Death of a pragmatist

The demise of Jyoti Basu does more than mark the passing of a titan among India’s communists. It also throws light on the challenge facing his successors.

It was the genius of Basu that he could be all things to many people. As champion of federalism and a protector of minorities and elder statesman first of anti-Congress and then finally of the plural forces, he was without parallel.

Yet, a decade after he demitted office in an orderly way to a hand-picked successor, his party and the Left forces are in serious disarray. Part of the reason is the ebbing away one by one of the giants who laid its foundations.

Far more than that other key cadre party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, they managed mostly to keep to an image of honesty and probity in public life.

Writing in his memoirs of his student days, Iqbal Masud the former revenue service officer who was known as a film critic, wrote of how he had received the young Mohan Kumaramangalam at the railway station in Madras in the 1940s.

“They do not”, Masud recalled over a half century later, “make Communists like those any more.” He could have been speaking of Basu.

The crisis is evident in West Bengal itself.  Basu courted private capital with less success than his successor, Buddhadev Bhattacharya. But a thermal plant like Bakreshwar became a symbol of regional pride with young men lining up to donate blood and put the money they earned in a ‘collection box’ to fund the plant.

Symbolic as this was, it showed a determination to make industrialisation a popular project, something that clearly has not been seen  in West Bengal since 2007.

With the passing of Basu, more than just an age has ended. He was after all democracy’s version of Deng Xiao Ping, someone who cared not about the colour of the cat but whether it could catch the mouse.

More seriously, he gave significance to issues such as defence of democracy (as in the Emergency) and of the secular fabric (as against the Hindutva groups). Both required major innovations in practice, even working with forces otherwise inimical to Marxism. But he helped give the party the steel to make it cut the cloth to the size in a given situation.

 Yet, where the party finds itself today is surely also to do with its shortcomings in the Jyoti Basu period. True, he was only its leader in one state, but he cast his leadership across the party and the Left across India.

Much of the commentary since his demise has looked at what he left undone in West Bengal but that is to do him less than justice.

What is striking is the extent to which the present tenure of the Left Front since May 2006 has eroded the solid base of support among the rural poor so carefully built in the first Jyoti  Basu ministry.

At its core, the party managed to play a key role at the Centre as a pivot in crucial realignments. It did so most clearly and recently when it helped gather the anti-Vajpayee forces under one broad umbrella.

Yet, in the medium term  it enabled the Congress to stage a recovery. Once it fine-tuned its economic policies and reached out to the minorities, it was able to dispense with any need for Left support.

The decision to withdraw support to Manmohan Singh in August 2008 only helped the Congress consolidate and refurbish itself. This is the kind of brinkmanship Basu might not have indulged in. He was far too canny a player to stake all on opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Part of this arose from his background and it is worth asking why the CPM has so many key figures in its party today who have never fought more than a University student union election.  This in itself puts them out of touch not only with the hurly burly of the poll trial but also with the realities of politics on the ground.

There is a role for a left-wing parliamentary force in Indian politics, but it was Basu who came closest to defining that place in a positive way. It is this ability to manage multiple contradictions more than dogma or ideology that makes for leadership in a democracy.

Yet incremental change in democratic frame requires serious rethinking of ideology for a party still steeped in early 20th century Marxism.

The Maoist tendency routed in Basu’s day has reappeared in several states. Basu’s Left Front responded in 1977 going beyond law and order. It created new opportunities for growth in a just way in rural Bengal.

A careful grasp of real possibilities of change in a law governed manner that would give the poor a measure of justice. It sounds so simple and is as we all know so elusive.  It is here with maach and  bhath ( fish and  rice) that Basu made Marxism gain meaning.

If they cannot match that performance his successors will find others willing to take on the baton.

The writer is a commentator on political affairs