Qila Raipur is a distant place. It is far away from the Delhi of principles and ideology. Perhaps its remoteness requires a new dialectic. Now Qila Raipur has become a touchstone of the CPI(M)'s principles. Remember, in that chaotic interregnum between the fall of Gowda and the onset of I. K. Gujral, the CPI(M) was rather reckless in its display of principles: while every partner was jostling for the highest chair, the CPI(M), with its high-mindedness, was setting the terms of power. A strange kind of anti-Congressism was the subtext of its rhetoric. Strange because the communists never doubted the indispensability of the Congress in the upkeep of the secular (anti-BJP) coalition, but at the same time they could not afford to deprive the Congress of its enemy-status. General Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet personified this principle by doubling himself as the elder confabulator and, occasionally, as the manipulator-in-chief. The party has the vocabulary to turn an instance of opportunism into an example of principle. Qila Raipur calls the bluff.

In the Qila Raipur by-election, the CPI(M) is riding piggyback on the Congress. A seat traditionally held by the Congress, it has now gone to the CPI(M) on noble ground, of course: the Akali Dal-BJP combine calls for a joint assault, a `secular' counterblast. By way of explanation, the General Secretary is very economical this time: ``If somebody helps, what's wrong?'' Nothing comrade, if you insist. But there is something terribly wrong about your nationally proclaimed anti-Congressism. And the CPI, the little brother of the communist parivar, has every reason to feel morally uplifted by the big brother's blatant repudiation of its own principle. For the Marxists have never wasted an opportunity to remind the poor CPI of its great betrayal during the Emergency. As a kind of repentance in retrospect, the CPI has already redeemed itself, for its anti-Congressism has of late been more honest and less ambivalent. But for the CPI(M), anti-Congressism is as flexible as its ideology is. It is something to be twisted and marketed in the Delhi of power politics; it is something to be quietly buried in Qila Raipur in Punjab.

It is all very simple: no ideology, only the ghost of it; no principle, only the pretence. The CPI(M) is too steeped in its own deceptions to feel any sense of shame. Its anti-communalism -- even its anti-Congressism -- is a sham. It is a party which has over the years cohabited with every kind of communalist (as in Kerala). Its history has enough stories to mock its current rhetoric on anti-Congressism. In Delhi, it plays out its national role with the theme songs of secularism. In the provinces, where it really belongs (though the provinces are shrinking), the rhetoric gives in to earthly realities. In Qila Raipur, the CPI(M) is real. In Delhi it is a hoax. The CPI(M) has lost history; it has lost its gods; its revolution (somebody's revolution, sorry) has unravelled itself as an ebony joke -- the party today is a provincial residue of this century's biggest superstition. India as a nation has defied that superstition. A coalition in Delhi and a by-election in Qila Raipur elucidate why.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.