A Karat Shot in the Dark

Call it a belated admission of error by CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat or his desperate move to assuage the sentiments of West Bengal party leaders.

Call it a belated admission of error by CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat or his desperate move to assuage the sentiments of West Bengal party leaders. They consider this mistake a fatal error by the central leadership, one which allowed their  opponents to unite. 

Whatever the case, Karat’s assertion that “a third alternative is not feasible” makes sense. It made sense even in 2008, when he steered the Left to a half-baked third front experiment, destroying the Congress-Communist alliance that CPM stalwarts Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu had built up as a bulwark against communal politics.

“A third alternative is not feasible in the country again,” Karat said on 13 July, while delivering the Pramode Dasgupta Memorial Lecture in Kolkata, “At the all-India level, the task of building a Left and democratic alliance is much more complicated and difficult—because in most parts, the influence of the bourgeoisie parties [is] strong among the people.”

Communist parties have admitted mistakes in the past as well. But the mistakes this time round are too enormous to be absolved by a simple admission of them. The Surjeet-Basu duo, even while aligning with the Congress, had kept alive the possibility of a third front. Under Karat, however, the party has lost its key role in both the options. His stress on “go alone”, too, looks meaningless as it has come at a time when the party is facing the threat of losing both its West Bengal and Kerala bastions.