The most flagrant challenge to the top leadership has followed the decision of the CPI(M) to support Pranab Mukherjee in the presidential election
Since its landmark defeat in the Assembly election in West Bengal over a year ago, there have been enough hints that all is not well with the CPI(M) internally. Trouble has brewed in the eastern state as well as in Kerala, the party’s two strongholds pretty much since its inception in 1964 after the breakaway from the parent CPI.
With the party’s top leadership coming under pressure since the rejection in West Bengal, important party leaders appear to have lost their customary restraint in attacking rivals within the organisation and some have shown a lack of disinclination in even attacking the party centre and the general secretary, Prakash Karat. For the Marxist party, these are decidedly unheard of things.
Arguably, the most flagrant challenge to the top leadership has followed the decision of the CPI(M) to support UPA candidate Pranab Mukherjee in the presidential election. It appears the party’s politburo was almost evenly split on the question, with representatives from West Bengal and Kerala, the two most important state units for the Marxists, engaged in a face-off with one another, the former being in support of Mr Mukherjee. The division at the top has obviously fuelled dissension below on the question of the presidential election.
In view of the current matrices of national politics, the CPI(M) did well in deciding that its MPs and MLAs should vote for Mr Mukherjee and not his rival Purno A. Sangma. In subsequent interviews Mr Karat cited two important reasons for this view — the fact that Mr Mukherjee is “secular” in his outlook, and that the CPI(M) had to consider the political situation in West Bengal and find the tactics aimed at loosening Mamata Banerjee’s hold over the state. These are valid considerations. But opting for the nominee of the UPA, which is seen as pursuing “neo-liberal economic policies”, has whipped up a veritable storm in sections of the CPI(M), most notably in its student body, the Students’ Federation of India. Its unit at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University has been dissolved in view of an open revolt. The JNU unit has given the party its current general secretary and also politburo member Sitaram Yechury. Earlier, a former SFI leader and JNU students’ union president who became the CPI(M)’s face on television news channels, expressed his discontent and was expelled for criticising the party’s official position on the presidential election.
The revolt against the leadership is naturally taking a toll on its élan, but it’s the way in which the leadership has dealt with dissent that appears to have disturbed the equilibrium even in a party like the CPI(M), long known for its Stalinist practices, the rough bureaucratic method of brutalising inner-party opponents.