Mainstream WeeklyHome > Archives (2006 on) > 2014 > Indian Politics and Left Parties: Bringing Dange Line Back
Mainstream, VOL52, No. 22, May 24, 2014
Indian Politics and Left Parties: Bringing Dange Line Back
Friday 23 May 2014
#socialtagsOn Dange’s 23rd death anniversary
by Pratip Chattopadhyay
This article has been written on the occasion of S.A. Dange’s 23rd death anniversary on May 22, 2014.
The verdict of the Lok Sabha elections 2014 reflects the sorry state which the Left political parties across the country have been reduced to (only 11 seats) particularly in their stronghold of West Bengal where the CPI-M has secured the same number of seats (two) as the BJP with the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc failing to win any seat. In the midst of this political turmoil, the Left parties must re-appraise the ‘united-front’ argument of Comrade S.A. Dange for their survival, both theoretically as well as politically.
Introducing the Theme
“Many a time it happens that an artist himself, when confronted to state his views on a given subject, which his art has represented, interprets his art creation in a way as would be almost opposite of what his art-vision, his emotion and thinking through art has said.†  —S.A. Dange
S.A. Dange’s above remark, while analysing Rabindranath Tagore’s Achalayatan novel, aptly describes Dange’s own brand of unique approach to Indian politics that has placed him opposite to the entire clan of mainstream Communists in India. Dange, a towering personality of yesteryears’ trade union and communist move-ments in the country with his dedicated role in the pre-independence freedom struggle, remains a memorable figure in the history of Left politics in India.
Dange gave leadership to the undivided Communist Party in the post-independence period and after the split of the CPI in 1964, he remained associated with the CPI and became the Chairman of the party. All the accolades and fame that Dange gathered in his party were dashed when on the pretext of some old letters reflecting some (misinterpreted) supportive comments of British officials some sections of the undivided party (who later split the organisation) decried him as a ‘British agent’ and the united CPI was sought to be divided by the splitters on the issue of the Dange Letters. (He continued as the CPI Chairman for several years thereafter but was subsequently expelled from the party on the CPI’s attitude to the Congress in the post-Emergency period.)
Thenceforth in the official thinking of the Left parties which are still sailing in the democratic parliamentary political milieu of India while being on the verge of drowning going by the verdict of the 16thLok Sabha elections, the very name of S.A. Dange is associated with treachery, conspiracy, betrayal, and he is dubbed as a bourgeois agent. Therefore in the acts/comments of these ‘vanguards of contemporary communism’ in the country, the person with the honour of ‘Order of Lenin’, who evolved a unique political approach (known as the Dange line) remains buried in the history of Indian communism.
The present article tries to understand the relevance of the Dange line in the context of the complex coalition era in which Indian politics is situated today and wherein the official Left parties are showing signs of steady decline. The need of the hour is to have a practical coalition to manage Indian politics better. How to achieve it? That is a million dollar question, and the answer to that query is the subject of this paper.
The title of the paper is modelled on a volume entitled ‘Bringing the State Back In’(1985) [edited by Theda Skocpol et al.] where the editors hope for the emergence of a new theoretical under-standing of states in relation to societal structures in the future. In the same vein, the present paper is woven on the thread of reasoning that a theoretical and practical reconsideration of the political course under-taken by the Left parties in India will lead to a new understanding of Dange in the era of coalitional federalism. The article does not promote the Dange line per se but notes that a realistic Leftist assessment of contemporary Indian politics cannot be undertaken without reference to the approach of S.A. Dange and concludes that such a reference/influence must not be implicitly but explicitly acknowledged by the Left parties while taking political moves under the exigencies of coalitional politics conditioned by federalist impulses.
