Left as an imagination in the post-EMS era

This summarises our predicament today as we fail to separate the real from the unreal and truth from the untruth.
Image used for representational purpose only.
Image used for representational purpose only.

We live in a time when reality is mistaken as fake and vice versa. One is reminded of a 1998 film, The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, in which the protagonist who lives in the US ultimately realises that what he believed to be real in his life was nothing but an elaborate reality TV show.

This summarises our predicament today as we fail to separate the real from the unreal and truth from the untruth. The Czech writer Milan Kundera once spoke about history as a clever divinity that could cheat us, misuse or play a joke on us.

In a sense, Kundera’s reflection about history applies to contemporary Indian/Kerala politics, too, in the post-EMS era. Coming to Kerala, this need not be taken to mean that this twist in state politics is a byproduct of his absence or that his presence would have altered the reality.

That said, one thing remains, he would have at least engaged his party colleagues and the civil society in Kerala in a lively discussion about these changes. Whether he would have justified his party’s changed position on various issues, including its attitude towards neoliberalism, is only a matter of conjecture. But the most important thing is to have an informed debate on socio-political developments, irrespective of the conclusions one may draw. For this makes politics an active laboratory of ideas.

E M Sankaran Namboodiripad, alias EMS, belonged to a generation who believed that politics per se was barren and, therefore, required to be nourished by ideas and culture.

Dialogue is the most important propeller which aids this process and thereby adds to the imagination of democracy. Except for the brief period he remained in office as the chief minister of Kerala, he spent the rest of his life reading, writing and speaking, i.e., articulating ideas and debating issues. In a sense, he measured out his life in words.

Though he believed in the role of ideas in social change, he also held the view that, left to themselves, ideas would perish in the tumult of everyday politics. They need to be seized by political forces (for him, the Communist Party), internalised, interpreted and implemented.

Further, socialism, to him, should begin in the head and then go over to the heart. He also created a sense of belonging and inclusion. While he disagreed with his political opponents, he conceded them some political space, respected them as individuals and valued their views.

To him, it was dialectics at its best. One can call this trust, mutual respect or democratic wisdom. But the fact remains that his politics was also transparent, like his life. In the past, if the Left, as an imagination, held high moral ground in Indian politics, it was partly due to the contributions made by leaders like EMS. They stood as a class apart through their ideological positions and personal probity. Not that they remained infallible, but their sincerity of purpose was unimpeachable.

Time has changed, and so have politics and society. The era is post-truth, and politics is neoliberal. Therefore, it is natural that political idols of a past era are pushed to the rear and forgotten or reduced to mere metaphors. Take, for instance, Gandhi, who is reduced to a spectacle. And EMS? He is a picture radiating an innocent smile.

Priorities and perceptions of politics today are different. What matters is power, power without any instrumental values, i.e., power for the sake of it. Political parties are electoral machines rather than agents of transformation. In a situation like this, ideology has little relevance if, by ideology, one means a set of ideas that stand for social change.

Hence, depending on the demands of the situation, parties speak in a vocabulary that suits their ever-shifting interests. One is reminded of a statement by the Roman Emperor, Charles V. “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse,” is what he said.

Exceptions apart, this is true of our parties as well. They seek to mobilise people by using all means at their disposal, even offering different promises to different groups though there is convergence on economic policies and issues. Allowing for some degree of differences in details, parties are pursuing right-wing policies. Some gallop towards it; others (the Left, for instance) drift towards it; some gaze leftward and move rightward; others look right and turn right; and others go right by glancing at the middle.

Politics has also become leader-centric to such an extent that parties have almost lost control over their governments, the leaders of which often pose themselves as infallible. This has dire consequences for inner-party democracy and, at a macro level, for constitutional governance.

Further, neoliberalism has reduced politics to a commodity that finds self-expression in advertisements and catchy slogans crafted by PR agencies. This, in turn, establishes the linkage between money and politics on a firm footing.

All these cumulatively constitute the greatest challenge for the organised Left in India. It’s true that in the matter of public policies, the government it runs in Kerala has certain limitations when the Centre is steamrolling over the state governments by making a mockery of the federal framework.

This, however, does not absolve the Left of the lack of ideas and imagination it suffers from or the decreasing role of ideology and the culture of debate within it. This will have dire consequences for the Left as an electoral force and an imagination.

J Prabhash

Formerly Professor of Political Science at the University of Kerala

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