CPM cadres being led by casteist forces: Party report

The section of the report, which deals with the rectification campaign and its implementation, regrets that “a serious defect noted in the discussions in the rectification campaign is the absence of educating the party membership in adopting a progressive and scientific outlook in social life.”

Elaborating, the report said: “Whether it be observance of religious obscurantist customs, feudal attitude to women, question ofcaste practices there has been little effort to initiate discussions or campaigns in the party and outside.”

“Tamil Nadu, Orissa, UP and other state reports show that discriminatory practices exist against scheduled castes, like not allowing them to draw water from common wells or take out wedding or funeral processions through main roads take place, in areas where the party influence exists.”

The result, the report reasons, is a dichotomy in the outlook of the party cadres in personal, social and political outlook maintain a non-Communist approach and adherence to petty bourgeois and antediluvian values based on religion and caste.

The report pointed out that essentially because of this `dichotomy and lack of party intervention’, the organisation has left the “field free to bourgeois parties and casteist forces to foster caste consciousness and channelise the political activities based on this.”

It pulled up the leadership failing to channelise the “growing consciousness of the backward castesand Dalits” for the Communist cause and served a warning that all “this has led to the weakening of our political intervention and hampering the class struggle in these areas.”