There is a genuine threat to the hegemony of the CPI(M) predominant line amongst the geriatric leadership that has failed to see the writing on the wall. leaders have failed to transform the class character of the revolutionary party
The arrest of students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar was debated and discussed at the Communist Party of India(Marxist)’s Central Committee meeting in New Delhi. During the meeting, CPI(M) leaders also discussed electoral tactics for the forthcoming polls in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam. There have been considerable differences within the State units in Kolkata and Thiruvanathapuram about how the party should revive itself.
The Kanhaiya Kumar episode was followed by yet another debate on SAR Geelani. The catch-all left, democratic and secular became the leitmotif of the meeting. So, all the talk about a possible return of the CPI(M) to its roots, of being a cadre-based ‘revolutionary’ party, the goal of leading the People’s Democratic Revolution, raised by former general secretary of the CPI(M) Prakash Karat got buried under the ‘play safe’ line of putting faith on the masses.
Thus, the goal of the CPI(M) still remains what can be called the Jyoti Basu-Harkishen Singh Surjeet-Anil Biswas line of patronage-based vote-seeking exercise which abandons any attempt to fundamentally transform the politics of this country.
This middle ground in politics, being junked across the world, particularly in advanced capitalist countries like the US, the UK, France etc, was embraced by the true worthies of the Basu-Surjeet-Biswas line. The socialist left parties of these countries are at the polar end of the political spectrum where the Right and the extreme Right-wing populate the other end. People of these countries are also congregating at these two ends, abandoning the middle ground, which is the most favourite space where paid political advisers and consultants like to reside.
However, this time there is a genuine threat to the hegemony of the CPI(M) predominant line amongst the geriatric leadership that has failed to see the writing on the wall. That writing, painted mostly by the young members of the CPI(M) itself can catch the wind after the dust of the RSS-BJP-led onslaught on the young settles down.
Evidence of a restive youth, seeking answers to questions that drew them to a ‘communist’ party were available in Kolkata just before the plenum of the party. There were murmurs of protest towards the older leadership seeking refuge while they remained on the frontlines of the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led atrocities.
The problem with many delegates of the party contingent from Kolkata, as described by one of its senior members, lies in the clever ploy of the Basu-Biswas line to push the issue of a political adjustment with the Congress to the masses. In other words, mass line had to prevail on top of a new ideologically-matured party line.
“Troubled souls of rural India, especially the cadre, called their leaders in Delhi to urge them to accept the line of political adjustment with the Congress”, said a senior leader in the West Bengal contingent. These are the people who have for the past five years faced eviction from their homes, hamlets or villages; have been even incarcerated in jails on false complaints or convictions; or have even been maimed or killed by the Trinamool Congress goons, who five years ago, did much the same job for the CPI(M).
Such is the fate of the West Bengal unit of the CPI(M) that even leaders of the zonal committees — just a notch below the State committee — have shifted their allegiance to the BJP, the true polar opposite. A perceptive, former leader of the peasant’s front of the party ascribes these changes to the vagaries of the political climate. For a young leader of the youth front this reflects first, the absence of political-ideological education; and second, the nurturing narrow self-interest. They want change within the party and outside.
While this write-up has ascribed the primary cause of its deficiency in the Central Committee to the Kanhaiya Kumar episode, the real reason lies in the ennui faced by the leaders in transforming themselves. Power provided them a cul-de-sac. The hurly-burly of politics is no longer served by their energies and exertions. Intellectually, they have seen all this while the verbiage that is supposedly ‘revolutionary’ have served them well in hiding their genuine intentions in public; and like Tammany Hall bosses of yore, exchanges of political deals have kept them alive in their committee chairs.
The talk of the West Bengal unit is particularly telling. For one, they held political power the longest in the country and were comparable to the tenures of fraternal parties in countries like the former Soviet Union or like China. Second, they lost power in the process of political survival, failing to see their follies not just in terms of their praxis, but in terms of their ideology. Otherwise, it is inexplicable that they blamed the central leadership under Mr Karat for their downfall. They claimed that because Mr Karat had withdrawn support to the Congress-led UPA on the issue of the civil nuclear deal with the US, the TMC found an ally in the Congress thus arithmetically reducing the index of opposition unity.
Some of the party leaders see a sliver of optimism on the otherwise dark political clouds because of the basic inability of Ms Banerjee and her colleagues to get private investment so as to make sufficient public investment, curb cronyism and extortion, and create genuine jobs.
But that may well be a chimera because of these leaders’ lack of reading of basic texts of their presiding deity, Karl Marx. The CPI(M) has played into the hands of reaction. The party has failed, as Marx had pointed out, to transform the class character of the revolutionary party.