'Alternate forces' share stage, but no word of a front

Effort by the Left parties to bring major regional players under the banner of “People’s Unity against Communalism” succeeded on Wednesday with leaders of 14 parties making it to the podium but fell far short of laying the foundation for a Third Front.

An interesting inclusion in the conclave was Sharad Pawar’s NCP, which is part of the UPA, and Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. 

However, it was clear from the tenor of nearly all parties that they were seeing the BJP under Narendra Modi as a real threat to their respective politics and were keen to get under one banner in 2014. At the same time, they were cautious not to commit as they were not yet clear what effect such an alliance can have on their poll arithmetic.

JD (U) leader Nitish Kumar was honest in admitting that the possibility of a Third Front —  against the Congress-led UPA or the BJP-led NDA alliance — did not exist at present. He said the convention was important for all secular parties to come together on a joint forum.

“There is no third front right now, but there should be an effort to bring in unity. Unity among all secular parties is necessary to defeat fascism,” Nitish said.

“The day there will be no democracy there will not be any India,” he said.

Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ramvilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) were not part of the convention, making it obvious that both are keenly looking at their vote banks in Bihar and perhaps do not want to have truck with anything that the JD(U) is part of.

The Bihar chief minister kept up his jibes against Modi, whom he had criticised a day earlier, by linking him to Adolf Hitler. The JD(U) had called off an alliance with Modi’s party in June this year.

“There is a need to defeat communal forces and those who want to develop only corporate houses,” Nitish said, referring to both the BJP and the Congress.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, too, took potshots at the BJP leader, saying: “Modi called himself a Hindu nationalist. Can there also be Muslim nationalist, Christian nationalist? There can only be secular nationalists.”   

Karat went a step further when he blamed the RSS for breaking Hindu-Muslim unity. “The RSS in the three day national conference in Kerala asked Hindus to give birth to more children to counter Muslims. Democratic forces need to come together to defeat communal forces led by RSS,” said Karat.

Referring to the recent communal overtones that have been playing out in Ayodhya and more recently in Muzzafarnagar, Mulayam Singh Yadav said that only the Left parties have been helping the SP government in the state to take on communal forces. “A communal force, which you all know, is trying to inflame communal passions by holding a one-month long yatra in the name of the Ram temple. We stopped them, but they managed to bring communal riots to Muzzafarnagar,” said Mulayam.

“Despite all contradictions, I assure this will remain one country,” said AB Bardhan, while appealing to parties left out of the convention to join the effort of making a secular front. He was pointing at the RJD and the LJP. “Let Sardar Patel’s statue at the Sardar Sarovar in Gujarat remind people what he said about the RSS.”

“I appeal to Mulayam Singh to help bring Muslims, who have been forced to live in camps, back to their homes in Muzaffarnagar and give them security,” Bardhan said.

Besides four left parties, others that attended the convention were JD (U), SP,  BJD, NCP, JD (S), AIADMK, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Republican Party of India (RPI) and People’s Party of Punjab.