Big Brother CPM doesn't scare allies any more
last weekend saw the Kerala unit of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, a national ally of the Marxists, quitting the CPI(M)-headed Opposition left Democratic Front, breaking the shackles of its 34-year-long servitude to the Big Brother. The reason was indeed poll-related dispute. The bone of contention was the Kollam lok Sabha seat which the Marxists had taken over from the RSP in 1999, citing its frailty caused by a split in that party. The RSP had been asking the Marxists for the past 10 years to return that seat to it, but the CPI(M) consistently neglected that demand, often with contempt. In the lDF, minor partners have never shown the courage to question the practice of the CPI(M) and the CPI of sharing in the proportion of 16:4 the 20 lok Sabha seats in the State. The duty of the other lDF constituents was limited to just applauding this drama. However, the RSP last weekend decided that enough was enough, announced its decision to quit lDF, resolved to field own candidate in Kollam and, quite predictably, walked straight into the tainted tent of the Congress-led ruling United Democratic Front. Needless to add, the UDF readily welcomed that party, considering it as an opportunity to humiliate the Marxists and the entire left at the national level. This was an exact re-enactment of the drama that occurred in the lDF in 2009 when a faction of the Janata Dal(S) walked out of the left fold protesting against the takeover of its Kozhikode seat by the Marxists, and joined the UDF.
However, the show of boldness by the RSP last weekend had instant effect on other minor lDF partners. The remainder of the Janata Dal(S) that had stayed with the lDF raised the claim for a lok Sabha seat and threatened to go it alone in four seats if a decision that it favoured did not come. Others have followed suit.
It will be interesting to watch how the RSP, still a CPI(M) ally nationally, will balance its act between the Kerala unit's support to the Congress and UPA and its anti-Congress stand at the national level. But the real question concerns the very meaning and relevance of the left as a political force — and not just in Kerala. Immediately after the departure of the RSP from the lDF, the CPI(M) described the act as a betrayal, a term the Marxists always prefer to describe actions that go against its interests. But the RSP's retort that the present leadership of the CPI(M) with its rock-hard arrogance will ensure the quick demise of the left as a combined political force, drew wider attention. In Kerala, the Marxists are increasingly being seen as a party which is steeped in arrogance and murderous violence and which has lost its capacity for successful agitations. Its shoddy protests against the ruling combine over the solar scam is an example of that. What the current developments indicate is that it could be the destiny of the left, torn between its democratic façade and the politics of fascism, to keep on undergoing implosions till it is dismantled from inside.