JNU: The Endless Opportunism Of The Left Questioned Again
Recently there has been much high pitched drama of the political parties --- the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Mulayam's Samajwadi Party, the BJP led NDA allies and even the CPIM --- over the presidential election. The Congress led UPA coalition allies such as Mamta Banerjee's Trinamool Congress or outside supporters like Mulayam's party spoke differently. In the NDA coalition the Janata Dal-United of Nitish Kumar and the Punjab's Akali Dal also differed from its BJP-led coalition. Much more political bickerings over the election of the President, seems to have poured out than earlier times. Of course any regular follower of the trends of these parties in national politics will not fail to understand that each and every political party and more so the so-called main national parties---the Congress and the BJP — are having quite low credibility among the masses in the present scenario of unbridled costs, lack of proper jobs or other livelihood, and a bleak, uncertain, economy favouring only the big company owners, the capitalists, and the rich. All successive governments of all these parties during these last two decades haven't done anything about it. Rather they all have only gone on helping the big traders and industrialists. But the next loksabha elections and the chance of getting a good share of the cake, in the next govt is coming near. So the political parties have started unfurling their new dramas taking this opportunity in an effort to work out new partners in new coalition equations. So that once again they can manage to dupe the masses and win in the coming national elections.
But among this dramas the particular one enacted by the CPIM party has been questioned again. The CPIM which once supported the Congress led UPA govt and then broke away from it accusing it of its pro-US stands like the Indo-US nuclear deal and the Indo-US strategic alliance has once again somersaulted and declared of supporting the Congress proposed presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee. To many workers who have seen this party and such parliamentary left parties' and their trade unions' opportunism this is nothing astonishing. But the jolt to this recent drama of the CPIM has come from the ranks of their own student organisation, the Student Federation of India's Jawaharlal Nehru University [JNU] unit. The JNU was the breeding ground for CPIM stalwarts like Sitaram Yechuri or Prakash Karat who zoomed up to the top notches of the Party . But that same SFI unit of JNU has spoiled the party for the CPIM. They volleyed fires against the CPIM line of supporting Congress's Pranab Mukherjee for the post of president. The JNU SFI unit members through their meeting decided that: ''Pranab Mukherjee, who held important positions in the UPA Government, has played a key role in implementing neo-liberal policies and cementing India's strategic alliance with US imperialism, both of which are detrimental to the interest of the Indian people. Pranab Mukherjee's record as Finance Minister is mired with failures to check inflation and unemployment alongside shameless defence of high-level corruption''.
That made CPIM furious – how dare the boys and girls supposed to ditto the words of the party top notches speak like that, and that too in public! The CPIM's somersault has been exposed by their own student activists! So they could not leave at least some fellows unpunished. Under pressure from the party the Delhi State Committee of the students organisation passed a resolution, expelling four leaders of the JNU unit of SFI. They were also charged with indiscipline. Later, the SFI Delhi State secretary Robert Rehman Raman, who was on leave resigned from his SFI post in protest against the decision. Some weeks earlier Prasenjit Bose, the CPIM's main spokesman on the television, quit the party over the Mukherjee issue.
JNU is an important institution specially well-known for various brands of so-called left politics. And left politics is supposed to be the politics that arouses the common people against the wrong policies of the ruling classes and their govts., the policies that exploit and rob the common masses to fill the pockets and profits of the rich few in society. But within that left politics and left parties there are big differences. While some talk and attempt for building struggles of students to rally with workers and toilers to remove the existing oppressive system, some like the CPIM and the CPI have for long used such talks as a camouflage to garner votes during elections and get ministers' posts. These left parties have been going to any extent of opportunism to achieve this end and they have since long become an out-and-out opportunist parliamentary party.
But history at times through its process of development often aggravates the contradictions within society to such a degree that it brings out the truth more starkly before different sections of the masses. The young JNU students in the midst of today's conditions of rising protests against the capitalists attacks seem to have discovered it in one such situation prevailing now. Didn't these learned friends know that there is a long history of such opportunism of this party? When CPIM supported the previous UPA government they put up the plea that otherwise the communal BJP will come to power. During the minority Narasimha Rao govt in which Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister introduced globalisation-liberalisation policies these left parties carried out simply token protests of walk-outs and abstentions without ever opposing through votes the real proposals. During their 'friendly' united front govt under I K Gujral's Prime Ministership the CPI leader was the Home Minister while CPIM supported from outside the same policies favouring the capitalists and imperialists. Further in power during 34 years in West Bengal the left parties implemented the same policies until masses revolted in Singur, Nandigram making way for Mamta Banerjee's Trinamool Congress to utilise it to form their govt.
Looking further back in history many older people will remind that in the conflict between two factions of Congress Party the left parties found progressiveness in the Indira Gandhi led Congress and voted together V V Giri to presidency way back in 1969.
It appears that the JNU students have been quite late and lagging behind in realising this only in the present president's election. But presently incidents have moved further ahead. It is not simply a matter of supporting or rejecting just one pro-liberalisation pro-imperialist individual like Pranab Mukherjee. Neither is it correct that the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle can be carried out by the so-called 'left and democratic forces' by just abstaining from the president's election which the other left party CPI has been advocating. This left and democratic coalition is only the other name for the supposedly third front, which uses the same opportunism to gain some kind of govt power within this pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist system.
The possibility of real struggle has started emerging in different parts of the world, in Canada, in Chile, Greece, England, where the students are by themselves out in struggle raising their voices against the capitalist policies and their system of rule resulting in large fee-hikes, unemployment and authoritarian laws to stifle protests. Workers and students are joining together in rallies. But in JNU and other Indian universities curbs imposed by govt's Lyngdoh Committee have shrunk democratic space for students political voices, privatisation and commercialisation have steeply increased expenses still the students are not yet in any mass movement. Without raising a struggle against this whole system and the opportunism of the parties just by merely questioning a small part of the hypocritical opportunist politics of the left party, the CPIM, is no more sufficient. Struggling workers in many factories and peasants in different regions have already during the last few years started revolting against these parties' duplicity and tried to resist the attacks of the capitalists and imperialist policies. It is time for also all those who really want to fight, to detach from and expose all these established parties and prepare for united organisations and struggle against the capitalists and their state. Whether the young revolting students of JNU can develop their fight towards that end will only prove that the revolt against their own party carries real meaning.
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