A call made by CPI(M) Politburo member MA Baby on Saturday for efforts aimed at the reunification of his party and the CPI has unsettled the Marxist leadership which has rejected the idea whenever it has been put forward due to its alleged feudal mindset. Under pressure from the leadership, Baby on Sunday recanted and blamed the media for “misquoting” him.
At a programme organised in Thrissur on Saturday in memory of late Chief Minister and CPI leader C Achutha Menon, Baby had said, “There is no point in abandoning the efforts for merger of the two Communist parties just because there are practical difficulties … The public sentiment favours such a merger. There are people who want the merger to materialise.”
CPI leaders in Kerala like national council member and former Minister Benoy Viswam had welcomed Baby’s call with enthusiasm. “The idea of principle-based reunification of the Communist parties is not a sin,” Benoy said. The CPI(M) has consistently rejected the idea of Communist unity whenever CPI leaders like Benoy have proposed it.
Baby’s call for unity had come at a time when he was facing the ire of senior party colleagues over his differences with them in the issue of his humiliating defeat in the Kollam constituency in the lok Sabha election. Baby had then expressed his wish to resign as MlA as even the Assembly segment he represented had not stood with him but the party rejected his request.
However, Baby recanted within 24 hours of making his call, saying he had not called for reunification efforts but had only proposed that such discussions could happen in the seminar he had addressed. “I had said the discussion could take place in the seminar. It is easy for the media to launch a debate based on remarks picked up from one’s speech,” Baby said on Sunday.
Baby’s recantation came after the vehement rejection of his proposal for unity by senior CPI(M) leaders including general secretary Prakash Karat. The top CPI(M) leadership is still of the view that there are ideological, political and organisational differences even 50 years after the split.
According to Karat, “The matter (of Communist unity) has not yet come up for discussion in the CPI(M). The party needs to address the ideological and political differences before discussing the merger of the Communist parties.” Karat also said he had not come across what Baby had said about CPI(M)-CPI merger.
Observers say that Baby’s recantation did not hold water because he was amply explicit in his Thrissur speech. “Baby had even said that there was no need to abandon the idea of Communist unity just because everybody knew that this was not going to happen all of a sudden. He had also said that one of the parties should take the initiative,” said a pro-merger Marxist theoretician.
Strangely, Baby was the first CPI(M) leader to oppose the idea of reunification when it was first proposed by Benoy Viswam through an article in CPI’s Malayalam organ, Janayugam daily, sometime back. Baby had then rejected the idea saying reunification efforts were impractical. Observers had interpreted Baby’s Thrissur speech as a divergence from this position.
Marxist thinkers are of the opinion that those who oppose the call for communist reunification are people who do not want to relinquish the superior position they are enjoying as leaders of the biggest Communist party in the sub-continent. They say that this mentality could be interpreted as an indication of the feudalist tendencies prevalent in the CPI(M).
“It is strange that the CPI(M) is calling for broader left cooperation but is rejecting proposals for Communist unity. Everyone in the CPI(M) knows that the ideological and political differences over which the CPI(M) was created out of the CPI in 1964 are not relevant anymore. Both parties are in the same camp now and the goals are the same,” admitted a CPI(M) theoretician.