Polls 2011: You can’t fool all the people all the time

The Left Front leaders in Bengal, from the very outset, were Marxist only in name, misusing a borrowed ideology to claim they speak for the disadvantaged classes; but finally, as the state went bankrupt, they could no longer fob off the people with tall promises, writes author and historian Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri.

West Bengal has won its second independence, as the Trinamool Congress-Indian National Congress combine has swept away the longest serving communist government in the country and smashed it to bits. Nobody was, however, surprised by this.

Because the writing on the wall, this time, was quite clear. Those who claimed that West Bengal was among the very few strong bastions of communism in the world, have been obliterated from the political scene. Now that the battle of Zeus has come to an end, it will be pertinent to relate the fascinating story of the rise and fall the Marxist titans in West Bengal.

Basu’s aristocratic roots
The Left Front government had been in power in West Bengal for 34 years, which, per se, is a record of some sort in India. On 21 June, 1977, the government, under the leadership of Jyoti Basu, was installed in power. The Marxist chief minister was — by upbringing, education, and temperament — an aristocrat. While in London to become a bar-at-law, he enrolled himself as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) more because it was the ‘elan’ in those days, than because of his love for the communist ideology.

No wonder, the fellow travellers in India gave Basu a royal welcome when he returned home in 1940. The Communist Party of India (CPI) at that time stipulated that to become a leader of the party, one was required to lead a mass movement or workers’ agitation. Basu was asked by senior leaders of the CPI to oversee the ongoing railway workers’ strike. But he was not made of the stuff to take up such a role. It was not his wont to rub his shoulders with the railway workers.

Nobody, however, had the temerity to pull him up. On the contrary, some leaders pointed out that it was just appropriate for Basu, a leader of the downtrodden ‘have-nots’, to liberate the workers and peasants from their serfdom. Basu himself admitted that since he was not an armchair ideologue, he did not feel it necessary to go through Karl Marx’s magnum opus Das Kapital. His favourite was The Communist Manifesto (1848), in the very first line of which Marx gave the clarion call “Workers of the World unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”. The Marxists in West Bengal were imbued with such assertions of their prophet. 

Half-baked borrowed ideology
Thus, a half-baked Marxist ideology was presented to the Bengali communists on a silver platter. Marxist ideology, said VI Lenin, was a mighty weapon. Lenin took up this weapon and brought about the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. But the communists here did not know how to use this weapon. In fact, they misused it. And the result has been disastrous. (It may be noted here that Stephen P Cohen, in his foreword to my book Leftism in India, 1917-1947, underlined the fact that the Leftists in India were influenced by this ‘foreign’ ideology called communism. They, therefore, could never adjust themselves to the nuances of an ideology that was, by and large, unknown to them.)

That is the prime reason why they have earned the ire, indignation, irritation, and disappointment of the people. The people of West Bengal are no longer to be fobbed off by their tall promises. Of late, they have begun to ask unpleasant and embarrassing questions — why, after nearly 34 years of rule, there is no semblance of infrastructure for industrial development; why there is a total collapse in health, education, and all other vital sectors.

The communists have left West Bengal in complete bankruptcy, with the state coffers showing a borrowing of nearly 2 lakh crores. While the people of the state are among the poorest of the poor, other states which have been traditionally backward, such as Bihar, are surging ahead, leaving it behind.

A state of delusion
In such a dismal situation, any government, with an iota of self respect, should have called it a day. But such petty bourgeois sentiments are not the forte of the Marxists. They were in a state of delusion, and continued to brag from the house top that the foundation of their party was so strong and their cadres were so disciplined and dedicated that it was well neigh impossible for anybody to even give a nudge to the party.

This braggadocio provoked the diminutive lady to take up the cudgels. Mamata Banerjee came to the limelight in 1981 when, to the bewilderment of all, she defeated CPM stalwart Somnath Chatterjee to become India’s youngest parliamentarian. And then began her odyssey. The chinks in the armour of the Left Front provided her with the stick to beat the communists with. She made no mistake to highlight the lacunae of the Left Front. What caught the imagination of the people was her pebeian lifestyle combined with an amazing determination to fight even seemingly unbeatable adversaries — a la David and Goliath. Who else could have been successful in overthrowing the Red fort, but her?

The Left Front government, which managed to bluff its way to an unknown destination, conveniently forgot the age-old adage: “You can fool some people for some time. But not all people for all times.” When the circle was complete, people lost no time to call the bluff.

— Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri was until recently a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. He is the author of the recently published book Leftism In India, 1917-1947.