The Nation: CPI(M); Confusion Manifesto

India Today
October 26,1998

CPI(M)
Confusion Manifesto

Factionalism, differences on the Congress party, gender battles and a generation gap. Is an international revolution rocking the comrades?

By Javed M Ansari and M G Radhkrishanan

Jyoti Basu If party conferences are meant to clarify issues, the CPI(M)'s 16th congress in Calcutta was an unqualified failure. If they are meant to be an exercise in semantic jugglery, the CPI(M)'s 16th congress in Calcutta was an unqualified success. Among other things, it was meant to decide if the party would continue to treat the BJP and the Congress as equally pernicious or whether the saffron party would be declared the greater enemy.

Eventually, the CPI(M) decided in favour of the Congress. Even so, it is quite clear that much of the party is not comfortable with this line. Till the penultimate day of the congress, H.S. Surjeet and Jyoti Basu -- CPI(M) general secretary and West Bengal chief minister respectively -- seemed to have managed to steer through their pro-Congress agenda. Even so, Surjeet had to stretch the limits of incredulity when he described the BJP as "more imperialist" because it combined liberalisation with Hindutva while the Congress was "less imperialist" because it combined liberalisation with "a secular base". "Our differences with the Congress on the economic front remain, but the BJP poses a greater danger," says Sitaram Yechury, central committee member.

If the CPI(M) were a debating club, Surjeet would have carried the house; unfortunately, it is a political party. The hardliners, led by Yechury and Prakash Karat, hit back. Basu's criticism of the decision not to allow him to become the United Front's prime minister was brought up. Even junior delegates put Basu in the dock and dialectics were reduced to plain quarrels. A vote became unavoidable: the Basu view was trounced 441 votes to 198.

The next blow came when the central committee was reconstituted. Brinda Karat, Prakash's wife and among the CPI(M)'s most articulate spokespersons, opted out of a second term, accusing the party leadership of a gender bias. For geriatric comrades who have over the years looked upon every politically correct concern, including feminism, as a natural acquisition, Brinda's dissent came as a shock. More important, it opened a new front between the traditionalists and the pragmatists.

Sensing trouble, the CPI(M) postponed till December the election of its 15-member politburo. An indication of the problems the party has to deal with comes from Kerala, where the unit is divided over who will take the late E.M.S. Namboodiripad's place in the politburo. Given Brinda Karat's outburst, state Industry Minister Susheela Gopalan, a veteran women's activist, appears a natural choice. However, she draws her strength from the CITU lobby which is battling the controlling V.S. Achuthanandan faction.

In many parties, such turf battles are usual. To the CPI(M), schooled in the mysterious ways of democratic centralism, they are an anathema at par with capitalism. Willy-nilly the party is coming to recognise that its obsession with theoretical postulates has backfired. Forty years after it first tasted power, the party remains a three-state phenomenon. Its membership is declining in the Hindi belt. Youth, once the virtual monopoly of the Left, are less easily swayed now. The Students Federation of India, the CPI(M)'s campus wing, was 21.49 lakh strong in 1994. Over four years it has found only 63,000 more recruits. "Mass movements alone will not do; the party will have to reorient and regularly intervene on social issues," admits Prakash Karat.

In West Bengal, district magistrates routinely receive memoranda from CPI(M)-governed panchayats warning, say, western powers against meddling in Bosnia. The divorce of such discourse from the regular voter is obvious. At the congress, some leaders spoke of the need for the party to "involve itself in community work". They seem to believe that a reinvention at the base is preferable to a tinkering (read: alliances) at the superstructure. Their model for a socially-relevant political organisation is the RSS. No wonder the CPI(M) is confused.

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