Contradictions are an integral a part of communist ideology, and extra importantly, praxis. Sitaram Yechury, who handed away on Thursday was essentially the most well-known modern communist chief in India. Yechury’s political persona is greatest described by a contradiction, which was articulated, not by Karl Marx or his ideological descendants, however by nineteenth-century Urdu poet Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan or Mirza Ghalib, as he’s identified popularly. One in every of Ghalib’s most well-known couplets is as follows.
Mohabbat meñ nahīñ hai farq jiine aur marne kā,
usī ko dekh kar jiite haiñ jis kāfir pe dam nikle
(In love there is no such thing as a distinction between life and demise do know,
the very one for whom I die, life too does bestow)
Yechury was essentially the most well-known face of the communists in India (no less than within the final decade) in political circles and amongst frequent people. His passing away has left a void, which communists will discover troublesome to fill, particularly in terms of political interventions and strategising within the anti-BJP political camp.
And but, it was underneath his watch as the overall secretary from 2015 onwards that the Communist Get together of India (Marxist) or the CPI (M) atrophied in West Bengal. Within the meeting elections which had been held in 2021, the CPI (M) didn’t even win one meeting seat within the state the place it loved an uninterrupted rule between 1977 and 2011. It was this lack of floor and, by extension, parliamentary energy in West Bengal, that prevented Yechury from having fun with the identical realpolitik clout; however the same goodwill he loved, as the previous CPI (M) common secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet who’s greatest generally known as the important thing architect of Indian model of cordon sanitaire political techniques to maintain the BJP out of energy.
What explains this contradiction in Sitaram Yechury’s political life?
The purpose of asking this query is to not criticise an individual who can not defend himself anymore. Additionally it is to not vent pent-up subjective grudges vis-à-vis the departed politician. Mandatory disclosure: this creator was a pacesetter of the CPI (M)’s pupil wing when he studied at Jawaharlal Nehru College and was expelled after rebelling towards a place of the social gathering of which Comrade Yechury was a number one proponent.
Political variations, particularly sans an organisational context, ought to by no means be allowed to achieve advert hominem ranges if objectivity in argument needs to be preserved. And, in any case, this creator, together with generations of JNU college students has seen first-hand Yechury’s attribute charisma and political wit to know why he’s being remembered so fondly by an entire lot of individuals together with journalists and politicians even exterior the fold of the left.
Yechury’s political evolution, and with him his social gathering’s trajectory, is symptomatic of a bigger and far older debate inside India’s communist motion, particularly the relation between communist and bourgeois politics in Indian democracy.
Two of its most essential manifestations within the Indian communist motion are instantly associated to the CPI (M). The primary led to the formation of the CPI (M) after a break up from the (undivided) Communist Get together of India in 1964 when a bunch of senior (however not prime) leaders pressured a break up criticising the CPI’s line for being too smooth on the Congress social gathering. This, by the best way, was additionally a riot towards the official line of the Soviet Union. The CPI (M) began as a faction however quickly outgrew the mom ship in common assist because of its mastery in mixing militant praxis of sophistication wrestle with electoral politics.
Leaders of Yechury’s era joined the communist motion at exactly this second of nice ideological churning inside the left.
The second key second got here in 1996 when the BJP ended up as the only largest social gathering after the Lok Sabha elections however didn’t have a majority to kind a authorities on the centre. With the Congress much more wanting a majority and having misplaced goodwill after presiding over the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, the anti-BJP group requested Jyoti Basu; who had been the chief minister of West Bengal from 1977 onwards, to return and take over the prime ministership and lead the United Entrance authorities.
This was nothing wanting a revolutionary provide the place a communist was being requested to take over the management of the world’s largest democracy. The Polit Bureau of the CPI (M), with Surjeet as the overall secretary, wished to lap up the provide however was overruled by the Central Committee after being persuaded, amongst others, by Surjeet’s younger colleague Prakash Karat, one other pupil chief from JNU who headed the JNU College students’ Union and later CPI (M) and earlier than Yechury. Karat’s, and subsequently, CPI (M)’s justification for refusing the provide was that communists weren’t robust sufficient to have a decisive affect on insurance policies in such a coalition authorities.
