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In 1948, the Communist Party of India decided that India’s independence was a betrayal and the country was ripe for armed revolution. Moscow had decreed so and therefore it had to be so. PC Joshi, the party’s general secretarysuggested that the CPI work with Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress to build a new India. This view was bitterly opposed by others; Nehru, for them, was a lackey and “running dog of imperialism.” Moscow said so and Moscow was never wrong.

A few years later, the CPI split over whether the Russian or the Chinese ‘line’ was correct. The breakway group began losing ground to the newly formed CPM. The Marxists gained electorally in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, trouncing the Congress, which became their principle enemy. They developed a strong allergy to Indira Gandhi and were not convinced by her socialistic attitudes. (Years later, in 2003, when a statue of Indira Gandhi was unveiled in Kolkata, a news report quoted Prakash Karat as saying “Indira Gandhi was an important leader who safeguarded India’s national interest vis-a-vis America and that is important for us.”)

By this time, anti-Congressism had emerged as a full fledged political ideology in India and different formations including the BJP (then the Jan Sangh) and the CPM moved closer together when the Janata Party was formed.

Subsequently, on many occasions the BJP and the Left found themselves on the same side. When VP Singh left Rajiv Gandhi’s government, he found support from both. The Congress was anathema to the BJP and the CPM, albeit for different reasons. So rabid and irrational was the CPM’s hatred of the Congress (echoed by its friends in the media) that it was ready to be in bed with the ‘communal’ BJP.

The blunders continued through that period — not letting Jyoti Basu take up the prime ministership was the most obvious one of them. But gradually, saner elements in the party were beginning to understand that the party’s reading of the situation was flawed: the BJP was the bigger enemy and the Congress was someone they could do business with, more so since the latter was almost totally destroyed in West Bengal. Hence the willingness to strike a deal with the Congress when the UPA was formed in 2004.

Here came yet another mistake, probably the biggest — the CPM did not accept any ministerial berths in the government. At one level, it is obvious why joining the government was not a good idea — being outside gave them more power and without responsibility. But there comes a time in the life of an organisation when it should stop behaving like an undergraduate union and move up to a more mature level as a full-fledged party. The decision makers of the CPM were not prepared to do that; the men (and woman) in the driver’s seat were not ready to give up their comfort zone of being perpetual agitationists and take on some responsibilities.

Hence we have seen four years of theatre of the absurd wherein the CPM has been in an attacking mode with the UPA, generally displaying an unhelpful tendency to block rather than facilitate. From divestment to raising petrol prices, each time the CPM has played an obstructionist role. The nuclear deal has brought out the worst in the party and for the last year or so it has kept the government and the country in suspense.
Trapped in a 1960s time warp, the Left has failed to see how the world and how
India have changed; they are still stuck in the same rhetoric and the same cheap anti-Congressism of the past. Nor have theyraised their concerns with quiet diplomacy, behind the scenes; there is something about a television camera that brings out the rabble-rousing trade unionist among the lefties. The language has been harsh and intemperate, especially where the mild mannered Manmohan Singh is concerned.

Now Manmohan Singh has struck back. By calling their bluff, he has shown that the CPM and its cronies are all bark and no bite. The withdrawal of support was accompanied by a whimper and not with a bang, Anything could happen when the trust vote is held — the government could well fall — but one thing is clear: once again the CPM and the BJP will on the same side. And once again the CPM will find itself on the wrong side of history.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net