05-07-2004, 05:36 AM
History of a relationship
Balbir K Punj
By now Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu has perhaps realised that compliments for Ms Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, are not complementary. Mr Basu's unsolicited bouquets for Ms Gandhi as the Prime Minister was responded to by brickbats by the Congress president herself within days. Taking the sentiments of an entire State for granted, Mr Basu had declared that Ms Gandhi's foreign origin might be an issue in northern India but not in West Bengal.
It is another matter that Mr Basu never entertained the opinions of Mr Sharad Pawar, Mr Narendra Modi, Ms Jayalalithaa, Mr PA Sangma or Mr Chandrababu Naidu, who come from anywhere but northern India. Ms Gandhi, in her Kalchini speech, on the other hand, decried the Leftist rule in West Bengal as a repressive monarchy where democracy has been reduced to a mockery. Incidentally, this is known to be her first scathing assault on Communist rule, whose prime constituent, the CPI(M), is divided over whether to support an incumbent Congress from outside or to join it were it to come to power.
This is how the CPI(M)'s election manifesto indicts the Congress: The Congress party ruled the country for over four decades. Its policies and record of government contributed to the present plight of the people and the country. Its failure to strengthen the foundations of democracy, secularism, federalism and its anti-people policies laid the basis for the rise of the BJP and the NDA Government. It still has not learnt lessons from the past. The Congress advocates economic policies which are not different from the BJP. Congress-run State governments such as the UDF in Kerala are pursuing policies which promote privatisation and liberalisation.
In the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, where the Left is strong, it has shown that alternative policies which are distinct from those of the BJP and the Congress can also be put in place. That is why it is necessary to ensure the defeat of the BJP and the Congress in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura and to project the platform of policies of the Left independently all over the country. Mr Harikishan Singh Surjeet, mama Shakuni of Indian politics, has bypassed the need for reviving his pet concept of "third front" and feels it is only a matter of formality to decide whether to join the Congress-led Secular Front or not. He recently told journalists at Chennai's Meenabakkam Airport that he knew which way the wind was blowing. Sadly, the Don Quixote of Indian Communism can't read the direction of the wind within his own party.
CPI(M)'s chief whip in the dissolved 13th Lok Sabha, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, was quick to clarify the confusion generated by Mr Basu and Mr Surjeet. He reiterated that the CPI(M) would not join any government but extend issue-based support. It will be pertinent to recollect that Mr Chatterjee has been throwing lavish dinner parties at his residence in New Delhi in honour of Ms Gandhi for the last few years. The objective of such ingratiation was always vague and ambiguous. There were bickerings inside the party and the Left Front; and every time any connection with the Congress was denied, Mr Basu accorded a gala dinner for Ms Gandhi at Mr Chatterjee's residence. In August 2002, one such dinner was boycotted by Left Front constituents: The Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc.
Most recently, a move towards rapprochement was proposed: Grand secular alliance between the Congress and other like-minded "secular" parties. It was mulled over last December in anticipation of snap polls, but was abandoned soon after for the obvious reasons. Mr Surjeet admitted that there was no raison d'etre in such an alliance because it would mean sleeping with the enemy. The Marxists have a government in office or in waiting in three states: West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala. Elsewhere, they are almost non-entities and immaterial to the Congress. In those three states, the Congress is their principle, if not the only, adversary. Hence, the question: On what principle will that alliance be forged, and against whom? But why is Mr Basu keen to see a lady with a mysterious past and dubious statesmanship in South Block? Why is a veteran like Mr Surjeet so beholden to Ms Gandhi and has abandoned his passions for a third front? A careful study of Left history in conjunction with the reading of today's world provides the answer.
In 1969, when Indira Gandhi's Government was reduced to a minority by a split in the Congress, it survived the no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha with the support of CPI. The party extended this support as per a thesis penned by late R Mohan Kumarmangalam that goes by his name. Kumaramangalam wanted to support Indira Gandhi as Lenin sought to support the Kernensky's provisional government in Russia-as a rope supports a hanged man. Even in those hey-days of communism, when every capital from Prague to Pyongyang portended to go red; Kumaramanglam knew Communists were too small to control India except through the "bulk" of the Congress. Kumaramangalam, Nurul Hassan and Raghunath Reddy were given ministerial portfolios. The basic idea was to infiltrate the ranks of power and take control of academia and intelligentsia.
