Lefts caught in Darwin’s survival of the fittest syndrome

‘Mistake, Mistake, Mistake...’ so goes a popular dialogue in one of Satyajit Ray’s masterpieces- Sonar Kella. The story weaves around a mistaken identity of a boy who is kidnapped in Calcutta. The ‘mistaken identity’ doctrine, albeit with a political twist, seems to be getting recreated by the Left mandarins, especially in West Bengal. This time around, it is regarding the ‘principal political enemy’. If one goes by the party document after the 23rd congress of the CPI (M) in Kannur and the subsequent statement of Sitaram Yechury, the party unequivocally identifies the Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindutva fascism as the principal enemy. Yechury had said that they were set to take on the challenge of putting together a “counter-offensive” and foil all ambitious efforts to establish Hindutva “hegemony” that is “destroying the very inclusive concept of nationhood.” One must note that naming BJP as their enemy number one is in contrast to their earlier contentions that the BJP and the Congress, quite mistakenly, were their political foes, even while conceding that Hindutva politics was a threat to the country’s unity and diversity.

In Bengal, however, the Communist apparatchiks are mincing no words (and work) in driving home the point that the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamul Congress (TMC) appears to be their enemy number one. So much so, that their electoral alliance with the Congress, notwithstanding, they seemed to have paved the way for BJP’s electoral wins in many earlier instances. Party hardliners, puritans and political observers would easily recall that the party had made similar blunders in the past also. In 1989, the Left Front had joined hands (euphemistically described as floor management) with the BJP to corner Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress on the issue of Bofors. In 2008, the ‘saffrons’ and the ‘Reds’ came together on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Ironically, the loser was the Left. In 2004, the Left Front had 61 MPs. Five years later it was down by half at 32. By the time the 2014 Lok Sabha election results were out, the Front’s strength had fallen to 12.Their current numerical position, nationally and in the state, is even more dismal. Meanwhile, it does not require any rocket science to understand and identify who would be the Left’s principal political enemy. If the Left brigade goes back to its roots, it will understand that different political positions across the spectrum, including anarchism, centrism, conservatism, fascism, liberalism, nationalism, social democracy, socialism, leftism and libertarianism ought to be identified as the principal political enemy. In simple terms, the Rightist forces are the principal political foe of the Left. Trinamul Congress, with all its follies, can never be billed as a Rightist force.

And interestingly, TMC was founded and came to power with rebels and disgruntled men from the Congress and a section of the disillusioned party cadre and ideologues from the Left. They are already in the lurch and any tacit entente or indirect support to the Saffron Brigade may send wrong signals to the remaining ideologues. This may prove disastrous to their calculations and eventually cause further decay of the Left for whom nothing seems to be going right.