This week, much of Delhi has been talking about the sweeping victory of the Aisa in campus elections held in Delhi?s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Now, Aisa is a student organisation of the extreme Left, and JNU is the university with India?s most kosher Left credentials. The election results have befuddled those who see all red flags as red flags, with the same ideology.
There are many shades of Leftist politics in India. Communism, in itself, has been around a long while. The Communist Party of India (CPI) was banned just after 1947. The ruling Congress?s attitude to the Communists was marked by considerable hostility. Nehru?s commitment to central planning, cosiness with the Soviet Union and left-of-centre ideals of Fabian Socialism did not translate into sympathy for Communists. In 1957, it is said that even Indira Gandhi, who was to shrewdly use the Left card later in the 1970s, reacted with such outrage to Kerala having voted for its first Communist Chief Minister (the world?s first elected Communist leader, EMS Namboodiripad) that her father dismissed the government.
Once the ban on the CPI was lifted in 1948, the Indian Left went through its own debates on the nature of the ?battle? it was waging in India. The party saw deep divisions, and in 1964, several Communists split away from the CPI to form the CPI (Marxist)?today?s CPM. The big tussle was over how the Indian State was to be defined. The CPI believed that the State was actually ?progressive? since it comprised ?nationalist? forces (though still ?bourgeoisie?!). But those who went on to establish the CPM argued that no collaboration with the State was possible since it was about supporting a bourgeoisie-led ?monopoly? (read ?in league with industry?).
Three years later saw another split, when CPM members like Kanu Sanyal and Charu Mazumdar argued that the road to revolution was not through parliamentary politics. This phase, the late 1960s and early 1970s, was one of the rockiest times in Communist history. This is when Naxalbari in West Bengal gave India?s political lexicon the term ?Naxalite?, for this village was said to have originated the notion that the State could be ?overthrown? violently. This is how the CPI (Marxist-Leninist), or CPI (ML), came into being?to represent this revolutionary fervour. Since then, Indian Communists have come in three very different hues, apart from the 25 or 26 variations of Naxalites to be found in India. Mind you, the resentment between Communists can often get more bitter than feelings towards those of a different persuasion entirely. Those seen as ?betrayers of the cause? are at the receiving end of more flak than non-Communists. In fact, on some Naxalite hit lists, Marxist CMs figure right on top!
Naxalites and CPI (ML) members tend to treat other Communists as part of the ?establishment?, while Leftists and those in the CPI or CPM look upon Naxalites with disdain as the ?irresponsible Left?. Yet, there have been changes, too. Naxalites such as the CPI (ML) in Bihar have contested and won elections. The CPI and CPM have arguably also amended their ?line?. The fact that the Soviet Union no longer exists and China flaunts its ?Socialism with Chinese characteristics? has challenged almost all shades of Marxist opinion in India. Today, the United Colours of Red may well make a Benetton salesman blush?red, of course.