Kumaramanglam perished in a plane crash in 1973, but Communists supported Indira Gandhi's imposition of Emergency (a provision of Indian Constitution borrowed from Third Reich; I mark this since Communists harangue so much against Nazism). As a result, none of their leaders were arrested during Emergency. The period under Nurul Hassan as Education Minister witnessed the Left extending its vice-like grip over education and research institutions. Hindu-baiting and India-bashing intellectuals were given privileged positions in academia. The Left could not, perhaps, have inflicted as much damage on the country as through the controlling of minds!
Long before Kumaramanglam, the Communists had perfected the fine art of infiltrating the Congress. Its history could be traced back to the days of the Congress Socialist Party, a radical Left wing party in the pre-Independence days. Many of them made it to important posts when the Congress formed governments alone or in alliance in nine out of 11 States after the provincial elections of 1937. They gained control of State units in what later became Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh. They were disrupting party activities and were intent on coopting party organisations. It was detected and many of them were expelled from the Congress Socialist Party in March 1940. Despite their belligerent posturing against eachother the Congress and the Communists are the two faces of the same coin.
Mr Basu is trying to redo a Kumaramanglam, sensing an opportunity in the fact that the Congress would need Left support to be in the saddle. And that the Left could never be within half the smelling distance of power without the body of the Congress. Besides, let us not forget that Mr Basu has the experience of cohabiting with the Congress in West Bengal. Marxists were a part of the United Front governments under the chief ministership of Ajay Mukherjee, a-dyed-in-the-wool Gandhian leading a splinter party named Bengal Congress, twice. First in 1967 and then in 1969-1970. The Communists in power used unprecedented State violence to implement their own agenda of land reforms. The politicisation of administration and police they initiated helped them consolidate their authority in 1977.
However, today for the first time in our history, a government at the Centre is on its way to building India as an economic powerhouse. India's image abroad has been bolstered as never before. All this has shifted the ground from beneath the feet of Congress and Communists who have thrived on shortages, poverty, and mediocrity. Mr Basu is not feasible and neither is the Congress or Communism.
Balbir K Punj
By now Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu has perhaps realised that compliments for Ms Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, are not complementary. Mr Basu's unsolicited bouquets for Ms Gandhi as the Prime Minister was responded to by brickbats by the Congress president herself within days. Taking the sentiments of an entire State for granted, Mr Basu had declared that Ms Gandhi's foreign origin might be an issue in northern India but not in West Bengal.
It is another matter that Mr Basu never entertained the opinions of Mr Sharad Pawar, Mr Narendra Modi, Ms Jayalalithaa, Mr PA Sangma or Mr Chandrababu Naidu, who come from anywhere but northern India. Ms Gandhi, in her Kalchini speech, on the other hand, decried the Leftist rule in West Bengal as a repressive monarchy where democracy has been reduced to a mockery. Incidentally, this is known to be her first scathing assault on Communist rule, whose prime constituent, the CPI(M), is divided over whether to support an incumbent Congress from outside or to join it were it to come to power.
This is how the CPI(M)'s election manifesto indicts the Congress: The Congress party ruled the country for over four decades. Its policies and record of government contributed to the present plight of the people and the country. Its failure to strengthen the foundations of democracy, secularism, federalism and its anti-people policies laid the basis for the rise of the BJP and the NDA Government. It still has not learnt lessons from the past. The Congress advocates economic policies which are not different from the BJP. Congress-run State governments such as the UDF in Kerala are pursuing policies which promote privatisation and liberalisation.
In the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, where the Left is strong, it has shown that alternative policies which are distinct from those of the BJP and the Congress can also be put in place. That is why it is necessary to ensure the defeat of the BJP and the Congress in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura and to project the platform of policies of the Left independently all over the country. Mr Harikishan Singh Surjeet, mama Shakuni of Indian politics, has bypassed the need for reviving his pet concept of "third front" and feels it is only a matter of formality to decide whether to join the Congress-led Secular Front or not. He recently told journalists at Chennai's Meenabakkam Airport that he knew which way the wind was blowing. Sadly, the Don Quixote of Indian Communism can't read the direction of the wind within his own party.