Understanding Dange’s Political Approach
In order to understand Dange, we have to take note of some important currents of political thought which influenced him in his formative years. In the Indian National Congress one current of thought centred on the pro-Western bourgeois circle led by G.K. Gokhale; the second school of thought centred on the anti-imperialist circle led by Lokmanya Tilak; and the third school developed around the revolutionaries led by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar... Imbibing the best of these traditions, Dange stood steadfast and was most uncompromising in his loyalty to the philosophy and principles of Marxism all his life... S.A. Dange’s life shows that one can remain firmly rooted to one’s convictions without necessarily being rigid about the methods and strategies for reaching the goal. He was unflinching in his commitment to the ideology of communism, but he found no contra-diction in being a hundred per cent Communist and a hundred per cent nationalist. (Bani Deshpande and Roza Deshpande eds., S.A. Dange: Problems of Indian Renaissance, Vichar Bharathi Prakashan, 2000, p. XI, p. XIII-XIV)
Dange’s political upbringing was within the maze of Tilak who evolved his own line of anti-imperialist national revolution in which both the peaceful and non-peaceful, parlia-mentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, including the resort to arms, had a place, but not in the manner conceived by the later advocates of the tactics of individual assassination of members of the British ruling class.... With Tilak’s sudden death... Dange also felt a dilemma in his philosophical and political thinking which we may call a ‘Tilak versus Gandhi’ contradiction. He wanted to carry Tilak’s methodology and thinking to the mass line of Gandhiji... He began to search for more literature on the Russian Revolution and Lenin’s philosophy. Thus we see that the Tilak versus Gandhi contradiction was replaced now in his mind by a new contradiction, which he termed as “Gandhi versus Lenin†.... To Dange, Lenin seemed to be the logical continuation and culmination of the political line of anti-imperialist national revolution of Tilak and his philosophy. (Roza Deshpande ed., S.A. Dange: Selected Writings, Vichar Bharati Prakashan, Bombay, 1974,_ pp. 5, 18-19)
Translated to Indian politics in the post-independence period, Dange’s political approach or his political line means in Dange’s words, “
in case of a choice between the BJP (the then Jana Sangh) and Mrs Indira Gandhi (Indian National Congress), I prefer Indira
†. The Dange line advocates Congress-Communist unity to defeat the ultra-Rightist and communal forces represented by the BJP. However, the unity is not of a blind type. It is unity along with struggle. It is both friendship and enmity.
Thus it is a flexible political line but not an opportunist one
. George Lukacs once remarked: “The highest level of development of theory is when theory bursts into praxis.†The Dange line is indeed “theory bursting into praxis†modelled on the theoretical understanding of Lenin’s position on the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Analysing the Contemporary Left Political
Line in India
The Left parties have been caustic in their approach to the Indian ruling class and their activities reflected this since independence. From ‘Yeh Azadi Jhooti Hai’ (Freedom is False) to ‘Yeh Azadi Bikne Wali Hai’ (Freedom is about to be Sold), the Left parties have always been critical about the negotiations of the Indian state with imperialist powers, be it the Germans in the 1940s or the Americans in the post-Cold War period. As the Indian state has been ruled by either the Congress or BJP-led coalitions mostly in the post-1990 period, the Left parties in the recent past have been utterly critical of both these formations and started their ‘never ending’ illusory search for a ‘Third Front’ in the Indian political scene. For once in 1996 such a formation came to power at the Centre but this was short-lived. Thenceforth in party resolutions and organisational reports the theme of building up a stable Third Front became the political line of the Left parties in contemporary Indian politics. Following are some excerpts from the party documents of some leading Left parties that will highlight this point.
