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| Edited By: Soroor Ahmed |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 30, 2019, 07:15 AM IST
Though the 2019 Lok Sabha election may go down in history as a different kind of electoral battle, there is no denying the fact that the Communist movement is facing a crisis of existence, almost a century after its birth in India.
Be it in Kerala or Bengal, and to a certain extent, Tripura and Begusarai, it may lose at the hands of secular parties and not the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is certainly time for introspection for the mainstream Communist movement in India.
Interestingly, the Left has bounced back in Nepal, where they came to power 16 months ago, or in Mexico, where they won an election last summer. These developments took place more than a quarter century after the collapse of the Reds in Russia. In the same way, China is mostly Communist in name, while post-Castro Cuba is a different country now.
The Indian Communists may have their own political compulsions in Kerala where they are in power and the only force strong enough to take on the Congress. The saffron party has a relatively small base in that state. But in Bengal, there was some possibility of an alliance between the Left and Congress as they had contested the last Assembly election together, yet no such seat sharing arrangement could be worked out this time. Notwithstanding the failure of an alliance with secular parties, people in general recognise contributions of the Left in fighting political opponents — be it Congress in the past, or the BJP now.
Perhaps they are missing personalities like Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Indrajit Gupta, Jyoti Basu and Somnath Chatterjee. Today there is a general feeling among the non-Communist secular parties that the Left is not following the line of Sitaram Yechury, but of Prakash Karat, the present general secretary of the CPM.
It was in Kerala that the first ever elected Communist government in the world came to power in 1957, when EMS Namboodiripad became the chief minister of the state. If things continue to go the way they are, Pinarayi Vijayan may end up becoming the last elected Chief Minister from the Left!
They have not only lost power in Bengal and Tripura, but have also become more or less politically irrelevant in these two states.
Incidentally, Kanhaiya Kumar the former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union — perhaps by default — has brought a glimmer of hope for the Communist movement. But he is too young and too new to the electoral battle of such a complex constituency as Begusarai, from where he has been fielded. That is why several Left-leaning activists have questioned the wisdom of the CPI to expose him to the rough and tumble of polls so early in his career. They are now asking as to why the Communists failed to build an alliance in Bengal and Begusarai — even if there was no scope for it in Kerala.
The Communists cannot put all the blame on the Congress in Bengal or the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar. From the very beginning, they started making unrealistic demands regarding sharing of seats in Bihar and Bengal. For example, the CPI demanded six Lok Sabha seats from the ‘Grand Alliance’ without any presence in the Bihar Assembly.
The big question is even if Kanhaiya wins from Begusarai, how many seats will the Communists win in the rest of the country?
If the Communists end up winning just a handful of seats, Kanhaiya would not be in a position to wage the so-called war against communalism alone. It seems that the hard line ideological position is taking its toll on the Communist movement in India.
Strangely, even the bitterest rivals of Communists have never questioned their political commitment and honesty of their leaders. Even in Bengal, where they ruled for 34 years, nobody charged them with corruption, though they have repeatedly been blamed for violence and political arm-twisting.
If the Indian Left is really in the lurch, they themselves are to blame. They perhaps failed to read the writing on the wall.
Author is a senior journalist