Whereas the controversy was settled formally, its fires continued to simmer, with seed gasoline (to paraphrase seed funding) from none apart from Basu himself who known as the choice a historic blunder. These fires can be resurrected within the interior social gathering debate between Yechury and Karat, a few of it brazenly and a few of it by way of proxies, over questions of supporting the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) authorities and the Congress on key points in authorities and elections.
Episodes such because the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, CPI (M)’s assist to Pranab Mukherjee within the 2012 presidential election and its alliance with the Congress in West Bengal are a few of the essential cases in these seemingly disconnected however ideologically linked inner-party debate. The final word irony of this complete course of was that whereas Yechury ultimately gained all the social gathering’s interior battles, his social gathering’s difficulties within the struggles exterior solely elevated with time.
Would issues have been very totally different for communist politics and CPI (M) in India had the social gathering debate been settled towards the Sitaram Yechury line? The best reply, like all counterfactual questions, is that it’s troublesome to say. The extra difficult and maybe the reply that’s nearer to the reality is that this debate is accorded extra significance than it deserves within the long-term decline of communists in Indian politics.
What actually weakened the Left in India didn’t even set off a wider debate inside the ranks in time. The trinity, which is maybe crucial for the stalling and eventual demise of the communist advances in democratic politics in India is as follows. First is the rise of subaltern caste politics which overwhelmed class-based mobilisation in massive elements of north India. Numerous first- and second-generation communist leaders had been utterly blindsided by it. Second is the demise of the Soviet Union and with it the ideological bulwark of worldwide socialism. And, lastly, financial reforms unleashed a brand new financial dynamism in India, which regardless of its failure to handle the basic structural transformation downside, has led to a big fall in poverty and ushered broad-based upward mobility even among the many center and decrease center lessons.
Chronologically talking, these three components fructified virtually one after the opposite, inflicting a triple whammy on the communist political mission in India. For communist politics within the classical sense of the time period, participating with these questions is tantamount to strolling on a razor whereas balancing its political existence and relevance. Accepting these criticisms absolutely would negate the necessity for communist politics and rejecting them in toto would render the politics divorced from actuality. To anticipate a person, on this case, Yechury, to search out solutions or options to those systemic questions is not only unfair but in addition unreal.
To his credit score, Yechury joined left politics out of ideological conviction fairly than materials deprivation. As somebody who studied economics at St Stephen’s Faculty after which JNU and was a wonderful pupil, the world should have provided many extra engaging and rewarding alternatives to him than turning into a full-time activist of a communist social gathering. It’s straightforward to criticise or disagree with Yechury and a whole lot of his contemporaries in progressive politics at this time. However it’s much more essential to recollect and admire the truth that a few of them determined to forego all elite privileges and embrace mass politics regardless of the uncertainties it posed earlier than them within the hope of adjusting the world for the higher.
The identical factor can’t be stated in regards to the privileged youthful era at this time for whom progressive politics is more and more turning into an train find microscopic however woke contradictions fairly than participating with macro points and the state of the plenty at massive.
In his post-dinner conferences in JNU – this creator attended a whole lot of them and chaired just a few as properly – Yechury would usually paraphrase a sentence from Karl Marx’s introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Proper. “…materials drive have to be overthrown by materials drive, however concept additionally turns into a fabric drive as quickly because it has gripped the plenty”, he would say in attribute chutzpah befitting a veteran politician, making an attempt to persuade batch after batch of scholars that their “concepts” had been “the” materials drive of historical past. It’s doubtless that he remained deeply cynical regardless of this exterior optimism given the reverses communists confronted within the 5 a long time he spent in energetic politics.
At all times able to narrate or take a joke about himself, Comrade Yechury would have appreciated one other of Ghalib’s couplets which seize the predicament communist politics confronted and can proceed to face in at this time’s occasions.
“ham ko maʿlūm hai jannat kī ḥaqīqat lekin
dil ke ḳhvush rakhne ko ġhālib yih ḳhayāl achchhā hai
(we all know the fact of paradise,
however to maintain the guts comfortable, Ghalib, this can be a good concept)
Roshan Kishore, HT’s Information and Political Economic system Editor, writes a weekly column on the state of the nation’s financial system and its political fall out, and vice-versa
