The CPI(M) finds itself relegated to a supporting role as the BJP and the Trinamul tussle for supremacy — a staggering fall from grace for the once all-conquering Marxists
May 23, 2019, will go down as a significant date in Bengal’s political history. As BJP members and supporters celebrated victory from 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state at Muralidhar Lane — headquarters of the party’s Bengal unit — visitors to 31, Alimuddin Street barely a few kilometres away were greeted with stony silence.
As the main power centre in Bengal politics for the best part of three decades, the nondescript Muzaffar Ahmed Bhavan — headquarters of the CPI(M) — had witnessed several historic firsts. Only this time, there was no cause for celebration— the Left Front had drawn a blank in Bengal in the General Elections for the first time since Independence and the CPI(M) had all but surrendered its position as the main opposition to a party that was till 2014 a bit-part player in the state’s political arena.
ALIENATING CORE SUPPORT
Having stormed to power in 1977, the Jyoti Basu-led Left Front government undertook Operation Barga — a land reform movement to record the names of bargadars (sharecroppers) while avoiding the time-consuming method of recording through the settlement machinery. It bestowed on the bargadars legal protection against eviction by landlords and entitled them to the due share of the produce.
The success of Operation Barga formed the backbone of the CPI(M)’s rural stronghold and had led to a groundswell of support for the party in its heydey.
But that success would eventually turn out to be a double-edged sword when Basu’s successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, embarked on a drive to industrialise Bengal’s largely rural economy.
“…The campaign (to industrialise Bengal) ran into an unyielding obstacle: because of the party’s own policies, it was difficult for anyone to own enough land to build a factory on it,” Alex Traub wrote in The Collapse of Secularism in West Bengal.
“Rather than resolve this contradiction, the CPI(M) sought to impose its will. The party seized land from poor farmers, its traditional base, provoking mass protests that police and party cadres tried to crush.”
Bhattacharjee would not have needed to embark on his rapid industrialisation drive had militant trade unionism and alleged extortion not led to the flight of capital, rendering thousands jobless.
“…the workers could not even enjoy their earnings in full because ‘the party’ took a cut. And now even the workers understand that fear of ‘the party’ is keeping capital away from Bengal — and without money there can be no upgradation of machinery, nothing spent on teaching new skills,” T.V.R. Shenoy wrote.
While essentially a party of the workers and peasants, the CPI(M) also enjoyed support from the urban elite — the so-called Bengali bhadralok. Singur-Nandigram and the excesses of the party’s cadre base alienated this support as well.
AN ANTICIPATED ROUT
For the CPI(M) (and Left Front) that had been at the forefront of politics in Bengal since its formation in 1964, either as the ruling party or a militant opposition, the decline has been staggering.
Having surrendered its 34-year reign to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress in a rout, the CPI(M) vowed to introspect, purge the lumpen elements, and come back stronger. Nine years later, it finds itself even further away from the mainstream.
The CPI(M) leadership, once known for an uncanny ability to read ground realities, had completely lost touch with the grassroots by the time it was voted out. For a Communist party, that is as close to blasphemy as it gets. Decades of power had made the leadership complacent, egotistical, and, in all probability, delusional.
“Was it plain and simple arrogance, accompanied by a noticeable decline in the quality of the leadership, which led the (Left) Front, and the Marxists in particular, to wear blinkers?” Ranabir Ray Choudhury wrote in 2011 as he tried to decode the reasons behind the CPI(M)’s spectacular collapse.
“If so, was the arrogance a natural growth flowing from having exercised power continuously for 34 long years, something which would perhaps have afflicted any other political outfit in a similar situation?”
What Ray Choudhury didn’t take into account was a Communist party is not “any other political outfit”. Long known and revered for its cadre-based regimented structure with an ideological fountain to drink from, the CPI(M)’s foundation was shaken when it started inducting and elevating strongmen into the party fold.
“Local body elections were just around the corner (in 1977–78). The total number of dedicated CPI(M) members was then estimated at 27,000. There was no way the party could find suitable candidates for the thousands of contests from its own battle-hardened ranks. That was when it decided to co-opt outsiders, winnability being almost the sole criterion,” Shenoy wrote.
“This led to an influx of members who had never demonstrated any allegiance to the core beliefs of the party.”
