BOOK REVIEW

He then develops his own argument,

Outstanding Chronicle of the Left

in India

The first three chapters of Prafuls book

are a chronicle of the rise and development of the Indian left during the 1920
40 periodfrom the early years of a few
communist groups trying to organise
workers in the industrial sector and poor
peasants in the countryside, to their
emergence into a political force in the
pre- and post-independence period. Praful
traces the twists and turns in their ideological understanding, and ebbs and
tides in their achievements. Notwithstanding the valour and sacrifice of individual
left organisers, the communist-led left
fumbled for a variety of reasons, the basic
being, according to Prafulthe Lefts
persistent ideological-theoretical and
programmatic weaknesses (p xi). In fact,
this is the leit-motif that runs all through
Prafuls narrativea sympathetic, critical and helpful analysis that should aid
the left to overcome their weaknesses,
upgrade their ideas and chisel their tools
of action to fight the enemy.
Praful critically identifies three areas
of the lefts ideologicaltheoretical weaknesses:

Having said this, Praful makes his position clear as a committed post-Marxian
socialist (if that is the term that we can
invent for ourselves): This needs a major modification of conventional Marxist
theory without losing sight of its foundational anti-capitalist tenets or goals of
socialism (p 20).
The next four chapters are a very
well-documented history and analysis of
the lefts rise to power in West Bengal
and Kerala, and after its initial achievements there, its political and moral
degeneration. As for West Bengal, Praful
divides the record of the three-decadeold Left Front regime (probably unmatched in a large region, province or
city in any democracy), into three
broad phases.
The first (late 1970late 1980 period)
was marked by modest, social welfare
and land reform measures delivered
through administrative means, combined with limited peoples participation. The second phase in the 1990s saw
popular demobilisation and a turning
away from redistributive policies, leading
to alienation of the poorer strata (p 161).
It was this trend that reached its extreme
stage in the third phase in the early years
of the 21 century, when the Left Front
government opted for a further rightward
shift and embrace of neo-liberalism, with
predatory land acquisition and industrialization policies (p 161).
Praful traverses this already welldocumented shameful history of the
CPI(M)-led left governments atrocities in
Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh and other
areas. But at the end, he sums up the
tragedy of the left in West Bengal in
these words:

The Left has never adequately theorized

caste or religion, despite their signal importance in India. Nor has it given the issue of
gender the salience it deserves in Indias patriarchal and viciously malesupremacist
society. And it has failed to incorporate the
question of ecology and destruction of nature centrally into its critique of capitalism
(p 20).

The Left lost multiple opportunities in West

Bengalinstituting ambitious land reform,
radicalizing the decentralization and devolution agenda, reinvigorating numerous social development sectors, conceptualization
new and different models of agricultural
growth, industrialization and urbanization,
and building a participatory, non-clientelist
relationship with its support base (p 187).

Sumanta Banerjee

ike the phoenix rising from the

ashes, will the Indian left re-emerge
from the still-burning embers of its
past historyof both heroic struggles
and pathetic failures? Will it become a
decisive force in todays Indian politics?
These were the queries, which both
Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik (the
inseparable friends), and me, along with
a few other companions who occasionally
joined them, tried to pursue often, during
seminars (which Praful indefatigably
organised in Delhi and other places), or
over cups of coffee and glasses of drinks
at the India International Centre.
Praful left us on 23 June 2015. But we
are thankful to him for leaving behind for
us this wonderful intellectually stimulating book that traces not only the history
of the Indian communist movement, but
also suggests an alternative courageous
strategy for the left in the coming future.
Almost ever since its birth in the
1920s, the Indian communist movement
had attracted a long list of archivists
starting from British intelligence agents
to nationalist historians and foreign
scholars. Praful adds a comprehensive
bibliography of this literature at the end
of his book, which will help young
researchers discover the sources of
much of the hitherto unknown nuggets
of information, as well as spur them on
to follow them up. Among all such books
published so far, his The Phoenix Moment
stands out as the most outstanding
chronicle of the fascinating twists and
turns of the communist movement and
the tides and ebbs that it experienced
spanning almost a century.
Praful updates the history till the
present times, and most importantly, he
pinpoints the political, social and economic challenges that the left is facing
today, and outlines a programme of
action (both ideological and based on
grass-roots praxis) in his last chapter
entitled Towards a New Left. This, I

36

for socialism as an altogether novel economic system or form of social organization

based on a qualitatively transformed relationship between natural resources, human
society, and production and consumption.

