Statement released by the CPI (M) Maharashtra State Committee
It has come to our notice that the so-called Godavari S. Parulekar Marxwadi Vichar Manch, based in Thane, has issued a statement responding to the charges levelled against it by the Student’s Federation of India (SFI) unit of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), dated 15th January 2013. The State Committee is forced to respond to this statement, which – like the Manch itself – reeks of utter, stark and downright falsehoods. Each of these falsehoods must be nailed down, so that the truth is known to the students of JNU.
At the outset, it was appalling that a corrupt and morally degenerate person like Parshuram Chavan was invited for a public meeting in JNU on the topic ‘Towards a People’s Democratic Alternative’. It is a sad irony that this comes at a time when we need to build real progressive, democratic alternatives to neo-liberalism and communalism, as well as fight against rampant corruption and shocking violence against women.
The response of the Manch starts with the falsehood that the “Vichar Manch was formed in the Thane District of Maharashtra on 7th June 2008 by 23 out of the 33 Thane District Committee members of the CPI (M).” The fact is that there were no more than a dozen District Committee members out of 33 who joined the Manch. Against most of them, the CPI (M) Maharashtra State Committee had already taken disciplinary action on grave charges (see details below).
More important, however, is the fact that of the then total Party membership in Thane district of 3000-odd, less than 10 per cent, i.e., less than 300, had joined the Manch. Over 90 per cent, i.e., more than 2700 Party members, firmly remained with, and continue to remain with, the CPI (M). Further, many among the 300, who were initially misled into going with the Manch, soon got disillusioned with the political opportunism and rank corruption that was indulged in by the Manch leadership comprising the ‘Gang of Four’ of Messrs Parshuram Chavan, Suhas Samant, Ramji Vartha and Rajendra Paranjape. The misled comrades soon came back to the CPI (M).
The Manch has said that “the bulk of our membership base comprises of tribal people.” The plain truth is that there is just no bulk with the Manch whatsoever, and there never was. In the state-wide Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections of March 2012, the Manch could not even save its security deposit in a single seat in Thane district.
The biggest lie in the Manch’s statement, in classic Goebbelsian style, is the following: “The Manch formation was the culmination of a bitter inner-party struggle following the land movement of 1991 when thousands of tribals occupied forest and ceiling surplus land of landlords in the leadership of the Party. However, sections of the Party leadership started engaging in nefarious negotiations with the landlords for personal benefits. This became a cause of continuous acrimony and discontent within our district. Fed up with this approach of shielding dubious state leaders, in February 2006, the Thane District Committee of the CPI (M) passed a unanimous resolution recommending action against Com. L. B. Dhangar (CPI (M) State Committee and District Committee Member) for misappropriation of funds in a trust. This recommendation was not endorsed by the State Committee. However, after this resolution, a 5-member state level enquiry committee was finally set up by the reluctant Party leadership...”
This entire paragraph is nothing but a shameless travesty of the truth. But this is not at all surprising. In the history of the Communist movement, renegades like Parshuram Chavan, Rajendra Paranjape and Ramji Vartha have always been most notorious for making shameful travesties of the truth. The truth of the matter is as follows:
Land has been a major issue of struggle in Thane district since the time of Comrades Godavari and Shamrao Parulekar. As a result of massive and sustained struggles by the CPI (M) and the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), lakhs of acres of land in Thane district was vested in the names of the Adivasis who cultivated it. This struggle for land continued in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s under the leadership of Comrade Godavari Parulekar and Comrade L. B. Dhangar. Comrade Dhangar is one of the senior-most and widely respected leaders of the Party and was its Thane district secretary for a long period till 1988. His contribution to the growth of the Left movement in the Adivasi regions of Maharashtra is remarkable. He is today over 85 years old and, in recognition of his six decade-old service to the Party, is the Chairman of the CPI (M) State Control Commission.
