Marxists are reviewing their fondness for Islamic Radicals in Kerala

VR Jayaraj

It is gradually dawning on the CPI(M) that aligning with Islamists has alienated middle-class Hindus

Pinarayi Vijayan, the neo-liberal State secretary of the CPI(M) in Kerala, has been facing criticism from within his party and outside for his harebrained idea of forging an open alliance with the Islamist People's Democratic Party led by Abdul Nasser Madani for the 2009 general election. Not many leaders in the party had supported that move even then. Senior comrades like then Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan had openly opposed it and most of the partners in the LDF were furious with Mr Vijayan for persistence with the idea of carrying the alliance forward. But he was ready to even antagonise the CPI — the CPI(M)'s closest ally in the LDF — for the sake of the alliance with Madani by allotting the Ponnani Lok Sabha seat in Muslim-majority Malappuram district to a candidate of the Islamist leader's choice despite the fact that the CPI had been contesting it for several elections.

The CPI(M) secretary even shared an election campaign stage with Madani at Ponnani to absolve him of all charges of extremism. With an iron hand, Mr Vijayan had suppressed criticism from within the party against his ill-advised election move. But it found its inevitable reflection in the Lok Sabha election when the Left was defeated in 80 per cent of the seats. Now, Mr Vijayan can no longer defend his folly — after all, he was faced with an avalanche of criticism by senior party functionaries during conferences in preparation for the 20th national congress to be held in Kozhikode in April.

A new realisation has dawned on the Kerala CPI(M) — or, at least upon some of its seniormost leaders — that appeasing hardcore elements within religious communities is sure to have a negative effect, especially during the polls. This was the essential message that was reflected in the words of former Home Minister and Polit Bureau member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan when he spoke the other day about the need to strengthen the party's work among religious communities, especially the minorities. Mr Kodiyeri is known to be Mr Vijayan's most trusted lieutenant in implementing the neo-liberal agenda and is presently seen as the strongest contender for the secretary's post. He pointed out to his comrades that the party and the Left had not been able to defeat the consolidation of religious organisations in the State Assembly election in April 2011 and this was one of the main reasons for the LDF's defeat by a whisker.

The neo-liberals in the CPI(M) were not prepared to accept the ominous fact that their affinity for religious fundamentalists was eroding public support, especially among middle-class Hindus and peace-loving Muslims, even after unambiguous signs had emerged in the form of the 2009 general election results. Even Mr Kodiyeri, who now takes on the agenda set by Mr Vijayan, had not thought of abdicating that relationship in the run-up to local elections in October 2010. When the Karnataka Police arrived in Kollam in August that year to arrest Madani for his role in the 2008 Bangalore bombings, Mr Kodiyeri, as the Minister commanding the State police, stalled the proceedings for over a week, much to the delight of the Islamists.

What many in the CPI(M) now understand and what some its top leaders are reluctant to admit is that the Left's electoral victories in 2004 and 2006 had nothing to do with its affiliation with the fundamentalists. Both these elections were fought against a backdrop of serious issues which also concerned religious communities — such as rampant corruption, lack of accountability and questions regarding the morality of leaders in the Congress-led UDF. The Left was destined to be defeated in the 2009 and 2011 elections, as it happened in West Bengal in a devastating manner because it had failed to answer these questions. Instead, it was busy translating neo-liberal principles into administrative practice. This was the rationale behind the consolidation of Muslims with the Muslim League and the Christians with the Congress and its allies like the Kerala Congress(M).

What the Marxist theorists fail to understand — even at this stage — is that the results of the last Assembly election have proved that it is not their association with Muslim outfits or various Christian denominations that helped them in moments of crisis. The LDF had managed to come close to retaining power in the April Assembly election without any such associations — barring the behind-the-scene understanding with the Jama'at-e-Islami which was not a big determinant anyway. Despite the fact that compared to 2006, the Muslim League had been able to win back the support of large sections of the Muslim community, and the Christian church stood solidly behind the Congress and its pro-Church allies, the UDF could win only 72 seats out of the total 140 in the Assembly while the LDF managed to bag 68 seats. Also, there was no huge difference between the percentages of votes won by the two fronts.

This brings to the fore the middle-class Hindu votes' factor on which the CPI(M) has always depended on during elections. The open alliance of the Marxists with Madani's party in the 2009 Lok Sabha election had obviously caused an aversion among those middle-class Hindu voters who supported them despite their atheistic ideology. When the Marxists ended such relationships and the religious minorities consolidated behind the Congress and its allies in the last Assembly election, the Hindu voters heaved a sigh of relief and decided to support the Left once again. This, and the nationwide upsurge against the corruption of the Congress-led UPA regime which the octogenarian Marxist, Mr Achuthanandan, successfully made into an election issue, along with the immoralities of UDF leaders, did the trick. If these factors had not played their part, the fate of the Left in Kerala would not have been too different from what its counterparts experienced in West Bengal.

That certain top Marxist leaders are rethinking the party's relationship with religious minorities in the context of the upcoming congress is important. The 20th CPI(M) congress is crucial to its very survival as a communist party in many ways. The party is going into it in a totally different political setting compared to that which existed during the 19th congress in Coimbatore in April 2008. The avalanche of developments that shook India, which included the electoral devastation of the party in West Bengal, has created so much confusion among the Marxists that the central leadership has not yet been able to draft a clean ideological document to be put before the delegates.

For the moment, the strongest unit of the party in the country is in Kerala. The way it chooses its efforts to grow will have an inevitable bearing on the organisation as a whole. Its approach to religious communities, including the minorities, is crucial in this sense.

Courtesy:-Daily Pioneer