The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting

the Indian Left by Praful Bidwai, Noida, Uttar Pradesh:
HarperCollins, 2015; pp 586, Rs 599.

am sure, will inspire a new generation of

members of leftist and social movements, Dalit and tribal activists, liberal
and humanist scholars and researchers
to come together on a common platform,
to put up resistance against the approaching tanks of Hindu fascism.
Twists and Turns

april 2, 2016

vol lI no 14

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

BOOK REVIEW

Prafuls critique of the West Bengal Left

Front government is that it was far too
timid and pusillanimous on certain radical
agendas, and far too rigid and orthodox
in its industrialization and organizational
policies (p 187).
Communist Movement in Kerala
The next two chapters on the communist
movement in Kerala, and their description
of the fits and starts by which the left won
and lost power there over the last several
decades, make interesting reading. In fact,
the Kerala communists were the first in
India to gain a popular electoral verdict
to form a government of their own
under the charismatic chiefministership of
E M S Namb
oodiripad in 1957. During the
two years they were allowed to rule, they
brought about legislations in favour of
poor farmers and agricultural labourers,
and also reforms in the educational system.
The reforms were not of a worldbreaking revolutionary nature, but were
mere implementation of promises of economic equity and social justice that the
bourgeois Congress Party had been
making all these years. But they were
enough to upset the status quo of the
upper caste landlord monopoly in Keralas
agrarian sector and the vested religious

clergys hold on the states educational

structure. They persuaded the then
Congress high command to allow them
to whip up a violent public agitation
against the left government, thus creating a law and order situation. In a kneejerk reaction, Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru acquiesced in the game plan that
his daughter as the Congress president
had fabricated, and he dismissed the
Kerala left government on 31 July 1959.
A less discussed episode behind this
shameful history is the role of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)Congress collaboration, which Praful exposes. Backed
by hard evidence (like memoirs of former
ambassadors of the United States (US) to
India (Ellsworth Bunker and Daniel Patrick
Moynihan) and recently declassified
official US and British documents), Praful
quite rightly concludes:
it is clear that the CIA funded and supported
anti-CPI activities in Kerala in multiple ways
and over a period of years. .to topple the
Namboodiripad ministry.The CIA secretly
channelled funds to Congress office bearers
and labour leaders to foment industrial unrest and political turmoil (p 210).

He refers in this connection to Paul

Michael McGarrs exposures in The Cold
War in South Asia: Britain, the United

States and the Indian Subcontinent,

19451965 (Cambridge University Press,
United Kingdom).
The 1959 CIACongress plandespite
its temporary success that year
boomeranged in the long run, as evident
from the phoenix-like return of the communist-led left front at intervals during
the last several decades.
Unlike their comrades in West Bengal,
who during the three decades of power
that they e njoyed, squandered their opportunities by concentrating only on
training apparatchiks as musclemen, and
ignored the building of basic human infrastructure in terms of health facilities,
housing, education among other social
indices, the Kerala communist governments d
uring their tenures registered
achievements in respect of health,
poverty a lleviation, education and other
social sector areas between the 1970s and
1990s, which were collectively identified by social scientists and development
practitioners as the Kerala model.
Praful leaves to future researchers the
task of investigating into the controversial questions that he has raised over the
Kerala model. In the brief section entitled
Missed Opportunities in Chapter 6,
while recognising the importance of the