For a long time, these ‘outsiders’ were only meant to make up the numbers. Once the old guard that had led the party to consecutive electoral successes began to step aside, the ‘outsiders’ started to gain prominence. Many of them went on to be inducted into the state secretariat, the party’s highest decision-making body in Bengal.
As the party slowly began to lose control of the lumpen elements that had made their way into the party, people’s resentment against it started to boil. Nearly a decade after being voted out, the CPI(M) still has to field allegations of Local/Zonal Committee leaders holding kangaroo courts or demanding protection money, which duly went to meet their quota in the party fund, from local businessmen.
“Violence signified and guaranteed party power — until it finally overtook politics entirely, rendering the CPI(M) not just grotesque, but absurd,” wrote Traub.
While Singur-Nandigram may have been the tipping point, discontent against the CPI(M) was brewing for a long time.
“Clearly, the Trinamul-Congress combine’s cataclysmic victory suggests that the intensity of the pent-up anger on the part of the people against the Left Front, and the CPI(M) in particular, had crossed all normal bounds, giving the Assembly elections the character of a dam-burst,” Ray Choudhury wrote.
CULT OF PERSONALITY
For a party that propagates collectivism in its politics, the Marxists in Bengal carefully nurtured the cult of personality. In stalwarts such as Jyoti Basu, former Bengal unit secretary Promod Dasgupta, and Harekrishna Konar, the legendary peasants’ leader, the CPI(M) has quite a few idols that it believes the new generation of party workers should aspire to. Even today, any rally of the CPI(M) would seem incomplete without Basu’s picture adorning placards.
“Inside his party, the no-nonsense Basu was neither known for his interest in ideological hair-splitting nor in lobbying for factional support to establish his opinion. He remained almost unchallenged both in the government and the party after (Promod) Dasgupta’s death in 1982,” was how The Telegraph summed up Basu’s stature among party cadres after his passing in 2010.
Bhattacharjee, during his 11 years as chief minister, constantly battled with Basu’s shadow — both in the party and in government. While he eventually developed a huge following later in his stint, the comparisons with Basu remained.
Many believed, and still do, that the party would not be staring at a wipeout if Basu had still been in charge.
FAILURE TO ADAPT
For a generation of Bengalis who had only seen the CPI(M) in power, tales of its militant opposition were only myths and legend. When it lost power, the party vowed to get back to the streets.
But apart from a few token marches, the CPI(M) has been absent from the streets. Yet it all could have been so different. From the chit fund scam to the Narada sting operation, the current ruling dispensation has given the opposition plenty of fodder to hit the streets. However, a lack of visionary leadership has held the party back.
“The single biggest failure of the Left has been its inability to change according to the times and remain relevant to a fast-changing electorate. The party still continues to talk about the perils of neo-capitalism and globalisation in all forums, failing to see how these issues find near-zero resonance with the electorate,” veteran journalist and analyst Rajat Roy told Outlook magazine.
With the BJP’s rise as a potent force since 2014, the CPI(M) has been pushed to the sidelines even further.
Large-scale defection of cadres, and many mid-level leaders, has also dented the party’s organisation.
“…many social scientists have argued that the CPI(M)-led Left Front used its position in power to develop a kind of patron-client relationship where it secured political support by doling favours via its hold on power,” the Mint reported.
“Not only did the membership of the party and its mass organisations stop growing after it lost power in 2011, it has suffered a significant decline.”
This came amid significant muscle-flexing by the Trinamul, which drove out opposition party members from village after village and took control of CPI(M) offices—ironical, considering how once the Marxists used the same strategy when they were in charge.
ALLIANCE OF CONVENIENCE
The “tactical understanding” with the Congress ahead of the 2016 Assembly elections highlighted the lack of vision and foresight. For members and supporters of two parties that for decades had been taught to see each other as the “class enemy”, the alliance reeked of political opportunism.
These were two parties going hammer and tongs at each other in Kerala but cosying up to each other in Bengal at the same time.
Moreover, the future of the alliance even if it turned out to be successful was up in the air. There was no common manifestos or platform sharing between the two, and this created more confusion among the electorate. The CPI(M) even failed to convince the RSP, CPI, and the Forward Bloc — Left Front constituents — about the need for the “understanding”.
It also came too late in the day for grassroot-level workers to spread their message, resulting in the inevitable return of Mamata with a bigger mandate.
The CPI(M), on the other hand, lost its status as the main opposition to the Congress.
