Either A Fist Or A Shake

• More defection from Congress to TMC, but post-poll violence may unite anti-TMC forces

• After the CPI(M)-Congress flop show, CPI(M) liberals may be forced to maintain a low key

• Tripura assembly polls may bring a fresh rethink in Left for new strategies against the BJP

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After an expected surge in Kerala and the attainment of a new nadir in West Bengal in the assembly elections, the CPI(M) is set for another int­ernal churn, for Prakash Karat and other party conservatives are back in business. A known Congress-baiter, Karat and company were sidelined after he was replaced as general secretary last year by Sitaram Yechury. But indications are that the poll results would propel them back into key roles for formulating the CPI(M)’s future policy.

To be sure, the Left Democratic Front coalition led by the party emphatically won in Kerala against the Congress’s United Democratic Front. But in dark contrast, the CPI(M), in an unofficial alliance with the Congress in West Bengal, was handed a humiliating defeat by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. In its old bastion, it licks its wounds with a reduced voteshare and number of seats.

The results will help strengthen the orthodox clergy in the CPI(M), who never tire of emphasising that the party stands a better chance when it aligns with ‘left, secular and democratic forces’ and stays away from the Congress. The party’s politburo will meet in Delhi on May 22, where a threadbare discussion on the poll results is on the agenda.

“It is too early to say what will be the outcome. But one thing is for sure, no one will talk about any further alliance with the Congress, especially Yechury, for a long time,” says a party insider.

It was mainly due to Karat that the CPI(M)-led Left parties in Lok Sabha had withdrawn support from the Manmohan Singh government in 2008 after the Indo-­­US nuclear deal. Many saw that as folly—borne out a year later when the Left parties lost 50 per cent of their Lok Sabha seats. In 2011, the party was also ousted in Kerala and West Bengal. Most partymen had at the time held Karat responsible for the debacle, culminating in his removal from the general secretary’s post. The mood seems to be swinging back in Karat’s favour.

The attitude towards and a proper analysis of the Congress has preoccupied the Communists since the 1940s. Several of its senior leaders, including luminaries like P.C. Joshi, even had to step down for their apparent ‘soft line’ on Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress. The predicament stayed with it for years, and prevailed even after two splits—in 1964, when the more radical section parted ways with the undivided CPI to become the CPI(M), and again in 1969, when activists of the Naxalbari movement split the CPI(M) and formed the CPI(ML).

CPI(M) leaders say that in the coming days the Congress issue will once again take centrestage as the ‘Vishakhapatnam line’—the document of the 21st party Congress in April 2015 on the ‘political-tactical line’—begins to dominate the narrative. “The main direction of our attack should be against the BJP when it is in power but this cannot mean having an electoral understanding with the Con­­gress,” the document said. It added: “Neither should there be an app­roach that the main task of fighting the neoliberal policies should be subordinated to the fight against communalism”.

But such theoretical niceties found few takers in the CPI(M)’s West Bengal unit, where an overwhelming number of leaders led by the party’s state secretary, Surya Kanta Mishra, were in favour of entering into an electoral alliance with the Congress. “The alliance was not done with the ass­embly elections in mind. It was forced out of the prevailing ground situation,” claims CPI(M) leader, Sujan Chakraborty. Like him, many party leaders from Bengal offer a near-moral spin: that the series of scams, brazen assaults on democracy and the terror unleashed by Mamata’s stormtroopers forced people in rural Bengal to find refuge in with anti-TMC forces, and linking up with the Congress was but natural.

There is no denying that the situation in Bengal—in both rural and urban areas—forced the state CPI(M) leaders to think of an innovative way of countering the Trinamool threat. But the crucial factor was a cold electoral calculus that if anti-­Mamata forces remain divided, there was a better chance for her to return to power. The party’s success in Siliguri, where a mobilisation of anti-TMC forces won the municipal polls and the Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad elections, forced Mishra and other CPI(M) leaders to convince Yechury to go for a seat adjustment arrangement in the assembly polls.

“After successive victories in Siliguri, people were confident that Mamata can be defeated if they come together,” says Ashok Bhattacharya, the CPI(M) mayor of Siliguri municipal corporation.

The path ahead for the CPI(M) in Ben­gal appears to be circular. There is no doubt that conservative Communists will proscribe any bonhomie with the Congress. Yet that might be untenable in Bengal. In the coming days, TMC supporters are likely to unleash violence (so auda­­ciously promised by their leaders) against opponents in Bengal. Such att­acks on CPI(M) cadres in the past had been a factor in forcing the Communists to join hands with the Congress—also subject to Trinamool lum­p­­enism—and may again have that ‘sol­idarity’ effect. Once the present two-way accusations  between the CPI(M) and the Congress leaders on their dismal performance wane, the ground reality in Bengal may force a common path.

More importantly, in Tri­pura, where the CPI(M) is in power, the party may find the BJP to be its main opponent INS­tead of the Congress, especially after its impressive win in neighbouring Assam. “I will not be surprised if we find ourselves fighting the BJP rather than the Congress,” says CPI leader Pallab Sengupta who rec­ently visited Tripura.

Comrade Karat’s ham-handed diktat might carry the day in the next party congress, but the embers of the CPI(M)’s loose partnership with the Congress might not be stamped out. Rabid Trinamool goons on the loose in Bengal, and the march of the BJP elsewhere, may yet lead to a meaningful friendship.