when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
A day before the United Front's common minimum programme (CMP) was released by Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda on June 5, it was decided that it would "be in order" to get it cleared by the Congress—whose support is instrumental to its survival. But the moot point is that the task was handed over to none other than Harkishen Singh Surjeet, CPI(M) general secretary and leading light of the Front despite his party's uncompromising stand on joining the Government. Front sources assert that Surjeet paid a "courtesy call" on Congress leader and former external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and discussed the CMP. All this, much to the chagrin of CPI(M) "hardliners".
Especially as it came a few days after the CPI broke ranks with the Left Front and its national council voted 71 to 9 for participation in government. This, in spite of a degree of uncertainty, and some opposition, from the Kerala and West Bengal units of the party—they did not want to go against the CPI(M) which heads Left Front Governments in both states. But the die had been cast much before the national council met. Unlike the CPI(M) central committee, the CPI's national council does not have a majority of its members from West Bengal and Kerala, and the overwhelming mood in the party was that it must not shrug off its responsibility.
CPI General Secretary Indrajit Gupta, who initially seemed inclined towards participating in the Government, was eventually one of the three abstainers, but it did not really make a difference. CPI sources now claim that Gupta abstained because he did not want to give the appearance of being on any one side of the debate, both in the party and in the Left Front.
The effect of the CPI decision—apart from emboldening the Forward Bloc to think in terms of reviewing its decision not to join the Government—is to ensure that CPI(M) hardliners, along with the RSP which has adopted a similar stand, are now engaged in fighting a rearguard action against the advancing tide of the 'realists' within the Left Front. And these include an influential section of the CPI(M). The consequence: the Left Front, in particular, and the broader Left movement in the nation as a whole is in the throes of inner convulsions. Never mind the relative lack of polemical exchanges, particularly in the various party organs.
But perhaps the most significant development is that those within the CPI(M)—led by Surjeet and Jyoti Basu—who advocated joining the Government have, even after the central committee of the party rejected their plea, carried on playing an active role in all UF matters. It is in this context that Surjeet's continued high-profile, the meeting with Pranab Mukherjee being only the latest in a string of initiatives undertaken by him, needs to be seen. Technically, he is on sure ground: the central committee did, after all, decide to extend full support to the UF despite staying out of the Cabinet. So, while he cannot be blamed on that count, the fact remains that that the more he—and by implication his party—gets involved, the stronger gets the argument of those who say the CPI(M) is looking for power without responsibility.
This is what seems to be driving the hard-liners against the wall. Because they want the CPI(M) to continue influencing government policy but recoil when the UF asks them to join the Government, as a dip into bourgeois politics obviously remains the original sin for them.
Some Left Front insiders, however, see in these actions of Surjeet and others a well thought out strategy to take the CPI(M) far too down the road in terms of involvement with the UF—"provided they stick to their broadly progressive and Left-leaning agenda, of course"—for the hardliners to continue to have their way. Also, the signs that there is a tacit understanding between the CPI and those who toe the Surjeet line in the CPI(M) are unambiguous.
According to a senior CPI leader and member of the national executive, "It was made quite clear to us that since we were keen, we should go ahead and join the Government. We were also assured that any polemical attacks by CPI(M) hardliners would be actively discouraged and certainly kept out of the newspapers. We too, have told our comrades that they would need to be very patient; one can never discount what the middle-level leaders in the various CPI(M) state committees and their organs will get up to." CPI sources add that they are also leaning on the other constituents of the UF not to put any pressure on the CPI(M) to join the Government as it will only negate what Surjeet and the others are trying to do within the party through honest arguments and persuasion. And strengthen those who will paint any decision taken by the party as a capitulation to the demand of "bourgeois parties". Senior Left leaders keen on seeing the CPI(M) alter its decision told Outlook that a "public debate is the last thing needed".
On the other hand, it is now emerging that the tactics, adopted by those of this view in the CPI(M),have been out of necessity rather than choice. "Contrary to certain reports, the central committee decision that the CPI(M) stay out of the Government was not carried by a two-vote margin, but by six votes," said a Left Front source. Other leaders in both communist parties were critical of the role played by a group of Leftist intellectuals who had issued a statement urging the CPI(M) to join the Government and, when this did not come about, made it out that it was Basu andSurjeet who did not press the issue.
"How could they have forced a decision when the difference was six votes? Neither they nor we will do anything that will cause any permanent schism in what remains the main party of the Indian Left. In fact, events have proved that their course was the correct one as quite a few members of the central committee, especially from Bengal, are now re-thinking their position. Many of them have realised what an opportunity—both in terms of symbolism and concrete political gains—has been lost by not accepting the offer of forming a communist-led government in India," says a Left leader who has been in touch with Surjeet and Basu.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the mood is upbeat. The CPI knows that probably for the first time since the United Communist Party split of 1964 they have taken a major decision from a position of strength—the CPI(M) hardliners will not get away with accusing them of "parliamentary deviations" and "revisionism". Not with their record of active participation in the parliamentary system and running governments in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. Unless, of course, they are willing to emphatically state what has remained their (of late) unstated and till now unrevised 'line' that social change through parliamentary means remains a chimera. And the intention of participation in parliamentary politics is to subvert the process and thereby expose it as inadequate to usher in social change.
Something Basu, to take just one example, may find very hard to do. It is to prevent just such a scenario that Surjeet, Basu and others in the CPI(M) have for some years been emphasising that parliamentary democracy and remaining true to "Marxist principles" are not mutually exclusive. And, by extension, that social change is obviously possible through parliamentary democracy—how else do they rationalise 20 years of being in power in West Bengal? Only as a "tactical line"?
In fact, in practice, the CPI(M) is far closer to the CPI'S consistent stand since 1964—that even genuine social change is possible through parliamentary means—than some of the hardliners would like to admit. "Yes, we have decided to participate in the Government because we do not ambassador want power without responsibility. But we remain a Marxist, and not a social democratic party," asserts D. Raja of the CPI national executive. That is another debate altogether. But there is a growing body of opinion within the CPI(M) which wishes it could say much the same thing as its colleagues in the CPI.
They set the sign of the cross over their outer doors, and
sacrifice to their gut and their groin in their inner closets.
- Ben Jonson, Explorata
