In this Issue
Verdict 2009: Lessons for the Left
The results of 2009 elections can be described as a string of surprises not only for many well-entrenched parties and seasoned politicians but also for a host of commonsensical notions about contemporary Indian political reality. Of late, it became rather customary to look at elections in India through the prism of coalition politics, caste equations and regional diversities. Verdict 2009 has given a serious jolt to this facile view and reasserted the underlying structural dynamics of Indian politics. Conventional wisdom would not have given the Congress anything more than 150 seats, but the fact that the Congress managed to notch up as many as 206 seats from across the country clearly reveal a national verdict which cannot be reduced to a mere sum total of the poll outcomes in different states and regions.
The NDA had long been expecting the 2009 elections to go its way and LK Advani had been duly designated its Prime Ministerial candidate. ‘Iron Man’ Advani saw Manmohan Singh as the weakest link of the Congress chain and hoped the chain would snap if only he could make it a direct clash between the UPA’s ‘weakest’ and the NDA’s ‘strongest’! He tried to fight and win the elections in true US Presidential style, but even before his campaign could take off he found himself overshadowed by two more self-appointed PMs-in-waiting, the redoubtable Narendra ‘Nano’ Modi and one Varun ‘venom’ Gandhi!
The results only reveal how miserably the NDA lost the plot in its own strongholds. Of all the NDA-ruled states, only Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Bihar went the NDA way while in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, the Congress staked almost equal claims defying its obvious organisational weaknesses. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar’s spectacular showing cannot really be treated as a typical NDA victory – it had more to do with the disintegration of the UPA and the continuing public anger in Bihar against the RJD-LJP brand of politics. Quite understandably, the NDA emerged as the overwhelming beneficiary of this public anger against the RJD’s legacy of chaos and misrule.
While the NDA remained confined to its own pockets, the ‘Third Front’ was humbled in its own strongholds. In West Bengal, the CPI(M) got its worst drubbing in three decades with its own tally getting reduced to only 9. The overall Left Front tally came down from the high point of 60-plus in the 14th Lok Sabha to mere 24. The grand alliances forged in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh failed to click, and ‘Mission Mayawati’ failed to fire the imagination of the BSP’s own base in Uttar Pradesh. Forged in a hurry, the Third Front had neither cohesion nor credibility; it thrived primarily on the exuberance of electoral expectation regarding the fortunes of regional alliances.
The Congress on the other hand sensed the national mood that looked for some order and stability in an overwhelming situation of crisis and uncertainty. In the absence of any reliable cohesive alternative, large parts of India once again turned to the grand old party now led by the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Various local factors only facilitated the crystallisation of this national mood, and the Congress strategy was in tune with this developing sentiment. The Congress decision to shelve the UPA during the elections and try the party’s own luck in the two most crucial Hindi belt states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar proved to be a tactical masterstroke paving the way for a Congress revival. In UP, the Congress won 20 seats, regaining its traditional base amongst upper caste gentry, minorities and a section of dalits.
What lessons do the results hold for the future of the people’s movement and Left and democratic politics in India?
The Congress revival is being portrayed by various neo-liberal commentators as well as the Congress establishment as a popular endorsement of its pro-corporate economic agenda and pro-US foreign policy framework. In the same breath the Congress is also attributing its victory to its ‘pro-poor’ policies. There is a fundamental paradox in such self-serving explanations: the verdict cannot be an endorsement of policies claiming to address the crisis of unemployment, farmers’ suicides etc as well as an endorsement of the neo-liberal policies causing the very same crisis! The country is reeling under a massive economic disaster sponsored by the neo-liberal economic offensive of indiscriminate liberalisation and globalisation and steady withdrawal of the state from productive investment and welfare-oriented public expenditure, and there can be no question of the people endorsing policies that spelled such disasters.
It is also equally clear that the country is not enamoured of the much-touted strategic spin-offs of a pro-US foreign policy when the entire neighbourhood is trapped in tremendous social upheaval and political turbulence and India’s growing identification with the US only renders it more vulnerable on every count. Signs of growing US involvement in India’s domestic affairs have also been quite visible with US officials making it of late a habit to call on leaders of different parties.
