People expect too much from the CPM

By O J George

Kottayam: A setback for the CPM gets double attention because the people expect too much from the party which stands for ensuring social justice, equal opportunity and empowerment of the down-trodden.

People forget that the classic Communists are not there anywhere in the world, and there cannot be regeneration of any more Marx, Engels, Lenin, Che Guera, not even E M S Namboodiripad.

One may accost Fidel and Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and a few Africal varieties.

Jyoti Basu’s time is over in West Bangal and Kerala cannot have a new P Krishna Pillai. Times have changed. Text book Communism will not relapse.

But then, total rejection of the available variety will offer opportunities for the ultras emerging from the dejected lot, Like Naxalites, to have their sway. That is what is happening in more than half a dozen states elsewhere in the country.

Here in Kerala, V S Achuthanandan faction and Pinarayi Vijayan group are fighting it out among themselves, the former for a toe-hold in and the latter for complete control of the party.

They can only ensure mutual annihilation, but the people would not have any benefit out of it.

One cannot exist without the prevalence of the other. Because both are representatives of vast sections of the people. But the people themselves are a dejected lot now.

There is an anecdote in “ Ettamathe Mothiram” (The Eighth Ring) the autobiography of Malayala Manorama supremo K.M.Mathew about the rescue of the boat in which the family members were voyaging in Kuttanad, when he was a child.

The local people swung to action and salvaged the drowning boat. K M Mathew’s father thanked them and asked them, “Do you know who we are?”

The locals swiftly turned back and retorted. “We did what we should. What is it to us whoever you may be?” .

This was the same retort given to V S Achuthanandan, Pinarayi Vijayan, and Prakash Karat from Delhi in tow, in the Lok Sabha elections.

You may be arguing about in unending rounds of party meetings blaming each other for non-deliverance. People do not want justification for what has not been done. They want action to ameliorate their woes in the nick of time.
Philipose Mar Chrysostom Marthoma Valiyametropolitan once raised a question. What would the poor do if there were no Communists?

Mind you, the Communists had earned a niche in the minds of the people about doing something for ensuring social justice, fetching decent returns for the workers and the like.

Forget about their insistence on non-belief for party leaders, razing down cultivations in the name of protecting paddy fields, their wayward activists charging looking fee while others do loading and unloading, looking askance at the many workers engaging in illicit liquor trade in every nook and cranny.

But the compendious entity of the Communists had heralded a new era of rejuvenation of the society in which the poor extracted their rights from the haves, crass injustices in some cases notwithstanding.

It would be a historical blunder if V S Achuthanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan continue to fight it out among themselves for extraneous innings, presided over by Prakash Karat, leaving the people and the main aim of serving them, particularly the poor and the weak, in the lurch.