1964: THE YEAR UNDIVIDED CPI SPLIT
AND CPI(M) WAS BORN
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) will mark 50years of its inception in October-November this year.
The party, which has 16 Members of Parliament in the
outgoing Lok Sabha, has in the past five decades
played a crucial role in the Indian political scene. It has
run state governments in West Bengal and Kerala for
several years and continues to have a government in
Tripura. The CPI(M) also gave outside support to the
National Front government of 1989, the United Front
governments of 1996 to 1998 and the UPA-I
government from 2004 to 2008. The CPI(M) claims it had
a membership of 1.44 million in 2011, up from 1.18 lakh
in 1964. The party has seen a perilous electoral decline
File photo of a rickshaw puller moving past a CPI(M) flag
in recent years and is expected to see one of its worst
PHOTO: REUTERS
in Kolkata
electoral performances of the last three decades in the
2014 Lok Sabha election.
new election symbol, came into existence a year later.
The CPI(M) will mark its 50 years in October-November
The first sign that a group within the undivided CPI
that coincides with the Seventh Party Congress in
may break away to form a separate party was seen 50
Kolkata’s Thyagaraja Hall in 1964, said party general
years ago on April 11, 1964. The split was formalised in
October-November of that year, and the party, with its secretary Prakash Karat.
HOW THEY PARTED WAYS
April 11, 1964: Thirty-two
members of the undivided
Communist Party of India walk out
of its National Council meeting in
Delhi to protest against the
“revisionist policies” of General
Secretary S A Dange and his
followers, particularly the failure
to have “class struggle” as its main
policy. Dange followers had an
overwhelming majority in the
National Council.
July 7-11, 1964: The breakaway
faction, still calling itself the CPI,
organises Tenali convention in
Andhra Pradesh by hoisting the
original party flag. The convention
is held to analyse the crisis the
party faced because of its
“revisionist policies”. Muzaffar
Ahmad, a founding member of
CPI, asks 146 delegates who
attended to take an oath to form
the “real communist party”. The
convention decides to hold the
CPI's Seventh Congress in October
in the same year.
October 31-November 7: The
Seventh Congress of the CPI, by the
breakaway faction, is held in
Kolkata, while Dange’s group
holds a parallel congress in
Mumbai. The Congress
government of P C Sen in Bengal
arrested many of the breakaway
group’s leaders days before the
General secretaries:
P Sundarayya elected in seventh
(1964), eighth (1968) and ninth
(1972) Congress; EMS
Namboodiripad in 10th (1978),
11th (1982), 12th (1985) and 13th
(1989) Congress; Harkishen
Singh Surjeet in 14th (1992), 15th
(1995), 16th (1998), 17th (2002),
18th (2005) and Prakash
Karat in 19th (2008) and
20th (2012) Congress.
of widespread rigging. He was
expelled from the party in the
early 1990s.
CPI(M) CHIEF MINISTERS
KERALA
EMS Namboodiripad
(1957-59, 1967-69)
EMS was one of the tallest leaders of
the communist
movement and the
first democratically
elected communist
chief minister of
India. The Centre
invoked President’s Rule
for the first time in 1959 in Kerala to
dismiss the Namboodiripad-led
government.
E K Nayanar
(1980-81, 1987-91, 1996-2001)
Nayanar holds the record as the
longest serving CM of Kerala. His
government is credited with
launching the concept of People’s
Planning Commission in 1996.
V S Achuthanandan (2006-2011)
V S, along with N Sankaraiah, are the
only two surviving members of the
32 who broke away from CPI’s
National Council in 1964. He started
life as a daily wage labourer. He has
an exemplary reputation as an
honest politician. He was even
removed from the party politburo in
2009 due to infighting. Most political
observers agree Achuthanandan
could have returned to power in 2011
but for the faction-ridden Kerala
unit and the central leadership who
didn’t support him enough.
TRIPURA
Nripen Chakraborty (1978 to 1988)
A former journalist credited with
running a clean government that was
dismissed by the Centre in 1988. The
1988 Assembly elections that
followed were marred by allegations
Dasarath Deb (1993 to 1998)
Deb declined to contest the 1998
election on health grounds.
Manik Sarkar (1998 to
present)
Sarkar and his wife
have a lifestyle so
simple that it would
put even many recent
claimants to the tag of
honest politicians to shame. The
couple don’t have a car or a house to
their names.
WEST BENGAL
Jyoti Basu (1977 to 2000)
The longest-serving
CM in the history of
India. The Basu-led
government is
credited with
bringing about land reforms, but
also for Bengal’s industrial decline.
Basu could have been the prime
minister but for the party’s Central
Committee voting against joining
the United Front government of
1996. He later termed it a
“historic blunder”.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
(2000 to 2011)
Bhattacharjee, better known for his
interest in arts and letters, was
somewhat a surprise
choice as Basu’s
successor. He
tried to revive
Bengal’s industrial
landscape, but
incidents like Singur and Nandigram
eventually led to the Left losing
power in Bengal after an
uninterrupted 34-years at Writers’
Building. Bhattacharjee did lead the
Left to its highest ever tally in the
Bengal Assembly in 2006.
Prakash Karat
congress. The breakaway faction
claims to have the support of 1.04
lakh of undivided party’s 1.76 lakh
members and therefore
represented the real party. It
elected P Sundarayya as general
secretary.
March 1965: Jyoti Basu in his
memoirs So Far I Can Remember
stated the breakaway party
decided on the eve of March 1965
Assembly elections in Kerala that it
would name itself the Communist
Party of India (Marxist). “This was
done for the purpose of the
election symbol. Since then, our
party has been known by this
name,” Basu wrote.
Onlytwo of the 32 who broke awayfrom the undivided
CPI are alive: V S Achuthanandan and N Sankaraiah.
The rest were EMS Namboodiripad, P Sundarayya,
N Prasada Rao, T Nagi Reddy, M Hanumantha Rao,
Guntur Bapanayya, Venkateswara Rao, Promode
Dasgupta, Hare Krishna Konar, Saroj Mukherjee,
Muzaffar Ahmad, Abdul Halim, A K Gopalan,
E K Nayanar, Imbichi Bava, CH Kanaran, A V Kunhabu,
M R Venkataraman, P Ramani, Harkishen Singh Surjeet,
Jagjit Singh Lyalpuri, Dalip Singh Tapiala, Bagh Singh,
Mohan Punamia, Shivkumar Mishra, R N Upadhyaya,
R P Saraf, Jyoti Basu, B T Ranadive and P Ramamurthi.