Is 'Buddha-ism' Marxism?

It has been said""by D D Kosambi, the foremost Marxist historian of India, no less""of India's failure to develop her science and technology after the sixth century that the Brahmins, who were the main keepers of knowledge and tradition, became so absorbed in meaningless sectarian debates over the maintenance of orthodoxy that they lost sight of what was essential.

Clearly, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, with a Brahmin surname and currently the CPI(M)'s chief minister of West Bengal, agrees with this assessment. That could be one reason why he thinks that it is time Indian Communists ceased to be riveted by their own navels and looked up and outwards for a change.

"Reform, perform or perish," Mr Bhattacharjee is reported as saying, even as he has ignored his critics and sought foreign investment, privatised state-owned companies, restrained his party's trade union activists, and promised more such action.

The chief minister's boss group at the party headquarters thinks the country will perish if its economy reforms in the way that liberals seek to, but the party's general secretary has clarified that the chief minister has done and said nothing that is not allowed by the party line.

This sounds like the party boss deciding not to join issue just now, and it will hopefully encourage Mr Bhattacharjee to soldier on along his chosen path.

After all, it is he who has to deliver a better life to the inhabitants of West Bengal, not the heroes of the politburo who prevent rational pricing for oil, fiscal correction, policies that will result in employment growth, and foreign investment. The question is whether Mr Bhattacharjee will turn out to be a Deng Xiaoping, and change the practice of Indian communism, if not its dogma.

Deng's achievement was in establishing 'capitalism with socialist characteristics', and introducing market-oriented reforms that did not threaten the political control of the communist party of China.

Mr Bhattacharjee, who seems to be cast in the same practical mould, has said, "Marxism is a science. We have to learn truth from facts"""and not, presumably, from party ideologues.

Only Deng Xiaoping put it better when he made that famous crack about the colour of the cat""that it didn't matter, so long as it caught mice. This is precisely what Mr Bhattacharjee is also saying. He says he doesn't care about the colour of the capital, as long as it isn't black money.

The question is: where do he and the CPI(M) go from here? If Mr Bhattacharjee, who faces state elections next year, leads the party to victory and gets another term, he will on current showing introduce policies that will make it more and more difficult for the party chieftains in Delhi to continue preventing the government at the Centre from doing the same thing.

The Prime Minister has seen the contradiction and, frustrated by people who seem to dictate to his government rather than support it, has encouraged the crack to widen. Many orthodox comrades, like the Brahmins in the Pune of the Peshwas, are livid that they stand accused of double standards.

They would like nothing better than, as Henry the Second said of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for someone to "rid them of the pesky priest". But as he discovered, such wishes have their attendant risks.

They will therefore have to wait till the election in West Bengal is over early next year. Mr Bhattacharjee is clearly using this window to force the issue and pile up the chips on his side of the table. The battle will be as absorbing as the one that is currently raging in the Brotherhood of Saffron.