(Note: I am a die-hard Star Wars and have used some words that is from the vocabulary of the movie series, to those who are not so into Star Wars, here is a small note. Darth side; coined from Darth Vader, who represents the dark side. Padawan: young apprentice training to be a Jedi, Jedi is the term used in the Star Wars movies to describe a Knight of sorts.)
Communism as an idea had its roots in Kerala while rest of British India was rooting for Indian independence; communists of pre-independence India were concerned as much about the quality of independence as the idea of being an independent nation. The question was, will independence be of equal consequence to all sections of the society, especially, proletariat or will the British be replaced by a new bourgeois order of landlords like in the past. Kerala’s first government was a Communist government that came to power by plebiscite and not as the outcome of a revolution like elsewhere in the world, only the second instance anywhere in the world.
Growing up in a moderately communist atmosphere, the subtle propaganda of Soviet Land and Sputnik magazines and a dusty hardbound edition on Pandit Nehru’s visit to Russia had its impact. While pictures of a snow-clad Kremlin which I seriously thought was a mosque as a six-year-old gave Russia this larger than life fee and the smiling photographs of Chacha Nehru and his evident bonhomie with the Russians gave both Communism and Russia a special place in my head. The Triumvirate of communism in Kerala; Marx, Lenin, and Stalin adorned many a wall, but what sealed it for me was Russia’s backing of India’s nascent space odyssey. Anything that was Russian and by association communist was this ideal world of awesomeness. As a seven-year-old in 1980, I cherished a shirt on which my mother had embroidered Misha, the mascot of the Moscow Olympics. As the eighties dawned I had my trinity; Russia, Rockets, and Misha.
As the exciting eighties got off the block, I like many of my generation in Kerala was ‘that kid with Dubai parents’. On my first trip to Riyadh, I had my first taste of United States of America. But before you conclude that this is where I turned to the darth side, from the sickle and hammer red banner to the star spangled banner, let me state it for the record, no it was not here I turned.
The day I turned to the Darth side dawned just like any other day, it was a Sunday and I too woke up to that lazy morning with no sense of anticipation but with the same thought of outwitting my grandmother and her trademark style of coercion. To her Sunday meant a leisurely day of teaching me math. Step one of the escape plan was to get over to my aunt’s; this guaranteed that I could escape an idly breakfast on a fine Sunday morning and treat myself to bread and Kissan jam and delay that math session a bit. It also gave me the opportunity hatch an even grander escape with my best buddy and partner in crime; my uncle.
And as if reading my mind that Sunday my uncle walked into the dining room and gave me that let’s do a boy’s day-out-look with his trademark conspiratorial smile and an impromptu plan took shape. I was introduced to the world of 007 on that very day; Roger Moore and For Your Eyes Only; not the best introduction to the cult but anyhow. James Bond and his charm presented an alternate narrative and the movie had many mentions of Russia and KGB as the villain; all of which was re-narrated to me since my proficiency of anglaisce was limited to comic books at that time.
I came back completely and utterly in love with 007 gadgets and the man himself; Bond girls definitely added to this lure I am sure. But I was equally confused too; who really is the bad guy, Russia or America (for a long time I did not figure out that Commander Bond was British). Close on the heels of the encounter with Commander Bond came two more discoveries; the alpha male of ‘cowboy movies’; Clint Eastwood and boy I was impressed by the cigar-chewing gunslinger. The fact that I still didn’t get a word of the dialogues didn’t dampen my spirits, and I moved from Wild West to War movies. I found myself an all new trinity – 007, Clint Eastwood and War Movies.
Hollywood’s scale and my insatiable hunger for stories meant I watched, at least, one movie a day during my trips to Riyadh, and in a matter of four more visits, I forgot the idea of communism. By the time, I was eleven, the young Padawan of Communism had fully darthed into a Hollywood movie loving, hamburgers chomping, and die-hard Clint Eastwood fan. The next few years added Rambo and Hardy Boys, and the Padawan was lost forever.
This Hardy Boys phase saw me being very opportunistic in my relationship with the communist student movement. Loved them for their uncanny ability to disrupt school with a ‘strike’ on that very day you felt lazy, and secretly admired their rebellious spirit. It was at this time I added to my vocabulary two seemingly harmless words, ‘Naxalite’ and Che Guevara. Saying that these two caught my imagination would be an understatement; these had me in rapture. Caught my imagination but I was afraid to publicly admire them and that made it even more exciting I guess.
It was the late eighties and just as I was struggling with this new-found attraction for rebels and the communist student movement who worshiped them, I left the protective cocoon of schools and joined junior college. Which meant lesser supervision, and like many of my peers I chose my political affiliations. I had content with being a silent admirer of the leftist ideology since the only restriction on me at that age was, no politics, no drugs, and no fist fights from my otherwise liberal parents. But even though it was forbidden I went on to attend my first ‘study-class’ as a proxy to becoming a member of the SFI(Students Federation of India, a student organization that was aligned with the Communist Party of India)
Impressed would be an understatement, I was spellbound by his oratory, his passion for the idea of liberating the working class from the clutches of the capitalists and petty bourgeois. Honestly, I had to look up the encyclopedia to figure out the many words he spoke. What didn’t strike me then was that instead of speaking about the armed and unarmed struggles of the early communists in Kerala, this master’s student of Malayalam and the ideologue of the Party in our college spoke about the struggles of Che Guevara in the forests of Bolivia. While it may not have been relevant, it had a great theatrical impact and it won the young Padawan’s heart over, the head still held back. It was also a time of change north of the Balkans, a new troika in Russian communism; Perestroika, Glasnost and last but not least Gorbachev the reformist and affable face of communism.
