On Comrade Gursharan Singh, his theatre and Communist Movement in Punjab
Prof. Randhir Singh
Let me begin by making a few qualifying remarks. I have no pretensions to scholarship in Marxism. I picked some on the way and have found it useful not only in my life as a teacher but in living my life as well. Knowing Marx does make a difference to what sense you make of life, how you understand it, live it and act in the world. I wrote this book because two distinguished people asked me to do it. One of them was my dear Gursharan. He was concerned about the crisis of Marxist thought, and about those who got lost in post modernism in an attempt to go ‘beyond’ Marx and much more. I needed to respond to his feelings. This book is not on Marxism. It is about how to go about understanding Marxism, as I understand it. This book is about Marxism and not onMarxism. I proudly dedicate this Punjabi version of my text to Gursharan Singh.
A lot has been said about Gursharan’s legacy and his contribution in the recent weeks. I would say a few words of warning before we start assessing his life and his contribution to the communist movement in Punjab, in particular, and in India in general. We must understand that this system has an infinite capacity to absorb even radical thinkers like Gursharan. I refer to two threats here: one from the State, and the other from the peer. The state has tremendous capacity to use both repression and cooption in the struggle over hegemony of ideas. The government of Punjab has numerous theatre groups in Punjab that are their ‘own’. We need to be careful about this race to ‘own’ Gursharan’s theatre and his writings. The other threat is from the peer, from those who consider proscenium theatre to be superior to the people-oriented street theatre of Gursharan. Throughout his life Gursharan faced this threat and I must say it is to the credit of Gursharan that he fought this threat with great élan and success. Gursharan achieved this through his honest and sincere writings, his commitment to the poor, dalits and women of Punjab, his transparent, fearless and uncompromising attitude towards what he thought was wrong, his faith in human beings and his belief in the ideas of Karl Marx. Gursharan openly defied what he considered was wrong.
The best way to face these threats and our best defence is to get united. All political forces that claim his legacy need to come together. It should be remembered that Gursharan was a communist. He had a certain pride in being a Communist and it meant a lot more in our days than perhaps now. I still remember from those times two lines from the poet C. Day Lewis. A question and an answer, they went something like this:
Why do we on seeing Red feel small?
For he is future walking to meet us—
Could this be said of Gursharan? I would say yes. He had the rare combination of commitment, determination and ability to communicate communist ideas and ideals through theatre. Many in the movement have the commitment but perhaps not the same ability. Gursharan had all three. As a Communist he was worried about the state of the Communist movement in Punjab. His attempt to unite the Communist forces, the formation of ‘Inqulabi Kendra’ in 1988 is a reflection of this concern. He had shared with me, his desire to make a similar effort in the future, his health permitting.
Together we discussed some details about his proposed effort for unity. He wanted to call a meeting of all parties, invite all the major and minor variations amongst the radical left, bring together various formations who differed with each other in their nomenclature, with all the suffixes and prefixes, and ask all of them, and their national and local leaders, to explain and defend their politics for India and for the people of Punjab. He wanted to put this understanding to an open and transparent discussion between and amongst all groups. He believed that those who did not respond to this call for unity and were reluctant to participate in this open consultation needed to be publically identified and named and their supporters be asked to join the effort for unity and open discussion. The specific question that he wanted to ask various groups was their understanding of politics in Punjab today and their vision of socialist Punjab in the future. Both of us felt a need for a concrete analysis of the changed and changing reality of India, since 1947, and, given the growing regionalisation of Indian politics, also the need to work out, if I may put it this way, region or state specific versions of Lenin’sWhat is To be Done?And,Where to Begin? We felt the need for the splintered left parties and formations to unite on a platform of socialism-oriented politics with primacy for extra parliamentary struggles. As they struggle to come together, at the very least, each party or formation needs to be genuinely self critical. They need to be fraternal towards each other and allow for differences over tactics, over forms or methods of struggle. Their polemics have to be less jargonised and more principled, and not abusive or denunciatory (‘revisionist’, ‘anarchist’, etc.). They should talk to and not at each other, and for a change, also talk to the Indian people in a language the people understand. Even their criticism of the mainstream (communist) Left has to be distinguishable from that of the Right (Congress, BJP. etc.) and in terms of an alternative revolutionary politics.
In the end, I wish to make one final point. We the Communists, need to do an honest appraisal of the Soviet experience. Confront today the fact that most people feel that Socialism is dead. We need to decipher the positive and negative aspects of the Soviet experience. Most of all, we need to understand, the negative dimensions. When Gursharan and I came to the Communist movement, democracy was integral to Socialism. The most negative consequence of the Soviet experience has been this perceived gulf between democracy and socialism. The downfall of Soviet Union came from the urge for democracy rather than the need for building socialism. But what has ended up happening in reality is the restoration of Capitalism in the name of democracy. The Soviet experience cannot be ignored. Soviet experience was intended to build a new civilization. This was not achieved but that does not mean that we should throw the baby out with the bath water. Socialism has to be disassociated from authoritarianism. Answer to neo-liberalism is perhaps not just greater state control but more ‘Democratic Planning’. Market and State control are not the only two options. We need to address the poverty of democracy and build institutions that support ‘Democratic Planning’. Democracy is the core issue in the state sector.
These are not Gursharan’s pronouncements. These are some of the issues he wanted the left formations to discuss. He had expressed a strong desire for the left formations to discuss the ‘politics of Punjab’. Unfortunately, most left formations claim some kind of invincibility of Marxism. If Marxism was that kind of a ‘science’ then Socialism would not have been in this kind of crisis, as it is today. It is understandable why capitalism is in crisis but why is the idea of Socialism in crisis? The authoritarianism and deformation of Soviet Socialism is one reason for it. As I would put it, we the Communist need to move away from ‘official Marxism’ and return to the Marxism of Karl Marx. We need to abandon the dogmas or orthodoxies of yesteryears (of both ‘official Marxism’ and of its ‘Maoist Vintage’) and return to Marxism of Karl Marx, to think as Marx would have thought in their place – the only sense in which the word Marxist has any raison d’ etre’, Engles had insisted. We need to be Marxist in our assessments of what has happened in the Soviet Union and its implications. Still more, we need to assess our own past with the ‘ruthless severity’ and ‘mercilessness’, typical of Marx in matters of revolutionary theory and practice.
I hope this book will help in the endeavour, will help to think and act about Marxism, and help to build an approach to understand Marxism. I also hope that this book will help build a strong Communist movement in Punjab, as a tribute to Gursharan, for what he struggled all his life. While each left formation, and even beyond, is claiming the legacy of Gursharan Singh today, unfortunately, his work has so far not been used to build the Communist movement in an appropriate way. In building this Communist movement, in formulating a program for the same, we need not depend only on organizations of the peasants, workers or petty bourgeoisie, but all ‘friendly’ wisdom that exists outside the ‘left’ forces and parties, that can benefit in this endeavour.