M D Nalapat
Visitors
to China will go to book stores without seeing a single copy of the
works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the authors of the “Communist
Manifesto”. In contrast, should they visit India, several bookstores
carry the works of the two, while in cities in Bengal and Kerala,
communist literature is plentiful. Jesef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin may
have been tossed aside in Russia, but not in these two States, where
even today, they are lovingly commemorated in conferences and even in
curricula. Indeed, the first place where a communist party came to power
in a free election was Kerala, which elected the Communist Party to
office in 1957, only to have the central government dismiss it in
1959,after an agitation led by the Catholic Church that was backed by
the daughter of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress President
Indira Gandhi. Soon afterwards, in 1967, the Communists were back in
power, not only in Kerala but also in West Bengal.
Nationally, the only time that Communists have held office was during 1996-97, when the Home portfolio was looked after by Indrajit Gupta. Indeed, there was even a prospect of India getting a Communist as Prime Minister, something that would have choked off the economic liberalisation that has powered this country’s ascent since the 1990s. Luckily for the economy, a section of the Marxist leadership sabotaged the chances for West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu to move to Delhi, thus clearing the way for the Karnataka leader H D Deve Gowda to take charge, although only for a year. After that, the high point of Communist and Marxist influence in the central government came in 2004,when the government led by Manmohan Singh was forced to depend on the 61 MPs of the Left to ensure a majority in Parliament. In the 2009 polls, the Red bastions fell, and today, the two Communist parties are once again sitting on the outside, except in Tripura, West Bengal and Kerala States. While the Communist parties (the pro-Moscow Communist Party of India and the pro-Beijing Communist Party of India-Marxist) have both won and lost elections in Kerala, in Bengal they have been continuously in power for more than three decades, a record of longevity only equalled by the Congress Party, which was in office in India from 1947 to 1977 without facing defeat. The long years of “Red Rule” have changed the culture and mindset in Bengal, pushing to the sidelines the courtly, aristocratic culture that has for hundreds of years been the hallmark of the Bengali. In days past, visitors to Kolkatta (then named Calcutta) would marvel at the charm and politeness of every local citizen he or she encountered, from taxi drivers to hotel receptionists to shop assistants. They were matched in good behaviour only by the old Lucknow aristocracy, which to this day retains the formal traditions of the Mughal Court.
