Window on politics
VENKATESH ATHREYA
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Anthology of articles written over the last decade on the current issues in governance
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POLITICS AND POLICIES — A Marxist Perspective: Prakash Karat; Prajasakti Book House, 1-1-187/1/2, Chikkadpally, Hyderabad-500020. Rs. 200.
This book brings together 61 articles written between 1998 and 2007 by Prakash Karat, the General Secretary of the CPI (M). Most of them have been published in the CPI (M)’s English language weekly, People’s Democracy, and a few longer pieces in the party’s theoretical quarterly in English, The Marxist.
Political issues
The collection is remarkable in several respects. First, rarely do full time politicians in India, least of all all-India leaders, write seriously and with depth on political and ideological issues. Second, this collection establishes that a political party can operate on the basis of an identifiable set of value-based principles and a carefully worked out long term perspective consistently over a very long period and in a variety of conditions and contexts. Third, Karat is equally at home whether writing on an immediate political issue explaining his party’s position in concrete terms in a manner intelligible to the lay person or writing on issues of considerable theoretical and ideological import.
Throughout, the writing style is simple and direct, reminding one of the style of E.M.S. Namboodiripad, an outstanding activist of both the freedom movement and the communist movement. Writing on complex political and ideological issues in a manner that rank and file activists can understand has, of course, been a hallmark of many of the leaders of the Communist movement in India. Nearly half of the articles deal with some aspect or the other of BJP-NDA rule and policies, as well as the communal ideology and fascism-in-action of the Sangh Parivar. This is not surprising since a large proportion of the articles pertain to the period 1998-2004 when BJP-NDA was in power at the Centre. They succeed in bringing out the follies of BJP’s policies in the arenas of communal harmony and national unity, Centre-state relations, constitutional questions, nuclear policy, culture and ideology and, foreign policy and the economy.
Karat brings out the fact that, for all its protestations of nationalism, the BJP in power had been servile to U.S. interests and had actively promoted and tried to operationalise the idea of strategic partnership with the U.S. initiated by the P.V. Narasimha Rao dispensation in the early 1990s. Karat also reminds us forcefully of the communal carnage perpetrated in various parts of the country during the NDA rule, with the so-called secular partners of the BJP in the NDA being largely silent spectators.
The BJP’s rejection of federalism and the need to give greater powers to the states within a strong Indian Union, its rejection of the principle of linguistic organisation of states, its attempts to float the idea of a presidential form of government and of changes in the Constitution to minimise democratic space in the Parliament in the name of stability of governments, its espousal of draconian legislation in the name of fighting terror, and its blatantly communal ideology and practice, including the condonation of acts of terror by the Sangh Parivar outfits against minorities — all these are documented by Karat.
Economic policies
The defeat of the NDA combine in the 2004 parliamentary elections and its replacement by the UPA coalition led by the Congress, with the support of the Left parties from outside, many had hoped, would usher in a different set of policies which would eschew communalism and correct the harmful consequences of neoliberal economic policies. Karat demonstrates that this has hardly happened. He provides a window for understanding why this has happened, by underlining the more or less identical class nature of the economic policies of both the BJP and the Congress. As such policies generate mass discontent. They provide a fertile soil for the rise of communal and divisive ideologies. The Congress, though not a communal party, tends to compromise on issues of secularism in such a context. The Congress also compromises on issues of national unity, its dalliance with separatist forces in Tripura against the Left being a case in point. Above all, the relentless pursuit of neoliberal policies by the Congress and the BJP over the last decade and a half has pushed the ruling parties into an ever-closer embrace with the U.S., even as their alienation from the mass of the people on account of the harmful consequences of their economic policies grows. This explains the continuity in the pursuit of strategic partnership with the U.S. since the early 1990s, culminating in the Indo-U.S. Nuclear deal, whose terms are clearly loaded against our sovereignty and pursuit of an independent foreign policy.
On nuclear policy
Besides dealing with issues of current politics, Karat has also dealt with some critical ideological and political issues with great clarity. I would especially recommend the articles on nuclear policies including the attitude to be taken to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and on the basic issues concerning nuclear disarmament; the challenges faced by Left-led state governments and their achievements; and the long-term strategic perspective of the CPI (M).
The publisher has to be commended for making available a collection of articles that provide a window to the perspectives of the CPI (M) as well as to the wider world of politics and ideology. However, it is a pity that the volume has been so shoddily brought out, possibly to meet some deadline.
There is no table of contents, but a so-called index which does not tell us where each article was first published (or whether the article has not been published before). One hopes that a second edition, including Karat’s more recent articles, will be brought out in a more professional manner.
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