India: Communists debate way forward
By Dipankar Bhattacharya
February 14, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Liberation — Media reports coming from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Central Committee meeting held
in Kolkata (19-21 January, 2018) indicate that the party is majorly
divided on the issue of its current political assessment and tactical
position. According to these reports, the draft presented by Sitaram
Yechury was defeated 31 to 55 votes in the Central Committee, and the
forthcoming CPI(M) Congress in Hyderabad is now expected to take up the
draft attributed to former general secretary Prakash Karat for
deliberation and adoption. Within the CPI(M) the division is being
widely seen as a clash of the ‘Bengal line’ against ‘Kerala line’. Beyond
the CPI(M), among broad progressive liberal circles it is being seen as a
clash between a pragmatic mass line and a puritan isolationist
position, a conflict between people who understand the nuances of
popular electoral politics and those who are driven by copybook Marxist
dogma.
These are obviously very superficial and misleading lines of
demarcation. The CPI(M) in Kerala is as much a deft practitioner of
electoral politics as the CPI(M) in West Bengal once used to be. Kerala
is where communists first came to power in 1957, and despite periodic
defeats, they are still in power after sixty years. This may not be as
spectacular as the 34-year-long reign of the CPI(M) in West Bengal, but
then the CPI(M)’s fall and setback in West Bengal has been no less
spectacular. In contrast the stable and protracted Kerala saga is
certainly no less significant than the West Bengal story of the CPI(M).
Let us therefore try and look beyond these superficial stereotypes at
the real and deeper political questions.The debate apparently revolves around two key issues. How should the
CPI(M) assess the current Narendra Modi regime and the present phase of the
Sangh-BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) aggression? And what should be the CPI(M)’s
electoral/political tactics at this stage? Sitaram Yechury reportedly
argues that fascism is staring us in the face and the Left must forge a
broad secular alliance to combat fascism. Prakash Karat, on the other
hand, has argued that what we are facing is not fascism but communal
authoritarianism and an alliance with the Congress is not the answer to
this challenge. Let us take a closer look at the arguments and how they
relate to the current situation and the real issues that face the CPI(M)
and the Left.There is indeed a wide agreement among Left liberal circles that what
we are experiencing in India today is nothing short of fascism. We must
not wait for a complete overrun of bourgeois democracy and the chilling
reality of concentration camps, gas chambers and the horror of
holocaust to say that fascism is ravaging India. The communal lynch
mobs, the numerous vigilante squads, the intensified
Brahminical-patriarchal aggression, the targeted killings and mysterious
‘deaths’ and ‘disappearances’ of dissenting voices and common citizens
are enough warning signals that we can ignore only at our own peril.
True, India is a former colony now dreaming of becoming a global power
under imperialist tutelage while Germany under Hitler was a cornered and
declining colonial power trying to achieve global supremacy and racial
‘purity’ and ‘pride’ through internal fascism that spilled and grew into
a world war. But these distinctions in no way negate the fascist
essence of the Sangh-BJP Hindu supremacist project of turning secular
India into a Hindu Rashtra.Had the Modi government been only about the Adani-Ambani brand of
crony capitalism and aggressive pursuit of the policies of privatisation
and globalisation coupled with arbitrary measures like demonetisation,
GST and Aadhaar, we could have perhaps called it just another
authoritarian neoliberal regime. But the ever growing domination of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the entire scheme of things makes the current regime undeniably
fascist. The RSS has all along been a fascist organisation with a
fascist project and now that it has acquired such a controlling grip on
state power, it is in a position to unleash its entire agenda at a
breakneck speed. It is therefore essential to oust the Sangh-BJP
dispensation from power and what happens in elections is definitely of
crucial importance.But the BJP has not risen overnight; it has had a steady and
spectacular growth over the last three decades. This has been possible
because of a political vacuum created by the discrediting of successive
governments and the complicity and capitulation of a whole range of
parties of the ruling classes in dealing with the BJP. The fact is there
are more parties today willing to do business and share power with the
BJP than the ones that are ready to fight against it. We certainly need a
credible alternative with a stronger democratic content and foundation
to effectively defeat, expose and isolate the Sangh-BJP establishment. A
dynamic and vibrant Left can surely play a big role in building and
energising such an alternative.The simple formula of a broad secular alliance with parties easily
crossing over from the ‘communal’ to the ‘secular’ camp and back (Nitish
Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), JDU, in Bihar being perhaps the most glaring but not the only
