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| Karat 'confession' irks West Bengal CPI(M) |
| Rajat Roy / Kolkata Mar 11, 2010, 00:26 IST |
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Shocked by the disclosure that the party's central leadership had already resigned to the fate that the party was expected to do badly in the coming state assembly election in 2011, the state CPI(M) has started mobilising its cadres against this 'defeatist line'. In an inner party document prepared by the CPI(M)'s state unit, the party has categorically asserted that it cannot afford to "surrender to a line of capitulation" and defeatist attitude.
It has stressed the point that the party must mobilise all its efforts to continue in power. The inner party document is placed before the extended body of Kolkata District Committee of the CPI(M), which has started a three day special meeting today where this would be discussed threadbare.
The significance of the document and its timing cannot be overlooked as it has come immediately after the revelations that the CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat's interview that the “beleaguered and besieged” party in West Bengal was expected to do “very badly” in the next round of Assembly elections. Although Karat always avoided expressing his views on this issue in public, he was reported to have discussed this point with Eric Hobsbawm, the British historian recently.
In the latest issue ((Jan.-Feb. 2010) of the prestigious Left journal New Left Review, Hobsbawm discusses the changes that have taken place across the world in the first decade of the 21st century, where he lists the “collapse of the CPI(M) in West Bengal which I really wouldn’t have expected”. He says, “Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) general secretary, recently told me that in West Bengal, they felt beleaguered and besieged. They look forward to doing very badly against this new Congress in the local elections."
Though immediately after the came out, Karat tried to dilute its impact by talking to the party's Kerala unit's organ 'Deshabhimani' pointing out that he was discussing this point with Hobsbawm in an informal chat over the telephone and did not expect him to write on it. But nothing appeared to this effect in the West Bengal unit's organ. Now, the West Bengal unit has come out with a strong rebuttal to it in its note on 'Party Organisation'.
Since the note's circulation has been kept restricted to the district level party members, it is obvious that the 'defeatist trend' as pursued by 'certain section' cannot refer to any outside forces. In fact, it indicates targeting a section within the party. Though no name has been mentioned, it is obvious that the West Bengal unit is preparing itself for a future showdown with the party's central leadership.
If the party's tradition is anything to go by, then it could not be ruled out that in the eventuality of the party's defeat in the 2011 election, the state leaders would try to direct the frustration and the anger of the cadres to the central leadership. In his recently-published memoir, Jolly Kaul, a former communist leader who later turned a Gandhiite, recalled his painful experience where the then state party leaders did not hesitate to stage-manage a well orchestrated demonstration to disrupt veteran but later disgraced communist leader SA Dange’s meeting. A party insider observes that Prakash Karat might find himself in similar situation in the event of a defeat of CPI(M) in the next assembly election.
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