(After apologising for not bang able to attend the first day’s session on account of a crucial vote in the Indian Parliament on the Finance Bill)

p Yesterday, I could not listen to the contributions of the differ ent comrades and since I haven’t had time to read all the documents, I just want to make one or two brief points.

p Comrades who are coming from the developed capitalist countries, very often when we meet them (not here today, but on other occasions) we find that they are very much interested, naturally, to know much more about the conditions prevailmgin the developing countries, specially comrades from Western Europe and North America J think it is also very necessary both for them and for us, to work out more specific methods of exchanges, cooperation, intercourse and soon. Because,actuallyweare operating in two different worlds, the developed countries and the developing countries. The conditionsofthe peoples who are there among whom you are working and the conditions of the people in Latin America, Africa or Asia are vastiy different Therefore, inavery limited way, that through this seminar, which I think is a very positive step that has been taken, that these comrades fromthesedifferent regions are brought together and they can to some extent; exchange experiences and talk about conditions, very different conditions in which they are working. Many comrades that we met in the last couple of years, who visited India, were much surprised to find demonstrations and public meetings going on with Red Flags, Hammer and Sickleandall and that peopteareseemtobe very enthusiastic about that There were impressions in theirrnindsafter the collapseof the socialist system in the Soviet Union and some other countries and 343 the propaganda that has been done, intense propaganda carried on by the enemies of socialism, that people are thoroughly demoralised, defeatist and have accepted the argument that socialism is dead and nobody wants it and people have rejected it, so on and so forth. They were surprised to find that was not the state of affairs. I am talking about the masses, and not about only people who are members of the communist party. Many members of the communist parties, may have certainly, it is not surprising, that they should have received a very big shock, a setback and all that. But the conditions of the masses - the comrade from Australia who a little while ago was talking about some villages and some rural areas which he had visited here was quite right. He saw for himself what the conditions of people are. And I have no doubt that they are much the same in other developing countries also. It is a problem, whose magnititude is sometimes difficult for comrades from the developed countries to appreciate. Something which runs into millions of people, who are suffering from unemployment, poverty, from malnutrition, disease, homelesshess - not just a few people but millions and millions. And naturally when the question is asked - these problems of course cannot be solved in a day, it is a very long and difficult struggle. But what should be our attitude, what will be our outlook, how do you expect to transform these kind of economic and social conditions for the good of the people, except unless you have some kind of a socialist perspective. Our people laugh if you ask "do you think that these problems can be solved by capitalism”. Some kind of a socialist perspective has to be worked out in each country, according to its own conditions and only on that basis the people will gradually acquire confidence as to how they should go forward. So I think that these kinds of seminar are very useful and helpful from that point of view.

p The second point I want to make is that nobody here, as far I could understand, as I was absent yesterday, has said anything which would have been very helpful for us, working in India, about our attitude to religion. What has been traditionally the attitude of the communist parties towards religion? In India you know what is happening now? Misusing the name of religion, and misusing many kinds of religious dogmas and sentiments, in a society where people are under the influence of various religions in this country, rightist forces of a fascist kind are growing, posing a big danger to our country and our people. The question I was wanting to know 344 is — what is attitude of the communists towards religion, how does one speak about it - what kind of image they create among the people about their attitude to religion. Has it had anything to do with the various setbacks that we may have received from time to time? You know what Karl Marx said about religion. Of course in a different context he said "religion is the cry of the oppressed, the soul of soulless world.” In a different context he also said that "religion is the opium of the people" What did he mean by it? How did we take it? How did we try to understand it? In countries, where the overwhelming majority of the people are religious minded people, are believers, how did we communicate with them on this very important question. I believe there are countries where it is being said, that because the communists are considered to be non-believers, therefore in such countries it is not possible to talk about Marxism-Leninism or is not possible for a communist parry to prosper in such a country. Well that may be some example in some country. I find, sitting here, comrades from many countries where certainly religion has a powerful hold. So what was the actual role of this factor. How did we react to it? And how are we reacting to it now? I don’t think wq will be able to have much of a discussion on it.

