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The colossus has bowed out

Generals fade away while politicians retire. The first are remembered for their bravery and valour and the second for the good work they leave behind. There is go gainsaying the fact that society rests on the sanctity of their efforts.

Jyoti Basu, a colossus who has bowed out after striding the West Bengal political scene for several decades, will be remembered for the sanity and sensitivity he brought to politics. This was not only in his state but also at the Centre. Imagine, he could have been India's prime minister in 1996 to impart his vision and values to the country.

Strange, he does not want to recall all that. He just wants to be remembered for having led the '23 years of the Left Front rule.' Indeed, it is an achievement, keeping different parties in tow for more than two decades. But togetherness by itself has little merit. The criterion is what did the state gain?

Any rule, however long, is the means to an end, not the end itself. Basu can take pride for having effected land reforms and for transferring substantial powers to the panchayats. Thousands of farmers became land owners. And lakhs of people came to administer their affairs locally, without the pull of distant bureaucracy. But he mixed economics with politics. He could not curb his overbearing comrades, who literally brought the wheels of industry to a halt. He tailored the government policy to suit the faulty party line.

True, he came to realise the dangers of violence and goondaism, which Calcutta experienced when the police looked the other way. But by then, the confidence of top industrialists was shattered. Practically, none invested in the state anymore. New Delhi could have helped by allocating more central projects and assistance. But for most of the time when Basu was in power anti-Communist governments ruled at the Centre and were deliberately unhelpful. He did succeed a bit when his party, the CPI-M, wielded some clout during the non-Congress and non-BJP governments.

Yet Basu's success or failure has to be assessed from the impact the CPI-M made in the country. The question is why did the CPI-M fail in spreading beyond West Bengal? When the Communists assumed power in Kerala in the early fifties, the world thought that a Yunan had taken shape in India. But it was wrong. Political considerations worked in Kerala, more than the communist ideology. The CPI-M rule in Tripura is not because of the people's love for Communism but because of the Bengali majority among the electorate. No wonder, the CPI-M has been crossed out by the Election Commission from the list of all-India political parties.

The impression is that the party, claiming to be a true representative of the masses, never came to terms with the masses. Even the party's trade unions got confined to Calcutta, Chennai, Kanpur and Mumbai. How distant is the CPI-M from people's thinking is evident from the pictures displayed at its headquarters in Calcutta. The main hall in the building has life-size photos of Marx, Lenin and even Stalin. But there is no Mahatma Gandhi.

The RSS headquarters at Nagpur is no better in this respect. It has Maharana Pratap and Shivaji. But Gandhi's photo is missing. The extreme Left and the extreme Right have a strange way of ignoring a person who is still the tallest in people's mind. Gandhi understood India. He too wanted a classless society with equal opportunities for all. He can be considered a Communist who did not believe in violence. After the British left he said that political independence had been achieved but economic independence had yet to be won. Can this be possible through violence?

The Communists have at last allied themselves to parliamentary ways, although the Naxalites are still practising violence. Ideologically, both have faith in dislodging governments by force. They are completely opposed to the peaceful approach which Gandhi taught us. He said: "Wrong means will not lead to right results." But then all political parties, including the Congress once led by him, have forgotten that.

The new trend is still worse. This is the doing of the RSS which imagines that a viewpoint can only be stoutly defended by condemning or beating up those who do not accept it. That is the old approach of the bigoted aspects of some religions. It is not the approach of tolerance, of a feeling that perhaps others might also have some share of truth. India has never divided its thinking as black and white. There has always been a grey area, which is unfortunately shrinking as the days go by. This approach goes against the ethos of the country, whether it is applied in the realm of religion or economic theory or anything else.

In India we have arrived at a stage where an attempt of forcible imposition of ideas on any section of people is bound to fail. It may lead to violence and destruction. Vituperative methods cannot possibly lead to a solution of any major problem. Partly because that itself may lead to a big-scale disturbance and partly because it produces an atmosphere of conflict and disruption.

Many intellectuals, particularly of the Left, imagine that out of the conflict, the socially progressive forces are bound to win. In Germany, both the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were swept away by Hitler. In India, any appeal to parochialism, as is the RSS doing to inculcate sentiments against Muslims and Christians, is particularly dangerous, because of its inherent disruptive character. We have too many fissiparous tendencies to take risks.

In Democracy, Communism, Socialism and Capitalism, Nehru examines the main economic and political alternatives that confront the contemporary world. As a disciple of Gandhi, Nehru is opposed to the violence of Communist theory and practice. The gravest defect in Communism, Nehru says, is that 'its contempt for what might be called the moral and spiritual side of life not only ignores something that is basic in man but also deprives human behaviour of standards and values.' The CPI-M has shut its eyes to this aspect.

In a poorly developed country, the capitalist methods offers no chance. But without respecting traditions and heritage, no equation with the people is possible to bring about the change. Gandhi said the defeat of a pernicious idea depends on the capacity of people to fight against it. The Marxists at their meeting in Trivandrum are correct in assessing that they must intervene in the crisis which the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF has created in India. It is not only in the industrial sector but also in the agrarian sphere. But how will they do it is the problem.

Basu's declaration that he is not quitting politics is welcome. But he has to lead the Communists out of the thickets of rigidity and regimentation. He is right when he says that he is unhappy at what is happening in Delhi. But he is wrong when he believes the CPI-M can lead the nation to find the answer. There is no alternative to Gandhi's teachings.

Kuldip Nayar