KASARAGOD: The CPM is dismissing the legacy of the Indian communist movement by distorting the origin of the Communist Party of India, said CPI's state assistant secretary K Prakash Babu. The CPI was founded in Kanpur on December 26, 1925, and the founding date figured in the 1928 report of the Communist International (Comintern), an organisation that advocated world communism, said Prakash Babu.
In 1959, when the undivided CPI prepared a brief history of the party, the founding date was recognized as December 26, 1925. But the CPM is now claiming that the Communist Party of India was formed at Tashkent on October 17, 1920, and kicked off the centenary year celebration last year.
It is an attempt to distort history and obliterate the legacy of the Communist Party of India, Prakash Babu said. In Tashkent, a communist group was formed and there were many such groups across the world and in India, he said.
He was speaking at a function to mark the 96th foundation year of the CPI at Kuttikol in Kasaragod on Sunday. The CPM did not have any dispute on the origin of the party till 1964, when the party split, he said.
The CPM was formed by pro-China leaders after the India-China war, Prakash Babu said. In the CPM's first plenum held at West Bengal's Burdwan, the party introduced the photographs of two new leaders at the venue - Joseph Stalin and China's Mao Zedong - along with Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin, whose photographs used to figure in CPI’s programmes then and now.
"Today, two youths are arrested and charged with UAPA for spreading Maoism. People will see through the self-contradictory position of the CPM," Prakash Babu said referring to the arrest of Allan Shuhaib and Thwaha Fasal under the Unlawful Atrocities (Prevention) Act.