6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST communist movement an international movement, a solidarity representing the brotherhood of the world's working class—whichever country they might individually belong to, are they not bound together by a common struggle and a common dream? You always come back to the crucial phenomena at work. The modalities are all incidental to, mere adjuncts of, what goes on at the base. The base consists of the masses, the oppressed, rack-rented peasantry, the exploited urban working class, the discontented, frustrated sections of the lower bourgeoisie. The task of building movements among the masses has therefore to be accorded the highest priority. The cadres must go to the people, feel their pulse, know how their/mind is working on this or that issue of the moment, and provide the party with the feedback. There is the other, equally essential political task too, organising the flow of the feedback in the other direction, the people have to be told of the party point of view, the masses have to be moulded in the manner the party considers to be the best for advancing the revolutionary cause. This places stress once more on strengthening not just the inner core, but also the network of front organisations amongst the peasantry, industrial workers, unemployed youth, students, teachers, women, mercantile employees, government employees, et al. And there is then the residual, but crucial, duty to build bridges of understanding between these mass organisations, which are each a part of the party and yet a little away from it. Muzaffar Ahmad thought about each such detail. He would in fact take enormous pains over going into details. That was in his constitution. He would fuss over a particular spot in the X'ray chart of a comrade struck down by tuberculosis, he would fuss over the correct spelling of a name mentioned on page 112 or page 219 of a party publication, he would fuss over the list of office-bearers of a newly set up front organisation in an area where the party was trying to penetrate to the core. He was a cantankerous man; because he was a revolutionary zealot, he could not afford to see things get fouled up. Must one now not mention something else? There can be no worthwhile party of the revolution if discipline is slack. A communist party is a party of love and mutual loyalty and enduring camaraderie, but it is also a party of system and rigour. And Muzaffar Ahmad us^d to be obsessive on the matter of party discipline, to enforce which he would be both obdurate and merciless. This was the ingrained Leninism in him. You have to keep honing the party, chiselling it, sharpening its potential as the principal revolutionary weaponry. The weak therefore have to go, the dross must be eliminated. Those found wanting will have to be excluded. It may cause a temporary wrench in the heart, but, since they have been found wanting, comrades will have to be rendered into former comrades, with no scope for exchanging further bourgeois courtesies. Not many can subsist on the single staple of a distant dream. Muzaffar Ahmad did. He had little illusion that, during his own life