Fifty years ago, on April 11, 1964, 32 members of the National Council of the Communist Party of India walked out of a council meeting. Trouble had been brewing for some time at the highest quarters of India's communist movement. The CPI's left accused its right of collaborating too closely with Jawaharlal Nehru and his increasingly socialist Congress; the right accused the left of undermining the march towards purer socialism worldwide. These differences were crystallised when the world communist movement split into pro-Beijing and pro-Moscow camps; Indian communists too took sides, with the right following Moscow's line, supportive of the Indian state, and the left choosing the path of confrontation that Beijing would prefer. That simple fact allowed the CPI (Left) - soon to become the CPI (Marxist) - to eventually dominate the original CPI in popularity. When the CPI-M was founded, many of its cadre were in jail for supposedly supporting the Chinese during the 1962 war. But its aggressive attempts to challenge the state, such as over a tramway strike in what was then Calcutta, allowed it to build up its popularity very fast.
Today, 50 years on, those days are a distant memory. The CPI-M faces the greatest challenge in its history - the threat of irrelevance. Ruling West Bengal for three decades - and Kerala, on and off - meant that its increasingly scholastic, aristocratic and out-of-touch leaders in New Delhi never had to trouble themselves with mass programmes the way that their predecessors did. And, so, the party retreated from all over India. Earlier it won seats in industrial towns across the country; today, not any more. And now that it has lost power in West Bengal, and faces a challenge in Kerala, too, its leadership has no answers. This is a pity - because, in spite of all its faults, it is an important element in India's diverse polity, providing an alternative view on economic and political issues. It has often played a significant countervailing role in policies that might not take into account interests of all sections of society. And its commitment to the procedures of parliamentary democracy is outstanding - especially because it is technically supposed to see Parliament as an illusion of representation meant to deceive the working class.
If its importance and impact as a national party are on the decline, that is because its leadership has ignored both changes in technology and the evolving character of the working class. Its hold over the organised working class has got weaker, and it has failed to make any significant dent among the increasing numbers of unorganised workers. Consequently, it has frittered away the advantages it had gained over the years through its long tenures in government and its national recognition. Strangely enough, many of the critiques of liberalisation and of cronyism have been taken up by the far better organised Aam Aadmi Party. The AAP, with committed cadre and a coherent message, have managed to present the Left platform far better than a Left that has reduced that platform essentially to South Delhi power-broking and desiccated anti-Americanism. The Left needs new leadership, and a new direction, if it is to remain relevant.