Communism for the first time seemed modern and moving forward and a little cool too.
And the nineties happened. In two years we saw a caste based social re-engineering by a bunch of well-meaning socialists, like VP Singh and some veteran opportunists, like Devi Lal, the Left Front, all denominations of Communist parties supported this political front, a tatter of political parties feted as the undeniable victory of the Indian federal system. As a young man who had just joined an engineering college, the fall out of the Mandal Commission was staring us in the face. A few classmates, we felt were undeserving in our evaluation (then), and be counted among us the hardworking and more intelligent ones. Sharing the same desk with those who joined the course in some quota or other, was a revolting idea. But have to concede many we shunned proved us wrong.
While we all reconciled to the fact that this is a new reality we will have to learn to live with; there was a bigger fallout, Che Guevara, and the Naxals lost out to a sense of being wronged by a new political order and the communists were in cahoots with this new order. This was an unpardonable act and the young Padawan was left angry and hurt, vowing never to turn back.
Next year was even more eventful; a young political leader is brutally assassinated but his party wins an unassailable majority. The new prime minister unleashed Manmohanomics or liberalization. Everything changed, the IT industry just went into a new orbit of growth and Dr.Manmohan Singh was the new poster boy and liberalization the new mantra. Communists were on the other side and they opposed it with all their might. But the ground realities painted a different picture, years of labour strikes mostly led by trade unions of communist affiliation had crippled private enterprise and industry in Kerala, proof that liberalization was the only solution. As all odds piled up against the Communist ideology, which held on to a few bastions in the country, the unthinkable happened, USSR just disintegrated. In the next few years, many more communist pockets fell by the wayside Iron curtain and Communist Europe almost ceased to exist.
Many active and passive supporters of Communism in the past, me including gave personal funerals to Communism and wholeheartedly supported liberalization and enjoyed its early fruits. A good job, a decent pay and many ways to spend what you earned would pretty much describe the mid-nineties. There was no need to rebel and the much-hated capitalism was delivering results. The new trinity emerged; liberalized economy, consumerism and living it up.
As the millennium dawned there was no trace of the old Padawan left in me or the awe for Communist ideology. Whatever supporters Communist Party still had were at a loss to find a way to mobilize the new skilled workforce, definition of ‘labour’ itself had changed. Working class the traditional support base had no time to waste, s/he was ready to work harder than anyone else if the returns kept flowing and it did. Naturally Communist Party and their ancillaries started losing traction bit by bit. Popular narrative in society also moved away from sweaty and grease to glitz and glamor.
Just as everyone felt everything is picture perfect, Naxalism reared its head again and the violence it spewed and some subtle and some not so subtle symbolic parallels to Communists and leftist ideologies was the last nail in the coffin for Communism in India. This abject violence led to two things. Firstly, Naxals ended being branded as mindless killers and rightly so. Second an ignorant urban India refused to acknowledge the existence of such suffering in their shining world, relegating this to an irrelevant and inconsequential issue of an equally insignificant minority in their heads. As a collateral, the plight of the tribals and rural India, which was supposedly behind this movement was compromised.
As the new millennium turned a decade old we were exposed to a new debilitating monster, you don’t realize it’s presence till it has half gobbled you up; ‘economic slow-down’. While Indian economy did not face its horrors as much as rest of the world, our unhindered march to economic growth had somewhere turned into a lethargic trudge. While we blamed global economic slowdown and found solace in us being still insulated enough to weather it; the unsavory questions we wanted to avoid came back to haunt us and refused to be shooed away.
Social inequity was glaring, it was around us everywhere. Every big city had it’s very own slum and the rural to urban migration was just growing at alarming rates. The new social structure of haves and have-nots was not of landlord and bonded laborers but of an affluent professional or business who could afford the services of the have-nots.
The new have-nots did not have any champion as their old champion was not a champion anymore, and they still spoke of disruption and not construction. Disruption was something both haves and have-nots could not afford, to the former that was a loss of wealth for the later loss of livelihood. And every political entity seemed to be on the side of capitalists, but as long as one could have a few square meals every day, the haves and the have-nots accepted the balance of power.
I quote the Aam Aadmi Party here since that is the only alternative political voice one has heard in a long time, while not music for many ears. They claim to be a party that has the interests of the common man and till now in their brief history they haven’t acted otherwise or we don’t know of such contradicting actions. While AAP is making this new socialist push and wooing a vote bank that would have gone to the communists, the communists have lost further ground in electoral politics. This is not just symbolic but a sign that there is a need for an ideological alternative. What is strikingly similar in the success of AAP and the glory years Communist Party is how the latter in their erstwhile bastions managed to connect with the voter at the last mile. Communist Party had an organizational structure that any organization would envy, it was aligned to a single ideology and objective and its influence ran deep.
Given the number of misses, that the AAP have had, it would be too optimistic to anoint them as the new keepers of socialist conscience, but the Communist Party has really missed an opportunity to recast themselves in a new reality.
I am one of the beneficiaries of Manmohanomics and a self-confessed admirer of the intellect and vision of a much-maligned man. While not a young Padawan of Communist ideology anymore, there are times you wish the force awakened and a truly alternative political point of view came forth. An alternative that impacts those who haven’t ridden this first wave of economic growth, where we stop doling out benefits and instead give every soul the right and the means to have a go at being part of the second wave of growth when it presents itself.
Will the force awaken and a Jedi Master step out of the shadows and lead, before a whole generation darths.
