I happened to be in a telephonic conversation with an affable leader of the CPI (M) from Kerala on December 18, 2017. It was when counting of votes of the assembly elections held in Gujarat had begun and a few hours before the results were out. My friend, now in his late forties, had spent most of his life with the students and the youth wing of the CPI (M). He shared his concern that a good show by the Congress party in Gujarat was bad news for his party.

Well. The Congress did well but not as much as to wrest power in the state from the BJP. I must also confess that I did not bother to follow up with my friend as to whether the results from Gujarat had accentuated his concerns or not. I must, however, add that the Congress fought the elections with Rahul Gandhi in the front and December 2017, perhaps, marked the beginning of the tightening of the sagging morale of the Congress.

The point about recalling the conversation, my friend did not and would not have expected me to share in public, is not to reveal who she/he was and put her/him in some difficulty. This friend of mine is known to be sensitive to the peoples’ concerns, takes up their cause in parliament and elsewhere, is comfortable with books of all kinds and stays clear of the infectious sectarianism that marks many others in the party.

The intention here is to talk about the perils of such myopic vision that had guided the CPI (M)’s political practice since its birth in 1964; it is relevant to also stress that this political practice was indeed the reason for its birth, splitting out of the CPI, in that year. The split and the birth of the CPI (M) was caused by different approaches within the CPI towards the Congress party, headed for most parts until then by Jawaharlal Nehru and subsequently by Indira Gandhi, her son Rajiv Gandhi and in recent years by Sonia Gandhi and now by Rahul Gandhi.

The CPI, before 1964, was in a continuous state of turmoil caused by the distinct and conflicting views among its leaders on the Congress party; the violent agitation that the Congress leadership lent support against Kerala’s Left government’s legislative attempts to abolish landlordism in the state and liberate the educational institutions and the poorly paid teachers in them from the Church, lent substantial credence to the view that the Congress was anything but progressive and liberator.

The dismissal of the first elected communist government (perhaps across the world then) also lent substantial credence to this view. The seeds of the CPI (M) were sown then, and 1964 and the formation of the party were only a logical culmination of that.

This notwithstanding, the national leaders of the CPI (M) did not shut off any possibility of walking along with the Congress and this they did between December 1969, when Indira Gandhi’s Congress (R) ended up short of a majority in the Lok Sabha and December 1971 when she called for early elections after the Constitution Amendment to delete provisions for award of Privy Purses were nullified by the Supreme Court. The CPI (M), along with the CPI and the DMK were among those that stood by Indira Gandhi supporting her in nationalisation of private banks and abolition of Privy Purses.

The point is the CPI (M) did not see the Congress party’s destruction as inevitable to its own survival and growth. The party, in fact, stayed away from the JP movement and yet made itself clear that it was opposed to Indira Gandhi’s measures such as the supersession of judges in 1973 and against corruption, issues that JP had raised. The CPI (M) had also stayed clear of collaborating with the Emergency regime and a section of its leaders and cadre had suffered imprisonment.

It was in the 1980s that the minds of the party’s ranks began to be filled with anti-Congress rage, so to say. The terror unleashed by the Congress regime in West Bengal against the CPI (M)’s ranks since 1972 and the resistance built against that contributed substantially to the CPI (M) wresting power in the state in June 1977; and with the Congress remaining its rival left the CPI (M) let anti-Congressism ending up an integral or even central to its programme at the national stage.

The 1980s, indeed, was when the CPI (M) rested every bit of its policy on the formulations at its Salkia Plenum; to consolidate where it was already a force and to enter into arrangements such as electoral alliance, seat adjustments and understanding with parties other than the Congress to deliver a body blow to the Congress party. My friend, like many others of that generation, were brought up with an everyday dose of a little anger against the Congress.

The anti-Sikh riots of 1984, legislations banning strikes and other protests by unionised workers and compromises the Congress made with communal campaigns did add legitimacy to such anger against the Congress party. And notwithstanding the programmatic shift in the CPI (M)’s understanding in its various stages since 1991, where it saw the BJP’s rise with concern and the maneuvers that Harkishen Singh Surjeet happily engaged himself in between 1996 and 2004, the ranks in West Bengal and in Kerala continued to let their gut rather than the resolutions guide them.

This, indeed, seems to have come to haunt the CPI (M) in West Bengal this election. The party seems to have come to a pass and may even draw a blank on May 23, 2019 from the state. This, perhaps, will be the first time since independence when none of the MPs from West Bengal will be a communist. This, indeed, is causing an erosion in the party’s base and there are reports of a section of its members or activists opting to work for the BJP this election.

That this is a fact and not just fairy tales has been admitted by its leaders. The former Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar cautioned his partymen, in a public gathering, against leaning on the BJP to defeat the TMC in the state. And former chief minister of West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharya too is reported to have said similar things.

The point is the ghost of anti-Congressism, which is attributed to Ram Manohar Lohia and his legatees in our political history lessons, is now haunting the CPI (M); and this while the legatees of Lohia such as Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and even someone like N Chandrababu Naidu who built his party exclusively on anti-Congressism, seem to have managed to convince their ranks that it is futile now.

The CPI (M), despite the impression it had created all these while, of being a party where political education remains a continuous process, is now being haunted by the ghost and much to its own decimation in West Bengal, a state that seemed to be its fortress until less than a decade ago. And the cadre and the ranks alone are not to blame because its leaders continue to believe that Mamata Banerjee and the BJP have a deal without showing the courage to acknowledge that its own ranks are dealing with the BJP against the TMC.

Krishna Ananth is an associate professor at Department of History, Sikkim University.

First Published:May 16, 2019 6:00 AM IST