CPI(M) party congress: Right diagnosis, wrong prescription

Dismissing the relevance of the communist parties of India and indeed the Left has become routine in any discussion on the present realities and prospects of Indian politics. It is a dangerous idea that the Left has no place and ought to sink into oblivion, except in Kerala.

Political positions in electoral democracies are usually distributed within a space bookended by the Left on the one side and the Right on the other, with the Centre or the middle ground occupying the largest space and holding the two extremes in check. Any disturbance of this equilibrium, and such equilibriums are rarely stable, creates the conditions for the dramatic tilt that India is experiencing, of the rise of the hardcore Right-wing and its electorally mandated occupation of vast tracts of the middle ground.

The decline of the CPI(M) and its failure to rebuild itself implies that the Left flank of Indian politics has effectively crumbled. The politics of the middle ground has tilted to the Right, and the ideologically indeterminate anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) non-Congress opposition of regional and smaller parties has cannibalised the agendas of the Left and the Right to construct a hybrid political agenda that is a wobbly combination of Hindutva and the social justice-egalitarian ideology of the communist movement.

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Strengthening the Left flank is the responsibility of the CPI(M). The broad Left, especially the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation in Bihar, has gained strength and visibility. The failure of the CPI (M) and its present decline is actually the dramatic collapse of the party in West Bengal in 2011 and its continuing failure to rebuild itself. It is this that prompts the conclusion that the Left is irreparably broken.

The 23rd party congress, which concluded recently in Kerala, of the formally 58-year-old party and nearly 100-year communist movement, fully understands its problem of failing the Left movement in India. It knows what it must do: It needs to survive and rebuild itself, and it has to "isolate and defeat" the BJP by forging a "broad mobilisation of all secular forces against Hindutva communalism" to fight "the Hindutva agenda of the fascistic RSS."

The political resolution is clear-eyed about the BJP's successful invasion and seemingly permanent occupation of the middle ground, which implies that the vast numbers of median voters have accepted the BJP's identity politics of demonising the Muslim minority and asserting that the Hindu majority must exert its strength to establish a Hindu Rashtra where the concentration of the regime's power to govern must increase in the best interests of the masses. The problem is the CPI(M)'s prescription.

The language of the text reflects the ideological position of the party; the content is pretty much the same as the perception of the rest of the anti-BJP, non-Congress opposition of smaller and regional parties. From Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress to M K Stalin of the DMK, most opposition parties in India are convinced that the fight is against the BJP, as the CPI(M) puts it, and that it is essential to do so. The non-BJP non-Congress opposition, like the CPI (M), is equally certain that resistance has to be strengthened against the "multi-pronged attack" of rabid neo-liberal reforms that strengthen the communal-corporate nexus, looting of national assets, promoting crony capitalism, legalising political corruption."

In concrete terms, the CPI(M) has to face up to the forces of history that have swept the party into near oblivion in West Bengal. Until it can rebuild its base in the state, its weakness in defending the Left flank in Indian politics and exerting the moral authority of its once upon a time principled politics will not happen.

That the CPI(M) has almost terminally bled itself out of West Bengal politics was confirmed in the 2021 state Assembly elections. That the party and its support base in the state continue to have faith in the ideology, however vaguely they may understand it, is also true. And, it is the distressing truth that many median voters who once voted for the CPI (M) and its Left allies have either temporarily or permanently shifted allegiance to the hardcore Right, that is, the BJP. Erstwhile Left voters explain away the choice of voting for the BJP as a rejection of the Trinamool Congress.

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Politics, especially the politics of survival, cannot be pursued in the safe houses of the CPI(M)'s offices. The party knows this, and the political tasks it has set itself list what it must do. The party has prescribed for itself, as have all anti-BJP opposition parties, that it must prioritise strengthening its independent role, expanding its influence and political intervention capacities through sustained class and mass struggles." There is, however, a conflict or contradiction between the CPI(M)'s larger agenda and the details. For instance, the party acknowledges that spontaneous movements outside the party are developing and that it has to support such outbreaks. The problem is the party, at least in West Bengal, is run by a fastidious elite leadership that invariably opts to duplicate the efforts of spontaneous movements instead of joining forces.

Between its intentions, purpose, and tactics, the CPI(M) is stuck in a morass of its own making. It wants to build Left and democratic unity, work together with secular forces, and lend its strength to protests and movements on human rights violations, civil liberties, social justice, and more. And then, it says, "As and when elections take place, appropriate electoral tactics to maximise the pooling of anti-BJP votes will be adopted based on the above political line."

The confusion is with how the party identifies the anti-BJP forces and how that works in its key locations, like West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. The CPI(M) has accepted that it failed to identify the Trinamool Congress as an anti-BJP force. But, as Prakash Karat and re-elected general secretary Sitaram Yechury made it abundantly clear, the CPI(M) has marked the Trinamool Congress as its principal political foe in West Bengal. Therefore, the CPI(M) will dilute the fight against the BJP in West Bengal by fighting the Trinamool Congress. It is exactly the same formula the party will apply in Kerala, where the fight is against the Congress, and the BJP is currently a weak force.

This is not to argue that the CPI(M) can afford to join forces with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal if it wants to rebuild itself. Nor can it join forces with the Congress in Kerala. The local conditions that identify the principal foe are just as important as the larger context in which the BJP is the biggest and principal enemy, against which the CPI(M) is committed, as it always was, to fight.

The problem is that against the oversimplified and hence clear and easy identification of friend and foe by the BJP and Narendra Modi, who has perfected the art of crafting a narrative that may be factually erroneous and ahistorical, the CPI(M) does not have a counter-narrative that delivers its politics and ideology with the clarity it deserves.

The Modi led BJP has developed a spiel that has convinced what is effectively the majority of voters that "those who oppose Modi are the nation's enemies and hence the peoples' enemies." Scholar extraordinary, Professor Partha Chatterjee argues, "As long as there is no alternative narrative that can bind the regional popular mobilisations into a credible historical bloc at the level of the Centre, the BJP can only be challenged through tactical alliances." He is concerned that "politics will remain confined to competitive populism seeking to assuage the demands of various sections of political society."

Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party chants the Hanuman Chalisa; Mamata Banerjee chants the Chandipath, the Devi Mahatmaya; Rahul Gandhi aggressively schedules temple visits. So do Modi, Amit Shah and the current head of the BJP, J P Nadda. Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Gandhi declare that BJP's Hindutva narrative is not real or true Hinduism. What it adds up to is that regional parties and the compulsions of populist politics cannot forge an alternative narrative. There is a rightward tilt that can only be blocked if the Left were stronger than it is now. The responsibility for rebuilding the Left is the CPI(M)'s, as the largest party with the most resources. Until it can do so, its promise to defeat the BJP and authoritarian anti-people, anti-secular forces is merely that - words without effect.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolkata)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

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