Comrade vs Comrade

The dice is loaded in favour of the Kerala faction of the CPM in its stand-off with the Bengal unit. This marks the party’s most bitter internal divide yet.

The Left bastions of Kerala and West Bengal are not just getting torn from within, the state units of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) are also heading for a mutual showdown for control of the central party line. The Kerala unit is backing CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat, while the Bengal unit is baying for his blood. This, even as the party girds itself for a landmark Extended Central Committee (CC) meeting to be held in August.

It’s premature to talk of a full-scale flare up between the two state units, given the need to project themselves as a united house ahead of crucial Assembly polls in these two states. But the equation between the two is fraught with increasing tension—stoked by old rivalries, mutually antagonistic explanations of electoral drubbings in West Bengal, and different visions of the party’s future.

Passions continue to be aroused by differences of opinion on the CPM’s political line, particularly the party’s attitude towards the Congress. As the West Bengal unit summons all its might to subdue Karat’s highly pronounced anti-Congressism, the Kerala unit is rolling up sleeves to save the general secretary a bloody nose. Members of the latter see their Bengali comrades posing a challenge to their traditional sway over the central party in New Delhi, and are determined to thwart it.

Sources say that the CPM’s Kerala state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, arguably Karat’s most significant source of power in the party, has already started gathering ammunition for a showdown at the Extended CC. Vijayan has started alerting the state and district committee members of the Kerala unit (delegates, all) of a possible ‘coup’ to dislodge Karat.

“The stand-off between Kerala and Bengal is not a new thing,” says a senior party leader from Kerala, “We have experienced such deadlocks earlier, too. These states have never been in complete harmony with each other.” Yet, this is not history being repeated, far less a farce. “Never in the past did their friction threaten the party,” he admits, “This time it is no longer just friction—the two state units are actually on the warpath, and none is ready to back off.”

In the CPM’s 46 year history, the two state units have mostly functioned as practically autonomous entities, with each taking utmost care not to barge into the other’s space. All these years, the central leadership, too, felt it convenient to leave this virtually federal arrangement undisturbed. On occasions that the two powerful party units crossed swords, the pragmatic attitude of the party general secretaries who preceded Karat—P Sundarayya (general secretary of the party from 1964 to 1978), EMS Namboodiripad (1978 to 1988) and Harkishan Singh Surjeet (1992 to 2005)—managed to balance the two units, thus steering the CPM through many a difficult time and situation. The first such situation arose when the West Bengal unit differed from a party decision, backed by the Kerala unit, to withdraw parliamentary support to the Janata Party Government at the Centre in 1980. In the subsequent Party Congress at Vijayawada in 1982, a major section of the West Bengal unit registered its dissent on the political resolution upholding that decision. While the Kerala party, the main force behind the 1980 withdrawal, argued that the act was necessary to keep in check the growing influence of the rightist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), members of which were in the Janata Party, the West Bengal lobby was of the view that the party’s decision weakened India’s anti-Congress forces and thus paved the way for the return of Indira Gandhi with a thumping majority at the Centre.

Again in 1989, differences between the two party units resurfaced at the Thiruvananthpuram Party Congress. The Kerala lobby pushed a resolution labelling the RSS-backed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as their main enemy. A large number of delegates from West Bengal voted against the resolution.

In both instances, perhaps the most striking factor was the complete unity shown by the Kerala unit, even while the West Bengal unit was split on most crucial issues. This unity among comrades in Kerala, which has the largest party membership base of any Indian state, has been a big source of their strength. It is this that has let them almost dictate the central party line ever since 1964, the year the CPM came into existence after the Communist Party of India split.

The only disunity within the Kerala CPM was in 1996, when the issue of Marxist veteran Jyoti Basu becoming Prime Minister came up for discussion in the Politburo. EMS Namboodiripad, Basu himself, and Surjeet were in favour of accepting the offer, while Karat, Sitaram Yechury, EK Nayannar, VS Achuthanandan, E Balanandan, Anil Biswas and Biman Bose were against it. This lack of consensus continued well into the next Party Congress held at Kolkata in 1998.

What has added significantly to the Kerala party’s weight all these years is the near unquestioned support from CPM units in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, which boast party memberships second only to Kerala and West Bengal. So, an overall South Indian unity within the CPM has bullied the West Bengal unit on matters of national politics. One explanation of this southern solidarity is the similarity in their history. The cohesion can also be attributed to the influence of individual leaders. P Sundarayya, the CPM’s first general secretary, belonged to Andhra Pradesh, but his sway over the Kerala unit was legendary, having been a founder of the party there. Similarly, AK Gopalakrishnan, though a Keralite by origin, spent most of his politically active days in Tamil Nadu, leading a series of mass struggles in the state. His protege´s R Umanath (former Politburo member and a Keralite), P Ramachandran (former Politburo member and originally a Keralite) and Nallashivam (former Central Committee member) continued to wield influence in the Tamil Nadu unit in later days.

