A Dilemma For Bengal CPM: Who is the primary enemy?

Many within CPI-M indicated that they would lose the ground that they have gained after a decade-long struggle against TMC.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the Communist Party of India Marxist’s ongoing dilemma to share the stage in the broad oppositional platform, which has been christened as the INDIA alliance, with its fundamental rival, the Trinamool Congress, can be compared with that of the Chinese Communist Party’s confusion in the 1930s over its great rival, the Kuomintang.

The Chinese Community Party (CPC) and Kuomintang – a totalitarian nationalist party – were sworn enemies and both the leaderships were deeply apprehensive about a “United Front” to resist Japan as it invaded China in 1931. Yet the parties formed a front and Mao Tse-Tung explained in his seminal 1937 essay why the rivals bonded. “(In) the present period of the anti-Japanese war, it (CCP) has adopted a moderate policy towards the Kuomintang and the domestic feudal forces as the Kuomintang has pressed itself in favour of resisting Japan,” he wrote.

Mao’s observation evinced that in history-defining dilemmas, a party is required to differentiate between its primary rival – in this case Japan – from its secondary opponent, as in Kuomintang. Following China’s defeat, the CPC resumed its resistance, defeating Kuomintang and completing the Chinese Revolution in 1949.

For the Bengal CPI-M, the situation is near similar.

Wrong Time To Ally

In the recent Bengal panchayat poll, the Left’s vote went up from 5.5 percent to 13.5 percent. Left leaders and cadres believe that the rise was an outcome of relentless opposition to its primary enemy, the Trinamool Congress (TMC). BJP was targeted but not as much as TMC since the saffron party is not governing Bengal. Acrimony between the Left and the BJP is historically less, therefore situating BJP as the “secondary enemy”.

But the political situation has radically changed since mid-June. On one hand, CPI-M’s general secretary Sitaram Yechury was spotted in the opposition’s Patna rally with Mamata Banerjee. And on the other hand, TMC stepped up its offensive against the Left in the run up to the Panchayat polls. This contradictory scenario was soon followed by the launching of the INDIA alliance with the TMC and the Left on board.

The turn of events has forced a “‘Kuomintang moment” on CPI-M. CPI-M’s cadres and leaders deliberated on the risks of being viewed in the same frame with Mamata. Many within CPI-M indicated that they would lose the ground that they have gained after a decade-long struggle against TMC.

The alarm was triggered as BJP forthwith branded the two rivals as “friends”. The BJP campaign may damage the Left as the anti-TMC vote – which has now moved from the Right to the Left – may again return to the saffron camp.

Secondly, it is easier said than done in Bengal’s deeply acrimonious politics to share a platform with the primary enemy. Till the rise of the BJP in Bengal in 2019, for 20 years (1998-2018), TMC and the CPI-M were each other’s foremost rivals.

Their animosity is legendary and then there was a sudden call to unite. For victims of organised political violence – on both sides – it would be anathema to accept their main rival.

Therefore, the contradictory approach of the party to bond with TMC nationally while confronting it in Bengal was flagged by many in CPI-M’s Central Committee meeting in early August. The party is facing a similar dilemma in Kerala where its key rival is Congress – the INDIA pivot.

The Frenemy Dilemma

In order to assuage critics in the party, CPI-M’s state and central leadership underscored two points.

One, the party will continue to oppose TMC in Bengal, while firing on all cylinders against the BJP nationally. Two, CPI-M’s leadership worked overtime to remind its workers that the last Party Congress (April 2022) mightily asserted that their “main task is to isolate and defeat the BJP”.

In order to do so, the party “will cooperate” with secular opposition forces inside and outside the Parliament. In a Central Committee communiqué in April 2023, the CPI-M “reiterated” its earlier stand and added: “As the situation varies from state to state these arrangements will necessarily be state specific.”

Yet it is impossible to anticipate if the foot soldiers would accept TMC or dump the party’s whip to vote against the BJP. To control cadres with resolutions requires outstanding control; whether CPI-M still commands such control over cadres is a question that the leadership must be asking routinely.

History however showcases both the patterns.

While in the 1930s China, two sworn enemies united to defeat a bigger force, around the same time (1933) the German opposition – comprising the Communists, Social Democrats and Centrist Catholics – failed to unite as they “distrusted one another almost as much as they feared the Nazis” and were unable “to mount a unified opposition” to Adolf Hitler, concluded historian Timothy Ryback among others.

The winter of 2023 will indicate whether the Bengali Communists have aligned with the Chinese or the German dilemma.

Suvojit Bagchi is a Kolkata-based journalist who previously worked with Ananda Bazar Patrika, BBC World Service and The Hindu. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.