“The country needs to be rescued from the politics and policies of the Congress and the BJP. What is required are alternative policies in the realm of the economic, social and political. The CPI-M and Left parties have set out such an alternative.†(CPI-M Election Manifesto, 16th Lok Sabha Election, 2014) “The political-tactical line of the 19th Congress had provided the direction that as against the Congress and BJP we should strive to build a third alternative. For this the Party should work for joint actions and build united struggles with the non-Congress secular parties on commonly agreed issues...†(Political Organisational Report of CPI-M, adopted at the 20th Congress of CPI-M at Kozhikode, April 2012, pp. 28, 31-32)
“In the ensuing parliamentary election the All India Forward Bloc is fighting against the Congress and BJP for an alternative under the leadership of the Left. The Forward Bloc appeals to support the Left and the Non-Congress and Non-BJP Parties who are working with the Left Parties at the national level.†(Forward Bloc, Election Manifesto, 16th Lok Sabha Election, 2014) †To make an end of this anti-people political polarization, the Left must take the leadership—the essence of which must be a broad based Left unity. A formidable Third Front, which we like to reorganise as the People’s Alternative, would eventually lead us to Socialist India.†(10.3, AIFB, National Council Document, February 2008, pp. 60-61)
“During the last two decades, after the imposition of the ‘neo-liberal’ policies, the line of the CPI-M-led Left Front, whereever it came to power, has become almost synonymous with that of the ruling class parties.†(4.6, Basic Documents of the CPI-ML, adopted by the Ninth Party Congress, 2011, p. 79) “The communist tactical line.... not mistaken in highlighting the danger posed by the BJP, but in the name of halting the BJP it went soft on the Congress and then committed all kinds of unprincipled compromise to share power under the banner of the United Front...†(CPI-ML, Political Organi-sational Report adopted at the Seventh Party Congress, November 2002, pp. 27-29)
A senior commentator on Left politics notes: “The Left today faces the combined challenge of the religious Right (which thrives on the traditional conservative values still held sacred by large sections of our population) and the neoliberal Right (which breeds consumerist values that ensure it a steady market among newer sections of the population). The Right has drawn lessons from Darwin’s concept of survival of the fittest through a long history of ruthless competition ending up with accommodation among their constituents to make themselves ‘fit’ to rule over the world. Should the socialist Left adopt from Darwin the path of natural selection whereby they can come out from the shell of their dinosaurian past, adapt themselves to new socio-economic conditions, and survive and transform into a unified force that can create new forms of resistance against the manifestations of social Darwinism?†(Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Why Is The Left More Divided Than The Right?’, EPW, Vol. XLVIII, No. 38, September, 2013, p. 16)
It is interesting to see that the Left parties are a divided house regarding their ‘correct’ political line. While the CPI and CPI-M at times have been inclined towards the Congress as against the BJP, the ultra-Leftists are in total opposition to any bourgeois party. The Forward Bloc, though cruising along being part of the mainstream Left Front coalition, keeps the other partners under strict vigilance on any deviations towards either the Congress or BJP. But overall they are in the same boat of anti-Congress and anti-BJP secular front and they are one in not giving the Dange line any place in their political schema. In his moving short poem Karl Henriech Marx, the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger has written: “I see you betrayed, by your disciples, only your enemies, remained what they were.†(quoted in Randhir Singh, Marxism, Socialism, Indian Politics: A View From the Left, Aakar Books, New Delhi, 2008, pp. 199) In Indian politics isn’t these lines meant for Comrade Dange?
Dange’s Agony of his Lifetime
“Amar Sokol Dukher Pradip, Jele Dibosh, Gele Korbo Nibedon, Amar Byathar Puja Hoyni Somapon..........†(I’ll light for my Lord a lamp, out of all my sorrows, at the end of the day, my prayer through agony is not yet over)
—Rabindranath Tagore
S.A. Dange was a person who believed in the unity of the communist movement in a country and was for a single party rallying the communist movement and thus Dange continued to be in the party despite several rounds of warnings and expulsions regarding his opinions against the party line. However, unlike contemporary politicians who desert their party to join new ones on the slightest of rebuke, Dange never deserted his party till his party deserted him by a final expulsion in the fag-end of his life. The following remark of Dange shows the degree of pain with which he continued his political party life: †I supported Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandee March in 1930 against Party’s line and for this offence the CPI expelled me while I was in jail as a prisoner in the Meerut Conspiracy case... Thereafter I was expelled twice and censored several times for opposing the Party line. However, as the situation changed, the CPI realised its past mistake and re-admitted me again. I was made Chairman of the Party in spite of my past records of expulsion and I have now resigned that post as well as Party membership at this age. However, I am sure that history will be repeated and the CPI will again understand from its bitter experience that it is now following a wrong path.†(Deshpande and Deshpande eds., ibid, pp. 192-193)
Mohit Sen opines that the Left parties have narrowly interpreted class consciousness as being synonymous with support for the Communist Party. Dange’s concept was to raise the level of general knowledge and consciousness of the workers till they realised they were a class and then decided to support any particular party. In the aftermath of the Total Revolution movement in India, Dange remarked: “We were always trying to become alternative to the Congress instead of cooperating with it and the Congress was confronting counter-revolution and we were confronting the party.†Dange’s cryptic statement to Sen was that ‘the CPI had no further historic role to play’ (Mohit Sen, Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist, Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2003, pp. 431) Nothing is more true than this statement in the wake of the debacle of the CPI in the 16th Lok Sabha elections.