example) has only discredited secularism and not provided any stable
alternative to the BJP in any province in India. It is one thing to
devise an electoral strategy to ensure the BJP’s defeat on as big a
scale as possible or to try and work out any possible post-poll
arrangement to keep the BJP out of power, but reducing the Left’s
tactics to the illusive idea of a grand secular alliance is a different
proposition and a futile exercise, if the experience of last three
decades is anything to go by.The debate over the Congress is actually an escapist debate within
the CPI(M). From indirectly sharing power with the Congress during the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA-I) period to having seat adjustments with the Congress in the last
Assembly elections in West Bengal, the CPI(M) has had various forms and
degrees of collaboration with the Congress short of openly joining a
Congress-led alliance. That has not stopped the BJP from growing (not
just nationally but specifically also in West Bengal) or the CPI(M) from
losing ground in West Bengal (and by implication also suffering a
massive erosion in its overall strength and stature). It is interesting
to note that while the CPI(M) is debating about its relation with the
Congress, the latter is more interested in courting the Trinamool Congress (TMC) as a
potential ally.It was the presumed Congress-CPI(M) proximity that led to the rise of
the TMC in West Bengal and the BJP backed it fully, directly when the
TMC was a part of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) during the early Vajpayee years at the Centre, and
indirectly even after the TMC quit NDA, to secure the CPI(M)’s ouster
from power. Of course even after that the CPI(M) had managed to secure
80% majority in 2006 and its fall from that height has little to do with
its equations with the Congress. The collapse was triggered by the
internal derailment of the Left Front government, illustrated most
starkly through the Singur-Nandigram-Lalgarh episodes, coupled with the
CPI(M)’s complete identification with and reliance on the government and
the bureaucratic arrogance and alienation of the CPI(M) leadership at
different levels of the party and government from the people. The CPI(M)
refuses to acknowledge and address this basic problem, smugly blaming
the people for bringing the TMC to power in the state.Today, for both the CPI(M) and the Congress, Kerala is a crucially
important state. It is well known that the RSS has a fairly strong and
extensive network in Kerala even though the BJP’s electoral success is
still very much limited. Congress-CPI(M) alliance in Kerala can only
facilitate the BJP’s rise in Kerala as the main opposition force. In
Tripura, the Congress has effectively given way to the BJP as the main
opposition force in the state. And in West Bengal, even as the CPI(M)
treats the TMC as the main target and virtually equates it to the BJP,
at the moment the TMC and the BJP appear at loggerheads and the TMC
remains the biggest anti-BJP force in the state in public perception.
Indeed, if the CPI(M) sees a broad secular alliance as the answer to the
BJP then it should reinvent and rehabilitate itself as a junior partner
of the TMC and to be sure that will again be a great service to the
BJP.A strong and dynamic Left is the need of the hour. The experience of
the post 2014 political scene tells us while most opposition parties,
the Congress included, have often been clueless and demoralised, and
devoid of any major oppositional or agitational initiative, there have
been no dearth of popular agitations challenging the BJP and throwing up
new faces and new forces in the process. The story of the recent
Gujarat elections was as much a stunning corroboration of this fact as
it was about belated attempts at reviving the Congress under the
leadership of Rahul Gandhi. And by launching the election campaign (as
well as the exercise to review the election results) from the Somnath
temple, the Congress has once again revealed its proclivity to compete
with the BJP on the latter’s own turf of Hindutva, the suicidal streak
that has enabled the BJP to go about setting the agenda ever more
aggressively, compelling a clueless Congress to remain limited to
belated defensive responses.
Rather than chasing the mirage of a grand secular alliance, the Left
must take the lead in launching powerful struggles on the ground and
unleashing bold socio-cultural and ideological-political campaigns and
initiatives. Prompt intervention on every issue and concerted efforts to
build and promote struggles in defence of democracy is the key to
defeating the BJP in the coming series of elections going up to the all
important showdown in 2019. The Left approach and tactics must be aimed
at increasing and leveraging the strength of the Left and maximising its
initiative and impact. The Yechury-Karat debate frames the tasks and
direction of the Left in a false binary – a powerful and independent
assertion of the Left becomes all the more urgent in the face of the
growing fascist danger and it is perfectly consistent, and must be
combined, with a readiness to explore suitable electoral tactics in
keeping with the objective political conditions in different parts of
the country and the central objective of defeating the BJP and
strengthening the Left.
Dipankar Bhattacharya is general secretary, Communist Party of India(Marxist Leninist) Liberation.
