- Former CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat’s article in People’s Democracy about his party is full of half-truths and platitudes.
- He argues that the CPI(M) has always been against the Congress but doesn’t recall its support to UPA-I.
- Karat fails to show that communal politics would not have deepened in the absence of Congress’ liberalisation agenda.
- He also chooses to forget CPI(M)’s critical culpability in facilitating the rise of the BJP in 1989.
- Blaming electoral alignments with regional, bourgeois parties for the erosion of support in Andhra, Bihar, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and UP is flawed.
- For over four decades, the left has made no attempt to initiate or sustain mass mobilisation campaigns.
- Left parties have taken part in electoral politics and are inextricably enmeshed in the parliamentary-electoral framework.
Former CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat has raised a number of issues in an article in the latest edition of People’s Democracy, weaving together strands of equivocation, half-truths and platitudes. His final point is about the character of the party and we shall get to that after dealing with some of his substantive points.
The context for Karat’s comments is provided by the debate within the party (and in broader left circles) about the CPI(M), or the mainstream left generally, forging an understanding of some sort with the Congress to fight the communal politics of the BJP, which many see as the biggest danger to liberal democracy and a progressive society in India.
Karat makes a number of points. The CPI(M) has always been opposed to the Congress on the basis of its understanding of the latter’s class character: since the party (like the BJP) represents the ruling classes (the big bourgeoisie and the landlords), any understanding with it would compromise the interests of the working class and lead his party into the morass of class-collaborative politics.
CPI(M) Support to UPA
If we accept this argument, which is not entirely erroneous, it would not explain how or why the CPI(M) agreed to support the Congress-led UPA under Karat’s stewardship in 2004.
A related argument made by Karat is that it was the Congress that initiated the process of liberalisation in the early 1990s, which was the precise period when the BJP and its communal agenda started making headway on the national stage. The fight against neo-liberalism and communalism must, therefore, be simultaneous.
The problem with this argument is that it does not demonstrate a causal connection between the two. To do that, Karat would have to show convincingly that communal politics would have been disadvantaged in the absence of the neo-liberalisation agenda which, well, has to be demonstrated.
Facilitating BJP’s Rise
Moreover, this argument overlooks the CPI(M)’s critical culpability in facilitating the rise of the BJP by joining hands with the party to support the VP Singh government in 1989.
If, as Karat argues in the course of his article, it would be a mistake to reduce the struggle against right-wing forces to electoral battles within the ‘parliamentary-electoral framework’, it is incomprehensible why the CPI(M) extended support to Singh, even given the understanding that supporting the Congress was not an option. After all, as a ‘communist’ party, the CPI(M) had no duty to ensure that a government, any government, was formed at the Centre.
Loss of Support
This brings us to the second point. Karat points out, quite correctly, that over the past four decades (ever since it acquired a taste of untroubled power in Bengal, with garnishing from Kerala and Tripura) the CPI(M), and the left generally, has been haemorrhaging support in areas where it had significant support bases: in Andhra, Bihar, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh.
The causal factor he identifies is electoral arrangements with regional ‘bourgeois’ parties, which hampered its growth. This is true, but the realisation is somewhat belated. Over four decades, the CPI(M) and the rest of the left have made no attempt to initiate or sustain mass mobilisation campaigns.
Inner-Party Verbiage
Karat’s realisation seems to have been prompted by the loss of the Bengal bastion. But even after that, all talk of people’s struggles remains (after six years) inner-party verbiage. The party has neither the stomach nor the will to mobilise the ‘people’, even in Bengal.
This brings us to Karat’s breathtaking conclusion. The criticism directed against the CPI(M), he says, is “part of the ideological assault on the Party with the aim of converting it into a social democratic party.” The party is not willing to oblige its critics. Really?
May we ask Comrade Karat what the CPI(M) really is? For at least four decades, but actually more like 65 years, the CPI(M) has been trying to gull itself and all those who are committed after their own fashion to some kind of left politics that it is a revolutionary party.
Instrument of Mobilisation?
When it decided to enter the arena of parliamentary politics (in the shape and form of the undivided CPI), it was argued that participating in elections was not really a parliamentary strategy; it was an instrument of mobilisation. This fiction has worn exceedingly thin over the years; by now it is in absolute tatters.
Anyone familiar with the history of electoral politics in the post-1967 era and the role of the CPI and CPI(M), which included frequent arrangements with the Congress (on the part of the CPI) and with parties like the Jana Sangh, Swatantra Party and the Congress(O), will know exactly how cynically the left parties played electoral politics and how inextricably enmeshed they were in the ‘parliamentary-electoral framework.’
Social Democratic Party
Quite simply, the CPI(M) is a social democratic party; it is not a ‘revolutionary’ party of the toiling classes or labouring masses. The sooner the party formally acknowledges this and dumps its jejune and completely unconvincing revolutionary rhetoric that no one buys any more, the better.
At this juncture, the disarray in the ranks of the left makes it difficult for most people to believe that it can play a progressive role in national politics. But shedding its pretensions is surely a first step – necessary, though hardly sufficient.
(The writer is a Kolkata-based freelance journalist)
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