The Clear and Present Change

History is important to gain a perspective, more so when a breeze of change fraught with uncertainty and expectations flow over us, slowly gathering pace and promising to turn into a raging gale within the next few months. As we look forward to exercising our right of franchise by March 2011, we need to look back at our options for ushering in a change in Bengal politics, after a long lull. Let us go back to the history of the three major players and try to understand their ethos. 

On 28 December 1885, the Indian National Congress was founded at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay. Allan Octavian Hume's poem 'The Old Man's Hope' published in Calcutta in 1886 aptly captures the sentiment of the founder :

Sons of Ind, why sit ye idle,

Wait ye for some Deva's aid?

Buckle to, be up and doing!

Nations by themselves are made!

Yours the land, lives, all, at stake, tho'

Not by you the cards are played;

Are ye dumb? Speak up and claim them!

By themselves are nations made!

What avail your wealth, your learning,

Empty titles, sordid trade?

True self-rule were worth them all!

Nations by themselves are made!

................... 

 Sons of Ind, be up and doing,

Let your course by none be stayed;

Lo! the Dawn is in the East;

By themselves are nations made!

125 years is a long time in history and INC has evolved from being the usher to the head of the table to the villain of the piece to disintegration to reorientation to back at the helm and so on.  But they have not only survived the test of time but also have been able to maintain her central position in Indian politics for all these years, as we transitioned from being Imperial subjects to a Democratic Republic.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formed at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of India held in Calcutta from October 31 to November 7, 1964. The CPI(M) was born in the struggle against revisionism and sectarianism in the communist movement at the international and national level, in order to defend the scientific and revolutionary tenets of Marxism-Leninism and its appropriate application in the concrete Indian conditions. In the fall of 1962, sharp differences over the question of the party’s attitude toward the Chinese-Indian border conflict arose within the leadership as a result of the heightening of that conflict. Subsequently, differences that had appeared as early as the Sixth Congress of the CPI concerning other questions of party activity—the evaluation of the role of the Indian national bourgeoisie, the nature and essence of the united national front, and so forth—also came to the fore. In November 1964 a group of leading figures left the CPI and proclaimed the creation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a parallel communist party. The direct intervention of the leadership of the Communist Party of China into the internal affairs of the CPI played a fundamental role in the split in the CPI and the emergence of a parallel communist party in India. 

Mamata Banerjee was expelled from Indian National Congress on 22 December 1997. The All India Trinamool Congress (formerly West Bengal Trinamool Congress) was founded on 1 January 1998, consisting largely of defectors from the then Congress (I) in West Bengal. A little bird quietly tells us the background as a precursor to forming the AITC. In the Rao government formed in 1991, Mamata Banerjee was made the Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development. As the sports minister, she protested in a rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, against Government's indifference towards her proposal to improve sports in the country and publicly announced that she would resign. She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993. In April 1996, she alleged that Congress was behaving as a stooge of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. She claimed that she was the lone voice of protest and wanted a "clean Congress". At a public rally at Alipore in Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee wrapped a black shawl around her neck and threatened to make a noose with it. In July 1996, she squatted at the well of Lok Sabha to protest against the hike in petroleum price, though she was a part of the Government. In February 1997, on the day of railway budget presentation in Lok Sabha, Mamata Banerjee threw her shawl at the railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan for ignoring West Bengal and announced her resignation. The speaker, P. A. Sangma, did not accept her resignation and asked her to apologise. She stayed away from Lok Sabha for six months. Later she came back as Santosh Mohan Deb mediated. 


Not much is found documented about the vision of AITC except what is available on their official website and I quote "In our vain self conceit and ivory tower musings, we have abandoned the path that led us to win our political freedom – the path which could also have led us to our highest spiritual liberty. And what is the price that we paid and still continue to pay? We have become corrupt, narrow and indolent, we have steeped ourselves into all kinds of ignominious acts possible or imaginable. We have lost ourselves! In this hour of crisis, when everything seems to fall apart, how is it that we can turn around and fight our own telling weaknesses and miseries? We can fight by invoking the presence of the Divine Mother who is not only present in the very stuff of the land but also in our hearts and minds; by imploring Her to free us of our weakness and make us great and mighty, not to please our egos, but to make Her great and mighty." Unqoute. Howsoever vague this might be, the one point agenda of Mamata Banerjee aka AITC is anti – Communism, or shall we say anti her bête noire CPI(M).


Let us go back again to the days she was part of NDA. In less than five months, she had threatened twice to withdraw support to Vajpayee's Government. Within the next July, she sprung a unique surprise by ``temporarily suspending'' her party's support to the Government. People understood it as her protest against some action or lack of action on the part of the Centre, but the method remained baffling. Then again, as she pulled out of the coordination committee of the BJP and its allies over the issue of rising prices, she was again making a point but not quite explaining it. In 1999 she had joined the NDA and became the Union Railway Minister in 2000 under PM Vajpayee. She walked out of the NDA in 2001 and allied with the Congress in Bengal to fight the Lok Sabha elections, with disastrous consequences.  She returned to the cabinet in 2004 only to remain the Union Coal and Mines Minister till the elections of 2004.  Then happened the indignation of single MP party in 2005, Nandigram and Singur. The rest as they say is history.

Now that we have a perspective of where the Congress, CPI(M) and Trinamool stand, the one single factor which is common to all of them is this : they are all children of anti establishment philosophies. While the former two, due to their long years in power at the national and state level, have become the establishment themselves, Trinamool does not have any seperate image other than that of Mamata and as Ashis Chakrabarty wrote in the Indian Express way back on Nov 8th, 1998, she has been able to portray herself as a ‘Rebel without a pause - sometimes apparently without a cause too. Revolting against friends and foes alike… And never failing to make her rebellion a spectacle eminently worthy of newspaper headlines. More often than not, her methods of revolt will be quite unconventional. So much so that one keeps wondering which is her message and which the medium. But her people lap it all up because in her they see the girl next door relentlessly fighting the venerable Jyoti Basu. They adore her but also fear her unpredictable turns in mood.’ 

The most interesting bit is what Rahul Gandhi is trying to do now. Congress has not been in power in Bengal for thirty three long years. Irrespective of those tumultuous last years of their rule here, the present electorate does not really have a feel of Congress as establishment and are best seen as reluctant former political allies of CPI(M) due to compulsions of National politics. To position Congress as anti establishment now will bring the party back to the mainstream mindset of the electorate and reposition it as a National party with regional perspective, which Trinamool lacks. There is another factor though, which Rahul will surely bring to the fore as days progress : quality of leadership. The vast experience of the Congress at running successive Governments and Rahul's ability to attract the young, from which future leadership will surely emerge, can actually eat into the vote base that was theirs originally, but later migrated to the Trinamool, slowly and dejectedly, during the last twelve years.

Actually, in March 2011, CPI(M) will not fight any opposition, they will be fighting themselves, as they did in November, 1964. They are now fighting the policies of their  utopian central leadership with more vigour than any opposition can even imagine and they will continue to do so till a clear political line emerges within. The Congress will fight the Trinamool and together they will take on the CPI(M). In the following years, this fight will intensify and one of them will emerge as the principal party with mass appeal. Since Trinamool will be spearheading the Government in Bengal now, Congress may be playing the anti establishment card against them in a run up to 2016. The future is impregnated with possibilities. Rahul probably has already started building up his team for governance. And he knows he can't do that without Congress having a solid political base, the task being easier specially in the states which lack strong National political representation to articulate and influence regional aspirations singularly.