Does the Left still have broken wings?

Amitava Mukherjee

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator)

The victory of the United Left in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union election will no doubt give the Left parties a long-awaited cause for cheer on the eve of the Lok Sabha election. Privately, some left-wing leaders are throwing up their hands in glee. Maybe they have some reasons to be optimistic, but this optimism should not defy logic. In West Bengal, the Left parties are still in bad shape. They may have won the last Assembly election in Kerala, but prior to that, in the 2019 parliamentary election, the Congress-led UPA had vanquished them, and in Tripura, they lost power to the BJP.

So, can the Left parties bounce back to the position they enjoyed nearly two decades ago? For them, it will be a difficult job. Ground realities have changed, and perceptions of the common people about the Left parties have changed. The plain truth is that the Left has become a marginal force in Indian politics. In Kerala, the parliamentary election tussle will present an interesting picture. Although in 2021, the CPM-led Left Democratic Front won the state assembly election, in the parliamentary election of 2019, the LDF was trounced by the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). So, the Left does not enjoy any certainty of success in Kerala.

Till the first decade of the 21st century, the Left parties exercised a certain influence in Indian politics that was disproportionate to their organizational or legislative strength. After independence, it was mainly due to Jawaharlal Nehru’s personal relationship with some communist leaders. Of the two communist parties, CPI became close to Indira Gandhi and was instrumental in some of the latter’s decisions, like bank nationalisation, coal mining nationalisation, etc. This tradition continued till Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. But even after Indira Gandhi, there were many sympathisers of the Left inside the Congress. Things, however, took a different turn after Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister and chose Manmohan Singh as his finance minister.

How will the Left fare in the coming parliamentary election? In a word, they should not hope for much, and the political situation for them is much worse than it had been even in the 1950s. In post-independent India’s first general election in 1952, the undivided CPI had 22 seats, and the iconic communist leader A.K. Gopalan was the leader of his block in the Lok Sabha. In the current situation, the Left misses the presence of the likes of Gopalan, who were clear about their ideology and strategy. In the 1957 and 1962 Lok Sabha polls, the CPI got 33 seats, respectively. In 1964, the CPI got divided, and the newly emerged CPI (M) got 19 seats in the 1967 general election, while the Left as a whole had 46 seats.

Till 1962, there was not much ideological confusion among the Left parties. However, the division of the CPI in 1964 on the question of support or opposition to the Chinese invasion of 1962 sowed the first seed of the Left’s’ irrelevance in Indian politics, which ultimately came at a much later time. Major contributions towards this end were made by both the CPI and CPI (M). After 1969, CPI got itself close to Indira Gandhi and even supported her emergency, which ultimately led to its painful irrelevance in the Indian political scenario. In the last parliamentary election of 2019, the CPM got three seats and the CPI two. This is the ultimate result of opportunistic politics without any ideological mooring.

The two communist parties in India are always plagued by churns over the question of their relationship with Congress. Till the 1970s, the CPM maintained a hardline against Congress. But the party took its first hesitant steps towards self-destruction with the rise of Harkishen Singh Surjeet as its general secretary, who, in the 1990s, took a great interest in fashioning a ‘king maker’ role for the CPM, a thing much away from the party’s professed ideological stance. Its role in the formation of the V.P. Singh-led Janata Dal government and later the United Front governments of H.D. Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral is too well known. But under Harkishen Singh Surjeet’s desire to play the role of a ‘king maker’ in Indian politics, the CPM tarnished its own image by becoming a major supporter of Lalu Prasad Yadav and his politics.

Opportunism pays off, but only temporarily. Its long-term effects are pernicious. Left parties are now realising it. Their identification with several questionable episodes in the 1990s and in the early years of this century eroded their credibility. Left politics had its apogee in 2004, when the bloc won 55 seats in the Lok Sabha election. But after that, a gradual decline started. Their vote share also started declining. From 43.3 percent in the 2009 general election, the Left’s vote share came down to 7.5 percent in the 2019 parliamentary poll. They could not win a single seat in West Bengal and won only one seat in Kerala.

What is the reason behind it? For the CPI, the plain reason is its association with the Congress—a self-defeating line that a section of the party leadership adhering to the ideology of late CPI general secretary P.C. Joshi has always tried to peddle. Prior to Indira Gandhi’s emergency, in Kerala as well as in West Bengal, the CPI was the largest left party. However, when one Communist party ties its knots with another political outfit whose roots are still firmly planted in feudal culture, the former loses its credibility with the electorate. This is what has happened with the CPI. It is ironic that Congress does not feel any gratitude for the CPI, which has sacrificed so much for the former. A case in point is Rahul Gandhi’s decision to contest from Waynad in Kerala, although CPI had requested Congress not to field Rahul from this seat so that there could be a one-to-one contest between the LDF and the BJP in Waynad. Incidentally, CPI’s Annie Raja is the LDF candidate in this seat.

Left activists think that in Kerala, it may be advantageous to the Left in 2024 as the Pinariye Vijayan-led government has again returned to power in Thiruvananthapuram in 2021. But it has to be kept in mind that the Left success in Kerala in 2021 was to some extent due to the support extended by the Christian community led by the Kerala Congress (Mani) group, which dominates politics in Central Kerala. But this time, the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to woo the Christian community. Their vote may not be the decisive factor behind the overall result of the state, but it may make the contest a tight rope one.

The Left increased its vote percentage in the last panchayat election in West Bengal. According to panchayat poll calculations, the Left-Congress alliance is in second place in around 18 Lok Sabha seats. However, the fate of the Left and the Congress depends on the actual booth-level alliance. Still, there is not much indication in that line.

In Tripura, the Left does not seem to have much hope. But in Bihar, the CPI (M-L) might pull off some surprise victories. On the whole, the decline in the Left bloc’s fortune that started with the defeat of the Left Front government in West Bengal in 2011 still continues.