Giving enough indications about its post-poll positioning, the CPM has for the first time come out openly in support of the Congress by extolling its move to protect secular forces in the country in its mouthpiece People’s Democracy (PD).
What has endeared the Congress to the CPM is Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s letter to all chief ministers, asking them to ensure that no innocent Muslim youth was wrongfully detained in terror cases.
Stating that the UPA Government has received several representations alleging harassment of innocent Muslim youths by law enforcement agencies, Shinde had said each State government should ensure that ‘no innocent person was subjected to undue harassment’.
The CPM celebrated this as an action that would ‘undo the wrong’ of detaining innocent Muslim youths in connection with terror cases, thereby depriving them of their fundamental right.
Party general secretary Prakash Karat has been till now maintaining an ‘equi-distance’ policy towards both the BJP and the Congress and secretly working on his pet ‘third front’ dream.
In the article, the CPM has taken a side, ending its equi-distance to communalism and capitalism. It is also interesting to note that the PD is being edited by Sitaram Yechury, who has all along pushing for a pro-Congress stance.
“It is true that both had been on a collision course with regard to the party policy towards the Congress. But the fact that such an article has appeared in the party mouthpiece means lot,” said a party insider. According to him, such a ‘crucial’ policy change would not be taken by Yechury alone.
The article was very critical of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. “The RSS/BJP’s much-hyped campaign to project the Gujarat Chief minister as their future prime ministerial candidate on the basis of the so-called ‘vibrant Gujarat’ has been punctured with a slew of facts that show Gujarat is well below the national average on all human development indicators,” it pointed out.
Taking a jibe at Modi, the article said the ‘Vikas Purush’ might well turn out to be the ‘Vinash Purush’.
According to party insiders, the CPM’s new-found love for the Congress has to do with the ‘Modi effect’ on its terrain. The Gujarat strongman’s recent visit to Kerala is being assessed as a success by the Left. It fears that his visit to the Royal Family of Travancore at Kowdiar Palace and meeting with the elderly member of the family, Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma, has struck a chord with the majority of voters in the state. Moreover, his participation in Mata Amritanandamayi Devi’s birthday celebrations received huge coverage, making the CPM uneasy. And if its fears are valid, then it spells trouble for the CPM, which is essentially a majority community party in the state.
P Valsala, who was the State Sahitya Akademi chairperson when the Left was in power, wrote an article praising Amritandamayi on the day Modi visited her ashram. The coincidence irked the CPM to such an extent that its Malayalam mouthpiece Desabhimani attacked Mata for ‘selling out to the Fascist Modi’.