CPI(M)'s chief whip in the dissolved 13th Lok Sabha, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, was quick to clarify the confusion generated by Mr Basu and Mr Surjeet. He reiterated that the CPI(M) would not join any government but extend issue-based support. It will be pertinent to recollect that Mr Chatterjee has been throwing lavish dinner parties at his residence in New Delhi in honour of Ms Gandhi for the last few years. The objective of such ingratiation was always vague and ambiguous. There were bickerings inside the party and the Left Front; and every time any connection with the Congress was denied, Mr Basu accorded a gala dinner for Ms Gandhi at Mr Chatterjee's residence. In August 2002, one such dinner was boycotted by Left Front constituents: The Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc.
Most recently, a move towards rapprochement was proposed: Grand secular alliance between the Congress and other like-minded "secular" parties. It was mulled over last December in anticipation of snap polls, but was abandoned soon after for the obvious reasons. Mr Surjeet admitted that there was no raison d'etre in such an alliance because it would mean sleeping with the enemy. The Marxists have a government in office or in waiting in three states: West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala. Elsewhere, they are almost non-entities and immaterial to the Congress. In those three states, the Congress is their principle, if not the only, adversary. Hence, the question: On what principle will that alliance be forged, and against whom? But why is Mr Basu keen to see a lady with a mysterious past and dubious statesmanship in South Block? Why is a veteran like Mr Surjeet so beholden to Ms Gandhi and has abandoned his passions for a third front? A careful study of Left history in conjunction with the reading of today's world provides the answer.
In 1969, when Indira Gandhi's Government was reduced to a minority by a split in the Congress, it survived the no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha with the support of CPI. The party extended this support as per a thesis penned by late R Mohan Kumarmangalam that goes by his name. Kumaramangalam wanted to support Indira Gandhi as Lenin sought to support the Kernensky's provisional government in Russia-as a rope supports a hanged man. Even in those hey-days of communism, when every capital from Prague to Pyongyang portended to go red; Kumaramanglam knew Communists were too small to control India except through the "bulk" of the Congress. Kumaramangalam, Nurul Hassan and Raghunath Reddy were given ministerial portfolios. The basic idea was to infiltrate the ranks of power and take control of academia and intelligentsia.
Kumaramanglam perished in a plane crash in 1973, but Communists supported Indira Gandhi's imposition of Emergency (a provision of Indian Constitution borrowed from Third Reich; I mark this since Communists harangue so much against Nazism). As a result, none of their leaders were arrested during Emergency. The period under Nurul Hassan as Education Minister witnessed the Left extending its vice-like grip over education and research institutions. Hindu-baiting and India-bashing intellectuals were given privileged positions in academia. The Left could not, perhaps, have inflicted as much damage on the country as through the controlling of minds!
Long before Kumaramanglam, the Communists had perfected the fine art of infiltrating the Congress. Its history could be traced back to the days of the Congress Socialist Party, a radical Left wing party in the pre-Independence days. Many of them made it to important posts when the Congress formed governments alone or in alliance in nine out of 11 States after the provincial elections of 1937. They gained control of State units in what later became Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh. They were disrupting party activities and were intent on coopting party organisations. It was detected and many of them were expelled from the Congress Socialist Party in March 1940. Despite their belligerent posturing against eachother the Congress and the Communists are the two faces of the same coin.
Mr Basu is trying to redo a Kumaramanglam, sensing an opportunity in the fact that the Congress would need Left support to be in the saddle. And that the Left could never be within half the smelling distance of power without the body of the Congress. Besides, let us not forget that Mr Basu has the experience of cohabiting with the Congress in West Bengal. Marxists were a part of the United Front governments under the chief ministership of Ajay Mukherjee, a-dyed-in-the-wool Gandhian leading a splinter party named Bengal Congress, twice. First in 1967 and then in 1969-1970. The Communists in power used unprecedented State violence to implement their own agenda of land reforms. The politicisation of administration and police they initiated helped them consolidate their authority in 1977.
However, today for the first time in our history, a government at the Centre is on its way to building India as an economic powerhouse. India's image abroad has been bolstered as never before. All this has shifted the ground from beneath the feet of Congress and Communists who have thrived on shortages, poverty, and mediocrity. Mr Basu is not feasible and neither is the Congress or Communism.