Hardial Bains

Hardial Bains (ਹਰਦਿਆਲ ਬੈਂਸ; 15 August 1939 – 24 August 1997) was an Indo-Canadian microbiology lecturer, but was primarily known as the founder of a series of left-wing movements and parties foremost of which was the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist) (CPC (ML)).

Presenting himself as staunchly anti-revisionist and pro-Stalinist, until his death, Bains acted as the spokesperson and ideological leader of the CPC (ML) — known in elections as the Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada.

During his lifetime, Bains' outlook swung from supporting the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, to Mao Zedong's China, then later to Enver Hoxha's Albania.

Shortly before he died, and abandoning his previous sharp criticisms of the country, Bains turned to Fidel Castro's Cuba for inspiration.

Spending most of his life in Canada, Bains was also politically active in England, Ireland, United States and India.

Born in India into a communist Sikh family in the Punjab, Bains became a member of the youth wing of the Communist Party of India (CPI).

He was dismayed by what he saw as the revisionism of Nikita Khrushchev following the death of Joseph Stalin.

He broke with the party when the CPI, during an underground period, supported Khrushchev's criticisms of Stalin.

Shortly after, Bains immigrated to Canada and enrolled as a graduate student in bacteriology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he was an elected student leader.

Later, following the Sino-Soviet split, Bains' groups and parties held a strident pro-China position from the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Bains himself openly identified as Maoist.

Formulated in the early 1960s, NFC thought brought together a variety of Marxist phraseology and addressed some existentialist ideas popular during that time.

His primary concern was how to bring about social revolution and the relationship of this process with the individual.

"A successful revolution can transform the world in some very definite direction, but whether it will happen, in the final analysis, is still dependent on the world," Bains wrote, arguing that "Unless it is profoundly appreciated that there is a Necessity for Change at each point [in history and the struggle], and theoretical and practical measures are taken to bring about the change, there is no possibility of creating the subjective conditions for revolution."

The recognition of the Necessity for Change, which created those subjective conditions for revolution, would create a new level of consciousness which broke with the anti-consciousness of bourgeois thought.

"The [human] brain reflects the sharpening class contradictions in the society and other developments. Either the individual transforms this reflection into social consciousness and becomes part of the human factor/social consciousness or remains part of the anti-human factor/anti-consciousness," he said, writing that:

In 1963, he helped found "The Internationalists", which evolved from a UBC political discussion group into an anti-revisionist organization that supported Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet split.

This organisation (in Canada) became the CPC (ML) with Bains as its founding leader.

In 1965, Bains founded the "Internationalists in Ireland", while he was working as a lecturer in microbiology at Trinity College, Dublin.

In 1967, Bains held a small conference of students in London with the express objective determining the future of the anti-revisionist movement, the "Necessity for Change" conference.

While the Irish Communist Organisation disagreed with the other delegates and walked out of the meeting, Bains became known as a leader of the anti-revisionist movement internationally, and assisted in establishing Marxist–Leninist parties around the world.

In addition to founding the CPC (ML) and CPI (ML), Bains is regarded as a major influence on the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist), the Communist Party of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Communist Ghadar Party of India.

Bains was also responsible for the founding of the Hindustani Ghadar Party (Organisation of Indian Marxist–Leninists Abroad).

In 1970, they renamed themselves the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist–Leninist).

He held a leading influence in the Marxist–Leninist Party, USA in the 1970s, although it later split from the CPC (ML) and dissolved in 1993.

Left publications such as Modern Communism have written articles on his legacy.

As a young man, Bains was a member of the Communist Party of India, but after the party accepted Nikita Khrushchev's speech, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", he apparently quit, adopting a pro-Stalinist viewpoint.

The CPC (ML) was the first significant Maoist formation in Canada, although it was joined by two other Maoist groups in the mid-1970s and Bains engaged in polemics against these groups as well.

With Mao Zedong's death in 1976 and the subsequent Sino-Albanian split, Bains renounced Maoism.

Following the leadership of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), he became a prominent spokesperson of the PLA's line internationally, agreeing with the conclusion that numerous communist parties had devolved into "social imperialism" (such as Leonid Brezhnev's USSR, Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung's North Korea and Fidel Castro's Cuba), while condemning Chinese revisionism, and Eurocommunism.

After the overturn of socialism in Albania, Bains again re-appraised his ideological outlook.

He visited Cuba and announced he had changed his outlook towards the country and now viewed it as a successful example of socialism.

The CPC (ML) also re-appraised its view of North Korea into a positive light.

By the end of his life, Bains' writings made fewer and fewer references to anti-revisionism and socialist revolution, and developed the theme of democratic renewal and the self-empowerment of the people.

After his death, a memorial was erected in the honour of Bains and other CPC (ML) "fallen comrades" in Ottawa's Beechwood Cemetery which is also the national cemetery of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Poet George Elliot Clarke published a poem titled "Homage to Hardial Bains" in 2000 in the Oyster Boy Review.

Bains' legacy is debated today, and he has been criticized posthumously by a number of writers such as Ben Seattle, a US leftist and former supporter.

Bains wrote several books, including Necessity for Change!, Modern Communism, Visiting Cuba, If You Love Your Class and Thinking About the Sixties, and many articles, pamphlets and speeches.

Sandra L. Smith, his widow, also served as leader of the CPC (ML).

Hardial Bains identified his main line of thinking as "Necessity for Change" or NFC thought.