By all accounts, a more confident Congress-led government will now tend to pursue the pro-corporate pro-imperialist policies, as well as the repressive policies of draconian laws and human rights violations in the name of countering terror, with greater speed and aggression while cleverly deceiving the people with the rhetoric of secularism, empowerment and ‘inclusive’ growth. Manmohan Singh has announced a "100-day" economic recovery plan to overcome recession and on May 18 Sensex soared 2111 points, the highest single day increase in any share index in the world, to celebrate the UPA's victory. But such exuberance and tall claims are unlikely to lead to any economic miracle, and against the backdrop of a deepening recession, livelihood issues are bound to assume explosive proportions in many sectors. Further, while the BJP’s communal agenda has been defeated, the aspirations of minorities and secular forces for justice against communal violence remains – a task that the Congress has historically betrayed. Instead of getting taken in by the deceptive discourse of the emerging ‘new generation’ Congress, the forces and friends of people’s struggles must now intensify public debate over the real state of affairs on different fronts and raise the level of popular mobilisation and resistance to press for a real change in the policies and priorities of the government.
Contrary to dominant media explanations, the rout suffered by the CPI(M) cannot be attributed to its belated oppositional stance vis-a-vis the UPA’s pro-US policies. The epicentre of the anti-CPI(M) political earthquake lies squarely in the Singur-Nandigram seismic zone where the CPI(M) has been punished for its arrogant and coercive attitude to the peasantry and the intelligentsia, for its ruthless attempt to implement the same economic policies that it claims to have been opposing all along. It is ironical that while the architect of the SEZ policy succeeded in masking its true face behind legislations like NREGA and forest land rights, the CPI(M) was seen as the brutal face of corporate land-grab offensive. Even when the CPI(M) quite correctly questioned and opposed the Indo-US strategic partnership and nuke deal, the point was allowed to get diluted and lost in the party’s desperate drive to somehow prop up a Third Front” devoid of any kind of pro-people, anti-imperialist commitment.
The results have also exposed the limits of the politics of social engineering and alliance arithmetic. Mayawati’s ‘sarvajanwad’ and Lalu Prasad’s ‘Mandal magic’ are clearly on the wane. Reports from UP indicate that while Mayawati failed to sustain her newly discovered upper caste base, cracks have also started surfacing in her core support base among dalits. Down south, the TDP-TRS kind of opportunist bonhomie and the desperate attempt of the PMK-MDMK-AIADMK alliance to make political capital of the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils have also been squarely rebuffed by the people. The CPI(M) has only discredited itself by glorifying and peddling this opportunism in the name of ‘Third Front’ politics.
The Left clearly has a lesson to learn from the Congress. The lesson is certainly not to seek signs of anti-imperialism or pro-people concern or commitment in the emerging leadership of the Congress. If the Congress has retrained its focus on its own revival overcoming the ‘BJP threat’, ‘Mandal magic’ and ‘coalition politics’, the Left must also rebuild and reposition itself as the core of the people’s movement for survival, justice and democracy and for the nation’s quest for a dignified future beyond the strategic umbrella of the US. A renewal of the communist identity as the most sincere, vibrant and fighting platform of people’s politics is the need of the hour.
The reverses suffered by the Left in general, and the admittedly poor showing of the CPI(ML) in Bihar, are bound to generate vibes of demoralisation and despondency across different sections of the Left. The noise emanating from dominant quarters of West Bengal CPI(M) against the ‘dogmatism’ and ‘adventurism’ of the party’s central leadership seeks to attribute the CPI(M)’s electoral rout to its belated act of withdrawal of support to the Congress. This is nothing but an exercise in barking up the wrong tree. If the CPI(M) had not withdrawn support, the Congress would have anyway subjugated the Left in national politics, while the TMC would have still monopolised the public anger in West Bengal. Not ‘dogmatism’ or ‘adventurism’, the greatest internal enemy of the Left at this juncture is opportunism and the intoxication of power. Any meaningful introspection must be aimed at identifying and eradicating the real malady and rejuvenating the Left movement in closer integration with the people and their real needs and aspirations.
By rejecting the NDA and rebuffing the cobweb of opportunist alliances and narrow identity politics, the 2009 verdict has opened up new possibilities for the entire Left and democratic camp to assert as a fighting opposition in the national political arena. Revolutionary communists must take adequate note of the prospects and challenges unleashed by the verdict and rise wholeheartedly to the occasion.
