Columns: The Usual Suspects

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India Today, May 10, 1999
May 10, 1999

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
The Parallel Coup

Jyoti Basu wanted to be prime minister, desperately.

By Swapan Dasgupta

So the truth is finally out, courtesy Jyoti Basu and Somnath Chatterjee. Far from being an upholder of Marxist fundamentalism, the CPI(M) has evolved into a pragmatic and eminently flexible organisation. So pragmatic that it is willing to digest dynastic democracy when necessary and so flexible as to furtively steal a government where possible.

The events of April are not only about a meticulously planned coup by Sonia Gandhi to fell Atal Bihari Vajpayee and install herself in Race Course Road. There was a sub-plot too. It centred on a parallel operation to trip Sonia at the last hurdle and clear the way for India's first communist prime minister. If conspiratorial whispers in Lutyens' Delhi are to be believed, the sub-plot had the tacit approval of a house on Raisina Hill.

Don't get it wrong. There is nothing politically and morally reprehensible about the CPI(M) turning its back on its 1998 Calcutta congress resolution and preferring the Popular Front approach rather than the United Front approach. Communist orthodoxy -- borrowed from European and Chinese experiences of the 1930s and '40s -- has a place for either approaches. There would have been nothing particularly heretical about the CPI(M) participating in a government in which the Left was not the dominant partner. True, it would have obliterated the difference between the CPI and CPI(M), but that would have been of academic interest to the dogmatists alone.

The point is that the CPI(M) didn't play with a straight bat. After Vajpayee fell on April 17, H.S. Surjeet was among the first to offer fulsome support to a Sonia-led Congress-only government. When initial noises were made by the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav about Basu heading a Third Front government, it was Sonia who said that the West Bengal chief minister "wasn't interested". Arjun Singh put his own twist and dubbed the idea as ridiculous as making Ajit Jogi the prime minister. The CPI(M) didn't get offended then. So why are Surjeet and Basu now complaining about Sonia's consistency? Why is Basu making inferences about "foreign powers" blocking his road to Delhi? Unless this is his way of belatedly questioning Sonia's Indian credentials. If so, it is strange it didn't occur to the avowedly internationalist CPI(M) earlier.

Obviously something doesn't square up. It would seem that the gushing support to Sonia by the CPI(M) was prefaced on the understanding that the Congress would find itself short of the promised 272 MPs at the last minute. This is precisely what happened with the Samajwadi Party, Revolutionary Socialist Party and Forward Bloc developing cold feet. Is it a mere coincidence that all these parties enjoy a special relationship with the CPI(M)? Is it also a coincidence that Chatterjee's leak to a Calcutta media group that the Politburo was ready to allow Basu to head a Third Front government was timed to match a sense of despondency in the Congress camp? Reconstructing the events, the conclusion is inescapable that the CPI(M) wanted to present Sonia with a fait accompli: either Basu or a restored Vajpayee. Sonia didn't blink. Did she know that Vajpayee wouldn't be given a second chance under any circumstances?

As India readies for the 13th Lok Sabha these are academic questions. But one thing is clear: Basu and the CPI(M) were willing, always willing. Their coyness was just a convenient facade. The communist coup was premised on plain duplicity.

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