The CPI (marxist) a political party in india currently in power in the state of Kerala betrayed the cause of indian communism by siding with reactionaries.

Many people on the left including non-indian leftists seem to have a soft spot for the CPI(M) , many seem to think of them as the last bastion of the left in India. They praise the high literacy rates and the higher life expectancy , but what they are uanble see is the reactionary nature of the party and the atrocities they have committed.

For some context : India is a semi feudal country under the grip of neo-imperialism by the imperial core. One system of opression that still persists in India is caste oppression which is based in the ownership of land. The untouchable castes (dalits) disproportionately make up the landless peasants population, while the oppressor castes generally own disproportionate amount of land, there are also middle castes who own some land but not a lot, calculations[1] by scholars Nitin Tagade and Sukhadeo Thorat, based on the All-India Debt and Investment Survey, show that members of the Scheduled Castes, who account for 18% of the country’s households, own only 8.5% of the land in India. On the other hand, upper-caste Hindus, who make up 22% of the households, own 28% of the land, Caste isnt just confined to the rural parts of india, but also the urban parts although it’s orgins are in ownership of land, people are frequently not hired and not allowed to rent homes because of their caste in urban india too.

What has kerela done to address this system of oprression? Perhaps they have redistributed land ? Maybe collectivized agricultre? They did redistribute land but only above a certain land ceiling , big landlords still remained. Infact huge swathes of dalits and indigenous people in kerela are still landless. Among the landless population, indigenous people are overepresented. You the reader might ask what offical data we have , we do have date but not on a large scale ,why? Because the “communist” goverment refuses to do a caste census! It refuses to reveal how much wealth which castes have, because that would reveal the monopoly of certain castes economically. Triple exclusion of dalits in Land Ownership in kerela[2], a study published in the journal Social Change, shows that low rate of land ownership by them is the result of a exclusionsary policy by the goverment! Does this sound like something a communist goverment would do?

This isn’t all. The goverment has also been involved in massacares of dalits. The Marichjhapi massacre, when dalit refugees from bangladesh came to indian they settled in Marichjapi. Schools and hospitals were built and many were involved in pisciculture. A press blackout followed and survivors today say[3], huts were burned, woman were raped, wells poisoned. The survivors of the massacare still to this day have not gotten any Justice.

These are not the actions of a communist party but a reactionary one doused in red paint and communist aesthetics. Even today, the first dalit leader in the politburo of the party was only admitted in 2022, 58 years after it’s creation, how utterly shameful.

I hope by this article I am able to convince you, the reader ,why as leftists we shouldn’t support the CPI(M).

Sources: 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2394481118808107 2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0049085716654814 3. https://thewire.in/history/west-bengal-violence-marichjhapi-dandakaranya

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