Missing Buddha

At its party congress,the CPM vows to rally the people but its own leader wont show up

At its party congress,the CPM vows to rally the people but its own leader wont show up

With the UPA in zombie mode,and the BJP busy with its own problems,the Left calculates that the time is right to mount an attack on the bourgeois formations. At the ongoing 20th Party Congress in Kozhikode,the CPM appraised its organisation and prospects and told itself why the people need it badly,even though the people have clearly expressed other views in recent elections. It vowed to rally Left and secular forces,though it avoided discussion of a Third Front. There were signs of introspection on the partys own decisions,like whether the nuclear deal was worth pulling out of UPA 1,what went wrong in Singur and Nandigram. The CPM also set itself an ambitious theoretical assignment to square its Marxist Leninist outlook,its grasp of imperialism,with a world where others deny these categories of thought.

The Left,to its credit,has never been afraid of periodically confronting its issues in conclaves like this. Such self-scrutiny has a long lineage in the Left parties,drawing on the Confucian tradition of introspection and attitudinal change,as well as Soviet disciplinary methods that involved the systematic study of documents and self-criticism. In Maos view too,it was the partys project to find the contradictions in historical periods and wrestle with them,gleaning the progressive aspect from these struggles.

Amid all the large questions and answers,however,one niggling fact about the party congress tells its own story. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee,the partys former star and erstwhile West Bengal chief minister,decided to skip the event altogether,citing health issues. This is not the first time after the debacle in Bengal that he has opted out of a party event; it comes at a time when there is speculation about him being removed from the partys politburo and central committee. His absence touches off a question for the CPM: if it cant persuade long-time comrades to attend its big show,what are the odds of it igniting excitement among the people it claims to speak for?