However, by the mid-1990s, the new Thane district Party leadership led by the above ‘Gang of Four’ consolidated its hold over the Party in Thane. It is this leadership that, in its own words, “started engaging in nefarious negotiations with the landlords for personal benefits”, which became “a cause of continuous acrimony and discontent.” As a result, very serious written complaints against them came to the Party state committee from Adivasi comrades. A five-member enquiry committee was appointed by the state committee.
Concrete proof came to the enquiry committee in the form of a letter written on the letterhead of the Party’s Thane district committee, signed by the then district secretary Suhas Samant (later expelled and now a Manch leader), to the local Dahanu police station in favour of a rich landlord and against a poor Adivasi Party member who rightly owned his land. After this letter was written to the police station, the landlord forcibly uprooted the standing crop in the Adivasi peasant’s field and tried to capture his land. However, local comrades under the leadership of Comrade Dhangar resisted and foiled this attempt. As a result, the land is still in the occupation of the Adivasi peasant. During the enquiry, further proof came of the involvement of this ‘Gang of Four’ in shady land deals with landlords. None of them could give any credible explanation regarding their connivance with the landlord class against the poor Adivasi peasants.
Similarly, more complaints began to come in about the ‘Gang of Four’ striking corrupt deals with factory-owners against the interests of the working class in Thane district. The enquiry committee came to the conclusion that these complaints were also true. Needless to say, the deals struck by these leaders with landlords and factory-owners were not without their ‘price’!
It was precisely because Comrade Dhangar consistently opposed these class collaborationist acts of the ‘Gang of Four’ that they tried to implicate him on false charges. However, the enquiry held by the Party state committee on the Trust issue completely absolved Comrade Dhangar of all the charges.
One of the major reasons why Ramji Vartha, ex-MLA, was expelled from the CPI (M) was because it was proved that he was hand-in-glove with the local ration food grains black-marketeer and had siphoned off thousands of quintals of grains meant for the Adivasi labourers working under the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). After an intense struggle by the CPI (M) and AIDWA, which Ramji Vartha opposed in his capacity as an MLA, the Tehsildar of Talasari was suspended and thousands of quintals of grains were distributed to poor Adivasis.
The Manch goes further in its string of lies when it says, “Meanwhile, instead of correcting their wrong practices, 4 members of the Maharashtra State Secretariat became part of a foreign funded trust for a ‘1 V 1 C’ (one village, one computer) scheme. As per the CPI (M) party’s guidelines, members of the CPI (M) cannot become part of the activities of foreign funded NGOs and can become part of other NGOs only after taking consent of their respective committees and approval of the higher committee. A complaint was sent to the same effect to the Party General Secretary against top state leaders, including the Maharashtra State Secretary.”
The facts of the matter are as follows: One Village One Computer (1V1C) was a programme organized to take computer training to remote villages in Maharashtra. This programme was funded by the ‘Maharashtra Foundation’, which consists of Maharashtrian people settled in the USA. The Maharashtra Foundation helps many such social causes in Maharashtra, and the annual awards that it gives in the fields of Marathi literature and culture have acquired a great deal of prestige in the State.
All the information pertaining to the 1V1C trust, its funding and its programmes were clearly placed before and were approved by the CPI (M) state secretariat. But when the above complaints came, the CPI (M) state committee itself took the decision that they should be thoroughly enquired into by the Party’s Polit Bureau (PB). This was done in 2006 and the PB gave its opinion in writing. The PB held that since the Maharashtra Foundation was an organization of Maharashtrian Indians settled in the USA, the funds that it gave the 1V1C could not be termed as foreign funding. The PB also asked the CPI (M) state committee to set up a monitoring committee to go into the 1V1C.
This was done and the monitoring committee, comprising three CPI (M) state secretariat members who had no connection whatsoever with the 1V1C project, after thoroughly going through all the accounts and other documents of the 1V1C, gave a clean chit to the project. The PB opinion and the monitoring committee report came before the CPI (M) state committee in 2006 and 2010 respectively and the state committee gave its approval.
