Left(over) Front

Of course, by the early 1990s, you didn’t need to be a prophet to foresee the fate of the Left. It has been a long story of decline for the comrades…

Going back to the first Lok Sabha of 1952, everyone knows that the Congress held a handsome majority under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru but who remembers the man who led the Opposition? That honour did not go to the Jan Sangh of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee nor to Acharya Kripalani’s Praja Socialists, but to the late A.K. Gopalan of the undivided Communist Party of India. (Strictly speaking, I am not sure if the Communists, in any incarnation, ever won the status of a “party” in the Lok Sabha; having won fewer than 10 per cent of the seats, the Communists were a “group” rather than a “party”.)

Yet, having begun well, the Communists proceeded to stumble and decline. Today, a party which used to pride itself on being “radical” is probably the one most wedded to the status quo. That is understandable; having surrendered one fortress after another, the best that the Left Front can hope for is to hang on to the little that remains.

Technically, both the CPI and the CPI(M) are “national” parties. This is hogwash. The only states where the CPI(M) is capable of standing on its own feet are West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura and the CPI is nothing but a feeble parasite clinging to Big Brother.

That was not always the case. Once upon a time, the Communists were a force to reckon with across a wide swathe of territory. They could count upon a hard core of dedicated voters from Punjab in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south, from the busy streets of Bombay to the virgin forests that surrounded Agartala. And this support found expression both inside and outside the legislatures.

But where do you find the likes of a P. Ramamurthy in Tamil Nadu (where the comrades can only play third fiddle — after the Congress — to one of the Dravidian parties)? Will there ever be another S.M. Bannerjee who could win a Lok Sabha election from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh? Will the Marxists ever relive the glorious days when a Nagi Reddy would take on not just the government of Andhra Pradesh but even argue dialectics with a Charu Mazumdar? (Chandrababu Naidu once referred contemptuously to the Left as “useless baggage” in that very same state!) Is there any space left for an S.A. Dange in a Maharashtra that is now dominated by Bal Thackeray and Sharad Pawar? And in a Punjab where the legendary Bhagat Singh held the public imagination in thrall, the best the Left can throw up today is a Harkishen Singh Surjeet…

The general-secretary of the CPI(M) and his comrade in arms Jyoti Basu have publicly bemoaned the “historic blunder” which cost the latter the prime minister’s chair in 1996. Has either man ever shed a single crocodile tear over the loss of public confidence which has left their party desperately clinging to just three states?

Had they built upon the support demonstrated in the first Lok Sabha would they have been reduced to backroom boys manoeuvring to build a ship with the flotsam and jetsam of Indian politics?

Where did it go wrong for the Left? Part of the reason is that history had dealt harshly with Marxism. An ideology which was founded on claims of a superior understanding of economics has failed in every economic parameter when compared to the capitalist West — whether it is life-expectancy, industrial production or even agriculture (Czarist Russia exported wheat, 50 years after the October Revolution the Soviet Union was reduced to buying grain from the United States.) Having landed in the “dustbin of history” — to quote Nikita Khrushchev — it would be small wonder if Communism failed to win fresh adherents.

But there were also shameful political blunders peculiar to our home-grown Marxists. They backed the British Raj during the Quit India Movement. The CPI — an ally of Indira Gandhi government since the Congress split of 1969 — went to the extent of being more loyal than the empress during the Emergency. More recently, the CPI(M) finds it impossible to stop supporting the most notorious regime in India — that of Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar.

Does the Left actually have any distinct ideology or identity today? It opposes economic reform in Delhi but Marxist Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya woos the info-tech czars in Kolkata. It fights the Congress (I) bitterly in Kerala, but can think of no better option as prime minister than a Congressman.

Is there any hope for the Left? Well, it still has a dedicated cadre. And I believe the Left Front could improve its numbers marginally in the fourteenth Lok Sabha with intelligent alliances. But these victories shall come at the expense of the Congress.

The BJP may be “Enemy Number One” for the Marxists, but it is also the ruling party’s best friend; thanks to the cupidity of the Communists I see the Congress numbers sinking to a historic low in the next Lok Sabha!