The political Left in India and Sri Lanka have a conspicuously intertwined and parallel destiny spanning nearly a century. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), founded on December 18, 1935, is one of the oldest existing communist parties in Asia. The party is a Maxist-Leninist outfit with a strong Trotskyist inclination. It played a remarkable role in the Quit India Movement through the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma. Thus the Sri Lankan Left has an umbilical tie with the Indian Left.
Taxonomically, in India and Sri Lanka, there are two major species of Communist parties -- first, the mainstream and parliamentary Left that often forge a coalition with the national bourgeoisie, and second, the radical or alternative Left. The former includes the LSSP and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) in Sri Lanka and the CPI and the CPI (M) in India. The latter category includes the Nava Sama Samaja Party, the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka, and numerous Left-Wing Extremist factions like the CPI (Maoist) in India.
The mainstream Left parties in Sri Lanka, like their Indian counterparts, have been catalysts in the democratization and promotion of working-class interests through championing the causes of social justice, economic redistribution, and state-led socio-economic transformation in their respective nations to a considerable extent.
Coalition compulsions
Coalition politics has been like riding a tiger for the mainstream Left in Sri Lanka and India. The mainstream Left’s first major coalition experiment in Sri Lanka was with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in 1964 which was a traumatic turning point for the entire Left. This marked the beginning of a long history of tie-ups between the LSSP and the CPSL with the SLFP. However, it triggered the Great Schism in the Sri Lankan Left. The Left split into the ‘Old Left’ or mainstream Left and the ‘New Left’ or radical Left. ‘The Old’ opted for the parliamentary path and ‘The New’ preferred armed struggle. The ‘New Left’ formed the LSSP (Revolutionary) and the CPSL (Peking wing).
For the mainstream Left, coalition politics and de-radicalization marked the starting point of their ideological compromises coupled with the gradual decline of their support base and electoral strength in both countries. The Old Left was forced to continue the coalition with the SLFP for their bare survival; disregarding their ideology and agenda. They de-emphasized their secular and socialist agenda to accommodate the state capitalism and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism of the SLFP. The LSSP and the CPSL had strongly advocated for a political solution to the Tamil question in the early 1980s; but due to the coalition compulsions, they endorsed a ‘war for peace’ policy later. They even supported the 18th Constitutional Amendment Bill (2010) that gave an authoritarian carte blanche to President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The coalition with the SLFP drove the mainstream Left into a predicament where it could not make independent ideological or policy choices. Likewise, the CPI’s alliance with the Congress party in the 1970-77 period made it a lesser force in Left politics. The same fate is awaiting the entire Indian mainstream Left as they are increasingly aligned with and depend on the Congress-led INDIA bloc at the national level.
Patronage politics
Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda in his essay Left Parties in Permanent Decline: Ideological and Strategy Shifts, Survival Strategies, and Consequences (2018) observes: “Two crucial developments seem to have occurred with far-reaching consequences for the nature of both the LSSP and the CP as political parties. The first was the transformation of the two parties from being cadre-based parties to leadership-centric parties. The second was the increasing dependence of these parties on public resources available through their partnership with coalition governments. That enabled the leaders of the LSSP and the CP to establish and maintain a network of patron-client relationships with party cadres.” This observation is equally true for the Indian mainstream Left parties namely the CPI (M) and the CPI.
The rise of ethnonationalist politics in both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities substantially deprived the mainstream Left of its political space. The ethnic-identity politics encroached and emptied the space for the class-based politics propounded by the Left. The same ill fate is haunting the Indian Left. The Indian Left now is a yam sandwiched between two rocks -- majoritarian and minoritarian communal politics where the working class politics has no room for growth.
Insurgency and de-radicalization
The Janatha Vimukthi Perumuna (JVP) is a phoenix-like phenomenon in Sri Lankan politics. It started as a clandestine militant left faction in the mid-1960s and was able to mastermind a nationwide insurgency in 1971. The armed uprising was crushed, but the JVP emerged as a major player in electoral politics by 1983. In the 1982 presidential race, its founder Rohana Wijeweera finished third. The JVP was proscribed in the wake of the anti-Tamil riots of July 1983, even though it had no proven role in the riots. The JVP waged yet another better-organized, well-equipped, and ruthless insurgency during the 1987-89 period against the unpopular government and oppressive and corrupt social elements.
It is noteworthy that the 1960s witnessed the rise of the radical Left in India too. The Naxalbari uprising of 1967 marked the coming of ‘spring thunder’ in India.
The CPSL (Peking wing), the mother outfit of the JVP, had extended its support to the Naxalbari movement. As the Indian Maoists appropriated the survival woes of Adivasis and Dalits, the JVP exploited the Sinhala-Buddhist anxieties for its political gain. By 1983, the JVP became a vocal champion of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism through readjusting its Communist ideology.
The Sri Lankan regime successfully crushed the second insurgency (1987-89) too and neutralized the entire top brass of the JVP. Thereafter the JVP underwent a massive de-radicalization process and has been successful in finding a formidable position in the parliamentary politics and the coalition matrix of Sri Lanka within two decades. Unlike the LSSP and the CPSL, the de-radicalization of the JVP marked the gradual reconsolidation of its popular support base and a steady growth in electoral politics.
In the 2004 general election, the JVP allied with the SLFP and won a remarkable 39 parliamentary seats. Amidst the growing general apathy towards the UNP and the SLFP, the JVP slowly emerged as a viable alternative. Moreover, the JVP’s crusade against societal corruption and elitism within the party has won high popular appreciation. The JVP launched the National People's Power, a broad-based alliance of 21 outfits including political parties, youth groups, women's groups, trade unions and other civil society organisations in 2019. Striking gold in the presidential race this September has been a logical conclusion of the persistent politicking of the JVP.
The moral of the Sri Lankan Left story for the Indian Left can be summarised as follows: if the mainstream Indian Left revives its lost revolutionary zeal and reduces its parliamentary temptations; if the radical Left undergoes a massive democratic de-radicalization; if they reconcile their ideological rhetoric with the current socio-economic and political realities, and if both sides forge a united front at the national level, the Indian Left can reclaim its political relevance. Or else, the Indian Left is doomed to be a political Dodo or the Congress Party’s Sancho Panza in the national arena.
(Faisal C.K is Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala. Views are personal. Email: faisal.chelengara10@gmail.com)