Mrinal K Biswas
At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the party’s highest policy making body broke the embedded practice of echoing and approving anything coming from the top leaders sitting in Politburo or Central Committee, and forced an alteration in the draft political resolution of the Central Committee.
The official resolution moved by the Central Committee, while stating the need to fight the menace of the Bharatiya Janata Party said, “However, this has to be done without having an understanding with the Congress party.” Hardliners led by Prakash Karat saw to it that CPI(M) avoided the touch of the Grand Old Party to keep away any impurities from invading their party. But Karat’s successor and the present party general secretary Sitaram Yechury wanted to keep CPI(M) afloat in the country’s political mainstream, and by dint of his wider support among the rank and file, threw down the gauntlet against the hardliners successfully. The broader forum, the Party Congress, modified the Central Committee’s resolution, and removed the words “without having an understanding with the Congress Party” and replaced them by “without having a political alliance with the Congress Party”. The Yechury line opened up the possibility of an “understanding” with the Congress party and with any coalition the Congress party may forge in the 2019 general election for the Lok Sabha.
There were interesting fallouts of this pathbreaking political line within the CPI(M) itself. Prakash Karat’s wife and influential politburo member Brinda Karat refused to accept defeat and said that any repetition of an understating with the Congress party that had happened during the 2016 West Bengal Assembly polls was “not permissible”. Actually, the resolution adopted by the CPI(M) says just the opposite.
The most emphatic statement for the Yechury line came from nonagenarian party founder member V.S. Achuthanandan, who was formerly Kerala Chief Minister. “We will reach an understanding with all secular opposition parties, including the Congress in Parliament on agreed issues. Outside the Parliament . . . we shall work for a broad mobilisation of people against communalism. This has to be done without a political alliance with the Congress.”
V.S. has elucidated further the meanings and implications of the alteration of the CPI(M) Central Committee’s draft resolution in the context of compulsion of the party in combating fascism. The Third International of the Communist parties, he said, gave the world the concept of a united front against fascism. This has helped India and other countries fight imperialism on the one hand and fascism on the other. The RSS was born along with the Italian Fascism and German Nazism. Its leadership and cadre have had decades long experience of fomenting communal extremism in India. And so V.S. stated that the need of the hour is not to waste time focussing on neo-liberalism as followed by the Congress but to form a broader front with Congress and others to fight the communal–fascist threat. Incidentally, this founding member of the CPI(M) has long been thrown out of the Politburo and Central Committee as well as the Kerala State Committee by hardliners in the CPI(M).
V.S., even though sidelined in important bodies of his own party, sensed correctly the wishes of his comrades assembled in the Party Congress to have some kind of an alliance with the Grand Old Party, contrary to the dictates of the ruling coterie. This significantly tilted the balance in favour of the Yechury line. The unprecedented demand for secret voting on the draft political resolution was itself an expression of disapproval of the hardliners’ much advertised anti-Congress views and showed weakening support for the Karat leadership which had held CPI(M) under leash for so many years.
The CPI(M) under a stronger Yechury leadership will no doubt find a more meaningful place in the mainstream of Indian politics. It has to be seen how Yechury plays his cards and how far he can tame the strongly entrenched Karat majority in the Politburo.
Kerala will pose the toughest task. Political understanding with the Congress party remains out of question; there is only a remote possibility of electoral seat adjustments between the two parties as they are the only adversaries in the poll battle. The recently lost battle in Tripura has only hardened the local CPI(M) which would not like to share the anti-BJP space with the Congress. West Bengal is the best place where the local leaderships of both Congress and CPI(M) are eager for joint efforts to fight the dominance of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress which threatens to make them irrelevant. Of course, the Congress high command’s attitude is the big question. Even then, the CPI(M) can keep hope for some gains in the all-India electoral battle if a broad front emerges with Congress at the top—that will open up the possibility of the CPI(M) making some dent in the three States of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura.
