Faced with a shrinking footprint, the Left Front is trying to reinvent itself

Is it the beginning of the last hurrah for the famous symbol of Soviet-Chinese communism in India? The reference is to the All India Forward Bloc — a constituent of India’s Left Front — deciding to remove the hammer and sickle from its party flag. The party founded by Subhas Chandra Bose inserted the communist symbol in the flag in 1948. Till then, it was a red flag with the image of a leaping tiger. Its National Council admitted that people noticed the symbol and mistook it for a communist party rather than a socialist party. The propaganda may have blocked the Bloc’s growth as an independent socialist party, the Council felt. The decision is a silent acknowledgement of a growing realization within the Left that the basic character of the Indian working class has changed, thanks to technology and personal aspirations of the capitalist kind. The Bloc’s decision is perhaps the inevitable result of the Left’s introspection as it licks the political wound of its near-decimation electorally in 2019. The Left Front, which won 59 seats in 2004, was reduced to 12 in 2014 and just five in 2019. It was wiped out from West Bengal and Tripura for the first time. It barely managed to survive in Kerala. With a vote share of barely seven per cent, it is no surprise that the Left Front is talking about course-correction. The dismal performance in 2019 led CPI general secretary Sudhakar Reddy to call for a merger of the two biggest Left parties — the CPM and CPI. The Front faces marginalisation and reunification is the alternative, he said.

The merger idea was first voiced in 1986, but there is an edge of desperation to it now. Two Front constituents, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party, are already part of the Congress-led UDF in Kerala. The CPM, which resists the merger idea, is jettisoning communism, at least in Kerala where Nava Keralam, the new doctrine of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, talks about wooing investors and private capital and disciplining trade unions. So, where did the Left go wrong? Was it the loyalty to the Soviet Union or China that it could not convince the Indian masses about? Was it the lack of a meeting point between the imported communist doctrine and the Indian socio-cultural reality? Did it get caught between a classless utopia and caste-influenced realism? Some say the Left united people by raising fundamental issues but failed to convince them about its ideological position. Now, it is distanced from imported communism and faces an uproariously nationalist right-wing onslaught. The Left has its relevance but has to reinvent itself — not as a doctrinal platform — as one to lead the lower class aspirations against the vagaries of caste, patriarchy, social inequalities and the cold capitalist order. A practical Left is in the making already, if the inclusion of a Dalit in the CPM politburo for the first time ever is anything to go by.