BY NIRENDRA DEV

India has requested the faster extradition of Kim Peter Davy aka Niels Holck from Denmark. This happened on the diplomatic scene when Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was in India and having bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. She also hailed Modi as an “inspiration” and the two sides held important talks on green policy in Afghanistan.

Kim Davy’s question highlights the good old Congress-Communist relationship in India – even until the mid-1990s. On December 17, 1995, a large shipment of illegal weapons, including AK-47 rifles and ammunition, was dropped from an Antonov An-26 plane and was dispersed in the Purulia district of West Bengal.

It is not necessary to examine the merits of the allegation that Congress conspired to overthrow the former government of Jyoti Basu in West Bengal. The fort of the Marxists was too strong and of course Basu was very powerful and also left to himself, a very popular leader in his state. But things have changed a lot since then. Now the congressional party base has shrunk and the Communists have, ironically, disappeared from West Bengal.

For someone born in 1970 and having seen the heroic image of Basu, this journalist never imagined that the CPI-M could be a strong or weak “Zero-MLA” party in Bengal. But it happened. In the legislative elections of 2021, the forces of the Left Front and Congress led by the CPI (M) in the legislature of the 294 member states were reduced to zero. Now it’s Mamata Banerjee to the end. Above all, it is seen as “more left than left” and as a result it thrives. Her outfit, a breakout organization of the Mothers Congress, is now trying to make its mark in different parts of India, including distant Goa.

In general, in recent years, Congress has lost its base across the country. But in the process, the big old Indian party has become “more to the left”; and in more than one way. It started with the JNU protest in 2015 and also on other issues, Rahul Gandhi tries to imitate the language of the comrades. Here is the new challenge. Just as the two communities with the same “historical and cultural” origins do not necessarily evolve in the same way, the two political parties trying to shape a “modern pro-communist” look also cannot see growth simultaneously. .

Historians often equate Hindu civilization with “affinities” shared early on with Mesopotamia. But the respective trajectories of course and growth have been different. Therefore, as the Indian National Congress and Communist growths are discussed, we have to see why both have lost ground. This brings us to discuss a very important chapter in Indian politics.

The shrinking of the bases of the Congress Party and the Indian Communists has also largely created a ground for the growth of Hindu fundamentalist forces, like the BJP. Even the rise of regionalist stars like Mamata Banerjee has typical reasoning of poor performance by Congress and the Communists. In the 2021 polls, Trinamool’s 200-plus congressional races would not have been possible if Congress and leftists hadn’t lost all of their seats. This downward sliding trip of Indian Communists and Congress has also pissed off minorities such as Muslims and Christians.

The decline is not only electoral but also in terms of influence on the socio-political state of mind.

In areas where they are losing their grip, the pro-Hindu BJP has gained ground – of course building on the “Moditva phenomenon”. Religious minorities could have rejoiced that atheism (the Communists) is losing ground. But they are upset because a worse and more dangerous form of political ideology has taken over. The BJP with its commitment to make India a nation of “Hindu hegemony” is now the main opponent of Mamata Banerjee in Bengal. It holds 18 of the 42 seats in Lok Sabha and three years ago it also came to power in Tripura by overthrowing its Communist government in another red stronghold.

There is yet another important lesson in politics.

The BJP’s “growing support base” in Kerala also essentially means a decline in the popularity of Kerala’s two traditional political alliances – the UDF (led by Congress) and the other LDF, led by the leftists. You don’t have to be a bitter rival or detractor to point out that even in Kerala, Comrade Pinarayi Vijayan tinted the red flag of the Communists with shades of saffron, the color associated with Hindu forces. In other words, he is careful not to “offend” Hindu sentiment with so-called progressive communist ideas. Leftists are good at shaping events and so they can describe this appeasement of Hindu sentiment or religion as pragmatism.

What could happen if Kim Davy were extradited would be debated another day. Communists might be anti-religious, but they have long been the real guardians of a secular regime where nearly 80 percent of its 1.3 billion people are Hindus. Minorities see a protector in the Communist leadership although in Kerala the CPI (M) has long been also known as a pro-Hindu party. Then you had the Muslim League and the Congress Party with a good base of support among Catholics.

Election data for the past 15 years or so shows that over the three national elections and some state assembly elections, not only have the Communists weakened, but there has been a steady increase in the BJP, including in West Bengal and in Tripura. The trend has also been modest in Kerala. In other words, the weakening of the Communists signals the rise of a macho nationalism untamed by the Hindutva.

But pragmatism, as they say, is often a good political substitute for naked opportunism. So, the Marxists in the southern state of Kerala actually started a “power struggle” between the two dominant minorities in Kerala – Muslims and Christians. Out of a population of 36 million, Muslims and Christians together constitute about 40 percent in this state.

(Nirendra Dev is a New Delhi-based journalist. He is the author of the books “The Talking Guns: North East India” and “Modi to Moditva: An Uncensored Truth”)

Source: IANS

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