Jyoti Basu folly

Any rule, however long, is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Basu can take pride in having effected land reforms and in transferring substantial powers to the panchayats. Thousands of farmers became land owners. And lakhs of people came to administer their affairs locally, without the interference of a distant bureaucracy.

But Basu also mixed economics with politics. He could not curb his overbearing comrades, who literally brought the wheels of industry to a halt. He tailored government policy to suit the faulty party line. True, he came to realise the dangers of violence and goondaism, which Calcutta experienced when the police looked the other way. But by then the confidence of top industrialists had been shattered. New Delhi could have helped by allocating more Central projects and assistance. But for most of the time Basu was in power anti-Communist governments ruled at the Centre. They were deliberately unhelpful. He did succeed a bit when his party, the CPIM, wielded some clout during the non-Congress and non-BJP governments.

Yet Basu8217;s success or failure has to be assessed from the impact the CPIM made in the country. The question is, why did the CPIM fail to expand beyond West Bengal? When the communists assumed power in Kerala in the early 8217;50s, the world thought that a Yenan had taken shape in India. But it was wrong. Political considerations worked in Kerala more than communist ideology. The CPIM rule in Tripura can be attributed not to the people8217;s love for communism but to the Bengali majority among the electorate. No wonder the CPIM has been crossed out by the Election Commission from the list of all-India political parties.

The impression is that the party, claiming to be a true representative of the masses, never came to terms with the masses. Even the party8217;s trade unions got confined to Calcutta, Chennai, Kanpur, Mumbai. How removed the CPIM is from the people is evident from the pictures displayed at its headquarters in Calcutta. The main hall has life-size photographs of Marx, Lenin, even Stalin. But there is no Mahatma Gandhi. The RSS headquarters at Nagpur is no better in this respect. It has Maharana Pratap and Shivaji. But Gandhi8217;s photo is missing. The extreme left and extreme right have a strange way of ignoring a person who is still the tallest in the people8217;s mind.

Gandhi understood India. He too wanted a classless society with equal opportunities for all. He can be considered a communist who did not believe in violence. After the British left, he said political independence had been achieved but economic independence had yet to be won. Can this be possible through violence? The communists have at last allied themselves to parliamentary ways, although the Naxalites are still practising violence.

Ideologically, both have faith in dislodging governments by force. They are completely opposed to the peaceful approach Gandhi taught us. He said:

quot;Wrong means will not lead to right results.quot; But then, all political parties, including the Congress once led by him, have forgotten that.

The new trend is still worse. This is the doing of the RSS which imagines that a viewpoint can only be stoutly defended by condemning or beating up those who do not accept it. This is not the approach of tolerance, of believing that perhaps others might also have some share of the truth. India has never divided thinking as black and white. There has always been a grey area, which is unfortunately shrinking as the days go by. This approach goes against the ethos of the country, no matter what realm it is applied in.

In today8217;s India any attempt at forcible imposition of ideas on any section of the people is bound to fail. It may lead to violence and destruction.

Vituperative methods cannot lead to the resolution of any major problem. Partly because that itself may lead to a big-scale disturbance and partly because it produces an atmosphere of conflict. Many intellectuals, particularly of the left, imagine that out of the conflict the socially progressive forces are bound to win. In Germany, the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were swept away by Hitler. In India, any appeal to parochialism such as the RSS trying to inculcate sentiments against Muslims and Christians is particularly dangerous, due to its inherently disruptive character. We have too many fissiparous tendencies to take risks.

In quot;Democracy, Communism, Socialism and Capitalismquot;, Nehru examines the main economic and political alternatives in the contemporary world. As a disciple of Gandhi, Nehru is opposed to the violence of communist theory and practice. The gravest defect in communism, Nehru says, is, quot;its contempt for what might be called the moral and spiritual side of life not only ignores something that is basic in man but also deprives human behaviour of standards and values.quot; The CPIM has shut its eyes to this aspect.

In a poorly developed country, the capitalist method offers no chance. But without respecting tradition and heritage, no equation with the people is possible to bring about change. Gandhi said the defeat of a pernicious idea depends on the capacity of the people to fight against it. The communists at their Thiruvananthapuram meet are correct in assessing that they must intervene in the crisis which the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF have created in India. It is not only in the industrial sector but also in agrarian sphere. But how they will do it is the problem.

Basu8217;s declaration that he is not quitting politics is welcome. But he has to lead the communists out of the thickets of regimentation. He is right when he says that he is unhappy at what is happening in Delhi. But he is wrong when he believes that the CPIM can lead the nation in finding the answer. There is no alternative to Gandhi8217;s teachings.