The post-Soviet world has been a rollercoaster ride for the CPM. Its fortunes had been entirely at odds with most other Communist parties worldwide. We know for sure that Jyoti Basu had the opportunity to become Prime Minister of India at least once — some say he had the opportunity thrice, in 1990, 1991 and 1996. The renowned “historical blunder” of not forming the government did not deter the party as much as one would have expected. CPM joined the United Progressive Alliance-led government, enjoyed significant clout, had a leading role in the Third Front in 2009, and had a fair share of hegemony in the national scene.
Things were looking rosy, if not red, until history blindsided them, just as it did with the Soviet Union and East Germany 25 years back. Their confrontational approach towards the UPA over the nuclear deal question backfired badly, and made the nationalist pitch legitimate, making things easier for right-wing nationalists. After the Left’s defeat in three consecutive general elections, the debates over Western imperialism and unequal exchanges in trade seem sterile and distant now, not even included in history as a “blunder”.
This topsy-turvy journey had a lot to do with the respective general secretaries. For a six-decade-old party, it is somewhat surprising that CPM is only electing its sixth general secretary now. Each leader, having served an average of 12 years, has defined their own era inside the party, representing their own “tendency” inside the party. Meanwhile, the role of its general secretaries has slowly transformed from being the vanguard fountainhead of the proletariat to the vanguard of party supporters.
After consolidating its presence, strategy and cadres under the first two general secretaries — P Sundarayya and EMS Namboodiripad — CPM really hit its stride under its one and only genuinely working-class leader, Harkishan Singh Surjeet. The previous two had taken the party-intellectual route to leadership, while Surjeet relied almost solely on his ability for mass mobilisation. All three were admired beyond their party bases, but Surjeet’s experience with democratic manoeuvering — he was a Jat Sikh who came through the All India Kisan Sabha — was pivotal in the alliance-making that characterised the high-point of CPM’s life.
The party’s downfall coincided with the election of the dogmatic Prakash Karat as general secretary. Karat was a party intellectual like Sundarayya and EMS, but differed from them in that he had no significant experience with electoral politics outside of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Karat could be compared with Ernst Thälmann, who led the German communist party (KPD) during the Weimar Republic. Much like Thälmann, Karat and the CPM under him misread the direction of history, only to come undone at the hands of an unexpected enemy. The Karat line did not appreciate the fact that India is not JNU.
The loose group inside the CPI(M) who agreed with Karat’s position, often referred to as the “Karat faction”, took a step back and gave space to the moderate “Yechury faction”, led by Sitaram Yechury. His leadership was characterised by a retreat and regroup, a more sober approach towards parliamentary democracy, and pragmatic cooperation with life-affirming movements like anti-CAA/NRC. Yechury’s untimely death last year necessitated a rethink of where the party would go from here.
M A Baby seemingly is a perfect fit in terms of ticking social justice boxes — he is a Latin Catholic and a member of a minority community. Who could be a better choice to lead a Communist party in times of a dominant Hindutva party like the BJP?
Although Baby contested elections thrice and won twice, he is known to be uncomfortable with electoral politics. But he is also not as respected a theorist as Karat is. Rather, Baby’s achievements for the party lie in his ability to bring the cultural fora in service to the party. He was more than instrumental in realising the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. A well-read Communist with rather conservative tastes in arts — he enjoys Carnatic music and arthouse films — and no significant working-class activism to speak of, Baby is not the typical general secretary whom the cadres are used to.
Baby’s arrival underscores CPM’s trouble with itself: a lack of clarity about its place in the current historical moment. This was visible at the Madurai party congress, where CPM struggled to define its line beyond the ossified Karat line and Yechury’s nervous pragmatism. Instead, it scrambled to appropriate from elsewhere — passing a late resolution on caste census, backing Palestine without interrogating October 7, doubting its atheist image, and noting its alienation from youth. Even familiar rhetoric on the corporate-Hindutva nexus seemed strained. It is as if the party now sees itself as shaped by history, not shaping it.
Baby’s candidature was rumoured to have been opposed by some of the state units, but they could not put up any popular alternatives. In a way, Baby is a compromise — the product of a defeated milieu in Communist politics. This situation, however, actually frees Baby to craft something new for the party. He is the first leader who is unconstrained by the unrealistic expectations of revolution. In an interview, Baby soberly accepted that the primary goal for the party now is to participate in the broader movement against Hindutva. Perhaps one could read into Karat’s statement, too, that the party has fallen behind in cultural and social activism — a domain where Baby could reinvigorate the party.
Finally, there are speculations that Baby’s elevation is a symptom of the Kerala unit’s dominance in the party. But those familiar with Kerala’s internal politics would have noted that Baby was almost a marginal figure in the past few years, owing to the difference in outlook between him and the “faction” controlling the government.
Rather than asserting itself through Baby, the Kerala unit is likely to adopt a division of labour. A preview of this emerged when M A Baby condemned SNDP leader Vellapally Natesan’s remarks on Malappuram while Pinarayi Vijayan defended him, signalling a split between the ideological and the electoral. Unlike Karat, who blurred the two with damaging results, and Yechury, who had no choice but to do the same, Baby’s task is building a party in the rest of India, which requires a synthesis between electoral and non-electoral tactics.
Baby’s real struggle will be in crafting such a new line that captures the zeitgeist of contemporary India, without which he cannot vanguard his own party, least of all the Indian people.
Viplov Wingkar is an assistant professor of philosophy at B K Birla College (Autonomous), Kalyan
