Hindu fundamentalists knocked back
By Eva Cheng
The February attempt by India's main Hindu fundamentalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to seize power through the back door in India's second largest state, Bihar, has failed miserably. Its newly installed chief minister, Nitish Kumar, was forced to resign just hours before a March 10 vote of no confidence at the state assembly was to turf him out.
The incumbent Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which won the largest block of seats (124) in the Bihar assembly elections, has swiftly formed a new government with the support of the Congress party, which has 23 seats.
The BJP, even though having won fewer seats than the RJD, managed to stake the first — albeit brief — claim for government following an astonishing statement of support from Bihar governor Vinod Pande. The move sparked widespread anger, culminating in the scheduled no-confidence vote.
The three main left parties — the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) — hold 13 seats in total. Those votes turned out to be decisive in the tight race to form government in Bihar.
However, how to use this clout to enhance mass struggles outside parliament, rather than getting dragged into the murky waters of bourgeois politics, has been a constant challenge for the Indian left.
The CPI and CPI-M have been in government in a few states on and off since the 1960s, and have formed questionable alliances with bourgeois parties, even to the extent of dutifully carrying out anti-worker polices. Although such measures were often covered with a fig leaf of radical rhetoric, these parties' militant mass bases weren't fooled all the time. Yet such mass support continues to give the two parties social influence.
This time in Bihar, the two parties pursued different courses. Despite winning only two seats, the CPI-M has joined the government led by the RJD, according to the March 10 edition of India's Hindu newspaper. There is, however, little evidence that the CPI-M will be able to enjoy any political independence from the RJD, whose claims to represent the lower castes were contradicted by its pro-bourgeois record while in government in the 1990s.
The CPI, with five votes in the Bihar assembly, has refused to support a BJP government. According to the Hindu, on March 10, it also abstained in the March 9 vote for the RJD-nominated candidate for assembly speaker.
The CPI-ML, with six votes, has devised a complex strategy to deal with the battle between the RJD and BJP while maintaining its independent profile and stance.
CPI-ML polit bureau member B. Sivaraman explained to Green Left Weekly that his party has little doubt that the BJP, which has been aggressively pushing a Hindu fundamentalist and neo-liberal policy since becoming India's central government in 1998, is the worse of the two.
Given the close balance of votes, Sivaraman added, his party is fully aware that not supporting the RJD (either by abstaining or voting against it) could have helped put the BJP in government.
But, as the CPI-ML's ML Update said on March 15, "While not refusing to distinguish between the two enemies, we have, unlike the CPI-M, never reduced our role to merely that of siding with the lesser evil". The party's strategy therefore was not to fully support the RJD but simply to offer one-off support.
In the election for speaker, Sivaraman explained, the CPI-ML's vote would depend on which nomination came first. If the BJP-nominated candidate was the first to appear, the CPI-ML would simply reject the nomination. It would only vote for the RJD's candidate if CPI-ML votes became crucial; if not, it would abstain.
"The alternative [to the RJD forming government] would have been President's rule, which means rule by the centre, which effectively means BJP rule by proxy", Sivaraman told Green Left Weekly.
As it turned out, the BJP withdrew its candidate for speaker just before the vote.
Failing or refusing to comprehend the CPI-ML's complex considerations, a number of establishment newspapers have blamed the BJP's debacle on the CPI-ML. They alleged that the party was neutral or equidistant between the BJP and RJD, a contention the CPI-ML's March 8 edition of ML Update described as "simplistic" and "a vulgar interpretation of the political independence [of] revolutionary communists".
"Our headache in negotiating the treacherous water of murky bourgeois parliamentary politics is not over yet", Sivaraman continued, noting the upcoming vote of confidence in the new RJD government.
However it appears that the RJD will be able to manage a majority even without the CPI-ML's support, following reports of some independents switching their support.