Communism and its uncle

CPM split once and became moderate. It should split again and become modern. But it probably can8217;t

My uncle was a communist, a CPM cardholder, if I remember right. He was also a managerial hotshot at the Calcutta Port Trust, a position that required frequent confrontations with militant port unions. His job also guaranteed annual Christmas/New Year gift hampers. He liked the bottles of Scotch he received. But what made him really happy were the loaves of black bread and small tins of caviar, made in the USSR, like the green felt-bound volumes from Progress Publishers on his bookshelves. Mine was not the only Calcutta-centred adolescence that had casual and puzzling encounters with collected works of Lenin and Stalin. The city was full of 8220;progressive8221; 8212; Bengalis, it must be said, have a doggedly self-serving use of that qualifier 8212; middle class households that boasted communists very much at home with bourgeois values.

Readers justifiably wondering about this autobiographical indulgence deserve to know that I could have also started with Lenin and not my uncle. Lenin debated with M.N. Roy 8212; a Bengali who founded the Communist Party of India in Tashkent, USSR in 1921 8212; at the second Comintern on the issue of communists supporting national elites in colonised countries. Lenin had argued for such support. Roy had argued against. Indian communism therefore had pretty uncompromisingly 8220;radical8221; beginnings. But that was 8212; happily for India 8212; a false dawn. Lenin had unwittingly drawn attention to what would be the leitmotif of Indian communism 8212; compromise.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee8217;s CPM is accused now of severe and serial compromises over Singur and Nandigram. But its critics from the 8220;true8221; Left they include some CPM insiders must understand they are misreading history. The CPM has happily compromised before. Middle class communists 8212; my uncle was an exemple 8212; are a big part of that happy compromise. The same kind of Bengali communists would happily settle for another major compromise 8212; one that brings Bengal back to industrial limelight.

In a 1971 book Radical Politics in West Bengal that still makes for wonderfully educative reading, Marcus Franda argued that Bengalis took to communism for some very non-revolutionary reasons. Communist political activity was a means to asserting regional identity. This search for identity was inspired in part by Bengali gentlemanly classes 8212; bhadralok 8212;feeling that they had lost out in independent India to the Hindi heartland8217;s elite in the competition for the pole position in the national mainstream. And communism was internalised by these educated classes mostly as an ideas package, an attractive, intellectually and morally satisfying alternative to bazaar politics. This kind of communism allowed variegated departures from orthodox praxis. There were and are thousands of 8220;gentleman8221; communists. The CPM was and is a good host for them. Which is to say, the CPM has never been particularly revolutionary.

True, the faction that broke away from the CPI in 1964 to form the CPM boasted inheritors of the M.N. Roy line 8212; no compromise with national elites, which then politically meant the Congress. But in 1967, when the CPM joined the United Front UF government in Bengal, the party split. The Maoists formed a separate party. Naxalbari and assassinations of class enemies were to follow. More interestingly for our purposes, the departure of Chairman Mao8217;s Indian foot soldiers weakened the more radical of CPM leaders, and strengthened the moderates. Moderates have ruled the CPM ever since. The CPM was part of the Bengal UF government that looked at Naxalites as a law and order problem.

When the CPM came to power in Bengal in 1977, moderation became more pronounced. Many objective studies have shown that more land was redistributed during the two brief periods totalling 19 months of UF rule, when the CPM was a coalition partner, than in the first decade and a half 8212; land reforms stopped after that 8212; of uninterrupted CPM governance. Thus even in Bengal CPM8217;s famed agrarian/rural reforms that excited radicals round the world, conservative moderation was the watchword. Operation Barga and the panchayats were never intended to start an agrarian revolution. The CPM wanted and has built a support base among the rich and middle peasantry.

Even on the industry question, the focal point of the Singur and Nandigram confrontations, Bengal CPM has often been de facto moderate. 8220;I think people are feeling confident that more stress is being laid on the private sector 8212; when well-known companies come in 8212; it helps us.8221; Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in 2006? No, Jyoti Basu in 1985.

Story continues below this ad

But India in 2006 is different from India in 1985. And the CPM in 2006 is even more different from the CPM in 1967. These two differences explain why the CPM8217;s need for another compromise is urgent but why the means to achieve that may be out of the party8217;s reach this time.

Growth competition is unexceptionable in India now, unlike in the mid-1980s. States are fighting for investment. Politics has changed. Then, Congress PM Rajiv Gandhi called Calcutta a 8220;dying city8221; and enraged Basu. Now, Congress PM Manmohan Singh supports Bhattacharjee8217;s industrialisation plans and angers the 8220;true8221; Left. Bluntly put, Basu didn8217;t face the urgency Bhattacharjee does, because India then didn8217;t feel the urgency either.

So why can8217;t, over time, Leftists who oppose more liberal policies be left behind, or be made to understand that there8217;s no place for them, as Sundarayya did when he resigned as CPM general secretary, protesting the loss of radicalism? Because in the CPM of 2006, modernisers and their foes are all prisoners of the machine.

The only area where the CPM in Bengal practised communism has been in electoral politics and institution grabbing. Bolshevik principles of party organisation and mobilisation have been applied for years. In his fine study of Bengal8217;s contemporary history The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism Partha Chatterjee estimated that nearly two million CPM cadres were mobilised during an early 1990s election 8212; a staggering number when one considers Bengal8217;s electorate at that time totaled just over 40 million. And there isn8217;t a major institution in Bengal 8212; from Calcutta University to Calcutta Police to panchayats 8212; that hasn8217;t been totally commandeered by the party. The CPM doesn8217;t practise bourgeois, half-hearted, let8217;s nominate some of our own chaps strategies favoured by the Congress and the BJP. It remodels institutions to serve the party.

Story continues below this ad

All major leaders 8212; those who support Bhattacharjee, those who don8217;t, Bhattacharjee himself and those gentleman communists 8212; in the Bengal CPM are implicated in building the machine and are served by it. If the industry issue becomes a critical question in determining the CPM8217;s future political direction 8212; as agrarian radicalism was in 1967 8212; can today8217;s moderates afford to split?

They should. It would be good for Bengal and for India. Bhadralok communists will cheer it. But today8217;s moderate CPM leaders will confront pure survival questions: will they inherit the machine, can the machine split?

As Uncle Joe, aka Joseph Stalin, would have pointed out, Stalinist structures don8217;t take well to divisions. My uncle, who I know would have been all for 8220;Buddhababu8221;, would have had no answer to that.