THE world has moved a long way since the formative decades of the communist movement when the latter was identified almost exclusively with workers’ (and in underdeveloped countries, peasants’) movements. Thanks to continual socio-economic and political changes, a whole range of other movements by different strata/sections — students, women, oppressed nations/nationalities, dalits, racial, religious or other minorities and so on — have grown powerful enough to carve out a distinct, autonomous political space for themselves. In all these areas the proletariat has to fight relentlessly for hegemony against both the spontaneous tendency of these movements to come under bourgeois influence and clever manipulations by bourgeois parties to influence and utilise these in their narrow interests. To this end a communist party steadfastly pursues the key thread of class struggle within these movements and this is what we mean by proletarian class approach. Thus Rosa Luxemburg and her party fought for women’s suffrage not because that would improve women’s conditions but in the interests of “the proletariat’s general struggle for liberation” (see box) and therefore presented this struggle as the responsibility of the whole party. (Broadly speaking, similar is our position today on the campaign for women’s reservation in legislative assemblies, as we will see in the third paper of this school).

In our context, the proletarian or communist approach to women’s movement would mean, first and foremost, that the women’s association should not be seen as the sole medium of the party’s work among women. No less vital in this regard are mass organisations of workers, students, cultural activists and, most importantly in our conditions, agrarian labourers. Here male organisers also should always — and especially during initial periods when, or in areas where, women organisers are not immediately available — take it as their responsibility to spread the work among women members of the respective class/strata. But this is possible only when and only to the extent they are educated to overcome the feudal values prevalent in our society, to fight and to repudiate what Lenin called “the separatist approach”( see end of Part II).

Secondly, majority of cadres in the women’s organisation should as a rule work directly and on a regular basis (not just during membership campaigns) in one particular class organisation or among unorganised/semi-organised working women like bidi workers, anganwadi and ASHA workers, domestic helps, etc.. Holding offices in say the TU centre or the agrarian labourers’ organisation is not the main thing, direct and responsible work is. It is necessary to naturalise this relation or working arrangement between the women’s organisation and class organisations; this the party committees must ensure at their respective levels, failing which higher committees should intervene. In this process alone can our women’s organisation acquire a good mass base and membership strength. This is not to deny, of course, the need to develop sustained work in selected slum areas and other localities in towns and cities, among school and college teachers in creative non-conventional ways and so on.

Thirdly, on the strength of the mass base thus developed, the women’s organisation should pursue a vigorous UF policy, which is very much a class policy of the proletariat. This means (a) mobilising progressive women and men from other strata in support of our movement and (b) wide interaction and joint initiatives with other women’s organisations on issues of common concern.

Combining the three elements noted above, we can develop a distinct stream of revolutionary democratic women’s movement in India and that is our task in the stage of democratic revolution.