Bengal Elections: Time to play some chess, Bengal Comrades

The strategic choice before the Communists in the 2021 Bengal elections is to stand down and declare unilateral support to the Trinamool Congress.
There is sacrifice and there is sacrifice. One entails unilateral loss and self-inflicted pain, so that someone else might gain. Then, there is sacrifice, as in chess, which is a temporary setback that facilitates securing a decisive advantage later on.

You sacrifice a pawn or even a knight, so as to tempt your opponent to move a piece out of its position that thwarts an unstoppable attack from your side. It is chess time for Bengal Communists.

West Bengal goes to the polls in 2021, to elect the next state government. The incumbent Trinamool Congress faces a serious threat from the BJP, which is determined to capture the state and is moving heaven and earth to achieve that goal—figuratively speaking, of course: there is little celestial about inducing defections from the Trinamool, partisan statements by the Governor or polarising voters on religious lines.

While the Trinamool and the BJP are the principal protagonists in the Bengal drama, they are not the only characters that matter. There is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress, which formed an alliance with its former foe, the CPI(M), the last time around.

The CPI(M) faces a tough choice in the next election to the West Bengal assembly, which has to take place over April-May 2021. It can either split the anti-BJP vote in the state, as the BJP mounts its largest ever campaign to capture the state, defeating Mamata Banerjee and her Trinalmool Congress (TMC), or it can sit out this election, declaring unilateral support to Trinamool, the party that is best placed to foil the BJP’s plan to add one more crucial prize to the collection of states it already possesses.

The Trinamool’s vote share in the 2016 assembly elections was 44.9%, the BJP’s 10.9% and the CPI(M)’s 19.75%, while the Congress secured 12.25%. Things changed dramatically in favour of the BJP by the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in which the Trinamool got 43.69% of the vote, the BJP, 40.64%, the CPI(M) 6.34% and the Congress, 5.67%. The rise in the BJP’s vote share was nothing short of spectacular and the CPI(M)’s decline mirrored that change.

Of course, voting for the Lok Sabha is different from voting for the assembly, local parties and concerns dominate the latter. The BJP is unlikely to have, in the 2021 elections, the same advantage that it had in the Lok Sabha polls. Yet, the BJP today in Bengal is a very different party from what it had been five years ago. If the anti-Trinamool votes are split, the BJP could well succeed in its mission of adding Bengal to its tally of states where a chief minister pushes the Hindutva agenda with zeal.

The CPI(M) has to decide its national priorities in Bengal, not contend with local problems. In its last resolution of the Central Committee, the party described the BJP’s actions as a threat to democracy and to the idea of India that guided the participants of the freedom movement. Should the party, then, feed that threat or try to foil it? Will aiding the BJP extend its political sway to West Bengal help the fight to defend democracy or weaken it?

It is not as if the party has any hope of forming a government in Bengal on its own or in alliance with the Congress. The goal of forming a government that provides the people with the limited relief possible in the current political and economic framework — the party’s justification for taking part in parliamentary politics, instead of focusing solely on matters revolutionary — is certain not to be achieved by taking part in the forthcoming Bengal polls. Taking part in the polls and splitting the anti-BJP votes could, at the same time, weaken democracy further, by easing the BJP’s path to power in Bengal.

In fact, demonstration of its determination to defeat the BJP, even by standing down in the Bengal assembly elections, could help the CPI(M) gain additional support in Kerala, where its chances of electoral success are definitely brighter than in Bengal.

Shouldn’t the same logic apply to the Congress in Bengal? It does not. For one, it is useful to have an alternative to both the BJP and the Trinamool in the fray: those who cannot stand Mamata should have an alternative other than the BJP to vent their frustrations; for another, the Congress is not a cadre-based party, unlike the CPI(M). The CPI(M) could hope to explain to its cadre why it is sitting out this election, without losing them altogether. The Congress cannot do that with its workers.

Bengal’s Communists have, for the most part, preferred Mrinal Sen to Satyajit Ray, but this is the time for Shatranj ke Khilari, not Akaler Sandhane.