SAFFRON SURGE
The BJP’s sudden rise has pushed the CPI(M) closer to the brink. Being a border state with the history of a bloody partition and communal riots, Bengal has always been sitting on a tinderbox.
“The emergence of Communist parties and the sheer dominance of the Left Front from 1978 ensured that people were workers, peasants and other professionals first and representatives of their community only thereafter. The CPI(M) may have kept religious identity in mind at the time of selecting candidates for elections but this consideration did not become paramount, like in other states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,” wrote Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Mamata’s reign as chief minister, however, has coincided with a surge in cases of communal violence. The BJP has accused Mamata of appeasing Muslims, who constitute nearly 30% of the state’s population and, hence, wield strong influence on the fate of elections. Bengal has not been immune to the growing popularity of Narendra Modi and his anti-Muslim rhetoric as well. This has led to the acceptance that Mamata indeed allows the minority community get away with murder to protect her seat, enabling the BJP to sharpen its rhetoric and expand its base.
Amid this competitive communalism, the CPI(M)’s message has failed to find resonance with the masses despite being the only force ideologically equipped to return Bengal from the brink of identity politics.
Mamata, however, has blamed the CPI(M) for assisting the BJP’s rise. “…They transferred their votes to the BJP in Bengal. The CPI(M)’s henchmen have now become BJP’s assets,” the Bengal chief minister said.
Analysing the changing electoral fortunes of the CPI(M) and the Left Front does, however, lend some credence to her claims.
In the 2014 General Elections, the Left Front cornered around 29.71% of the popular vote. In 2019, its vote share tanked to a mere 6.28%. On the other hand, the BJP, which had a vote share of 17.02% in 2014, increased it to 40.25% in 2019.
In terms of vote swing, the Trinamul’s share in 2019 went up from 39.05% in 2014 to 43.28%, while the Congress’s came down to 5.61% from 9.58%. The CPI(M), on the other hand, suffered a 23.43% negative swing, while the BJP bagged an additional 23.03% votes.
Former Tripura chief minister and CPI(M) polituburo member Manik Sarkar, who had himself seen the party surrender to the BJP in his state in 2018, warned of this tendency of supporters drifting towards the saffron outfit despite their diametrically opposite ideologies.
“To gain freedom from the TMC (Trinamul), don’t make the mistake of choosing the BJP. It will be a blunder. It will be self-destruction,” he said at a rally in Bengal.
But these warnings fell on deaf ears as the BJP stepped into the political vacuum in the opposition space, bagging 18 of the state’s 42 seats.
A BRIGHT FUTURE?
The decimation in the General Elections, however, might still turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the CPI(M). Ridiculed for years for not having any youth face, the senior leadership has started paying more attention to the mass organisations that have for many years been nurseries for new recruits.
Since the pan-India lockdown from March 25 was announced, community kitchens run by the Students’ Federation of India, the party’s students’ wing, and the Democratic Youth Federation of India, its youth wing, have drawn huge numbers from members of marginalised communities.
The party had to double its efforts following the devastation caused by Cyclone Amphan. Its frontal organisations also lent support to relief and rehabilitation of those displaced by the super cyclone.
The students and the youths have started taking on more prominent roles in rallies and the media — dominated for too long by grey-haired septuagenarians. The students’ wing also led the protests against Modi when he visited Kolkata in January following the passage of the the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Parliament.
In an attempt to boost its anti-citizenship act movement, “…the Left party has resuscitated a moribund post-partition-era mass organisation — the United Central Refugee Council — to breathe life into its campaign against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the National Register of Citizens and the National Population Register,” The Telegraph reported.
The organisation was at the forefront of the Left parties’ demand for rehabilitation of refugees post Partition.
“The organisation was set up by Left Front leaders in the 1950s and it played a key role in the rise of the communist parties in Bengal and the eventual ascension to power in 1977. We have decided to revive it as the new central act and the threat of the NRC and the NPR will affect those born in what used to be refugee families in the sixties and the seventies,” The Telegraph quoted CPI(M) state committee member Gautam Ghosh as saying.
Despite these developments, the 2021 elections would be too early for the CPI(M) to mount a comeback. The best it can hope for is to regain its status as the main opposition before challenging for the 2024 General Elections with a leaner and hungrier cadre base. Till then, its main target should be to stay relevant and go back to its roots.
The views expressed in this blog are mine unless otherwise mentioned.
Vantage Point 