Author: T V R Shenoy
Publication: Rediff
on Net
Date: June 2, 2000
Five weeks ago I mentioned
the possibility of the Muslim League and the CPI-M joining hands in Kerala.
The deal is now virtually complete; the state secretariat of the CPI-M
has decided, after quite a bit of debate, to welcome the organisation which
it once denounced as "communal" and equated with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The state committee shall, I am told, meet on June 5 to make it official.
This step will have repercussions
-- the CPI will lose its position as the second largest party in the Left
Front, and the Congress will lose a valuable ally just one year before
the next assembly poll. Right now, however, what I find most interesting
is the rift that the proposed alliance has opened up within the ranks of
the CPI-M itself.
You might say that the
rift is as much geographical as it is historical. The modern state of Kerala
was created in 1956 by the union of two distinct geographical entities
-- Travancore-Cochin and the Malabar areas of what used to be Madras. As
many as 86 of the 140 Members of the Legislative Assembly are elected from
constituencies that used to be in Travancore-Cochin, with only 54 from
Malabar.
Nevertheless, it is a
curious fact that every CPI-M contender for chief minister -- from the
late E M S Namboodaripad to E K Nayanar today -- has been from the Malabar
area. Even more surprising -- given the pretensions of the Communists --
all of them have been upper-caste men. (I use the word 'men' advisedly;
the CPI-M has never made a woman the chief minister although Kerala has
more women than men.) For the record, the foundation of the CPI-M vote
is the Ezhava community, 'OBCs' in the casteist lingo of modern Indian
politics.
There have been only
two 'OBC' leaders from the CPI-M with aspirations to the chief minister's
chair - V S Achuthanandan and K R Gowri. The latter, who seemed to offend
the CPI-M by being a woman, was expelled from the party. As for the former,
he was projected as chief minister in the 1996 assembly poll, but lost
from his own constituency due to fighting within his party, which paved
the way for Nayanar. Achuthanandan is still a member of the CPI-M politburo;
more to the point, he is also the foremost opponent of any tie-up with
the Muslim League.
That is not very surprising.
The Malabar wing of the party is aware that a tie-up with the Muslim League
could lead to the alliance sweeping as many as 48 of the 56 seats from
this area. That means the next chief minister will, yet again, be someone
from Malabar.
If these calculations
hold, the CPI-M's nominee as the next chief minister will probably be Pinarayi
Vijayan (who is currently state secretary of the party). This means Achuthanandan's
hopes will be dashed yet again, and he is not getting any younger. That
is one of the reasons why he is objecting so strenuously to the proposed
alliance; Vijayan's chance of getting the top job in Kerala depends quite
a lot on the Muslim League's support.
What are Achuthanandan's
options? Can he sabotage the party's chances as his rivals did to him?
How does it help him come closer to the chief minister's seat if the Congress-dominated
United Democratic Front comes to power? Can he convince his colleagues
in Kerala to denounce the alliance with the Muslim League even at the eleventh
hour? Not really, everyone is aware that the tie-up is essential if the
Left Front is to return to the treasury benches.
Achuthanandan need not
expect anything from his comrades in the state; his only hope of stopping
Vijayan is the Centre. No, I do not mean the National Democratic Alliance
ministry in Delhi, but the central leadership of the CPI-M itself. He hopes
that support from the Big Brothers in the party headquarters shall be enough
to stop Vijayan somehow.
It will be interesting
to see how Achuthanandan handles the weak cards that he has been dealt.
I am sure, however, that he will not just fold up. The battle between the
two wings of the party -- Travancore-Cochin versus Malabar, OBC versus
upper-caste -- shall continue. It will be masked, in true Marxist fashion,
as a conflict between two ideologies. But do not be fooled by the dialectics
-- it is nothing more than a sordid battle for the chief minister's chair.