A “Famous Victory”?
According to an announcement by the Sri Lankan Government, the LTTE chief Prabhakaran is dead, killed by the Lankan Army. The LTTE is yet to confirm the death, and some sections are questioning the veracity of the claim.
The exact manner of Prabhakaran’s death is clouded in suspicion. The Sri Lankan Government claims he was killed when the army opened fire on a van in which he and two top aides were travelling; initially, Sri Lankan officials said the van caught fire under rocket attack and Prabhakaran’s body was badly burnt. Subsequently, they claimed to have found his body, dead from a bullet, dressed in fatigues and having identification papers on him, during a combing operation. There are many unanswered questions about the manner of the death: including the suspicion that he might have been captured alive by the Lankan Army, or that he might have taken his life before capture.
The dubious account of the LTTE chief’s death is only the latest in the saga of bloody massacre that the Sri Lankan government unleashed on the Tamil people. CPI(ML) condemns the Sri Lankan Government’s killing of LTTE chief Prabhakaran, who had pursued the cause of Tamil national self-determination struggle for over three decades, and firmly holds that the politics of repression, elimination and extermination of Tamil people and leaders cannot resolve the issue of Tamil national self-determination in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lanka’s “famous victory” is not a grand military triumph but a crime against humanity, particularly, against the Tamil masses in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is a despot who should be branded as a war criminal and tried for deliberate and ruthless violation of international conventions on war.
Rajapakse is trying to garner international support for his war, by claiming it to be a crusade against terrorism embodied in the LTTE. But the
emergence of LTTE is mainly a reaction to the Sri Lankan state-sponsored Sinhala chauvinism that massacred thousands of Tamil people in the island nation, and to miss this point is an injustice to the national self-determination struggle of Tamil people and their history.
We do share the democratic opinion that condemned the killing of Rajiv Gandhi in Indian soil and of other Sinhala and Tamil political leaders in Sri Lanka. We also have our share of criticism of LTTE and Prabakaran. Prabakaran was a leader of the Tamil national self-determination struggle and not a communist or socialist as he claimed on some occasions. Prabakaran’s excessive reliance on military might and intolerance to dissent without any long term political strategy and diplomacy that could tilt the balance of forces in favour of his own ideal of Tamil Eelam was a major flaw. But, all these things cannot justify the killings of tens of thousands of innocent Tamil masses by the Sri Lankan military offensive.
If LTTE could be at the head of decades-old liberation struggle of Tamil people in Sri Lanka in spite of its autocratic behaviour and intolerance to any dissent, it is not merely because of its military might which was reinforced by none other than the Indian government in ‘80s, but because of the objective aspirations of Tamil masses for emancipation from the clutches of majority Sinhala chauvinism. Elimination of LTTE cannot mean elimination of Tamil people’s aspirations for liberation in Sri Lanka. Rhetoric like ‘equal rights’ etc., being peddled by Sri Lankan president, and also the abstract concept of ‘devolution of powers’ being advocated by Indian government and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi may not really satisfy the Tamil masses who have undergone the brunt of decades-long chauvinism, brutal oppression and genocide. Solutions can lie only in thoroughgoing autonomy for the Tamil people, negotiated in the backdrop of a genuine end to the politics of Sinhala chauvinism. To imagine that a solution would be possible in the backdrop of a bloody massacre and chauvinistic triumphalism ‘celebrating’ the decimation of the Tamil movement is delusional.
Civil liberty and Tamil activists protesting against the Indian army convoys suspected of supplying arms to the Lankan army have been arrested and jailed in Coimbatore, thus muzzling dissent even in India. This incident also disproves the Indian claim of no involvement in the war against Tamils in Sri Lanka. It is true that there was no IPKF involved in war this time but supplying arms even from the point of view of promoting business interests is against the Geneva Convention.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi is in Delhi busy bargaining for ministerial berths for his family in central government when the entire state of Tamil Nadu is burning and mourning the death of Prabakaran. Neither the Karunanidhi’s election stunt of fasting nor the presence of dozens of Tamil ministers of various parties in the central government could stop the war. In fact, all bourgeois parties in Tamil Nadu, including DMK, PMK and AIADMK, have only played politics on the corpse of thousands of Tamil masses in Sri Lanka in order to promote their own electoral prospects. Jayalalitha’s election promise of ‘Separate Tamil Eelam’ when Tamil people were on the run to save their lives was the biggest ever fraud on the people of Tamil Nadu.
