The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Left Government in West Bengal, 1977–2011: Strains of Governance and Socialist Imagination
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Author | Hans Löfgren |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023016634947 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Communist Party of
Studies in Indian Politics
4(1) 102–115
India (Marxist) and the
© 2016 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Left Government in West Bengal,
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
1977–2011: Strains of Governance
DOI: 10.1177/2321023016634947
http://inp.sagepub.com
and Socialist Imagination
Hans Löfgren1,2
Abstract
This article appraises the role of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) in West Bengal, where
the CPM-led Left Front formed government uninterruptedly between 1977 and 2011. It identifies
four phases of Left politics in West Bengal: the period during which communists built support for
a programme of radical transformation; the post-1977 years when the Left Front introduced land
reform and effective local government that produced a ‘party society’ in rural areas; a third stage when
popular support was subverted through clientelism tinged with coercion and petty corruption; and the
1990s, when growth in agricultural output petered out, the proportion of landless labourers increased
and employment in manufacturing stagnated. The Left had also not delivered significant progress in
social policy. The CPM turned to corporate investments and special economic zones. This trajectory
points to problems of party ideology and the imperative of renewal to devise an anti-capitalist strategy.
Keywords
Communist Party of India (Marxist), West Bengal, Left politics, party society
The Leninist vanguard party, which emerged in Russia under conditions of a repressive dictatorship, was
central to the twentieth-century communism. It involved, according to its proponents, ‘the selection of a
group of single-minded revolutionaries, prepared to make any sacrifice, from the more or less chaotic
mass of the class as a whole’ (Lukacs, 1977, p. 25). The declared purpose of this type of party was the
revolutionary transition to socialism. As communist parties in Western Europe gained electoral support,
the notion of a revolutionary vanguard was toned down, if not abandoned. In contrast, communists in
1 (Deceased), Last at Deakin University.
2 Hans Löfgren passed away unexpectedly in July 2014. Together with K.C. Suri (University of Hyderabad), he organized several
collaborative research projects, conferences and symposia, including the ones from which this collection emerged. This article was
Hans’ first foray in the study of Left politics in India. During his final visit to India in 2013, he conducted face-to-face interviews
with leaders of the Left parties and academicians, mostly in Kolkata. He did not have the opportunity to incorporate these obser-
vations in this article, but the editors believe that this is a valuable contribution to the study of the Left politics in India, and
therefore a fitting part of this collection.
Löfgren 103
China and Vietnam, and other colonial and semi-colonial countries, applied a form of militarized
Leninism to build effective vanguard parties.
By the time of the implosion of the Soviet Union, the vanguard party had been discredited in much of
the world. Left parties in Europe and Latin America ceased making even rhetorical gestures towards
Leninism and the language of communism was largely abandoned. Left politics has recently seen a
revival in Latin America and also, in the wake of the global financial crisis, in Europe. But few contem-
porary parties of the radical Left look to the Leninist model. For example, Syriza, the influential Greek
party of the radical Left, is a democratic mass-based party comprising different groups and tendencies
(Rorris, 2013). Orthodox communism is marginal, if present at all, in the popular wave that has brought
Left parties to government in much of Latin America (Sader, 2008).
In India, however, the ideology, symbolism and organizational practices of orthodox communism
retain a significant presence. Even as communism was declared dead in much of the world in the 1990s,
the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—hereafter CPM—the largest of India’s left parties, actually
gained in support and influence. The CPM traces its lineage to the Communist Party of India (CPI),
formed in 1925 when communists first came together to elect a national leadership (Vanaik, 1986, p. 50).
Throughout the freedom struggle, the CPI operated in the shadow of the Indian National Congress, never
able to effectively challenge the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru. As a party embedded within popular
struggles and influential within the intelligentsia, however, it made significant contributions to twentieth-
century Indian politics and culture (Damodaran, 1975; Datta Gupta, 2011; Nigam, 1996; Rodrigues,
2006; Vanaik, 1986).