Participating in the debate on the Bank Nationalisation Bill in 1969, Dange remarked in the Lok Sabha: †... It is a happy moment that the nationalisation of banks has at last come for legislation before this House from the opposite side, not from our side... I welcome it even it is from the opposite side and I congratulate the Congress Party and the Prime Minister on having brought this measure before Parliament. We will not hesitate to congratulate even Congressmen, though we have differences and we quarrel. Yes, the bargain is made. What is wrong in that bargain?...†(S.A. Dange in LokSabha: Selected Speeches, p. 68) Sadly, in Dange’s lifetime and even now there are few opinion-builders among the Left parties who appreciate the ruling class if besides many other faults the latter takes some positive steps. Today if such socially revolutionary policies are made (MGNREGA, Food Security Bill) the wisdom of the Left parties only allows them to criticise and highlight the fault-lines, which are acceptable witnessing the degree of corruption in their implementation, but these should not make them oblivious of the positive steps taken. Thus Dange’s pain of seeing the Left parties striding a faulty political direction continues posthumously, more so when his party, the CPI, is practically unrepresented in the 16th Lok Sabha.
Dange in the Eyes of his Chelas (Disciples)
There may be doubts regarding the extent to which Dange is ‘Tilak’s chela’ or ‘Lenin’s chela’ (as far as his political philosophy is concernede) or ‘Gandhi’s chela’ (as regards his political line) but the admiration for Dange knows no bounds among his own chelas. This section shows how minutely his admirers have observed his qualities; from this it can be said that even though the official Left parties have not been able to digest his approach to Indian politics, there are many who feel proud to be associated with the Dange line.
The communist movement in India involved two distinct trends: one replete with indepen-dent ideas and eager to get united with the working class in the struggle against the imperialists as well as for the welfare of the society. The other trend appeared to be most conservative and alienated from the nation itself. S.A. Dange was all along with the first trend in the communist movement. The thesis, advocated by V.I. Lenin regarding the colonial countries, that was adopted in the Communist Inter-national, again endorsed the thesis of George Dimitrov about the United Front. Dange was in favour of applying these theses on the soil of India. His lifelong objective was to ensure a sort of unification of all democratic parties and working classes against imperialism, feudalism and communalism and thus build up a national united front in India. (Dilip Chakraborty, ‘The Re-emergence of Dange Line in Indian Politics’ in Gopal Banerjee ed., S.A. Dange : A Fruitful Life, Progressive Publishers, Kolkata, 2002, pp. 115, 121)
According to Mohit Sen, Dange worked out the manner and mechanism of bandhs which carried forward Gandhiji’s hartal as a form of mass protest. At the same time he gave a new content to the leading role that the working class played in it. The Great Petition and the National March to Parliament which he led the CPI to organise in 1963 was also an original form of combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle bringing the people to Parliament and Parliament to the people. The uniqueness and originality of Dange was expressed in the way in which he combined class and national positions and patriotism and internationalism...... The uniqueness of Dange consisted in his being able to combine hectic mass work with deep study and understanding of our civilisation—its history and culture.... It was with these qualities and courage that he helped to found the CPI in December 1925, to leave it in 1980 when he assessed that it had outlived its historic role, found the AICP and practically at the end of a long and turbulent life to found the UCPI... made him repudiate Stalinism, break with the Brezhnev leadership of the Soviet Union in 1980 and welcome Perestroika and Glasnost no sooner had Gorbachev launched these in 1985.... Dange lived a life of sacrifice not in a showy but in a civilised manner. ‘Freedom is the recognition of necessity,’ wrote Engels. Sripad Amrit Dange knew this, lived it and passed into history. (Mohit Sen, ‘The Dange Centenary’, in Gopal Banerjee ed., ibid, pp. 41-45)
In the words of a leading scholar on Indian politics, “The remarkable thing about Dange is that he had a protean personality. Whether one agrees with the ways in which Dange decided to accept change is not the important point here. What is important and what one can learn from his life is his readiness to accept change.†(Rakhahari Chatterji, ‘Foreword’, in Panchanan Chattopadhyay ed., S.A. Dange and Twentieth Century India, Progressive Publishers, Kolkata, 2002, pp. viii)
The belief of these ‘Dangeites’ is summed up well in the following comment: “
Today the Communists in India have no better alternative but to accept the essence of the ‘Dange-line’ in daily politics for their survival, making it as their grand narrative. Without this grand narrative, the Communists cannot make any headway even in a revolutionary situation as is prevailing in India today.
