern times to define Indian feudalism from the a-brahmani methodological point of view and compare its abolition with Western bourgeois democratic revolutions. His disciple Ambedkar organised the untouchables separately from the general varna category of Sudras and was the first to call them social proletariat. Though the Dharma-shastra included the Adivasis in the Ati-Sudra category, Ambedkar excluded them from the category of social proletariat. Untouchables were the only section of the Indian people who responded and participated in his anti-caste mass struggles. First untouchables arose in the lifetime of Buddha in the feudal caste monarchies of Magadha and Kosala. Ex-untouchable bhikkhus like Sunita and Sopaka were in the forefront of the greatest revolution in Indian history led by Buddha. But they became social proletariat (SP) during the twilight period of British imperialism. British imperial capital had added economic proletariat (EP) to the age-old social one. His unconcern with the caste exploitation and oppression of the SP led to the split of the dual Indian proletariat in the post-independence period. The rural agricultural proletariat is also dual. The Caste-abolishing Bourgeois Democratic Revolution too is a dual one. The surplus land above the ceiling, according to the National Sample Survey, is 21 million hectares. (Actually it is far greater.) Being owned by the elites of the dominating peasant castes, it can be confiscated for redistribution among the land-poor and landless OBCs, SCs and STs in order to create the home market for industrialisation, but it can be acquired only by the Caste-abolishing Democratic Revolution. Hence this dual revolution has to be led by the industrial and agricultural SP. That is why this SP is a revolutionary one. The land-poor and landless STs and OBCs are its allies. The non-elite peasant mass, which today supports the caste-class system, can be made its ally only through unprecedented Enlightenment, the ideological arsenal for which has been made ready by me through my lifelong work.

     Therefore, the impending electoral tragedy can be transformed into revolutionary recovery.

The author is the General Secretary, Satyashodhak Communist Party, Dhule (Maharashtra).

Nine-point programme of Com. Sharad Patil for caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolution and it socialist consummation

1. All political parties have not been able to overcome the European complex even after independence. Hence, India should get out of the Common Wealth.
2. Afer unleashing the Great Enlightenment of caste-ending equality abolish the caste system by punishable law+ and redistribute all surplus agricultural land to SC,ST and OBC landless labourers and poor peasants.
3. Confiscate the capital of unpatriotic comprador big capitalists who wish industrialisation by neo-imperialist way and industrialise India with the help of patriotic capitalists who wish to create developing home market in the above mentioned way.
4. Quash all Sepcial Economic Zones as in Goa and retun all acquired lands to their peasant owners.
5. In order to quash 'The Armed Forces Act, 1958', which prohibits civilians from seeking redressal from courts against the armed forces' atrocities, Irom Sharmila Chanu, the 'Iron Lady' of Manipur, is fasting unto death since more than six years. Terminate her epic fast with due honour by abrogating the Act. At present no adivasis are in the tribal stage. They are jamats. They ascend to the tribal (gana) stage only with gynocracy (stri-rajya, vairaj). Present Khasis, Garos and Jaintias of Meghalaya were a gynocracy when P.R.T. Gurdon was appointed to govern them, His account of them was published by Oxford under the title 'The Khasis' (1914). Panini has defined the stages of gana and samgha. The Hindi term jana-jati is also incorrect, because the adivasis are not jatis (castes). Hence the present term 'scheculed tribes (ST)' should be changed to 'scheduled jamats (SJ)'. The adivasi states of the Himalayan North East have to decide how they are going to ascend to the modern socialist stage with the help of the historical Khasi and Rti gynocracies which they can treat as a model. Their present political alternatives of Congress or BJP, both being casteist and not western capitalist, will land them in disaster. The adivasi jamats in the rest of India should form autonomous states where they live in contiguous areas and are in the majority. Where their area is not contiguous and they are not in majority, they should become a part of the Indian revolutionary social proletariat. Converts to religions like Christianity or Islam should preserve and develop their positive jamat culture and should not alienate themselves form the great Indian history and the positive aspects of its brahmanic and a-brahmani currents.
6. Protect matrilinear laws and culture and develop them towards genuine sexual equality. Legislate a law that ends feudal patriarchy and capitalist sexual discrimination.
7. Rehabilitate Taslima Nasreen with due honour and secrity who was forced to leave Bangla Desh for writing in defence of the Hindu minority and externed also from India under pressure from Muslim fundamentalists. Erect legal and religious guarantee of true secularism which will end religious fanaticism and persecution.
8. Deforstation has reduced rainfall to half in India. Even the waters of rivers like Ganga are becoming contaminated and other perennial rivers go dry after rainy season. Ecological disaster faces the whole world. Proection of the remaining tree cover and aforestation can be undertaken only with the help of adivasis. Implementation of the Forect Rights Act, 2005, being in the hands of the beaucracy, is not making any headway and the movement of adivasi forest encroachers being splintered and weak, cannot bring sufficient all India pressure on the government to implement the Act. When I started this movement in the concluding '60s, I have been impressing on the government that aforestation should be handed over to the adivasi encroachers by written agreements. Non-encroacher adivasis are not interested in aforestation.
9. The current of inequalitarian Vaidiki Sruti tried its utmost to decimate the current of equalitarian Tantriki Sruti. Today's general crisis of philosophy, literature, arts and culture is due to that. This crisis can be solved by the a-brahmani current if it can sublate the brahmanical current. This process can be discharged only by the aesthetics of Socialist Sautrantikism. This process consists of accomplishing the caste-ending bourgeois democratic revolution, transforming the resulting class society into socialist society and increasingly enabling the people to build the socialist society by making them self-intellected (svayam-prajna). This process will ultimately materialize by philosophy and methodology impregnating aesthetics on ever new qualitative plane into infinity. 

Intro.: Com. Sharad Patil

Com Sharad Patil : Brief

17-9-1925        Born in Satyashodhak Family in Dhule.

1942                Matriculation in Dhule.

1942 – 43        Kalabhavan Vadodara;

1943 - 45         J.J. School of Art, Bombay.

1945 - 47         Staff artist in CPI's PHQ, Bombay.

1947 - 49         Trade Union Front, Dhule.

1949 - 50         Externed.

1951 - 56         Peasant Front.

1956                onwards Adivasi Movement.

1964                Joined CPI( M).

1971 - 72        Wrote ‘Dāsa - Śūdra Slavery’.

1978           Resigned CPI(M) and established Satyashodhak Communist Party. Joined ‘Nāmāntar Krti Samiti’

1987               ‘Dalit -Adivasi- Gramin Samyukta Sahitya Sammelan’ in Sakri.

Com. Sharad Patil's important works:

      1. 'Dāsa-śūdra Slavery', Vol.I, Pt. i, out of print. 

2. 'Dāsa-śūsra Slavery', Vol. I, Pt. ii, Sugawa Prakashan, Pune- 411030

3. 'Rāmāyana-Mahābhāratātīla Varna-samgharsha', Vol.I, Pt.3, Rs. 120, Mavlai Prakashan, Pune.

4. 'Caste Feudal Servitude', Vol.II, Pt.1, Mavlai Prakashan, Pune, Rs. 200.

5. Shivājīcyā Hindavī Svarājyāce Khare Satrū Kona, Mohammadi vā Brāhmanī?' Vol.II, Pt. i Mavlai
    Prakashan, Pune, Rs.100.

6. 'Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and Its Socialist consummation,' Vol. III, Mavlai
   Prakashan, Shirur, Dt. Pune, Rs. 200.

7. Primitive Communism, Matriarchy - Gynocracy and Modern Socialism, Mavalai Prakashan, Pune, Rs.  

    200.