The Communists, led by Prakash Karat, had parted ways with the UPA in 2008 over the contentious issue of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal for which the then UPA Government had to face a no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha. The fortune of the party seems to be in doldrums currently, the General Secretary of the CPM Sitaram Yechury, who took over from Prakash Karat is aware of the critical position his party finds itself in. In 2015, Sitaram Yechury had become the party’s General-Secretary countering stiff competition from the Kerala Communist Group’s S Ramachandran Pillai. Sitaram Yechury, who can be said to be close to the Bengal Communists had suggested that the Communists enter an alliance with the Congress for the Lok Sabha election in 2019.
According to a recent report in the Financial Express, the CPM’s Central Committee voted on Sitaram Yechury’s proposal of a CPM-Congress alliance for 2019. While the Kerala Communist group led by Prakash Karat who are against the alliance with the Congress prevailed as Sitaram Yechury’s proposal received 31 votes in support of and 55 votes against the proposal. Apparently, after this snub, Sitaram Yechury has offered to resign as the General-Secretary of the CPM.
This drubbing at the hands of Prakash Karat comes as a major jolt to Sitaram Yechury who has been trying to consolidate his position as the General Secretary of the party and revive the fortunes of the CPM. The big Prakash Karat Sitaram Yechury fight also comes as a dampener for all those who have been trying to engineer an all-united-anti-Modi front for 2019 General Elections.
It is not for the first time that there has been internal sparring within the Communist Party in India. The first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru passed away on 27th May, 1964. In the same year, the Communist Party of India split into two parties – Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Prominent leaders of the party such as A K Gopalan who had also served as the leader of the Communist Party of India in the first Lok Sabha had been reluctant to side with the Government of India during the Sino-Indian war in 1962, a stand which was rejected by the more conservative faction of the party that had supported the Indian Government during the War. Following the end of the War, there had been there had been differences between the internal factions within the Communist Party over the Government’s crackdown on radical Communists and the conservative faction’s support to the Government.
In the Lok Sabha election held in 1967 after the split in the Communist Party of India in 1964 (over conservatism versus radicalism), while the Indian National Congress won the election, albeit with a reduced number of seats, the right of Centre, Swatantra Party led by stalwart C Rajagopalachari emerged as the second largest party with 44 seats. The 2 major Communist parties of the country – Communist Party of India [CPI] and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] together had won a total of 42 seats. After the independence of India in 1947, the first democratically elected Communist Government in the world was formed in the state of Kerala in 1957.
The Communist Party of India had emerged as the second largest party in the first three Lok Sabha polls after the Indian National Congress. It can now only be a matter of conjecture as to what might have happened in 1967 had the Communist Party not split in 1964, though, Swatantra Party was also a potent emerging force. Interestingly, there also seems to be no unanimity between the CPI and CPM on when the original Communist Party of India was actually formed. As per the CPI, the Communist Party of India was formed in 1925 at Kanpur, while as per the CPM the Communist Party of India was formed in 1920 at Tashkent.
The Kerala faction has been traditionally quite strong within the Communist polity in India. The Communist Party, presently has its Government in only 2 states of India – Tripura (CPM) and Kerala (CPM-led LDF). After ruling for 34 years, the Communists lost power in West Bengal in 2011 after a resurgent Mamata Banerjee trounced the Communists in their own backyard. Since then, the Communists in West Bengal have shown no real signs of revival with many of their tall leaders from the state either left redundant such as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, passing away or retiring such as Somnath Chatterjee.
The present situation of the Communists in the state should not come as a surprise because up till the 1967 the Communists had a reasonable presence in the state but were not in the Government in the state. After the 1967 state election in West Bengal, when the Congress was not in a position to form a government on its own, the Communists had allied with Bangla Congress (which had broken away from the Congress) to form a post-poll alliance to prevent the Congress from forming the Government. Jyoti Basu, who, presently, is the longest serving Chief Minister of an Indian state was then made the Deputy Chief Minister of West Bengal in 1967. Despite being the largest party in the post-poll coalition, the CPM did not claim the Chief Minister’s post in 1967. Perhaps, the Communists in India most of the time have been confused, clueless, shy away from taking responsibility and prefer to stick to the agitational anti-state attitude which seems to have an intrinsic to their politics in the country.
In 1996, when the United Front Government was formed, in spite of being the largest bloc within the United Front with 52 seats, the Communists chose not to have Jyoti Basu who had then been the Chief Minister for almost 2 decades as the Prime Minister of India. Perhaps this had something to do with the internal squabbles within the more inflexible Kerala group of Communists prevailing over the Bengal Communists who had no objection in accepting the position. Jyoti Basu had gone on to describe the decision of the party as a “historic blunder”. Ever since the advent of Mamata Banerjee in the state, the Bengal Communists have been on a decline of sorts. In fact, they are struggling to retain even the opposition space in the state, which is being fast occupied by a rising BJP.