But in spite of the PB opinion on the matter, which was clearly conveyed in writing and placed in the state committee in 2006, the handful that later formed the Manch ran a nasty campaign to malign the Party leadership – a campaign that they still continue today as seen in their statement! They stooped to such levels of factionalism that they began organising an unprecedented signature campaign against the CPI (M) state committee decisions. No Communist Party worth its name could have tolerated this deliberate violation of discipline and therefore, the handful that was indulging in it was expelled from the Party in 2007.
The Manch has categorically denied the charge of misconduct against women that has been made against Parshuram Chavan. The CPI (M) state committee has in its possession several letters and documents, as well as the proceedings of the enquiry committee, which would go to prove without any doubt whatsoever the charges against Parshuram Chavan of misbehavior with women. One of the women Party members with whom Parshuram Chavan had misbehaved got married and did not want to pursue her complaint as she was worried that it would create problems in her marital life. It was to respect her wishes that the Party did not pursue the matter to its logical conclusion. But the CPI (M) stands firm as a rock on this charge against Parshuram Chavan.
The Manch says, “It was propagated that we will join hands with the BJP, Shiv Sena, NCP and so on. But after 5 years we have continued to defend our movement in our district...We are not willing to join hands with any communal or bourgeois Party. We will continue in this path.”
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the Manch spokesmen protest too much! It is known to the whole world, and has been published in black and white in the newspapers of the day, that in the 2009 Lok Sabha election in the Palghar (ST) constituency of Thane district, when Comrade Lahanu Kom was the candidate of the CPI (M), the Manch openly supported Baliram Jadhav, the candidate of Hitendra Thakur’s ‘Bahujan Vikas Aghadi’. This Party is notorious as the Party of the land mafia, which has gone to the extent of murdering Adivasis simply because they refused to part with their land! And it is with such a Party that the Manch openly allied with! Needless to say, the leaders extracted their ‘price’!
In the 2009 Vidhan Sabha elections held six months later, in the Dahanu (ST) seat where sitting MLA of the CPI (M) Comrade Rajaram Ozare was the candidate, Ramji Vartha of the Manch filed his nomination papers and then suddenly withdrew after a secret ‘understanding’ with the NCP candidate. In the election, the Manch openly supported the NCP against the CPI (M). But the CPI (M) won this seat for the eighth consecutive time since the 1978 assembly polls by scoring over 62,000 votes against all odds, by a winning margin of over 16,000 votes!
In the Vikramgad (ST) seat, the Manch put up a candidate against the CPI (M). However, its candidate lost his security deposit, while the CPI (M) got over 15,000 votes! So far as the 2012 Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections are concerned, the less said the better!
Finally, the Manch says, “On 23rd May 2009, a young tribal comrade of our Manch, Anil Shingade, was brutally murdered by CPI (M) goons. 6 CPI (M) activists were arrested for the murder and 3 have been convicted.” For the death of a poor Adivasi named Anil Shingade, some CPI (M) comrades were falsely implicated in this case by Ramji Vartha by bribing the police and conspiring with the Party’s political opponents. They were implicated because they were active in the CPI (M) and refused to join the anti-Party Manch. They are now released on bail and the CPI (M) will fight this case till the end and prove the utter falseness of the charges.
To sum up, the students of JNU need to know that the leaders of the so-called Manch were expelled from the CPI (M) for amassing enormous wealth at the expense of the poor Adivasis, usurping lakhs of rupees from Party and trade union funds and indulging in immoral, corrupt and anti-Party activities. All proper Party procedures were followed in these expulsions. The CPI (M) State Control Commission unanimously rejected their appeals. The CPI (M) PB and the Central Committee unanimously ratified these disciplinary actions.
All honest and militant comrades in Thane district are united as one behind the CPI (M) state committee and the Thane district committee to foil the disruptive activities of the Manch and consign these renegades to the dustbin of history. The CPI (M) is committed to uphold the glorious legacy of Comrades Shamrao and Godavari Parulekar in Thane district.
The Manch’s pathetic statement is a vain attempt to mislead the students of JNU with utter falsehoods. We are sure that just as the Adivasis of Thane district rejected this corrupt and degenerate outfit, the students of JNU will also reject them lock, stock and barrel - along with their equally opportunistic sponsors!
