Leaders,Unite!

The Left Front has been in power in West Bengal longer than most of that state has been alive. For all those years,the Communist Party of India Marxist,or CPM,has worked with the Communist Party of India,or CPI,so effectively that most will be hard pressed to remember precisely why they split in the first place. But that 1964 fraternal squabble was fuelled by two differences. One was geopolitical: those in the CPM had sympathised with Beijing during the 1962 Indo-China war,and were dismissive of the nationalist,pro-Congress leanings of the CPI establishment hence,a pro-China CPM and a pro-Moscow and in socialist India,pro-Congress CPI. The other difference was ideological: disagreement over bourgeois compromises of the undivided Party. Much has changed since. Geopolitically,the USSRs collapse and Chinas capitalist-fuelled growth has changed their equations with their Indian fans. And on ideology,both parties are now partners in that sham: bourgeois democracy,free and fair elections. So what stops the Is and Ms from unifying once again?

Nothing it seems,according to CPI General Secretary A.B. Bardhan. On December 31,he called for the unification of the two communist movements in India. His platform was symbolic;

Bardhan was speaking at the 70th anniversary of the formation of Indias Communist Party,at its birthplace of Parapram in Kerala. This is not the first time the CPI head has hoped for a re-merger. In 2004,at the funeral of veteran CPI parliamentarian Hiren Mukherjee,he called for reunification; Mukherjee himself,in a posthumously published letter,argued that there was no reason for two separate parties.

There is yet another reason for unification 1967. Ever since the Naxalites split from the CPM that year,their call for an armed revolution has spread across eastern India,growing into what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called the single biggest threat to internal security. CPM cadres are a particular target,as Lalgarh demonstrated. In the face of such mindless nihilism,the consolidation of those Left forces that have come around to accepting the rituals of democracy surely merits encouragement. Before hoping for workers of the world to unite,let at least their vanguard show the way.