An Appeal from the CPI(ML) to Left Activists and Progressive Citizens of India

NDA Has Resumed Its Disaster Mission - Let’s Ensure A Vigilant and Vigorous Resistance

Comrades,

The NDA is back in business. Vajpayee has begun his third and NDA’s second term with a jumbo coalition of 24 parties and a super jumbo cabinet of 70 ministers. For the common citizen of this country the return of Mr. Vajpayee and his NDA had however already been announced in the shape of a steep 40% hike in diesel prices and in many cases even heftier hikes in bus fares and transportation costs. Insurance and patent bills have of course long been pending for parliamentary clearance.

And now every minister has started outlining his/her portion of the resumed saffron agenda. Yashwant Sinha is dying to downsize the government and reduce fiscal deficit to less than 2% of GDP. Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra are working overtime to invent a national consensus to sign CTBT even as the US Senate has refused to ratify it. Murosoli Maran, who made Swadeshi noises over Maruti in his last stint, eggs on his officials this time who have already given away much at the WTO even before the formal negotiations could open in Seattle. Manohar Joshi’s priority is rapid public sector disinvestment while Murli Manohar Joshi is back at the helm of his pet project of saffronisation of education and research. Old RSS hand Prof. M.L. Sondhi has just been named chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research while Mr. B.R. Grover who had lent ‘academic’ assistance to the Babri demolition campaign has been rewarded as the head of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research. Then there is Uma Bharati, the new tourism minister, who dumped her traditional constituency Khajuraho to secure a safe passage to Parliament from Bhopal. She has just disclosed her top priorities: promotion of pilgrimage centres like Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya! And, please remember, we are yet to see L.K. Advani resume that sinister smile and Fernandez reopen his loud mouth...

Meanwhile, away from the parliamentary arena, the affiliates of the saffron brigade are not sitting idle. Making an issue of the Pope’s November visit to India, the VHP and other saffron forces are bent upon inciting anti-Christian religious passion all around. Make no mistake, Bihar and Orissa are due for Assembly polls early next year.

The signals are indeed loud and clear. Last time too, they were not misleading. When Vajpayee had assumed office to the music of Pokhran, when Fernandez had started spelling out his China-is-our-enemy-number-one thesis, when Murli Manohar Joshi had started packing the ICHR with the Sangh Parivar’s family historians and onions had set all Indian bazars afire, few had really complained about the signals being inaudible or difficult to sight and read. By November people had begun exploding into electoral rage and BJP governments were sent packing from Delhi and Rajasthan. The spread of the saffron brigade’s anti-Christian crusade from Gujarat to Orissa further steeled the secular resolve of democratic forces. This was the time all of us were taking to the streets with chants of "Oust Saffron, Save the Nation". The situation just appeared to be getting ready for the unfolding of a popular resistance against the saffron conspiracy...

But the focus soon shifted from the masses and their struggles on the streets to Sonia-Jayalalitha tea parties and get-togethers. The government that deserved to be ousted by the might of millions of people was actually granted a blessing in disguise when it was eventually eased out by the narrowest margin of just one vote on the floor of the Lok Sabha. And the loud-mouthed leaders who promised an alternative government within five minutes only exposed their utter bankruptcy and bestowed a halo of martyrdom on Mr. Vajpayee. From then onward it was the BJP’s turn to carry the battle into the Congress camp. While the nation was reluctant and even refused to buy the "foreign origin" bogey, the Pawar-Anwar-Sangma trio rushed to own it and prospects of any rapid and dramatic revival of the Congress died a silent premature death. Yet Comrades Surjeet and Bardhan had already given in to the suicidal illusion of a Congress-led grand alliance of secular forces.

Came Kargil and once again we saw the mad rush of jingoism with Laloo Yadav emptying the coffers of his state to ‘honour’ the Kargil martyrs and soldiers and Jyoti Basu and his comrades rewarding a war-crazy former Army chief with the honour of a Rajya Sabha seat. The key political prize of Kargil thus already conceded to the BJP, leaders of the Congress, RJD, CPI and CPI(M) belatedly began a rearguard operation to salvage some consolation points and that too often on a plank which could only add fuel to the jingoistic fire. Yet we must be thankful to the Indian people’s political judgement. There was no Kargil wave in the 1999 elections. In the biggest Hindi heartland province of Uttar Pradesh, the issue was BJP’s misrule. In neighbouring Bihar, it was Laloo’s betrayal.

The poll results also reveal a rejection of the ruling classes’ attempt to impose a two-party model of personality-based politics. The Atal Vs. Sonia theme did not have many takers. The BJP’s tally remains stagnant at the 1998 level while the Congress count in the Lok Sabha has dipped to a new low of only 113. Most regional forces have held their ground and while the majority of regional forces are currently part of the BJP-led NDA, within the alliance they have managed to increase their bargaining power vis-a-vis the BJP. And remarkably enough, in UP, parties like the SP and BSP which had avoided aligning with either BJP or Congress(I) have also fared quite well.