It has come to our notice that the so-called Godavari S. Parulekar Marxwadi Vichar Manch, based in Thane, has issued a statement responding to the charges levelled against it by the Student’s Federation of India (SFI) unit of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), dated 15th January 2013. The State Committee is forced to respond to this statement, which – like the Manch itself – reeks of utter, stark and downright falsehoods. Each of these falsehoods must be nailed down, so that the truth is known to the students of JNU.
At the outset, it was appalling that a corrupt and morally degenerate person like Parshuram Chavan was invited for a public meeting in JNU on the topic ‘Towards a People’s Democratic Alternative’. It is a sad irony that this comes at a time when we need to build real progressive, democratic alternatives to neo-liberalism and communalism, as well as fight against rampant corruption and shocking violence against women.
The response of the Manch starts with the falsehood that the “Vichar Manch was formed in the Thane District of Maharashtra on 7th June 2008 by 23 out of the 33 Thane District Committee members of the CPI (M).” The fact is that there were no more than a dozen District Committee members out of 33 who joined the Manch. Against most of them, the CPI (M) Maharashtra State Committee had already taken disciplinary action on grave charges (see details below).
More important, however, is the fact that of the then total Party membership in Thane district of 3000-odd, less than 10 per cent, i.e., less than 300, had joined the Manch. Over 90 per cent, i.e., more than 2700 Party members, firmly remained with, and continue to remain with, the CPI (M). Further, many among the 300, who were initially misled into going with the Manch, soon got disillusioned with the political opportunism and rank corruption that was indulged in by the Manch leadership comprising the ‘Gang of Four’ of Messrs Parshuram Chavan, Suhas Samant, Ramji Vartha and Rajendra Paranjape. The misled comrades soon came back to the CPI (M).
The Manch has said that “the bulk of our membership base comprises of tribal people.” The plain truth is that there is just no bulk with the Manch whatsoever, and there never was. In the state-wide Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections of March 2012, the Manch could not even save its security deposit in a single seat in Thane district.
The biggest lie in the Manch’s statement, in classic Goebbelsian style, is the following: “The Manch formation was the culmination of a bitter inner-party struggle following the land movement of 1991 when thousands of tribals occupied forest and ceiling surplus land of landlords in the leadership of the Party. However, sections of the Party leadership started engaging in nefarious negotiations with the landlords for personal benefits. This became a cause of continuous acrimony and discontent within our district. Fed up with this approach of shielding dubious state leaders, in February 2006, the Thane District Committee of the CPI (M) passed a unanimous resolution recommending action against Com. L. B. Dhangar (CPI (M) State Committee and District Committee Member) for misappropriation of funds in a trust. This recommendation was not endorsed by the State Committee. However, after this resolution, a 5-member state level enquiry committee was finally set up by the reluctant Party leadership...”
This entire paragraph is nothing but a shameless travesty of the truth. But this is not at all surprising. In the history of the Communist movement, renegades like Parshuram Chavan, Rajendra Paranjape and Ramji Vartha have always been most notorious for making shameful travesties of the truth. The truth of the matter is as follows:
Land has been a major issue of struggle in Thane district since the time of Comrades Godavari and Shamrao Parulekar. As a result of massive and sustained struggles by the CPI (M) and the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), lakhs of acres of land in Thane district was vested in the names of the Adivasis who cultivated it. This struggle for land continued in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s under the leadership of Comrade Godavari Parulekar and Comrade L. B. Dhangar. Comrade Dhangar is one of the senior-most and widely respected leaders of the Party and was its Thane district secretary for a long period till 1988. His contribution to the growth of the Left movement in the Adivasi regions of Maharashtra is remarkable. He is today over 85 years old and, in recognition of his six decade-old service to the Party, is the Chairman of the CPI (M) State Control Commission.
However, by the mid-1990s, the new Thane district Party leadership led by the above ‘Gang of Four’ consolidated its hold over the Party in Thane. It is this leadership that, in its own words, “started engaging in nefarious negotiations with the landlords for personal benefits”, which became “a cause of continuous acrimony and discontent.” As a result, very serious written complaints against them came to the Party state committee from Adivasi comrades. A five-member enquiry committee was appointed by the state committee.