It is not surprising, therefore, that out of four CPM general secretaries so far, three (P Sundaraiyya, EMS Namboodiripad and Prakash Karat) are candidates of the south Indian lobby, with two being Keralite by origin. Surjeet, from Punjab, was the only general secretary who did not belong to South India. This is how the overbearing presence of Kerala has deterred the Bengal unit from asserting itself.

The difference between the two warring state units this time round, however, is not a point-of-view issue alone. For the first time since the Left attained power in West Bengal in 1977, it faces ejection from office, and so the big question—relations with the Congress—that has riven the all-India party is a matter of survival for the state unit. This also means a hardening of stances as the divided party gravitates towards the proposed Extended CC scheduled to be held at Vijayawada on 7-10 August this year.

The crisis may still have been averted had first generation communist leaders been at the helm of affairs, those with a throbbing presence in the heartspace of their comrades—since they are seen to have joined the movement for the upliftment of India’s suffering masses rather than any greed of power.

The woeful absence of such leaders today, both at the Centre and in states, has made the crisis all the more acute for the party. A few of that generation, like VS Achuthanandan, are still in active politics, but have hardly any say in the party’s central affairs. Most of the party’s national leaders are seen to be bookish theorists with no experience of popular agitations, while the state leaders have little to offer except rhetoric and even threats designed to secure power and positions for themselves and their cronies.

Uncharacteristically for a cadre-based ideological party, the CPM General Secretary himself has become the focal point of discord between the two state party units. Sources say the Kerala unit of the party is in consonance with Karat’s argument that faulty industrialisation and land acquisition policies of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government have led to the crisis in West Bengal. The counter argument of vocal sections of the West Bengal unit is that Karat’s decision to withdraw support to the UPA-I and his Third Front adventurism, which brought together the Congress and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, have weakened the CPM’s chances of re-election in the state. This, though, has almost no takers in the Kerala faction that prefers to privilege the party’s ideological identity over electoral affairs. The party’s core thoughts, Karat’s acolytes appear to insist, should not be shaped by material circumstances.

But there is no evidence that the Kerala unit’s mind is not equally being shaped by the conditions it exists under. According to a senior party leader, much of the discord simply stems from the changing political scenarios in the two states. In Kerala, the Congress is still the CPM’s main opponent, but in West Bengal, its big threat is the Trinamool Congress. Thus, while the Kerala unit is pleased to oppose the Congress at all levels, leaders from West Bengal favour a softer attitude towards the country’s ruling party so that a wedge is driven between the Congress and Mamata’s party. This, feel strategists, is the only way for the Left Front government to survive Assembly polls in the state.

Interestingly, while in West Bengal, Karat has blamed the government’s neo-liberal economic policies for the present crisis, in Kerala he draws strength not from the orthodox communist Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan but from Pinarayi Vijayan, whose image is far from clean, and whose economic outlook appears to match that of ‘neo-liberal’ West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

For many within the party, what has stripped Karat’s rhetoric of its ideological cloak is the fact that he is understood to have sided with Vijayan in the latter’s all-out war against Kerala Chief Minister Achuthanandan, whose reputation for probity and simple living remain unblemished. His concern for the poor has thrown ‘neo-liberals’ into disarray.

Achuthanandan’s pro-people policy initiatives include Rs 2 per kg rice for the poor, revival of most defunct public sector units, and the state government’s proposal to take over and run sick private sector industrial units. Also in his favour, from this standpoint, is his resistance to pressure from corporate lobbies on clearing land acquisition proposals to set up Special Economic Zones (SEZs), apart from sops for minorities and the poor and a move to turn over 2,000 acres of Tata land to the landless. By contrast, under Vijayan, the party organisation in Kerala has allegedly been converted into a big corporate enterprise with big buildings, resorts and other businesses.

The irony in Karat’s bid to achieve harmony with anti-Achuthanandan party bosses in Kerala is as striking as the one that’s obvious in the party’s East Indian bastion. In West Bengal, the CPM came to power in 1977 on the promise that land would be given to tillers—and it effectively did distribute land to landless labourers and share-croppers. Such land reforms helped it retain its hold over West Bengal’s countryside for decades. Now that party leaders have made moves to invite industrial projects to the state, Bengal’s impoverished millions are ready for another historic regime change via the ballot box.

According to a Central Committee member, “In the name of a fight between Kerala and West Bengal, what now stand face to face are greed for power that defines the Karat-Vijayan axis and the arrogance of power that is the hallmark of the West Bengal party unit.”

As in the past, the balance once again appears to be tilted in favour of Kerala, as the CPM attempts to thrash out its latest “political line to meet the current situation”. Yet, the West Bengal party unit, which has never been so desperate as it is now, given its imminent loss of power in the state (as all signs suggest), appears in no mood to give up its fight to change the party’s aloofness of the Congress.

Overall, the CPM is in a lot of trouble vis-a-vis an electorate it could once count on. What is not at all clear is whether Karat will be able to command the conscience of both factions, which was a daunting challenge for him even in better times. For the moment, most party leaders appear worried, wondering which way the clash between the two strong units would lead the party to. “We may not particularly like the situation,” says a Central Committee member, “but it is clear that the growing alienation of two states is more dangerous than the bitter power struggle at the top.”

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