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Sonia's poodles

The Communist movement made its presence felt in India by putting up a small tent outside the Congress shamiana when the older party was holding its session in Kanpur some seventy years ago.

Permit me to suggest a site for the next meeting of the CPI-M politburo -- the kennels of 10, Janpath. Provided, that is, that Sonia Gandhi allows them to pass through the gates...

I am sure some Marxists -- their fellow travellers too -- shall object to this characterisation of the proud leaders of the Left as the Congress president's poodles. In my own defence, let me point out that it is the Leftists themselves who are grovelling before her, meekly accepting any lashes she sees fit to deliver.

Who is the Left Front's candidate for prime minister? Sonia Gandhi. With which party have the venerable patriarchs of the Left allied in states ranging from Tamil Nadu to Bihar? The Congress. When you come right down to it, there is absolutely no difference between the Left Front and the Congress with the exception of sixty-four seats.

These are the Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura. Bengal sends forty-two members of Parliament to the Lok Sabha, Kerala's contribution is twenty, and tiny Tripura sends two. It is here and only here that the Left can put up a creditable effort, winning around fifty seats or so. In the rest of the country the once flourishing Communist movement is a corpse.

Once upon a time, the Communists were a force in Telangana; after the last general election, the Telugu Desam's Chandrababu Naidu said they were a mere 'burden' on his party. Once a Communist member of Parliament represented Faizabad, the constituency that includes Ayodhya; now they don't have a single seat in giant Uttar Pradesh. Once, the Communists flourished in Bihar; in the last general election they failed to pick up a single seat, and they have now been reduced to begging for Laloo Prasad Yadav's support.

It is a different story that in the last Lok Sabha election, the Left had defiantly proclaimed its intention to keep the Congress, the 'communalists', and the 'corrupt' at bay. Each of those three elements, in one form or the other, is now being wooed by the Communists.

Jayalalitha and Laloo Prasad Yadav aren't exactly the cleanest politicians around. The splinter group of the Akali Dal is considered immoderate in its politics even by the standards of Punjab.

Yet the AIADMK, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Akali Dal-Tohra, and, lest we forget, Sonia Gandhi Ltd. are now the parties closest to the CPI-M's heart.

Comrade Harkishen Singh Surjeet, general secretary of the CPI-M, was a special invitee at the annual conclave of the CPI last year. Speaking to the cadres, he asked a very pertinent question -- why it was that the Left had failed to become a party of the mainstream, why it had failed to grow beyond Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura. Though he asked the question, he did not answer it. But it is simple actually -- the voters of India saw through the lies and the half-truths in which the Communists have traditionally excelled.

The fraud on the electorate -- opposing the Congress in Calcutta, Agartala, and Thiruvananthapuram, yet supporting Sonia Gandhi in Delhi -- is costing the Left Front dearly with the ordinary voter. Well, I suppose it is more a problem for voters in Kerala and Tripura than for those in Bengal; as the last election proved, the Trinamul Congress-BJP combine is proving to be a real alternative to the Left in Bengal.

Twenty-five years ago, the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev met the leaders of the CPI when he visited India. He advised them to merge with the Congress in order to strengthen 'progressive' forces. That piece of wisdom was not accepted (though Mohit Sen and S A Dange took it seriously). However, the CPI -- though not the CPI-M -- went along with Brezhnev to the extent of supporting the Emergency. This was bitterly resented by the CPI-M; the Marxists extracted a public apology from the CPI when it sought re-entry into the Left Front.

But wasn't Brezhnev correct all along? Today, the CPI-M is talking of strengthening 'secular' forces. What exactly is the fine difference between 'progressive' and 'secular' -- both of which words have been so abused by the Left that they lack any meaning? Why, to put it quite brutally, doesn't the Left merge with the Congress? Or at least openly proclaim that it is an ally of the Congress?

As far as I know there is only thing stopping them: the well-judged fear that Sonia Gandhi doesn't want them around. The politburo is willing to sit in the kennel, but the mistress of 10, Janpath isn't sure about her potential pets' pedigree.

T V R Shenoy