†(Panchanan Chattopadhyay, ‘Under the Shadow of Comrade Dange’ in Gopal Banerjee ed., ibid, p. 143)
S.A. Dange: A Contemporary Re-appraisal
After a brief analysis of the uncompromising stance of the Left parties in Indian politics where the ‘Dange line’ is tantamount to being a stooge of the Congress party which is absolutely unacceptable to them, and the hard-core belief of the Dangeites in the correctness of the Dange line for a Marxist approach to Indian politics, in this section of the paper an attempt to bring forth a balance between the two
camps, theoretically as well as practically, is attempted.
The Marxist theory of ‘unity and struggle of opposites’, on which the essence of the Dange line is based, must be studied not in isolation but together with the other law of dialectical materialism, that is, ‘negation of negation’. Those who support the Dange line highlight the former principle while those who oppose it talk of the latter. This paper argues that there is inherently no opposition between the two camps of reasoning as both lead to the same theoretical and practical goal embodied in the Dange line. Simply put, the Communist Party (anti-capitalism) and Congress (pro-capitalism) are parties of diametrically opposite character and the very alliance between them is the first negation (negation of the general pattern of coming together/forging alliances only of like-minded parties) and the break of the alliance between the two is the negation of negation (going back to the normal positions of maintaining distance between characteristically different parties). However, the ‘first negation’ shows that the ‘unity of opposites’ is possible while the ‘second negation’ would mean that the struggle of opposites if not maintained with practical tactics could lead to systemic instability and a breakdown of the unity.
Notice, in the first law, unity is not surrender but it is coupled with struggle. As scientific laws of historical evolution, both ‘negation of negation’ and ‘unity and struggle of opposites’ will keep on happening, not in a cyclical but in a linear way, each time with some new inter-pretative meanings.
An alliance or a coalitional understanding between the Congress and Communists is bound to be hampered, disturbed and ultimately tampered with. In India the experience of UPA-I showed that ‘unity and struggle of opposites’ can be a historical reality in the concrete situation of the present era of Indian coalition politics but withdrawal of ‘mere outside support’, although a highly pressing support, could lead only to systemic instability of the polity and create an opportunity for non-ideological parties to gain prominence in the coalitional political game in India. (The very withdrawal of the crucial outside Left support from UPA-I can be seen as the root cause for today’s rise of the BJP in prominence at the Centre. After their withdrawal the Congress lost the strict vigilance of the Left, corruption mounted and scaled new heights, and also with it came a political vacuum, that was capitalised first by the AAP and now by the BJP.)
Guided by the very law of nature, the phase of ‘unity and struggle’ is bound to be disturbed by ‘negation of negation’. However, even after ‘negation of negation’, in the light of the experience of ‘unity and struggle of opposites’, there is always a room for becoming practical and adaptive to the changing situation so that ‘negation of negation’ only becomes and an interlude to the large span of the ‘unity and struggle of opposites’ phase. Translated in Indian politics, this means that the coalitional understanding between the Communists and Congress parties become the working reality for quite some time instead of remaining always a distant dream in the coming days of our coalitional federalism, in the post-BJP Government at the Centre.
“Marxian theory represents not a ‘closed system’ but a phenomenon that is in a continuous process of reconstitution. Even this continuous process of reconstitution does not necessarily make the theory complete at every moment of time. Significant incompleteness remains and may do so for long stretches of time.†(Prabhat Patnaik, ‘The Communist Manifesto: After 150 Years’, in Prakash Karat (ed.), A World to Win: Essays on Communist Manifesto, Leftword Books, New Delhi, 1999, p. 76)
The Dange line does not mean unity with the Congress at the cost of the working class and its interest. It is both thesis (unity) and anti-thesis (struggle) going together for a synthesis (new social condition and new social policies favouring the setting up of a socialist society). S.A. Dange’s political approach is couched in a language that is appreciative of parties and formations outside the Marxist groups. In other words, Dange was in search for Marxist features in these non-Marxist groupings, to go beyond the Marxist framework not to denigrate Marxism but to advance it in different situations.
