Author: Saraf, R. P.
Fuller name: Ram Piara Saraf
Title: The Indian Society
Died: 23 June 2009
Bio: Mr. Ram Piara Saraf was, during the last days of his life, the chief theoretician of Nature-Human Centric Peoples Movement and editor of its organ Nature-Human Centric Viewpoint. In the present world having fundamental reality of countries becoming inter-dependent and globalization a continuous phenomenon, he felt the necessity for restructuring its social-political order on the basis of Nature-Human Centric Model. This, he said, would lead to the establishment of a peaceful, environment friendly, sustainable and democratic development model—a world order marked by a concern for human values.

He has traversed a long journey from the revolutionary and proletarian viewpoint to the international democratic and nature-human centric viewpoint. In fact, Saraf had been a politician, an ideologue and a scribe combined into one. Born in 1924 at Samba (Jammu & Kashmir state, India) he plunged into active politics at a young age of 22 immediately after his post-graduation in History from the then Punjab University, Lahore (now in Pakistan) and took an active part in the National Conference (NC), then leading a nationalist movement in Kashmir.

In 1952 he was elected to the first Constituent Assembly in the state and subsequently served for 10 years as a peoples representative in the Legislative Assembly. Inclined towards Marxism from his debut in politics, he remained in-charge of the communist group within the ruling NC till 1958. Opposing ruling party’s anti-people and reactionary policies, he along with the entire communist group in 1958 formed a new party, the Democratic National Conference (DNC) which began to function as a state unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI). In the meantime he took over as the Editor of an Urdu Weekly, the Jammu Sandesh in which he wrote leading ideological-political articles till the paper was closed down in 1969.

After split in the CPI in 1964 he was among 32 members of its National Council who later laid foundation for the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). Subsequently, he found a berth in the Central Committee of the CPI-M. In 1964 when the CPI-M cadre throughout the country was rounded up for their so-called pro-Chinese stand, he was also detained under Defence of India Rules (DIR), a draconian law imposed by the Government of India, only to be released in 1966. But when the DNC decided to support Mao Tse-tung‘s Thought and Naxalbari peasant uprising in 1967, the CPI-M leadership removed Saraf from the party.

In 1968 Saraf too contributed in the formation of the All India Coordination Committee of the Communist Revolutionaries and later in 1969 became one of the founder members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). Accordingly, he got elected to the Polit Bureau of the Central Committee of the party. He was put in-charge of the North Zonal Committee of the CPI(ML). Having gone underground in the wake of the Jammu & Kashmir Government employees agitation in 1967, Saraf was arrested in 1971 and confined to Jammu Interrogation Centre for two years.

After his release in 1973 he, while again going underground, concentrated on the question: Why is it that Indian revolution could not attain its goal as yet? He wrote several articles on the subject. Meanwhile, basing himself on Mao Tse-tung’s Thought he authored a set of four books—Scientific Dialectics, The Present Indian Society, The Situation of Indian Peoples Democratic Revolution, and Nature of Indian State, Classes, Political Parties and Revolution—which reflected his thinking during that period. Soon after, Saraf, a keen student of History, delved deep into the past and wrote a voluminous book, The Indian Society, which presents an account of pre-1947 Indian history from a Maoist premise. In January 1978, an English-Hindi bi-lingual quarterly A Revolutionary Viewpoint began to be published clandestinely under his editorship. He tried to mobilize his comrades around this publication.

Meanwhile his thinking was in the process of taking a new turn. The vast changes in China after the death of Mao Tse-tung in 1976 had shaken him and his comrades to ponder over whether Marxism represented a reality in the present era. Passing through a process of investigation and practice, they, in Fabruary 1983, first discarded Mao Tse-tung’s Thought and then changed the name of their organization to Proletarian Party in India and journal to Proletarian Viewpoint.

Further exploring and delving into the social science they adopted an internationalist democratic approach in place of Marxism-Leninism and formed an open Internationalist Democratic Party instead of a secret one in June 1986. Saraf continued as General Secreatry of this party till 1996 and also editor of its official organ Internationalist Democratic Viewpoint.

But in his quest of finding truth, his social-political thinking further evolved culminating in the Nature-Human Centric ideology. Accordingly, by the end of 2002, he along with his comrades went on to lay emphasis on the Nature-Human Centric Peoples Movement and in January 2003 the Internationalist Democratic Viewpoint changed its name to Nature-Human Centric Viewpoint with Saraf continuing as its editor.