The Problem of Caste

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Caste is one of the oldest concerns of the social sciences in India that continues to be relevant even today.
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after the controversial reservations for the Other Backward Classes recommended by the Mandal Commission, revealing it
to be a belief of only a privileged upper caste minority for the vast majority of Indians caste continued to be a crucial
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Authors: Satish Deshpande Irawati Karve M N Srinivas Dipankar Gupta Andr Bteille Rajni Kothari Kumkum Roy Sukhadeo Thorat
Katherine S Newman Marc Galanter Sundar Sarukkai Gopal Guru D L Sheth Anand Chakravarti Carol Upadhya Ashwini Deshpande
Meena Gopal Baldev Raj Nayar Gail Omvedt Mohan Ram I P Desai K Balagopal Sudha Pai Anand Teltumbde Surinder S Jodhka
Ghanshyam Shah Susie Tharu M Madhava Prasad Rekha Pappu K Satyanarayana Padmanabh Samarendra Mary E John Uma Chakravarti
Prem Chowdhry V Geetha Sharmila Rege S Anandhi J Jeyaranjan Rajan Krishnan Rekha Raj Kancha Ilaiah Aditya Nigam M S S Pandian

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Economic & Political Weekly EPW april 2, 2016 vol lI no 14

37

BOOK REVIEW

model, he identifies the frailties and

flawsthe unintended results of wellmeaning measures like tenancy reforms
that led to an increase in the power of
rich farmers, which adversely affected
the interests of the poor Among the
other limitations of the Kerala model,
Praful points out the exclusion of certain
social groups, poor equity outcomes, relatively high ecological costs, imbalances
between different economic sectors
(p 222). He also describes the gradual
decline in the moral standards of communist politicians that create Cracks in
the Kerala Edifice (Chapter 7).
Sad Refrain
Running through the rest of Prafuls book
is a sad refrainthe regret over the communist leaderships lack of interest in
theoretical matters and the relatively
low priority accorded to Marxist theory,
as distinct from programmatic and practical matters, in party education. I share
with him his distaste for the then Communist Party of Indias (CPI) slavish
loyalty to the Communist Party of Great
Britain (CPGB). Incidentally, could not
the CPGB at its birth think of adopting an
independent communist name instead of
appending it to its imperial host?), and the
later Indian Naxalite movements sycophancy towards Mao. Both betrayed a
lack of innovative interpretation of
Marxism and indigenous ways of practising it. Praful sums up the historical
crisis of the Indian communists in the
following words:
The Lefts search for a strategic framework
within which to fight for transformative
social change based on popular counterhegemony remains both inadequately theorized and practically unrealized (p 78).

I also agree with him when he says:

the Indian Communist parties attracted the
brightest of intellectuals and scholars, but
they did not create or foster an internal climate where their theoretical abilities and
analytical talent would be encouraged and
original work rewarded (p 62).

Praful here raises the old question about

the tenuous relationship between theory
and practice. Brilliant theoreticians that
the Marxist movement produced were
marginalisedand often eliminated
in the erstwhile Soviet Union and East
38

European states by the state administration in order to throttle any dissent that
would challenge the hegemonic order.

MANOHAR
RECENT BOOKS

Peoples Charter
In the Indian situation today there is an
urgent need for a renewal of relationship between Marxist theory and present
social movements. It is necessary to reinterpret Marxism in the post-Marxian
situation and reformulate strategy and
tactics by the left to fight the twin enemies of the neo-liberal economic order
and Hindu religious fundamentalism. It
is against this political background that
Praful ends his last chapter, appropriately entitled Towards a New Left.
He envisages a Peoples Charter
under a broad vision of a socialist agenda
that incorporates, among other priorities,
plans for (i) radicalising the continuing
popular struggles and deepening democracy; (ii) evolving sector-based or
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a critique of chauvinist nationalism in
India, and developing new forms of international solidarity among working
people (p 335).
Prafuls Peoples Charter is on its way.
He would have been happy to hear the
sounds of the footsteps of the future
alternatives that are resonating around
India todaythe expansion of leftDalit
affinity; the consolidation of radical
students and their teaching faculty all
over India in the campuses in Film and
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the solidarity of the writers, artists,
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philistine practices of the present regime
run by a prime minister who has
emerged from the insides of a diseased
and decaying political system.

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