The CPI and CPI(M) leadership however had a different kind of wisdom. Ignoring the opposition of their own party ranks and a virtual revolt in Bihar, they adopted a soft line towards the Congress, and in fact teamed up with the Congress in Punjab and also with other thoroughly discredited parties like the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and RJD in Bihar. What have they got in return? Two seats -- Madurai in Tamil Nadu (CPM) and Bhatinda in Punjab (CPI) -- and a lot of bad name. The ideological independence and political credibility of these two parties have never taken such a beating. Yet if the Left Front still has 42 seats, 40 of them have come from West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura where the Left is still an independent force. Ironically in West Bengal, the Congress managed to increase its number of seats from one to three and even as its vote share dropped further by 2%, these ‘secular’ votes all went to the communal BJP-TMC combine enabling the BJP to raise its strength from one to two and the TMC to make inroads in rural districts like Midnapore and Nadia.

The CPI and CPI(M) leadership would have us believe that the Left has grown so weak that it cannot even think of playing an independent role except in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. If this is true, what is even more true is that the current line of dependence on bourgeois parties is further weakening the Left. The SP has virtually finished off the CPI in UP, the RJD has reduced it to a pathetic state of dependence in Bihar and after the CPI’s legislature party leader going over to TDP in Andhra the party has drawn a blank in the Andhra Assembly polls. And Bengal and Kerala are no isolated islands - beyond a point of time this all-India weakness is bound to affect the Left’s electoral strength in these two states.

Contrary to the CPI-CPI(M) line and experience, the CPI(ML) has been pursuing a line of independent assertion all over the country. Admittedly we are still very weak in most parts of the country, yet we have managed to secure nearly 1.5 million votes on our own. We have succeeded in winning one seat in Assam, the lone Left success in the state. The CPI and CPI(M) here are allied with the AGP but the BJP has virtually hijacked the AGP’s old slogans and agenda and is making rapid inroads in the AGP’s social base. And the CPI(M) is trying to face this situation by going soft on the Congress. In the Barak Valley region of Assam, the CPI(M) has for all practical purposes rallied behind the Congress. We on the other hand are trying our best to strengthen the democratic camp in Assam by orientating the tribal autonomy movement in a leftward direction. It is quite significant that at a time when regional forces and tribal organisations all over the country display a pro-BJP tilt, the Autonomous State Demand Committee in the hill districts of Assam has strengthened its left orientation and its alliance with the CPI(ML).

In Bihar, though we have once again failed to win any seat, we have finished second in Siwan and polled nearly a million votes defying intense feudal violence and severe state repression. This is incidentally more than the combined votes polled by the CPI and CPI(M) in a state like Andhra Pradesh where the two parties were forced this time to fight the polls on their own strength. We mention this only to contradict the oft-repeated piece of wisdom which denies any independent future for the Left outside of West Bengal and Kerala and especially in the Hindi belt. Of course, the independent strength which we command in Assam and Bihar is still very limited and we need to put in a lot more efforts and take many more lessons from our own mistakes to further strengthen our movement and organisation and expand our political influence. The point is if the CPI(ML) can do this much on its own, can’t the united strength of the Left score bigger successes and win greater victories?

We must face the stark reality which is staring us in the face. There can be no denying the fact that the politics of dependence on bourgeois parties has done a lot of harm to the cause and strength of the Left. The focus on parleys with bourgeois leaders may have gained the Left a new visibility in the electronic media, but it has also taken a heavy toll of the Left’s political credibility. The movement on the streets, in factories and fields has not stopped, but the spirit has been dampened by parliamentary cretinism. It is surely time we all realised and reiterated the basic truth that for the Left there is no substitute for ideological independence, there is no shortcut in class struggle.

Comrades, as the NDA resumes its disaster mission, the country demands of us, the Left and progressive democratic forces, a firm oppositional role. The new government has made its intentions clear. It has already warned us about the harsh decisions in the offing - Kargil tax has to be realised, defence budget has to go up, subsidies are to be abolished, all public sector units are to be handed over to private capital, the government has to be downsized... The Congress has also given enough hints. Ordinary bus fare in Delhi has gone up to Rs. 10. Insurance, patent, public sector disinvestment, there can be not an iota of doubt as to the Congress position on all these issues. As usual, the Congress is firmly at one with the BJP on the basic agenda of the Indian corporate sector and its American masters.

If the BJP and the Congress can wage a joint war on the basic rights and interests of the toiling people of India, nothing should stop the Left from coming up with a determined united resistance. Left unity must not remain confined to the trade union front or to the business of running state governments. The need of the hour is Left unity in the field of mass struggles. And Left unity cannot flourish in the company of Laloo Prasad, Jayalalitha and Sonia Gandhi. It is time we told our leaders to stop peddling the hackneyed theme of Jyoti Basu becoming the Prime Minister or the Left forming a secular government at the centre. The working people and the democratic forces of the country understand the existing balance of political forces. The mandate for the Left is clear: go back to the people, go back to the basic issues and burning questions of the day, go back to the movement. Unity and strength lie in this direction. Let us march forward.

With warm greetings,

Central Committee, CPI(ML) (Liberation)