p At the fag end of a very useful, constructive and friendly dis cussion, I would not like to make some critical remarks. But I have a feeling that on one or two points, I have some opinion mat may be different from the opinion of some of the comrades.

p Now I am an old communist, I have been in the communist movement for more than half a century. I have seen the glory of the international communist movement, its profound impact on the 20th century and many ups and downs also. But having gone through the period of the recent developments - what has happened with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the collapse of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe.

p I have the feeling that we communists should also be modest. Modest in the sense that -1 have a feeling that somehow we arrogated to ourselves this kind of authority as if that we have the monopoly of wisdom and that has led to some kind of intolerance also to other opinions. For instance when you depict somebody, there has been a tendency to call him either a revisionist or a sectarian. Now I think we have to learn quite a lot from what has happened to our movement and what has gone wrong. Ofcourse we have glorious achievements to the credit of our international movement. Bu t we should also team from our mistakes and should not tihnk as if history began with the international communist movement. I think human history is much longer and we have also to learn from what was there before the glorious ideas of Marx and Engels. In our country there have been progressive thoughts and so on. This is one thing.

p For instance there has been a feeling that the 20th Congress of 371 the CPSU gave some kind of a revisionist direction to the international communist movement At least my party does not agree with this. In fact what has happened during the period of Com. Stalin, using the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a particular way, which I do not think it was in the Leninist tradition. Because Lenin was a great democrat and he functioned the party in a different way, in a very democratic way. So something happened of course there tremendous achievements to socialism under Stalin that nobody can deny, but there were also were tremendous mistakes, particularly in the realm of democracy and inside the Party.How the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat or democratic centralism was distorted in that period. And therefore we have a feeling (I am talking as a member of the CPI) that the 20th Congress of the CPSU opened the road to new thinking. After all something had gone wrong in the Soviet Union and the CPSU. I am not saying that what followed under Kruschev, Brezhnev — everything was wonderful. But it opened the road to new thinking.

p Talking about my own party, in the 50s, we got our independence in 1947 and for nearly two-three years our party was more or less underground and after independence also. In the 50s we began to discuss in our party, the question of Indian road to socialism. And a great debate in our party among Indian communists, and some comrades said of the Chinese path and some other comrades talked of the Russian path, and finally we came to the conclusion that the Indian revolution will be neither a Chinese path nor Russian path. In the background of that great debate came this 20th Congress of the CPSU. Then soon after the 20th Congress of the CPSU something very important, momentous happened in our political history, after independence i.e. in one state of our country , in Kerala in 1957 elections the communi sts came to power through the ballot, something unique in the history of the communist movement. For the first time communists came to power in a state through the ballot. But the government was overthrown by the central government is another question.

p Secondly the great debate that took place in the communist movement after the 20th Congress of the CPSU. And therefore, in our party, we started to work out our own Indian way to socialism. Now please understand that we are working within a parliamentary democratic system and we have to take into account the structure - if the communist movement has to grow, if the people 372 have to respect us, then we have to appear as defenders of parliamentary democracy. Of course we have a socialist objective, a socialist perspective. But socialism is not on the agenda, in the immediate future as far as our country is concerned. In our country having a socialist perspective we have not changed our name (mere is no trend in our party, among Indian communists to change the name of the Communist Party or all that), but socialism is not on the immediate agenda.

On the immediate agenda is how to strengthen the institutions of parliamentary democracy, how to appeal to the people. And therefore we came to this conclusion, that we will have to work out our own path and we in our party congress’s in 1958 arrived at this understanding that in India under socialism there will be the right of the opposition to function. Of course, it may appear very strange that the communists come to power and they allow other parties to function. But if we say that we will not allow any party to function under socialism, then people will say all right we will see to it that you don’t come to power. And therefore, every party will have to work out its own road. Any party is not going to accept any model. What I would like to emphasise is that almost for more than thirty years we have been discussing this question and we came to certain understanding about the Indian road to socialism.