Concrete proof came to the enquiry committee in the form of a letter written on the letterhead of the Party’s Thane district committee, signed by the then district secretary Suhas Samant (later expelled and now a Manch leader), to the local Dahanu police station in favour of a rich landlord and against a poor Adivasi Party member who rightly owned his land. After this letter was written to the police station, the landlord forcibly uprooted the standing crop in the Adivasi peasant’s field and tried to capture his land. However, local comrades under the leadership of Comrade Dhangar resisted and foiled this attempt. As a result, the land is still in the occupation of the Adivasi peasant. During the enquiry, further proof came of the involvement of this ‘Gang of Four’ in shady land deals with landlords. None of them could give any credible explanation regarding their connivance with the landlord class against the poor Adivasi peasants.
Similarly, more complaints began to come in about the ‘Gang of Four’ striking corrupt deals with factory-owners against the interests of the working class in Thane district. The enquiry committee came to the conclusion that these complaints were also true. Needless to say, the deals struck by these leaders with landlords and factory-owners were not without their ‘price’!
It was precisely because Comrade Dhangar consistently opposed these class collaborationist acts of the ‘Gang of Four’ that they tried to implicate him on false charges. However, the enquiry held by the Party state committee on the Trust issue completely absolved Comrade Dhangar of all the charges.
One of the major reasons why Ramji Vartha, ex-MLA, was expelled from the CPI (M) was because it was proved that he was hand-in-glove with the local ration food grains black-marketeer and had siphoned off thousands of quintals of grains meant for the Adivasi labourers working under the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). After an intense struggle by the CPI (M) and AIDWA, which Ramji Vartha opposed in his capacity as an MLA, the Tehsildar of Talasari was suspended and thousands of quintals of grains were distributed to poor Adivasis.
The Manch goes further in its string of lies when it says, “Meanwhile, instead of correcting their wrong practices, 4 members of the Maharashtra State Secretariat became part of a foreign funded trust for a ‘1 V 1 C’ (one village, one computer) scheme. As per the CPI (M) party’s guidelines, members of the CPI (M) cannot become part of the activities of foreign funded NGOs and can become part of other NGOs only after taking consent of their respective committees and approval of the higher committee. A complaint was sent to the same effect to the Party General Secretary against top state leaders, including the Maharashtra State Secretary.”
The facts of the matter are as follows: One Village One Computer (1V1C) was a programme organized to take computer training to remote villages in Maharashtra. This programme was funded by the ‘Maharashtra Foundation’, which consists of Maharashtrian people settled in the USA. The Maharashtra Foundation helps many such social causes in Maharashtra, and the annual awards that it gives in the fields of Marathi literature and culture have acquired a great deal of prestige in the State.
All the information pertaining to the 1V1C trust, its funding and its programmes were clearly placed before and were approved by the CPI (M) state secretariat. But when the above complaints came, the CPI (M) state committee itself took the decision that they should be thoroughly enquired into by the Party’s Polit Bureau (PB). This was done in 2006 and the PB gave its opinion in writing. The PB held that since the Maharashtra Foundation was an organization of Maharashtrian Indians settled in the USA, the funds that it gave the 1V1C could not be termed as foreign funding. The PB also asked the CPI (M) state committee to set up a monitoring committee to go into the 1V1C.
This was done and the monitoring committee, comprising three CPI (M) state secretariat members who had no connection whatsoever with the 1V1C project, after thoroughly going through all the accounts and other documents of the 1V1C, gave a clean chit to the project. The PB opinion and the monitoring committee report came before the CPI (M) state committee in 2006 and 2010 respectively and the state committee gave its approval.
