Even if the country doesn’t get a sense of how Assam, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have voted through the scores of exit polls (many of doubtful veracity) on Monday evening, the complete results will be before us by the afternoon of May 19. What started off as foregone verdicts in at least three of the four states, barring Assam, has, with the campaign acquiring momentum developed into a real contest.
In the case of West Bengal, that was expected to yield a conclusive second-term for Mamata Banarjee and her Trinamool Congress, the expectations have been significantly modified. Judging from a wide range of conversations I have had with MPs from both sides of the political divide in the Central Hall of Parliament, it would seem that the TMC camp expects to win around 160 to 170 of the 294 Assembly seats on offer. The Left, on the other hand, which began the race with the sole expectation of ensuring its survival in a state it once held was impregnable, has, steadily gained in confidence and now believes that it has a chance of actually forming a government in alliance with the Congress. The BJP, which once believed it could emerge as the main opposition to Mamata, will have to be content with a single digit presence, if lucky.
IN forging an alliance with the moribund Congress in West Bengal, the state CPI(M) was guided by considerations of plain survival. It was aware that if it highlighted the larger battle against imperialism and neo-liberalism, any alliance with the Congress would be a non-starter. Instead, it shunned ideology for normal bourgeois parliamentary politics and did what they thought was necessary for the State party.
Regardless of the final outcome, it is now becoming sufficiently clear that the CPI(M) has been able to claw its way back into the reckoning after being horribly defeated in both the Assembly election of 2011 and the Lok Sabha election of 2014. Even if it fails to oust Mamata from power, it has ensured its continuing relevance in Bengal politics, either in government or in opposition.
The significance of this should not be underestimated. What was striking about the CPI(M)’s approach to the 2016 poll was its alliance with the Congress. In the initial phase the alliance was painted as a seat adjustment with both parties doing their own thing. However, as the campaign gained momentum, there was a genuine ground-level alliance in most areas. In essence, that consisted of the CPI(M) assuming charge of the Congress campaign in areas outside North Bengal. The reason was obvious: the Congress had a brand name but no forces on the ground. This alliance culminated in a joint rally in Kolkata’s Park Circus Maidan where Rahul Gandhi and the CPI(M)’s foremost state leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee shared the dais.
The coming together of the CPI(M) and Congress marks a significant departure from the existing pattern of state politics. What is particularly significant is that the issue was thoroughly debated in the CPI(M) State Committee. There, the local leadership, whose relations with the central party had come under strain from 1996, when Jyoti Basu was prevented from becoming Prime Minister of the United Front government at the Centre, finally chose to defy AKG Bhavan and decided to pursue its own course.
In Communist circles, quoting chapter and verse from Lenin and other stalwarts is a feature of political discourse. When a ‘line’ changes from correctness to correctness, it is accompanied by theoretical justifications, a mandatory denunciation of revisionism and an assurance that the new path is the right path justified by global realities. In forging an alliance with the moribund Congress in West Bengal, the state CPI(M) was guided by considerations of plain survival. It was aware that if it highlighted the larger battle against imperialism and neo-liberalism, any alliance with the Congress would be a non-starter. Instead, it shunned ideology for normal bourgeois parliamentary politics and did what they thought was necessary for the State party.
There are important ideological consequences of the CPI(M) doing exactly what the CPI did with Indira Gandhi between 1969 and 1977— except in West Bengal it is the Congress that is clearly the junior partner. However, apart from the tacit acknowledgement that what the Second International did in 1914 was right and that Leninism is now for the history books, there is something extraordinary in the state party’s open defiance of the central party and, by implication, the Politburo. It is fortuitous that the Politiburo stepped away from a confrontation, because the alternative would have been the emergence of a separate Bengal CPI(M). Indeed, from all accounts, a formal split was very narrowly averted.
It is understood that even if the CPI(M)-Congress alliance fails to win in West Bengal in 2016, the arrangement will continue till 2019. The Leftward movement of the Congress, already visible in its retreat from a reformist agenda, will also get an additional push. Most important, the unstated Congress-Left alliance that is visible in intellectual circles will be formalised and even sanctified.
What we await is for the Kerala CPI(M) to take stock of the Bengal developments after the polls. It would be fun if the two wings become different centres of regional social democracy. Communism no longer has a global command centre. There is similarly no reason why Indian Communism shouldn’t become confederal in character. Lenin is dead and discredited and no earthly reason is served by perpetuation his organisational legacy.
