 |
| N. Shanmugathasan with Chairman Mao |
By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Many of our Leftist leaders who began their political life in earnest in the early part of the last century to change history turned into prisoners of the very same history within two decades.
The lure of the power and privilege that came with ministerial and other high-level positions in government made them embrace a political class of compromise and collaboration. Their reliance on opportunistic shortcuts in the name of tactics to attract votes at Parliamentary Elections severely damaged the integrity and the future of the Leftist movement in Sri Lanka.
However, there were a few exceptional leaders on the Left who never succumbed to opportunist and capitulationist tendencies. Among them was Nagalingam Shanmugathasan, one of the leaders of the country’s communist movement, popularly known as ‘Shan,’ whose 32nd death anniversary fell on 8 February.
A leading theoretician
Shanmugathasan, the founding father of the Maoist movement in Sri Lanka, deserves to be remembered for his contributions to the working class movement and the fight against revisionism. He was a leading theoretician of the international Maoist movement.
He asserted that no Leftist party could seize real political power through the parliamentary path and rule the country properly using the old State machinery that had served the traditional ruling class for a long time. It seems appropriate to remember Shanmugathasan when we look at the crises that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his ruling National People’s Power (NPP) are facing in running the Government administration with the bureaucracy that served previous governments led by corrupt leaders.
Born on 3 July 1920 in Manipay, Jaffna, Shan read for a degree in history at the University College, Colombo, where he was a popular student leader. In July 1943, soon after sitting the final examination at the university, he joined the newly formed Communist Party of Ceylon (CP). The party was barely two weeks old when he joined it as a full-timer. Since then, Shan’s life was intimately linked with the history of the communist movement.
Shan, the respected Marxist intellectual, served as a teacher and guide in Marxist theory and international politics for generations of communist activists and other politically engaged progressives.
The political class he regularly conducted for nearly three decades since the latter part of 1950 in Colombo and other parts of the country always drew an impressive number of participants. Indeed, the continuous popularity enjoyed by these classes was an acknowledgement of Shan’s mastery of dialectical materialism and pedagogic skills.
Opposition to revisionism
Shan’s contribution to the popularisation of the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism far outweighed that of many other Leftist leaders in this country.
He was consistently engaged in ideological struggles against Trotskyism, reformism, and modern revisionism. As the Leader of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation (CTUF), he played an important role in many working class struggles, including the 1947 General Strike, 1953 Hartal, and 1955 transport workers’ strike.
However, he was expelled from the Communist Party in 1963 for opposing the revisionist line of the party.
Shortly before that, he had visited China for discussion with the Chinese Communist Party. Even before the Sino-Soviet ideological conflict came into the open, it was known that there were differences within the CP on issues such as the positions of the so-called parliamentary road to socialism and on the united front with the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP).
Shan protested his expulsion as an act that violated the party’s Constitution. In October 1963, he issued a statement that the struggle would continue and identified the following immediate tasks: (a) the publication of Sinhala translations of important Marxist theoretical works; (b) the publication of ‘Kamkaruwa’ and ‘Thozhilali ’ (Sinhala and Tamil editions of the CTUF’s ‘Worker’) as high-quality weeklies and making them daily papers within one year; (c) the publication of good-quality Sinhala and Tamil Marxist theoretical periodicals; (d) building up the unity of the trade union movement and establishing a united trade union centre as quickly as possible; and (e) mobilising peasants and creating a worker-peasant alliance.
Role in revolutionary communism
The CP finally split in two in January 1964 into pro-Moscow and pro-Peking wings. Shan, Premalal Kumarasiri, and several other leaders condemned and rejected the pro-Moscow revisionist line of the party as well as the leadership of Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe and Peter Keuneman, and created a separate Central Committee and announced the formation of the Communist Party (Peking).
The new CP earned a reputation due to its revolutionary political line and the militant struggles it organised and led. The CTUF and Plantation Workers’ Union provided a strong working-class base for the new party, which was also able to win over large sections of the youth league of the original CP. Even though it preached armed struggle as a justifiable means to achieve its goal, the party did not take any steps towards such a struggle on a national scale.
However, Tamil militant movements were influenced by the party’s theoretical defence of armed struggle and, even more importantly, by the practical experience of the Mass Movement for the Eradication of Untouchability launched by the party in Jaffna in 1966.