After a turn to ultra-Leftism in the late 1940s (armed insurrection in the Telangana region), the party
won 16 seats in the first national elections in 1952. This made the CPI the second-largest party in the Lok
Sabha though still massively trailing the dominant Congress (Suri, 2005, p. 50). Internal tensions over
the role of the Congress and the class character of the state, which fused with the rift between the Soviet
Union and China, burst into a three-way party split in the 1960s. The centre and Left factions in 1964
established the CPM as the more revolutionary and China-oriented party. Another section continued
as the CPI, upholding the Soviet notion of peaceful transition and a national–democratic front with
the Congress. In 1969, pro-China proponents of armed struggle broke with the CPM to form the CPI
(Marxist–Leninist), which subsequently fragmented into a myriad of insurrectionist groups, some of
which later came together to form today’s CPI (Maoist) (Banerjee, 1984; Seth, 2002).
The CPM is a party of ‘parliamentary communism’ (Basu & Majumder, 2013). It operated from the
outset as an electoral party, albeit without ever programmatically resolving the tensions between parlia-
mentary democracy and Marxism–Leninism (Alam, 2009). The CPM is an officially designated national
party, but most of its membership of around one million is in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. In its
focus on parliamentary politics, the CPM resembles other state and national parties but differs from all
non-Left parties in deriving its basic rationale from an egalitarian social theory and political ideology.
It also does not depend on strong or charismatic leaders and rejects the identity politics of language,
ethnicity or caste. Its leadership in West Bengal and elsewhere is predominantly Hindu high caste, how-
ever, and the most oppressed sections of Indian society view the CPM with some distrust (Mallick, 1993,
pp. 81–82). The party is often criticized for subscribing to a theoretical model of class that impedes
understanding of the social reality of caste (Wankhede, 2013).
The influence of the CPM in mainstream national politics culminated in 1996 when the then majority
coalition in Delhi offered the prime ministership to Jyoti Basu, a leading party figure and long-standing
chief minister of West Bengal. The central committee, however, baulked at accepting governmental
responsibility in the absence of full control, a decision Basu and many party supporters regretted (Gupta,
2010). The CPM regained national influence in the first term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
104
Studies in Indian Politics 4(1)
government (2004–2009). The parliamentary Left suffered a series of electoral defeats: it won only
24 seats (16 for the CPM) in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, down from 61 in 2004 (42 for the CPM). In
2011, the CPM-led state governments in Kerala and West Bengal were both defeated. Tripura remained
a bright spot for the party: In this small northeastern state, the CPM-led Left Front government in 2013
won the Assembly elections for the fifth successive time.
This article provides a perspective on the CPM through an appraisal of its role in West Bengal. In this
state, with a population of more than 90 million, the CPM-led Left Front, a coalition of nine parties,
formed government uninterruptedly between 1977 and 2011. It won seven elections, a unique record.
In every election in this period, the Left Front gained at least 40 per cent of the vote. In 2011, though
defeated, it retained the support of about 41 per cent of the electorate; the CPM alone was supported by
30 per cent of voters (Chakrabarty, 2011).
The article is organized around four phases of Left politics in West Bengal. First, the period of
several decades during which communists built support for a programme and vision of radical transfor-
mation through participation and leadership in popular struggles. Second, the early post-1977 years
when the Left Front introduced land reform and effective local government. Bhattacharyya (2009a,
2011) has introduced the concept of ‘party society’ as a means of explaining the transformation which
eventuated in rural West Bengal. A third stage followed when party society, established through popular
mobilizations, degenerated into a form of clientelism tinged with coercion and petty corruption. By the
1990s, growth in agricultural output had petered out, the proportion of landless labourers was on the
increase and there were few prospects of finding employment in manufacturing. The Left Front had also
not delivered significant progress in education, health and other areas of social policy (Dreze & Sen,
2013). In these circumstances, the CPM turned to...
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