The Nation: CPI(M); Courting Sonia

The pragmatic pro-Congress line is finally adopted at party congress of the CPI(M). But as the caveats indicate, the hardliners have lived to fight another day.

It was the opening session of the CPI(M)'s 16th congress at Calcutta's Nazrul Manch, temporarily renamed EMS Centre. Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the party general secretary, was searching for some papers midway through his introduction of the draft political resolution. Suddenly Jyoti Basu, chief minister of West Bengal, announced that translations of the draft would now be distributed. A few moments later, he changed his mind. The translations could not be made available, Basu said, because delegates from particular states and countries-18 fraternal leftist parties from abroad had sent representatives-were not sitting together.

It was a minor incident, just another example of Basu's at times quirky reasoning. Nevertheless, it was an indicator of the somersaults which were to come. Anybody who followed the CPI(M)'s sessions over the next few days could have been forgiven for concluding that the party's initials stood for Contradiction Party of India (Marxist). Contradiction; that word itself was the centrepiece of all ideological anguish. The CPI(M) had for some time been divided between the Basu-Surjeet camp, which favoured a tilt towards the Congress, and the younger Prakash Karat-Sitaram Yechury group, which wanted to persist with the "policy of equidistance from both the Congress and the BJP".

Eventually, the old guard seemed to have won. The delegates decided the "central contradiction" was with the BJP, a party which Basu thundered was "fundamentalist, communal, corrupt, opportunistic and undemocratic". The draft resolution was equally eloquent: "The BJP is the political wing of the RSS which has a fascistic ideology." So the Basu-Surjeet line had triumphed.

In most parties that should have been the end of the debate. In the CPI(M) it was only the beginning. Marxist theory has room for a "popular front"- communist and bourgeois parties united in a battle against fascism. The detente Surjeet and his comrades proposed with the Congress was as far from a popular front as chalk from cheese.

THOSE CONTRADICTIONS

The CPI(M) has reconciled backing the Congress with opposing liberalisation.

The Surjeet-Basu line prevailed but the party hierarchy is still in the orthodoxy's grip.

Hardliners in West Bengal and Tripura and almost the entire Kerala unit see the Congress as the main enemy.

The comrades claim to be keen on a "third front" but don't want to touch Laloo.

For one, there was no promise of an electoral alliance. The offer of "outside support" to a Congress-led regime was limited to the current Lok Sabha.

Even here, Surjeet entered a caveat: "It will not be unqualified support. We will back a Congress government on the basis of issues." Of course, if a Congress prime minister is to be sworn in, the BJP one has to fall. So would the CPI(M) abet the collapse of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's ministry? Nothing doing said Surjeet: "We would like the congress to realise this BJP government should not continue for a single day. The sooner they pull it down the better ... We are not in the toppling game though." Soon after, local Congressmen returned the favour by demonstrating against "corrupt" Surjeet.

Clearly, whatever the "short-term deviation from the line of march," the Marxists still see the Congress as a decrepit party of the "bourgeoisie and landlords". No wonder then that the congress unanimously decided to work for the rebirth of the "third alternative". Here came the next contradiction. The Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha of Laloo Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh yadav is the largest non-BJP, non-Congress force in north India and obviously the pivot of any third front. Yet, the CPI(M) declared it would keep corruption-tainted Laloo out of the proposed alliance.

Since Karl Marx saw politics as no more than an extension of economics, it is no surprise that the CPI(M) conclave "forcefully endorsed the link between the struggle against liberalisation and the fight against communal forces". This again was paradoxical, since the Congress fathered economic reforms. The anti-liberalisation clause was seen as a facesaver for the party's trade unions. In reality, much of the congress' efforts were expended in papering over internal differences.

For instance, Basu loyalists proposed amendments acclaiming his statement that not allowing him to become the UF's prime minister in 1996 was a "historic blunder". The other side proposed "seven times" the number of amendments criticising Basu. Eventually, a compromise was reached and both sets of proposals were withdrawn.

The larger battle in the CPI(M) is between the party apparatchiki and those who can broadly be termed the democracy specialists. Commissars like Karat and Yechury, who have an iron grip over the organisation, are worried about the legislative wing's increasing autonomy. They fear that if party MPs become ministers , such deviant "parliamentarianism" will rise.

As the CPI(M) tried to extricate itself from these knots, one special visitor at the congress must have felt a sense of irony: A.B. Bardhan, general secretary of the CPI. In 1964, Basu, Surjeet and 30 others walked out of the CPI's national council, angry at the party's "nakedly reformist" pro-Congress stand. The wheel has come a full circle. Yet even as the old contradictions have gone, new ones have appeared. "They will always remain," proclaimed a central committee member, "after all Marxism thrives because of dichotomies." Unfortunately, so does confusion.