p But I must certainly congratulate also the comrade from South Africa, who I think was so practical and at the same time so political in his presentation of the struggle of the South African people and what he has said here about the need for the mass organisations in which the party occupies important positions, for those mass organisations to be functioning democratically, as independent mass organisations and not as appendages of the communist party. Some lessons had to be drawn from past history also. There is some resistance among comrades even now to this idea of trade unions being independent of political parties or of course of the government or the employers. But principally the difficulty arises when we talk about the independence of the trade unions from political parties. Of course we were told about the example of COSATU in South Africa and if I understood the comrade rightly, he said that although there are leading members, Central Committee members of the SACP who are occupying leading positions in COSATU but COSATU would not permit the Communist Party to dictate to the trade unions or to intervene in their internal affairs. It is a very important question, and I think that we require to examine our past 345 on this and several other questions, self-critically.

p In our country at least, we are feeling very acutely the lack of a national alternative to the present There are big bourgeois parties run by sections of the bourgeoisie or so called centrist forces but people are gradually losing all confidence in such parties. They do not believe that they can really give an effective leadership to the people specially the workingmasses, the working class, the poorer people and the toiling masses as we call them. The situation is ripe for a national alternative to be created, a viable national alternative, which we are not yet able to create. I am talking about an alternative on a national scale. Thereare pockets in our country, there are states here and there like West Bengal where the left forces are dominating, but taking the country as a whole where there are some states whose area and population are bigger than that of many European countries, where the left forces are still very weak and where this reactionary, rightist fundamentalist forces have been able to grow considerably. In such a situation, we feel that it is necessary to make redoubled efforts for the left parties and left forces to come closer together, to consolidate themselves, to counter the reactionary ideology and activities of these parties and to project a national alternative before the people. This is difficult, not an easy job. But it has to be done because the attacks on democracy and democratic rights are increasing all the time. I think you will agree that if there is one single issue throughout the world now where people are being mobilised and are going into struggle and acting it is on the issue of democracy and democratic rights. This is what moves millions today. Therefore, I think that we should consider, whether this also gives us opportunity to forge a very broad kind of front, alliance of all forces which are willing to fight for democracy and democratic rights.

p “

p Finally, there are some other problems we have to draw lessons from. Of course, we can’t do this in one seminar. You have referred, to Yugoslavia, what is happening there. We have seen the multinational Soviet state disintegrate into so many so called independent republics, many of them based on ethnic foundations. At one time we had been firmly convinced that the nationality pwobtem had been solved in the Soviet Union, according to Lenin’s teaching and Lenin’s principles and that the Soviet Union had beenrconverted into a family of equal nationalities. Certainly tremendous achievements were made at that time. But now after the 346 disintegration of the Soviet state and what is going on there we can see that that was not the whole truth. Some times on the surface it appeard to be like that, but something else was going on below the surface which is now erupting, for the first time into all kinds of unpleasant things. In our country also, we should learn, other countries also, they should speak for themselves, I can’t speak for them. But this question of ethnic rights, ethnic self-determination, ethnic striving for asserting their identity, it may be cultural, it may be linguistic, it may be something else. But so many different ethnic groups and nationalities existed in a single country, a single state, as a we have in India. The Communist Party has to have a proper line on this question. Otherwise already we are having so many conflicts and disturbances and many of them are marked by brutal violence, innocent people are losing their lives. This is a question of strengthening the federal character of the state, not centralising all the powers in one place at the top, decentralising the powers to the extent possible, strengthening the federal character of the state where there are so many different national and ethnic groupings so that nobody feels suppressed or stifled. In the Soviet Union also the right to self-determination was inscribed in the Constitution. Right of self-determination to the point of secession, was a right given to the nationalities of the Soviet Union. We were all confident that nobody is going to exercise it But the day came when something very different happened. You can blame anybody,you can blame the wrong policies followed by Gorbachev which accelerated the movement towards disintegration. Whatever it is the fact remains that the day came when we found that the state has been torn apart on the basis of ethnic and nationalistic rivalries, struggles, conflicts. Now we do not know, in some of the central Asian republics there may be a rise of Islamic fundamentalism also.

p So what I would like to say in conclusion is that among the many important and valuable contributions, the problems that have been discussed in this seminar, some of these matters, the question of religion, (because certainly in our country we cannot keep quiet, we have to take a stand on this question); then on the question of nationalities, of ethnic identity, of dencentralisation of powers from a single centralised state apparatus to lower levels of self government. If these are not dealt with in time men we may not be able to benefit from the lessons which Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union or other countries are providing for us.

I hope in our future discussions, we will have more discussions and seminars, I suppose, at any rate we can exchange our views in writings through our various journals, these problems I hope will be taken up and dealt with so that we can profit from it