CPI(M) blames own leadership, RSS tactics as party's foothold reduces across country

New Delhi: Critically evaluating its efforts to counter communalism, the CPI(M) has said that the RSS is using “growing religiosity” among people to woo them to their side and the Left party should have an “approach” on how to reach out to believers to make them understand how faith is being misused by Hindutva forces.

At a time when the RSS-BJP is using certain practices of Muslims to accuse them of denigrating women, the party said, it is also necessary to oppose and counter minority communalism and speak out against Islamic fundamentalism with its “reactionary social values, in particular regarding women”.

The assessment is part of CPI(M)’s Political Review Report adopted at the party’s Central Committee meeting here earlier this month. This report will form the base for the draft Political Resolution to be presented in the Party Congress in April next year.

According to the report, the CPI(M)’s activities against communalism are “confined to conventions and some limited campaigns”, and the party has “still not taken” the ideological and political campaign against Hindutva “deep among” people or its own members.

In an indictment of its own top leadership, the report said the Polit Bureau “has not given sufficient guidance” to the state committees to concretise how to integrate its anti-communal campaign with the overall campaign.

“We are still lagging in integrating the fight on economic and livelihood issues with the struggle against the divisive and reactionary role of Hindutva communalism,” it said.

The report identified that there is “growing religiosity in society” and the RSS has been “using religious sentiments to attract believers through religious ceremonies and temple festivals to inculcate the Hindutva communal thinking. They specially target women for this purpose.”

With RSS-BJP using religious faith and places of worship for “political purposes”, the report said the CPI(M) should have “an approach on how to reach out to believers and make them understand the difference between practising their faith and their faith being misused to target other religious faiths”.

Emphasising that there is a need to concretely work out how to draw religious believers towards secular politics, the report said that they need to expose the ‘Manuvadi’ outlook, which denies women their right to economic independence and access to the public sphere and their autonomy.

The “second aspect” that needs to be exposed is the “Manuvadi commitment to uphold and strengthen” the caste system which fuels the all-round attacks on Dalits and their rights, it said while admitting that the BJP “were able to make advances at our expense” in three states where the CPI(M) was strong.

“In Tripura, we lost the assembly elections to the BJP in 2018 and since then, our party has been under severe assault from these forces; in West Bengal, after our defeat in the 2011 assembly election, the BJP has grown to be the main opposition at our expense; in Kerala, to a lesser extent, the BJP has been able to make some headway as seen in the recent Lok Sabha election,” the review report said.