Red alert! Our triumphantly confused Red Brigade is behind the times. The full page newspaper adverts proclaiming the anointment of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan have disturbed the comrades. They worry about Vijayan starting a personality cult. Their flamboyantly bearded patron saint who lies in eternal proletarian paradise in Highgate Cemetery must be smiling. What did he say about personalities repeating as tragedy and farce?
Comrade Vijayan is not starting a fan club of his own. He is just brandishing the fact in the face of the nation that the Communists have made a comeback in Kerala, especially when they were wiped out in West Bengal. He was also laying to rest speculation about a latent rift in the party destroying the fruits of victory.
The farce is that the Communist party itself is a personality cult. The tragedy is that it plays ostrich in the ideological sands of time. Communism was built around the worship of old Joe Stalin. With his handlebar moustache and psychopath’s smile, he is the first icon of Communism. Marxism itself is eponymous with its founder, and there cannot be a more transparent example of a sycophantic hysteria. Lenin’s embalmed body is still kept in the centre of the Red Square of Moscow—now a parody of Communist hagiography, and, ironically, a selfie opportunity for tourists. Next door, Mao Zedong, following Red Joe’s example, murdered millions of his countrymen in the Cultural Revolution, imprisoned anyone remotely educated, and cleansed China of its past simply because he wanted the Mao cult to survive for eternity. His embalmed corpse lies in an eternal state in a crystal mausoleum built by over 400,000 prison labourers (read poets, artists, teachers and intellectuals) in the middle of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. No other cult after the Pharaohs has created necropolises like Communism—apart from the bodies of Mao and Lenin, those of Kim Il-sung and Ho Chi Minh are also on bizarre display as mementos of the dark pain that clouds the destiny of their countries.
But why blame the Commies alone for personality cults? The CPI, which hath protested too much about Vijayan, discovered a goddess in Indira Gandhi during the Emergency at Soviet urging, with Dange as the chief priest. The Congress itself survives on a cult with a hyphen—Nehru-Gandhi. Nehru’s red rose, cigarette holder and adultery with Mountbatten’s wife is part of the glamorous cult of the architect of modern India. His daughter Indira’s personality defined politics for decades. Her ghost is a constant presence in the party’s seance with democracy. On Sonia and Rahul, it seems the family fanfare is gasping its last.
In India, in politics and films, pandering to personalities drives social kinetics. Temples are built to actors and politicians. All political outfits exist around personalities and dynasties. The BJP experienced rebirth only thanks to the cult of Modi.
So, let’s give Comrade Vijayan a break. He thrived under the divinity of Prakash Karat, who ran the party tighter than Corleone ran his business. He is coming into his own now. The ad had a paradox, however: it says the atheist Vijayan is committed to turn Kerala into truly God’s Own Country. The BJP effect?