In the face of violence unleashed by the upper castes and the Police, this movement metamorphosed into an armed uprising of oppressed castes led by Shanmugathasan. Of all the struggles for social justice in Sri Lanka, this was perhaps the most successful in terms of results achieved.
There have been discussions and debates among historians, Marxist intellectuals, and Leftist activists regarding Shan’s contributions to revolutionary communism. However, he was the undisputed founding leader and guide of the Maoist movement in this country. Shan’s close friend, leading English journalist, and editor the late Mervyn de Silva nicknamed him Mao Tse-Shan in an article, with a touch of humour.
Shan visited China during the Cultural Revolution and addressed a gathering of thousands of Red Guards. His writings on Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s thoughts were published in ‘The Bright Red Banner of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought,’ which had an international readership. He served as a key link between various Marxist-Leninist parties and the Communist Party of China. He also maintained a close contact with the Naxalite movement in India.
An ideal Maoist
Former diplomat and reputed political analyst Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, in an article written on the occasion of Shan’s birth centenary in 2020, said that Shan may be seen as the “founder and ‘Vice Chancellor’ of the ‘university’ of Marxist-Leninist learning that almost every committed Lankan revolutionary, south and north, graduated from but never stayed on in”.
He added: “Comrade Shan knew Mao and represented him. He was the only Sri Lankan and one of the very few South Asians to have had conversations with him. The founder leader of India’s Maoist movement, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), much better known as the Naxalites, Charu Mazumdar, never met Mao. Shan, however, stood with Mao at Tiananmen Square at the height of the Cultural Revolution, when Mao reviewed one-and-a-half million Red Guards marching as the sun rose.
“The fact that the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), though not itself a Maoist movement, emerged from the bowels of the Maoist movement and its leading cadres were for the most part ex-Maoists, is evidence of the fecundity of Sri Lankan Maoism.
“Most striking was the ideological role played by the Sri Lankan Maoist leader internationally. Shan was one of the first in the world to found a Maoist Communist Party, breaking away from the Moscow-centric CP. His skills with the English language and his knowledge of Marxist-Leninist doctrine made him an ideal representative for the Communist Party of China in the global polemic with the pro-Moscow parties.
“The histories and anthologies of political literature of that period showed the Ceylon Communist Party, as the Maoists were known, the chance to punch above their weight. His English-language writings were regarded as a prime source on Maoism by students of comparative communist studies the world over.”
A fighter to the last
After the insurrection launched by the JVP in 1971, Shan was arrested and detained for one year. He was vehemently critical of the JVP, which originated from the CP (Peking).
He was arrested because of his open advocacy of the armed struggle and for being a political mentor to JVP Leader Rohana Wijeweera. While in detention, Shan wrote a book entitled ‘A Marxist Looks at the History of Ceylon’ in English. Sinhala and Tamil translations of the book were published later.
China’s support for the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Government after the 1971 insurrection had adverse political consequences for the CP (Peking). Some groups in the party tried to capture the leadership when Shan was out of the country. Their moves were defeated after Shan returned.
Some of the expelled persons formed a new party, which later splintered into different factions. Some of them turned into supporters of the United Front Government of Bandaranaike while the CP (Peking) continued in its path of struggle.
After the death of Mao in 1976, the ‘Gang of Four’ which firmly followed his policies began to lose support within the Chinese party. In Sri Lanka, the groups that broke away or were expelled from the CP (Peking) supported China’s domestic and foreign policies, while Shan’s party firmly supported the legacies of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Shan actively devoted himself to the task of establishing the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).
The CP (Peking) was reorganised and renamed as the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist) in 1991. Shan led the party until his death in 1993. The last public event in which he participated was a press conference organised by the International Emergency Committee of the RIM in support of Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path Leader Dr. Abimael Guzman in London.
Shan passed away in February 1993 at the age of 74 in England, where he was receiving treatment while staying with his daughter Dr. Radha Thambirajah, who is an acupuncture specialist.
In the words of eminent journalist, the late Ajith Samaranayake: “Shan’s contributions as trade unionist and an educator of the worker’s movement, as a leader who led by example, was immense. Such men will hardly be born again in a land fast becoming a home for pygmies and mediocrities, time-servers and hurrah boys. That he led a fighting life and fought to the last, that he refused to leave the barricades while others were retreating all around him – such are the memories of which legends are made.” (The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo)- Courtesy- The Sunday Morning
Post a Comment