(This article was first published in April 2018. It has been republished from The Quint’s archives on Karl Marx’s birth anniversary.)
Of the politicians I know and have followed extensively, the communists have always come across as very well-read, well-behaved, humble, least susceptible to corruption and least intrusive. Given a choice, I will prefer Prakash Karat, the former general secretary of the CPI (M), for a lecture on political economy to anyone else.
If I get a chance, I would always like to go to Sitaram Yechury, the present general secretary of the CPI (M) now into his second term, for a comprehensive update on why our economy has been growing the way it has been all these years.
Late A B Bardhan, former general secretary of the CPI, was encyclopedic and led a life that was spartan in the true sense of the term. And I have rarely seen anyone else getting as much adulation from all benches in Parliament as late Indrajit Gupta – yet another former general secretary of the CPI who briefly served as the Union Home Minister as well – used to get during his long stint as an MP.
These four leaders have been the most influential voices of the Left at a time when the very idea of such a party has struggled to survive, and now faces near extinction.
Why have such leaders with strong personal qualities failed to revive the fortunes of their respective parties?
Their archaic worldview has to be the primary reason. Their perpetual struggle to marry the basic tenets of Marxism with Indian reality has been an unfinished agenda, adding to the ebbing fortunes of the Left politics. Wherever they have ruled – in West Bengal, Kerala or Tripura – they have been accused of presiding over the politics of penury. An aspirational generation therefore finds it hard to have any connect with the communists in the country.
How Is Resurrection of the Left Possible?
Is a resurrection not at all possible?
Will Yechury have the dubious distinction of presiding over a party that is in coma and has no chance of revival?
Having been raised with a healthy dose of Marxism in formative years (and I am proud of that for a variety of reasons), I am not all that pessimistic. But for that to happen, Left ideology needs a complete overhaul.
Other than their moribund economic policy and cultural fundamentalism (yes, fundamentalism of a kind they must admit) which they need to abandon, they have been fairly consistent when it comes to dealing with identity politics.
Whether on the question of caste or religion, they have so far adopted a hands-off approach, a primordial-identities-be-damned kind of view.
This view, if rebooted with inputs from our own desi philosopher and one of the leading lights of Bhakti movement Kabir, can lead to a revival of political fortune of sorts for the Left.
Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Kabir says: “Although Kabir is often depicted in modern times as a harmonizer of Hindu and Muslim belief and practice, it would be more accurate to say that he was equally critical of both, often conceiving them as parallel to one another in their misguided ways. In his view, the mindless, repetitious, prideful habit of declaiming scripture could be visited alike” by the Hindus and Muslims.
Let us go through these words again –– mindless, repetitious, prideful habit of declaiming scripture which Kabir strongly disapproved of.
In the name of civilizational pride, only to denigrate others and therefore suitable for hate mongering, aren’t we witnessing mindless, repetitious, prideful habit of declaiming scripture all over again?
Kabir and His Gems
Here is how Kabir would have countered the politics of hate:
Kabira kuwan ek hai aur paani bhare anek
Bhande mein hi bhed hai, paani sabmein ek
(There is just one well which different people draw water from, pots are different, but water remains the same)
And
Hindu kahen mohi Ram piyari, Turk kahen Rahmana
Aapas mein dowu ladi-ladi muwe, maram na kowu jana
(For Hindus, I am a Ram bhakt, for Muslims Rahmana; They constantly fight and kill each other, being oblivious of the essence)
These are just two of the many couplets ridiculing mindless habits of pursuing the form and completely disregarding the essence of religion.
Religion for Kabir was not the “opium of the people.” Nor was it “the sigh of the oppressed class”.
The essence of religion, according to Kabir, lay in individual’s communion with the Almighty, without any scripture and without any mediation.
The individual – his/her freedom and his/her choices – has been at the core, in a way, of both Marxism sans subsequent distortions introduced by Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin and Kabir’s bhakti teachings.
Merger of Marx and Kabir Possible?
Can contemporary communists merge the two and mount a successful counter-narrative against the politics of hate? Having known Yechury for years, I am reasonably confident that he will be open to the idea.
After all, the incidents like someone cancelling an Ola trip just because the driver happened to be from “other” religion or scores of hate mongers deleting certain apps just because of Swara Bhaskar raising her voice strongly against a ghastly rape and murder need to be countered effectively. Not through more abuses. Through the voice of reason borrowed heavily from our own glorious tradition of which Kabir has been one of the leading lights.
There is a vast constituency of people, disgusted with hate-mongering of various persuasions, waiting to be tapped.
Can a new Left come forward and make the most out of it?
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