The State committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) will meet this weekend to discuss the party’s draft political resolution released a fortnight ago, ahead of the State conference in Ernakulam next month.
A senior party functionary told The Hindu that the meeting would also deliberate on strategies to counter the growing clout of the Popular Front of India (PFI) and its fronts, such as the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), among the Muslim community following the Hijab controversy in Karnataka.
In fact, a separate one-topic paragraph describing the situation was incorporated into the original 80-page draft adopted at the Central Committee meeting in Hyderabad in January. The draft reads, “There are Muslim extremist and fundamentalist organisations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and Popular Front of India and their political fronts which are trying to utilise the alienation and insecurities among the minority community in the background of vicious targeting by the Hindutva forces.”
“However, their activities only help the Hindutva communal forces. It is of utmost importance that the democratic and secular forces firmly defend the rights of minorities and rally them to the secular platform.”
Rattled by the accusation, the PFI leaders have asked the CPI(M) to correct the reference against their organisation and said “the victimised society cannot wait for liberators from outside.”
CPI(M) sources said that the State meeting would discuss issues such as strengthening the organisational structure through quality membership as directed by the Kolkata Plenum. This apart, concerted efforts would be made to attract youth as well as women to the party.
Contours of these guidelines would be drawn before the Central Committee meets again in March last week to give a concrete shape to the political resolution to be adopted at the 23rd Party Congress in Kannur in April.
The draft also mentions that the party must “take up the defence of the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala and against the fascistic attacks being mounted against the party especially in West Bengal and Tripura.”
Wary of the attacks from various quarters, the draft says that “the party must be conscious of and vigilant to counter the anti-communist campaigns mounted by rabid right-wing forces against our party and Communists as being ‘Pro-China’. Incidentally, it also says that the CPI(M) expresses its solidarity with all socialist countries – China, Vietnam, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba and Laos.
