Communism in Rajiv Gandhi's India

Abstract

Those who take an academic interest in Indian communism sometimes feel as the communist leaders themselves must do: will our time never come? After sixty years of existence the communist movement shows no sign of a breakthrough in a country whose toiling masses are legion and poverty is a byword. One should not, of course, underestimate the diffuse contribution of socialism and Marxism from Subhas Chandra Bose-who led the left challenge to Gandhi in the 1930s-to Jyoti Basu-West Bengal's current Chief Minister-to modern Indian history. Nevertheless, the Marxist hope of peaceful transition has regularly proved a false dawn since the 1950s as the revolutionary situation proved a mirage before. Table 1 summarises the essential facts of communist performance in India's general elections. Compared with the communists' best showing-48 seats in 1971-the 1984 figure of 28 is a setback. More importantly, the trend in the share of the vote which peaked at 9.9 per cent has edged slowly down since 1971 to 8.5 per cent in 1984. It is also clear that the parent party, the Communist Party of India (CPI) has not recovered from the loss of support incurred by its alignment with Mrs Gandhi during the Emergency. Although the CPI still enjoys the patronage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and links between the rival CPI (Marxist) are unofficial, it is the CPI(M) which is the major communist party in India; and so it is on the Marxist party's performance and prospects that this article focuses.