HVK Archives: Left aligned?
Left aligned? - The Sunday Times
Kumar Ketkar
()
10 June 1996
Title : Left aligned?
Author : Kumar Ketkar
Date : June 10, 1996
Publication : The Sunday Times
Publication : The Sunday Times of India
In Indian politics the very term `Left' has become a
euphemism of sorts. It was, however, not so until the
1970s. Indeed, the term used to evoke an extremely
redical, iconoclastic and revolutionary image earlier.
Indian capitalists and intellectuals, brought up on the
staple anti-communist, diet coming from Europe and
America, detested even the presence of a comrade in an
elite gathering. Though young boys and girls from
aristocratic families were taking to the Red Flag in
Calcutta and Delhi in a big way in the `60s, the Leftists
did not then have the respectablity that they acquired in
the mid-`70s.
The Congress establishment did not resent the presence of
the communists int eh political system during the Nehru
days. The political class in India, which was born out of
the Indian freeedom struggle, was not anti-communists in
the classical American sense despite the communists'
errors of 1942 which earned them the label of being
treacherous. The hard-won freedom, calling it a
"compromise" between the Indian bourgeoisie and British
imperialists.
The Communist Party had suffered setbacks
organisationally and politically but had not lost its
mass base. It secured about 10 per cent of the votes in
the 1957 and 1962 Lok Sabha elections. In 1957, the
party, then united, had been able to secure power in
Kerlala through the ballot box. It was the first time a
communist government was democratically elected to power
anywhere in the world. Red euphoria engulfed the country
although only a small state had gone the communist way.
The communists evoked a gamut of responses. The upper
caste urban intelligentsia, which was slowly going over
to the Jan Sangh, feared them. The Socialists hated them
and alwasy reminded them of their treachery in 1942. The
average Congressman respected them and Nehruites
hobnobbed with them.
It was strange because the communists had a running love-
hate relationship with Nehru. At times they called him a
`running dog of imperialism' and at others they welcomed
his and Krishna Menon's initiatives of friendship with
the Soviet Union and China. Against the background of the
Cold War and Nehru's policy of Non-alignment, the
communists could determine the themes of political
discourse in the country.
At the time of the India-China war in 1962, the
communists were ambivalent because they had consistently
believed that the communist state could never invade any
territory. It was Nehru who had to arrest communists
again in '62 as he had in 1948 during the Telengana armed
struggle, notwithstanding his private affection for
Marxism and the USSR.
Though the party was united and had won power in Kerala,
it had always had two paralel lines within it. Broadly,
the comrades identified the soft line (pro-Nehru), as led
by Dange and the hard line (anti-Nehru) as supposedly led
by B.T. Ranadive. The India-China war brought to the
surface the animosities that already existed in the
party. The party split in 1964, ostensibly on the issue
of China. Actually, the split merely manifested the
division which already existed.
Their victory in 1957 in Kerala had turned sour following
a massive agitation, and none other than Nehru had
dismissed the first ever communist experiment in India
two years later. Yet, it is interesting to note that
Indian politics never became viciously anti-communist as
in Indonesia, South Korea or Chile.
This is perhaps due to the fact that communists were
active in working class areas and many rural pockets.
Such dedication and devotion were not noticed in other
parties. There ideology may have been materialistic but
their lifestyle was Gandhian. They certainly aspired to
power but were not seen as vulgar and opportunistic
power-mongers - as were most other parties including the
Congress.
The communist leadership was seen as intelligent, alert
and studious and one that could always make a signal
contribution to parliamentary debates. Most communists
not only led a simple life but also one that was
ethnically integrated with the class they worked with. It
was this that earned them respect. Their intolerant
attitute towards the so-called bourgeois parties notwith-
standing, they remained a powerful force.
However, all communists, irrespective of their party
affiliation or their soft, hard or ultra-radical line,
believed that revolution was always round the corner.
This faith was so deeply ingrained that some of the
stalwarts of the CPM believed that the great national
railway strike in 1974 had raised the curtain on the
revolutionary epoch. A year later, instead of revolution
came the Emergency, and altough most communists were
spared arrest or harrassment, radical politics in the
country changed gear.
In the elections following the Emergency, the CPM had
electoral adjustments even with ultra-right parties like
the BJP. The formation of the Janata party at teh Centre
was blessed by the comdrades. By now even the CPI had
given up the so-called "unity and struggle" line evolved
by Dange and taken a sharp anti-Congress posture.
The communist parties gradually began to don social
democratic garb. Some of them theorised that the time was
ripe for a "bourgeois democratic revolution" and not a
"proletarian revolution". Following the example of
Dange's followers who had supported Indira Gandhi since
the Congress split in 1969, the CPM also began to support
anti-Congress bourgeois parties moved more along Lahiaite
lines than Leninist guidelines.
It is significant to note that the communists, who had a
national base in the '50s and '60s, have been reduced
today to two regional blocs in West Bengal and Kerala.
Their approach and strategies towards other parties are
driven more by regional considerations than national
ones. Indeed, they have lost confidence in determining
the issues and levels of national political discourse.
This realisation - of their having a relatively limited
playing field - dawned on them rather suddenly when the
entire anti-BJP bloc unanimously recommended Jyoti Basu's
name for prime ministership. The CPM politburo panicked.
The CPI was stumped. Never in the past had the communists
parties wavered as they did a month ago. First the
politburo claimed that Jyoti Basu would not pick up the
gauntlet. But just a few hours later, on a personal
request from V. P. Singh, the top brass of the party
decided to "review" the decision. Finally they firmly
turned down the offer.
It is not as if they were shying away from power. The
communists are never shy of power, unlike their vague and
confused socialist colleagues. In this case they had
belatedly realised that their image was larger than their
real self and their thetoric louder than their theory.
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