If we are to credit Surjit Singh for strengthening the CPI(M), the credit of undoing all the things done by Surjit Singh has to be given to Prakash Karat.
On August 10th, 2017 Sitaram Yechury a highly revered CPI(M) intellect bid farewell to the Upper house of parliament. His farewell speech left almost everyone present teary-eyed, despite the differences between ideologies. The same day parliament also witnessed a bonhomie between leaders from across the party lines contrary to what we see on a public platform. Ritabrata Banerjee, the ousted CPI(M) leader said, “This is the second historical blunder committed by the CPI(M).”
Months after his statement, the reality comes eerily knocking at the doorstep of the largest left party in India- CPI(M)-the party is dying. One after another the forts CPI(M) guarded for years are falling, with every falling brick making the once influential party in India more irrelevant.
The History of Communist Party India:
CPI(M)’s history though dates back to roughly fifty years ago, The Communist party has existed since the pre-independence era. As much as the Indian National Congress is credited with mobilising the masses against the colonial British rule, the CPI is credited with mobilising the labourers and peasants across the states. Traditionally, the party enjoyed a good clout in West Bengal and Kerala.
Barring the initial chaos in party post-independence, the CPI spread its roots through many north-eastern states including Tripura, Manipur and Southern states like Kerala and Telangana (then part of Nizam’s reign). The party which was a staunch advocate of anti-capitalist ideology led several struggles against local monarchs. The most important rebellion took place in Telangana, against the Nizam of Hyderabad. The CPI became such a frontier of the agitation of labour class that it even built up a people’s army and militia and controlled an area with a population of three million. The rebellion though was later crushed, it displayed the magnitude of CPI’s ability to influence the masses.
Considering the social structure in India, the party also focused on bringing about land reforms and strengthening trade unions across the various sectors. For three decades, the 60s, 70s and 80s the party dominated in the development deprived Bihar and Jharkhand. It is the communist achievements in Bihar that placed it at the forefront of the left movement in India.
Electoral Success of the communists:
Despite the emergence of the party 20 years before, the CPI was legalised only in 1942 following the coalition between Britain and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. Pre-independence, CPI fought the Provincial Legislative Assembly elections of 1946 of its own. It had fielded candidates in 108 out of 1585 seats. It won in eight seats. Post-independence, when the Nehru-led Congress became the ruling party of India, CPI was the first leading opposition party in the Lok Sabha. However, it was only in 1957 when the CPI tasted its first success winning the state elections in Kerala. This was also the first time that an opposition party won control over an Indian state. The party hadn’t even begun to strengthen its base in parliament when a faction separated from CPI and established itself as CPI(M).
The CPI(M) was born into a relative hostile political environment when the Indo-China war was still being fought. However, it soon went on to become the torch-bearer of Indian left. The uprising like Naxalbari further fuelled its growth in the lowest section of the population. In the following three decades after its birth, the CPI(M) became the driving force in opposition to the ruling Congress. It also tasted electoral success in West Bengal where it successfully installed the Jyoti Basu government in 1977. Jyoti Basu ruled the state for more than 20 years.
The glory days of CPI(M):
The CPI(M) as an alternative to the Indian National Congress produced a battery of intellectual giants but it was under the leadership of party general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet, that it witnessed its glory days. Surjeet Singh an atheist and a staunch follower of Bhagat Singh joined CPI in 1936. Surjeet has a remarkable contribution in the movement against British Colonialism and was also one of the nine members of the original CPI(M) Polit Bureau. Harkishan Singh Surjeet who had the strong backing of farmer’s union in Punjab was the key strategist of party’s political tactics.
It is Surjeet Singh who recognized the threat posed by the communalism to the democratic Indian state. He vigorously opposed the Khalistan movement. As much as 200 CPI(M) workers sacrificed their lives in fighting the Sikh extremism. However, Surjeet Singh’s one of the most important role in Indian political history has to be the setting up coalition governments in 1989, 1996 and 2004 with the Indian National Congress which excluded the BJP. His role, however, was not limited to his party. Surjeet was involved in tackling the problems of Jammu & Kashmir. He played a role in the evolution of the Assam Accord in the eighties.
So, one is compelled to wonder why the red glory of the party has turned into a debacle in present scenario?
The Problematic Prakash:
If we are to credit Surjit Singh for strengthening the CPI(M), the credit of undoing all the things done by Surjit Singh has to be given to Prakash Karat. The statistics show that left had been declining since Karat took over as the party general secretary in the year 2005. Not letting Jyoti Basu be the Prime Minister of the country was the historic blunder of the CPI(M). But the party committed an even bigger blunder by pulling out support to the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-1 government over the Indo-US Nuclear deal under the leadership of Prakash Karat. A coalition that Surjeet Singh has carefully stitched to keep the BJP away from the government, was undone by Karat. The party thought it would fight the next general elections making the Indo-US Nuclear deal its foremost issue, but little did it succeed.
The party even asked the then speaker of Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, to resign from his position. However, defiant Chatterjee did not do so and Prakash Karat expelled his from the party, a mistake that cost CPI(M) severely.
The Left front gave the country few of the longest serving state governments including in the West Bengal and in Tripura, the strongholds of CPI. But the party under the leadership of Prakash Karat even lost there.
According to the Election Commission Data, the party recorded steady vote share from 1967-1999. In 2004, the vote share of the party was 5.66%. However, in the next General Election, the vote share slid to 3.1%. In 2004, it hit the all-time low of 2.16%. In Loksabha, its seat share was 7.92% which drastically fell to 2.95% in 2009 and 1.66% in 2014.
The CPM’s debacle is a result of non-flexible leadership which is unable to blow fresh air of revitalization in the party workers. The party under Prakash Karat has failed to lead campaigns, weed out corruption within its ranks, and had utterly failed to mobilize the youth. Most importantly, the party which rose to power following the support of masses has now lost the connection to the ground level reality. Karat has often been criticized for being an elitist textbook communist who is detached from the realpolitik.
Though Sitaram Yechury took over as the general secretary in 2015, the party is still reeling from the devastation done by Prakash Karat’s problematic autocratic leadership. The Tripura Assembly election defeat is another hammer in the left’s already falling fort.
The left is dying a slow death and Prakash Karat is digging the grave for it.
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