Class to creed: CPM 'Religious Line' in Bengal

In an effort to reclaim the vital Muslim vote in Bengal, Indian Marxists are slipping, as quietly as they can manage, from the shackles of class as the primary identity of the Indian voter and easing into the wider space of creed. This may make them less Marxist, but it might make them more Indian.

The big story in Bengal since the impressive re-election of the Left Front three years ago is the implosion of Muslim support for the CPM. Twenty eight per cent of Bengal is Muslim, the highest, by far, percentage of any state. Since Muslims tend to poll in higher numbers, their effective voting strength is probably a few points more. If they desert the Marxists in significant numbers, the Left could lose up to 20 seats in the next Lok Sabha elections. If the momentum sustains, it could lose power in the state after three unique decades. Evidence of what could happen came in this summer's panchayat elections, when the rural Muslim vote shifted to Mamata Banerjee across wide swathes, particularly in south Bengal. The fear barrier was broken.

The Marxists are busy repairing the walls of Fortress Bengal, but the colour of the cement is no longer uniformly red. It is tinged with green. The incandescent alliance between George Bush, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh has provided an opportunity. The Left has begun to participate in conferences against American imperialism sponsored by overtly Muslim organisations. The juxtaposition of the crescent beside the hammer, sickle and star is the gift of the Prime Minister who publicly celebrated his liberation from the “slavery” of the Marxists after he decided that Bush was a much better ally than Prakash Karat.

Traditional Marxist analysis has been unambiguous: class matters more than creed. Bread has no religion; dignity is the right of the poor. This has been a powerful foundation of electoral mobilisation in as complex a state as Bengal. Precisely because the Left has ensured communal peace we forget what a tinderbox Bengal was, and can be. Like Punjab, Bengal is a border state traumatised by Partition. It has had to absorb refugees who brought with them a tortured narrative of bitterness and exile. Having fled from Bengali Muslims, it is galling for East Bengali Hindus, with their traditionally superior sense of superiority, to discover that they have to deal with politically assertive, if financially broken, Muslims in the land of refuge. The ‘escape' has been, if you like, ‘inadequate' compared to Punjab where there was a near-complete exchange of populations (the exception was Malerkotla).

But the CPM “chatrachaya” stopped at security; they forgot to give Muslims jobs, or basic amenities like schools and healthcare in rural Bengal. They thought protection was enough to secure the Muslim vote permanently.

This was the policy of “soft secularism”: keep the peace and let Muslims fend for themselves. This has been challenged by the emergence of post-Partition generations who claim security as their inalienable right as Indian citizens, and are no longer willing to treat it as some special favour. They are angry, for they believe that they have become victims of a more subtle form of discrimination, economic communalism. Bengal's Muslims feel increasingly cheated by a party they trusted without reserve.

Curiously, the moment of revelation came with the publication of a report that the Left initially welcomed, the findings of the Sachar Committee. It showed that Bengal's Muslims had received less patronage and benefits from the state than even in Gujarat. The comparison, as can be easily deduced, was inflammatory. Nor could Justice Rajinder Sachar be dismissed as a BJP acolyte. His report was the hammer that cracked the awesome CPM edifice even more effectively than the anger of Muslim peasant-farmers defending their land in Singur and Nandigram. Mamata Banerjee stepped in at a psychologically vulnerable moment.

Sometimes it takes one incident to symbolize and set off a larger rage. Urban Muslims, who are mainly Bihari ethnically, have been incensed by the insensitive manner in which the Buddhadev Bhattacharya administration has handled the case of a young Kolkata boy, Rizwan, who fell in love with and married the daughter of a Marwari businessman with a less than upright reputation. He was found dead a little after the romantic rich-girl-poor-boy wedding. Civil society rose up in a remarkable protest that stretched across the narrow confines of community in the belief that he had been murdered and that the police had been bribed into a cover-up. The chief minister sent too many signals indicating that he was on the side of the police rather than the voice of the people. Between Rizwan, Sachar and Nandigram, the CPM is in unprecedented trouble. A crisis can induce temporary alliances with unfamiliar bedfellows. The Left is reaching out, anxiously, to the Muslim clergy that it once disdained.

Is the shift too late? The recuperative powers of even a comatose Marxist should not be underestimated. But this much is certain. Red has begun to bleed in its bastion.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3426494,flstry-1.cms