Faith in reality

Only in India. Those wouldnt have been Karl Marxs exact words,but nonetheless one thread of Marxisms post-independence narrative in India has been the communists marriage of their materialistic philosophy with a social reality with roots stretching thousands of years. Believing Marxists,or whatever you call them,are a synthesis no doubt,but perhaps the dialectic in India never entailed a cataclysmic clash of opposing entities. Former Kerala MP K.S. Manoj,a practising Catholic,may have quit the CPM in protest against the directive in the rectification document impinging on religion. But does Prakash Karats clarification indeed surprise? Party members,apparently,should stay away from religious programmes and rituals but they arent being asked to jettison their faith.

It doesnt quite surprise because Indian Marxists have come a long way even from E.M.S. Namboodiripad not allowing Kerala Congress chief P.J. Joseph from joining the Left Democratic Front without publicly forsaking the clergy. In the 2006 Kerala swearing-in,two CPM MLAs took their oath in the name of god. If communists can court capital,what prevents adherence to both Marxism and religion? Little apparently. The late Subhas Chakraborty too seemed confounded by the partys rebuke over the media circus after his puja at a Birbhum temple in 2006. Yet,that was a gentle rebuke in retrospect,nothing like sure expulsion of the olden days. And yet,instances like Chakraborty and K.S. Manoj show how the Marxist demarcation of private faith from public ideology is increasingly blurred. Pragmatically,the Left is also afraid of alienating minorities and the bulk of believing voters.

Marxist flexibility on religion ties in also with the conversion of revolutionaries to parliamentary democrats. While debates may rage about ideological failure or political opportunism,or on compromises on religion going back to the Indian Lefts long history of being led by upper-caste,Hindu men,its undeniable that in a country with strong socio-religious identities,borrowed ideologies have to be recast in a uniquely Indian mould. Thats how mainstream Marxism too has lingered in India a continuous,accommodating evolution. And that is why there is always exasperation with the Lefts and their fellow travellers record of obstructionism. Not every indefensible can be defended.