The 2021 West Bengal polls are around the corner, and the Communists who have been out of power for almost a decade in the state are looking to adopt a poll strategy which is largely inconsistent with their core ideology.
According to a CPI(M) internal review report, the party is looking to align itself at a greater level with the Hindu temples. The report has stated that the CPI(M) cannot “leave the temples and other religious places to the mercy of the RSS and its various outfits”.
It added, “We cannot leave the temples and other religious places to the mercy of the RSS and its various outfits. We must take steps where we can intervene to see that secular-minded believers and devotees are in the management of temples.”
Therefore, in the garb of countering what the Communists call the Hindutva agenda of the RSS, the CPI(M) is looking to pander to the Hindus in West Bengal. The core Communist ideology is atheism of the kind that borders on abhorrence towards religion. But the CPI(M) has realised that such atheism doesn’t work in India.
Especially the kind of atheism that CPI(M) practises and propagates, promotes Islamo-Fascism, directly hampering the interests of the Hindus. CPI(M) has always believed in core anti-Hindu ideology that finds deep roots in West Bengal as well.
Jyoti Basu, former West Bengal CM, is the face of Communism in the state. Basu, the longest serving Chief Minister of West Bengal was the one who oversaw the infamous Marichjhapi massacre. More than 1,700 Bengali Hindu refugees were killed and thousands of women were raped in this massacre. In fact, Communism is the reason behind the pitiable state of Bengali Hindus today.
The Communists managed to reduce the massacre to a mere ‘incident’ in academic writing in the Bengali intellectual circles. As such Communism has been an anti-Hindu disaster in West Bengal.
When the CPI(M) was thrown out of power in West Bengal in the year 2011, winning just 40 seats in the 294 member Assembly that it had ruled uninterruptedly for 34 years, its anti-Hindu ideology and a tendency to pander to the Islamists was seen as a major reason behind its debacle.
In the years ahead, the party however continued its brand of Islamo-Fascism with even greater vigour. Kerala, the only state which where the CPI(M) still enjoys some presence too has witnessed the Communists launching an all out assault on the Hindu majority.
Whether it was the ruling Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) insistence towards defiling the Sabarimala Temple at a time when Lord Ayyappa devotees were protesting to preserve the sanctum sanctorum from the so called secular activists, or its perceived support to the Popular Front of India (PFI), an affiliate of the banned terror organisation Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the Communists have been always seen as following patently anti-Hindu agenda and policies.
The electorate has snubbed the Communists in the harshest possible manner time and again. In the recent Delhi Assembly polls, the NOTA (None of the Above) secured greater vote share than the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) combined.
As West Bengal heads towards Assembly polls to be held next year, the Communists have realised that their blatantly anti-Hindu policies are not going to work. Their brand of Islamo-Fascism has been rejected time and again, and therefore they are trying to rebrand themselves in a rather naïve attempt to pander the Hindu community that they have been despising for decades.
