While a terminally-ill CPI(M) froths from its mouth, the Marxist grassroots in Bengal bay for former party general secretary Prakash Karat’s blood. The reason: His alleged spiking of a Left revival with Congress support.
Notwithstanding Karat’s emphatic denial of any “sharp division” in his party over alliance with the Tricolor outfit, an overwhelming majority of the Bengal Marxists have started wondering whether the time for a formal split had come.
Save a stray faction in Burdwan district committee leaders from most districts want immediate declaration of the party’s Congress policy “and the policy should be in the affirmative,” say a senior CPI(M) State committee member and a former Minister.
Another leader who is also a party legislator said “the way the social media is dissenting over the CC decision it seems that a formal split is a matter of time; maybe an election or two away.”
A strong follower of former powerful Minister and CC member Gautam Deb this furious MLA says, “the all-India party still runs largely by the funds fetched by our Bengal comrades. They survived and flew abroad to attend conferences out of the levy we gave from here and yet they are refusing to support us in our time of need.”
A third leader and another MLA from North Bengal says, “The people have not really left us. It is the national leadership that has ditched us. The party men are murdered, brutally subjugated by the ruling party so that they are forced to change over to Trinamool, drift towards BJP, sit idle or leave the State. These people are fiercely disgruntled and that disgruntlement is increasing by the day. There is pressure from below. If something is not done fast then we will become history.”
“Let Karat come and meet the party men on ground and he will feel the heat. Still Bengal accounts for the most number of party members. It seems a time has come to consider a split like in 1960s to give Marxism in particular and the Left movement in general a fresh lease of life” a former MP from Kolkata said.
This fuming senior leader said Bengal party men would not tolerate being smothered to death. “They will rise up in revolt and those like Karat would have to face the brunt.” He reminded had Gautam Deb not been under the weather for the past a few years things would have been different in Bengal and “those like this man from Kerala would have been swept away by popular mood.”
Incidentally Karat — accused in hushed tones within the party of following an appease-BJP policy to save some of his prominent backers in Kerala who are themselves facing allegations of corruption — has denied any division in the party. In an article in his party mouthpiece he has denied any division saying the voting that took place was a mark of “true inner party democracy.”
All but three central committee members from Bengal had voted in favour of an alliance with the Congress in the coming elections though the Karat lobby won by a huge margin of about 19 votes in the recently concluded CC meeting leading the party to adopt a draft resolution favoring an no-truck-with-Congress policy.