In damage control mode, Karat said he had a telephonic conversation with Hobsbawm in November last year during which he had explained the violent attacks unleashed by the Trinamool Congress and Maoists on CPM cadres in West Bengal after the Lok Sabha elections.

The CPM top boss said it was correct that he had told Hobsbawm that the CPM is “under siege” in Bengal, but that was in the context of the attacks against its rank and file. Karat said the first part of Hobsbawm’s statement where he quotes him as saying that the CPM feels besieged is “correct”, while the second part is the views of the historian.

In an interview to political journal New Left Review, Hobsbawm had quoted Karat as saying that the CPM felt “themselves beleaguered and besieged” and it looked forward to “doing very badly against this new Congress in the local elections.”

“I had told him that we are under siege in the context of the attacks. A large number of our workers are being killed by Trinamool Congress activists and Maoists,” Karat said, contending that the bit about the grim electoral prospects in store for the CPM were the views of Hobsbawm and not his.

Karat also came out