As long as the fundamental issues involved with the aspirations of Tamil masses in Sri Lanka are not politically resolved, military elimination of LTTE and Prabakaran may only be a beginning of another round of newer forms of struggle for national self-determination of Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Everything has not come to an end with the elimination of LTTE, but rather a fresh chapter has only begun.
’twas a famous victory...
...“With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby, died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.
“They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.
...“Great praise the Duke of Marlboro’ won,
And our good Prince Eugene.”
“Why, ‘twas a very wicked thing!”
Said little Wilhelmine.
“Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he;
“It was a famous victory.
“And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win.”
“But what good came of it at last?”
Quoth little Peterkin.
“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he;
“But ‘twas a famous victory.”
[ from 'The Battle of Blenheim', Robert Southey ]
Agricultural Workers Occupy Land
Punjab’s Akali Government had promised house plots to rural poor. In Mansa, agricultural labourers launched a protest against betrayal of this promise. During the elections itself, a mass movement developed, in which agricultural workers led by the CPI(ML) occupied panchayat land. A third of panchayat land is supposed to be for use by workers for agricultural purposes – but it is usually grabbed by more powerful land owners. The land occupied by the workers is only such land – which legitimately falls to their share even by the law of the land. Workers planted red flags on the land, and began constructing homes on the land and moving in, bag and baggage. From 17 May onwards a dharna began and is still continuing. On 19 May, a massive Rally was held, in which 7000 villagers from 30 villages took part. CPI(ML) State Secretary Comrade Rajvinder Rana, CPI(ML) leader Tarsem Jodhan, and CPI leader Comrade Jagroot led the Rally. As a result of the Rally, local officials came to an agreement that job cards under NREGA would be issued within 1 month and house plots within 3 months. The officials tried but failed to pressurise the workers to leave the panchayat land they had occupied. Subsequent to the agreement, it seems kulak sections of the villages have launched a protest and a rasta roko demanding eviction of the agricultural workers from the panchayat land. The workers, vigilant till the agreement is implemented, have decided to continue with their dharna in symbolic form. They have also defied all attempts to intimidate them to vacate the panchayat land.
Reports from Chhatisgarh
On May Day, CPI(ML) and AICCTU held a ‘Workers’ Respect Rally’ (Mazdoor Swabhimaan Rally) and mass meeting at Durg district, Chhattisgarh. Around 1000 workers (including a large number of women sanitation workers) marched in the Rally. The mass meeting was addressed by Bhimrao Bagade and A G Qureshi of the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha, as well as CPI(ML) and AICCTU leaders. Similar programmes were held at stone quarries of Bastar and Raipur also.
On 6 May, CPI(ML) observed the 19th martyrdom day of Comrade Daraswam Sahu at Lal Khadan, Bilaspur with a rally and memorial meeting, presided over by Comrade Darasram Sahu’s wife Sushila Bai. The chief guest was CPI(ML) State Secretary Brijendra Tiwari. AICCTU, CPI(ML) and CMM leaders addressed the meeting. 15 sanitation workers from Bhilai also took part in the meeting.
The CPI(ML) has actively supported the struggle of residents of Gori village, Dhamdaha block, Durg district, against land grab for a liquor factory. Villagers have been protesting since April against the forcible and fraudulent grab of 50 acres of arable land for a liquor factory. The Sarpanch and janpad member had given the NOC for land acquisition without convening a gram sabha meeting. Workers at Bhilai Steel Plant who hail from the village contacted our party and party activists attended a large rally of villagers on 30 April. Finally after a long protest, a gram sabha was convened by the villagers themselves on 19 May (Comrades Brijendra Tiwari and Shyamlal Sahu were also present in solidarity), and forced reluctant police officials and the janpad member to attend the sabha, and they publicly accepted their fault and gave an undertaking in writing that they would intimate the Collector that the NOC given earlier was false. The protest will continue till the land acquisition is withdrawn.
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