The survival challenge before the CPM

The 18th Lok Sabha election is critical to the secular democratic India; the polls happening in the months of April –May are all the more so in the case of the communist movements in the country. The crisis that the Communist Party of India, founded in 1925 in UP's Kanpur, ended up today as it is marking centenary next year poses greater challenge to the labour movement’s existence like never before. After the establishment of Soviet Union with the October Revolution of 1917 and within three and a half decades of its emergence as the one of the two great powers of the world, the communists dreamed of their ideology governing the world replacing capitalism someday. After China became completely crimson in 1949, more than one-third of the world saw red flag fluttering over it. As the independent India post 1947 under the leadership of Jawarharlal Nehru declared to be a socialist state, the communist was predicted to be making greater inroads in the country. The Communist Party emerged as the second largest of all the parties with 16 seats in the first general election of 1951-52. In the first Assembly polls of 1956 after the establishment of the Kerala state on linguistic basis the communist party came to power with the support of two independent candidates. The party came by the golden opportunity to govern the state of West Bengal for more than three decades, so did they have monopoly over the neighouring Tripura as well. By the early 1990s when the USSR fell apart and the communists globally faced set back, in India the movement still held on. In 2004 polls, the communists emerged as the major political force with 59 MPs. With their support the Congress-controlled UPA administration under the leadership of Manmohan Singh governed the country for ten years.

All those are truths agone. The communist party and the left movement have historically never been more weakened just as the country is going to 2024 Lok Sabha polls days away to decide the future of the India’s democracy and the Constitution based on it. The Reasons behind the party's failure call for clear and objective study. The LS polls are particularly critical to the party; if it does not gather enough seats, as in the opinion of a spokesperson, it will have to look for some palm civet or pangolin for a poll symbol instead of its sickle and hammer. In order to retain its status of being a national party, which the CPI previously lost, the CPM will have to garner at least 11 seats from four states. It is yet to see if the CPM, seeking election in a total of 50 seats, can pull it off.

Nevertheless being part of the INDIA bloc led by the Congress whom the CPM termed as the bourgeois party, and having still made alliance with it in Bengal, the truth of losing the national party status still staring at the party. This situation cries for the party to soul-search for a fundamental correction. One has to remember, on the other hand, the RSS as it is to celebrate centenary is successful in its efforts to enveloping and hauling the county backwards to eons. Their idea of Ram Rajya challenging Secularism, Democracy, Socialism enshrined in the Constitution is staring up at the country as a threat. It is not to blame that communists are not seriously thinking about this or taking positions favouring the rightwing. As LDF and UDF are taking on each other at the election campaign in Kerala, they are part of the same front at the national level. It is to be admitted that communists made grave mistake in evaluating Indian realities and thus forming strategies. The situation also calls for the party to assess its lapse in taking creative approach towards religion and moral principles, while taking strong position against India’s stark reality of casteism, superstitions and priestly exploitation