But in spite of the PB opinion on the matter, which was clearly conveyed in writing and placed in the state committee in 2006, the handful that later formed the Manch ran a nasty campaign to malign the Party leadership – a campaign that they still continue today as seen in their statement! They stooped to such levels of factionalism that they began organising an unprecedented signature campaign against the CPI (M) state committee decisions. No Communist Party worth its name could have tolerated this deliberate violation of discipline and therefore, the handful that was indulging in it was expelled from the Party in 2007.
The Manch has categorically denied the charge of misconduct against women that has been made against Parshuram Chavan. The CPI (M) state committee has in its possession several letters and documents, as well as the proceedings of the enquiry committee, which would go to prove without any doubt whatsoever the charges against Parshuram Chavan of misbehavior with women. One of the women Party members with whom Parshuram Chavan had misbehaved got married and did not want to pursue her complaint as she was worried that it would create problems in her marital life. It was to respect her wishes that the Party did not pursue the matter to its logical conclusion. But the CPI (M) stands firm as a rock on this charge against Parshuram Chavan.
The Manch says, “It was propagated that we will join hands with the BJP, Shiv Sena, NCP and so on. But after 5 years we have continued to defend our movement in our district...We are not willing to join hands with any communal or bourgeois Party. We will continue in this path.”
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the Manch spokesmen protest too much! It is known to the whole world, and has been published in black and white in the newspapers of the day, that in the 2009 Lok Sabha election in the Palghar (ST) constituency of Thane district, when Comrade Lahanu Kom was the candidate of the CPI (M), the Manch openly supported Baliram Jadhav, the candidate of Hitendra Thakur’s ‘Bahujan Vikas Aghadi’. This Party is notorious as the Party of the land mafia, which has gone to the extent of murdering Adivasis simply because they refused to part with their land! And it is with such a Party that the Manch openly allied with! Needless to say, the leaders extracted their ‘price’!
In the 2009 Vidhan Sabha elections held six months later, in the Dahanu (ST) seat where sitting MLA of the CPI (M) Comrade Rajaram Ozare was the candidate, Ramji Vartha of the Manch filed his nomination papers and then suddenly withdrew after a secret ‘understanding’ with the NCP candidate. In the election, the Manch openly supported the NCP against the CPI (M). But the CPI (M) won this seat for the eighth consecutive time since the 1978 assembly polls by scoring over 62,000 votes against all odds, by a winning margin of over 16,000 votes!
In the Vikramgad (ST) seat, the Manch put up a candidate against the CPI (M). However, its candidate lost his security deposit, while the CPI (M) got over 15,000 votes! So far as the 2012 Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections are concerned, the less said the better!
Finally, the Manch says, “On 23rd May 2009, a young tribal comrade of our Manch, Anil Shingade, was brutally murdered by CPI (M) goons. 6 CPI (M) activists were arrested for the murder and 3 have been convicted.” For the death of a poor Adivasi named Anil Shingade, some CPI (M) comrades were falsely implicated in this case by Ramji Vartha by bribing the police and conspiring with the Party’s political opponents. They were implicated because they were active in the CPI (M) and refused to join the anti-Party Manch. They are now released on bail and the CPI (M) will fight this case till the end and prove the utter falseness of the charges.
To sum up, the students of JNU need to know that the leaders of the so-called Manch were expelled from the CPI (M) for amassing enormous wealth at the expense of the poor Adivasis, usurping lakhs of rupees from Party and trade union funds and indulging in immoral, corrupt and anti-Party activities. All proper Party procedures were followed in these expulsions. The CPI (M) State Control Commission unanimously rejected their appeals. The CPI (M) PB and the Central Committee unanimously ratified these disciplinary actions.
All honest and militant comrades in Thane district are united as one behind the CPI (M) state committee and the Thane district committee to foil the disruptive activities of the Manch and consign these renegades to the dustbin of history. The CPI (M) is committed to uphold the glorious legacy of Comrades Shamrao and Godavari Parulekar in Thane district.
The Manch’s pathetic statement is a vain attempt to mislead the students of JNU with utter falsehoods. We are sure that just as the Adivasis of Thane district rejected this corrupt and degenerate outfit, the students of JNU will also reject them lock, stock and barrel - along with their equally opportunistic sponsors!
