Sunday Interview: ‘Soon the country will sing... Koi lauta de mere beete huye din’

Rendered electorally irrelevant, the Marxists are facing an existential crisis. Their ideology and tactical line are not able to match Narendra Modi’s development and progressive plank. The Communist Party (Marxist) is, of course, down but senior party leader and politburo member Sitaram Yechury claims that “it’s not out”. Speaking to Sanjay Basak and Namrata Biji Ahuja,

Mr Yechury says that he is confident that Mr Modi’s slogan of “achche din aa gaye hain” will not last.

In an aspirational India, don’t you think the Left ideology needs to be revamped to keep it relevant to changing times? Naren-dra Modi has emerged as an icon for development — not a Hindutva hawk.

L.K. Advani was the Lohpurush and Atal Behari Vajpayee was that all-embracing statesman. What happened to that? Eventually people will realise what’s happening. The illusion is breaking fast and it is not even six months that Mr Modi has linked medical science to mythology, citing “plastic surgery” and “gene-tic science” to explain the creation of Lord Ganesh and Karna respectively. Karna, he said, was the result of artificial insemination. No one is against Kashmiri pandits returning to Kashmir, but the way this government is talking of resettlement Kashmiri pan-dits sounds like that of Jews being resettled in the Arab land.

What does that prove?

It shows that Mr Modi is going back to the basics. He is propagating the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology that Hindu civilisation is the best in the world. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the RSS have perfected the art of speaking with a forked tongue. While Mr Modi appears to be a man of development, the RSS is distorting history, changing textbooks.

In an aspirational India, what’s the future of caste-based parties and the regional satraps?
These caste-based parties have to link up their politics with problems of the people, employment, price-rise and the growing aspirations of people.

So, Mr Modi is reshaping national politics — his “Made in India” mantra and “achche din aane wale hain” has cut across caste and community.
At the Red Fort, Mr Modi talks of “Made in India” and at Madison Square he speaks of “Make in India”. This is not a subtle shift. “Made in India” means India as a manufacturing hub but “Make in India” means come here, use our resources and maximise your profits. Loot and go. “Make in India” will only maximise and fatten pockets of the MNCs. The expression of “achche din aane wale hain” will soon change, people will soon be singing that Kishore Kumar song — “koi lauta de mere beete huye din”.

Once a state which rejected communal and caste politics seemed to have become a fertile ground for the BJP. What are the reasons for the BJP’s rapid growth in West Bengal?
West Bengal has always been a communally polarised state. This goes back to the Partition days when Mahat-ma Gandhi sat at an indefinite hungerstrike to stop the communal mayhem at Noakhali. It was the Left front which managed to keep the communal elements at bay. In the urge to dislodge Left front government, the Trinamul Congress had allowed and provided patronage to the BJP to step into West Bengal. The opportunity for the BJP to grow was provided by the Trinamul. In 2006 Assembly and 2009 Lok Sabha elections, you could see the BJP, RSS and the Maoists striking a grand alliance to dislodge the Left front. Now that the Trinamul has unleashed a reign of terror and Left cadres have been disarmed, people see the BJP, which is in power at the Centre as a force which can protect them.

Is the Trinamul playing a communal card in West Bengal?
After 2014 elections, the Trinamul is trying to appease minority fundamentalism. This, therefore, has the natural consequence of consolidation of majority communalism. Minority fundamentalism and majority communalism feed and grow on each other. Therefore, West Ben-gal has become a fertile ground for the BJP to advance. It may appear that the growth of the BJP is at the Left’s expense, but the fact is that our votes are not migrating to the BJP.

Don’t you think the decimation of the Left and the Congress has created a vacuum in the Opposition space, both in West Bengal and in the country? Do you see an alliance of secular outfits and like-minded parties against the BJP at the national level?
There’s no doubt that the decimation of the Left has made it weaker. Despite growing discontentment agai-nst the Trinamul in West Bengal, the support which should have naturally come to the Left is not coming. the BJP, which is in power at the Centre, is being seen as the natural protector and so this is allowing them to grow.

And at the national level the Trinamul has already sent a signal for a grand alliance in West Bengal.
Fighting jointly for the sake of political opportunism cannot be accepted. Communalism cannot be defeated by electoral adjustment only. The Left is committed to fight communalism; other parties need to show that commitment. Joining forces for elections against Mr Modi can only be counter-productive. As for the Trinamul Congress, how can we join hands with a party that provided patronage to communal forces?

How do you look at the Congress in fighting communalism?
We are asking all the forces to rise to defend secularism. Everybody who is willing is welcome to join us. We have done it in the past, even when the Congress was politically against us. It has to be a peoples initiative, not a mere handshake at the top level. There has to be a ground-level mobilisation to stop the communal forces.

Don’t you think the Left’s anti-reform and conservative ideology is being rejected by the people of the country?
No. Even in the worst of the situations like last elections our voting percentage was close to 40 per cent. The hold of the Left over people was never beyond 52 per cent.

There seems to be a division in your party over the tactical line.
These are not new. In the CPM we have a very strong inner-party democracy. The drafts go back and discussions are held. This happened in the past when Jyoti Basu refused the prime ministership. In any party, inner-party democracy is a sign of healthy democracy. But once a decision is taken, we abide by it.

What do you think is wro-ng with the tactical line?
The party at this juncture has its lowest-ever strength in Parliament. It is not growing. This is what we are examining. We believe the situation in India is ripe for the party to grow. The agrarian crisis is deepening, there is a growing dissatis-faction within the people. The Left has to build itself in a way that it can reach the masses.

There’s a thinking that the Left is not being able to grow at the national level because of its alliances with regional parties...
Our objective is to build a Left democratic republic to replace the bourgeois parties. We are examining why we are not growing at the national level. The regional parties are there only in a few states. The rest of India is larger than these states. Even there we have not grown. We need to examine these issues and that is why we have decided to hold a plenum for organisational changes.