Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The Indian Left has been somewhat akin to the Soviet/ Russian football team at the 1990 and 1994 World Cups coming to the party a tad too late,to find only the dessert left. They passed up the prime ministership in 1996; they withdrew support to UPA 1 in 2008 and soon got banished to the political margins. There were other less conspicuously dramatic historical blunders. The Lefts bane has been committing the blunder with eyes wide open,and one individual retrospectively owning up to a nostra culpa,but never the party. The Lefts electoral presence outside its erstwhile triad of states was always nominal a seat here,another there but not its politics. However,in the churning of the 1980s-90s caused by the advent of the politics of identity and empowerment in northern India,the Left,in adherence to its ideology of class struggle,continued to reject the notion of caste. The new politics of aspiration would reduce the
Left to near total irrelevance in northern India.
Instead,after the 2009 Lok Sabha reversals,the CPM talked about rectification and a return to agitationism. Then came the 2011 vanquishing,and the Politburo,minus Bhattacharjee,is still making up its mind.
The late Jyoti Basu had called 1996 a historic blunder. Prakash Karat,CPM general secretary,has admitted the price paid for ignoring caste. But Karat and his rivals still dont agree on the 2008 withdrawal of support,signalling a deeper disengagement from realpolitik,and the reasons why Bengal was lost. To be taken seriously,the Left has to look at another lacuna how it has never been comfortable with the idea of assuming responsibility for anything outside its old triad of states. Irrespective of whats happening to the support bases of others,the Left will need more than merely contesting the elections.