In the contemporary Indian political scene the Left parties are trying to stay alive ‘indepen-dently’ as against the BJP-led NDA and Congress- led UPA formations. Such ‘independence’ is intertwined with strategic electoral alliances with ‘secular’ forces in the country. After the 16thLok Sabha elections, all the possible secular partners of the Left Front felt that the ‘Third Front’ has been trivialised by a sweeping BJP wave across the country—except the AIADMK (refused to forge a pre-poll alliance with the Left in 2014), BJD (not with any clear position) and Trinamul Congress (arch rival of the Left).
Today the BJP wants to be the ‘new Congress of the post-independence period’ and the TMC wants to go beyond the achievements of the Left Front Government (statistically it is shown to have won 34 Lok Sabha seats in reply to 34 years of misrule of the Left)! Today the ‘twin-danger’ thesis of the Left parties must be restated in the ‘BJP-TMC’ danger and not the rhetorical ‘BJP-Congress’ danger and both strategy and tactics must be designed accordingly. This shift is in tune with Engels’ remark—‘Men make their own history but they make it in circumstances given to them.’
Dange and Practical Communism: Need of the Hour
In an article published at the end of 1984, the Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko, repeated the warning that perfection of socialism would require a whole historical epoch. (Stephen White, “Ideology and Soviet Politics†, in Stephen White and Alex Pravda (eds.), Ideology and Soviet Politics, Macmillan, London, p. 10) In that journey towards ‘perfect socialism’, various strategies must be tried out and in the Indian context Dange’s approach is one of them. Dange was never a Congress agent but an uncompromising Communist personality who tried to theorise the road to power for the Left parties in India.
In the words of David Miliband, “to reinvent the Left is to give its practice a cutting edge that the old formulas no longer possess, and to make possible radical changes that are badly needed.†(Daivd Miliband (ed), Reinventing the Left, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, p. 16) Dange’s approach may be re-appraised in the sense that at present the Left parties‘ association with the Congress along with other small Left-rhetorical slogan-based formations may be the correct way of coming to power for the Left, to use that power to build their own organisation and then work independently. Today the Left must understand that its historic role lies not only in its own rejuvenation but also to strengthen the secular forces in the country of which the Congress party is one.
After the gigantic rise of NarendraModi and the RSS-led BJP to power at the Centre with 280 plus seats as the single largest party after the 2014 general elections, a prophetic statement has come from an introspective scholar: “The Congress and the Left will eventually work together because none of the two on its own can fight against Hindutva. The logic of social dialectics is that these two secular forces should join hands to oppose Hindutva. The Congress and Communists have no option but to come together to fight the Hindutva forces because, finally, both need one another due to their common secular belief system.†(C.P. Bhambri, Coalition Politics in India, Shipra Publications, 2010, New Delhi, p. 170)
In Indian politics, after the ‘unity and struggle’ (Dange line) phase of 2004-07 and the ‘negation of negation’(mainstream party line) phase of 2007-13, it’s time now for the ‘unity and struggle’ approach (Dange line of ‘united front’) to bounce back in an effort to resist the BJP at the Centre and Trinamul Congress at the State level. Practical communism is the crux of Dange’s approach to Indian politics and the Left parties are at ‘independence’ to use that ‘tool-kit’ in this coalition era. The Left parties’ actual ‘indepen-dence’ lies not in forging any electoral ally outside the Congress and BJP but to decide the actual moment for using this particular ‘tool-kit’. These suggestions may be weird or conjectures but as Maurice Duverger comments: “Frequently we have had to draw imaginary lines to link the few shining points scattered in the dark—the resultant pattern can give only a very approximate idea of reality.†(Maurice Duverger, Political Parties, 1964, p. 224)
By way of conclusion a couple of lines from one of Rabindranath Tagore’s writings, also Dange’s favourite, may be recalled—“Eto tar alo, se jawar poreo hoyna ghor ondhokar, eto tar prem se chole geleo gondho thake bhalobashar†(He is so illuminating, that even after his departure the room is not dark, His love and care is such that even in his absence the fragrance remains).
Long Live Comrade Dange!
Pratip Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Kalyani, West Bengal and can be reached at chatterjee23_pratip@yahoo.co.in
