Despite the most disastrous performance by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] in the history of West Bengal, its general secretary, Prakash Karat, continues to try and infuse a refulgent optimism among the rank and file as if return of CPI(M)-led government soon is just a matter of organisational revamp. He resembles a typically run-of-the-mill defender of ‘Official Marxism’, whose collapse started even before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Karat’s take on the CPI(M)-led Left Front’s debacle in the party mouthpiece, People’s Democracy, reflects his penchant for fantasy. Conceitedly, he wrote, “As far as ideology is concerned, the CPI(M) draws on the theory and practice of Marxism by creatively applying it to Indian conditions. This is not a static position but one which evolves constantly.”
A random pick from official records shows the wild assumptions, rather the Ionescoan absurdity, of the top boss at the AK Gopalan Bhavan, the CPI(M)’s national headquarters. The lofty claim about CPI(M)’s adherence to revolutionary commitment runs counter to the numerous aberrations in the minimum norms of democratic governance. Where is the Marxism in some 1,250 custodial deaths (450 in jail and 800 in police lock-ups) and in the over 50,000 assassinations - mostly political - during 34 years of the Left Front (LF) regime?
Seven skeletons were dug out near the residence of erstwhile West Bengal minister Susanta Ghosh. One skeleton turned out to be that of Trinamool Congress worker Ajoy Acharya, who, along with the remaining six, had disappeared mysteriously on 22 September 2002, after a clash with CPI(M) workers. In 2002, when Ajoy’s daughter Chandana went to file a police complaint, the then superintendent of police, SK Meena, and the officer in-charge, Debashis Ray, refused to act against the CPI(M) workers.
Now, Ajoy’s son, Shyamal, who identified Acharya, has lodged an FIR against 40 CPI(M) workers, including the likes of Ghosh, CPI(M) district secretariat member Tarun Roy, and district committee member Entaz Ali, sending shivers down the spine of CPI(M) leaders.
The massacres at Singur and genocides and gang-rapes at Nandigram in 2007 forced then WB governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi to describe the killing of 14 unarmed villagers at Nandigram on 14 March - 124th death anniversary of Karl Marx — as “cold horror”.
CPI(M) cadres obstructed Gandhi from visiting Nandigram, while chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who was also in-charge the home ministry (police) merely looked. Bhattacharjee did not even express his regrets for what had happened. No wonder then that Bhattacharjee was defeated by a record margin of 16,000-plus votes in his constituency, from where he has thus far repeatedly won by record margins.
Then there was the irony of millions of workers who were deprived of their minimum wages as stipulated by the state government: the 7.3 million agricultural labourers, 1 million brick-kiln workers,1.5 million bidi workers, 1.1 million construction workers, and innumerable thousand others.
The reality is that LF victories in 2001 and 2006 did not reflect the people’s will but was manipulated through a well-oiled election machinery. In 2011, the LF was mauled (mainly by the alliance of TC and Congress) in 160 seats with a margin of over 10,000 voters, out of which 79 constituencies gave 20,000-plus margins.
The recent assembly polls show that democracy triumphs if elections are conducted by a neutral authority, not by any government run by a regimented political party.
The Left’s performance in Kerala too is exaggerated, where the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) won a hairline victory. The CPI(M) chief in Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, wrote in People’s Democracy that the voting difference between the UDF and the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) “was of a paltry 1,55,571 votes, and the overall result was that while the UDF got 72 seats, the LDF captured 68. The LDF’s defeat in five seats — Piravam, Manaloor, Azheekkode, Parassala and Kottayam — was by very meagre margins of 157 to 711 votes”.
The truth, however, is different. But for the division of the anti-LDF between the UDF and BJP, the LDF would have lost another 15 seats. Vijayan and Karat are silent on the expanding electorate of the BJP in Kerala, where it came second in two constituencies, and third in over 100 constituencies.
The CPI(M)’s central committee meeting, scheduled to be held on June 11 and 12, may end in a face-saving patch-up as comrades forfeit the moral right to recite from Faiz Ahmed Faiz:
Speak, your lips are free
Speak, it is your own tongue
Speak, it is your own body
Speak, your life is still yours
The reality is different from Karat’s illusion about communist morality and commitment of party functionaries. Marx and ‘Official Marxism’ are mutually exclusive.
— The writer is a veteran journalist & commentator, specialising in left politics and environment
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