What's left of the Indian Left?

Recently, history was made, or unmade as some would have it, by the electorate in the northeastern Indian state of West Bengal. The ruling Left Front was defeated after an astonishing thirty-four year tenure. However delicious, this Indian anomaly of a democratically elected Communist Government is by now a stale tale. (But if you still want to know more about it, here is a interesting take on the underlying reasons for the colossal debacle of the Left Front.)

However epoch-making the election, what interests me is the response of a motley group of leftist activists and intellectuals, who claim that the defeat of the real-existing-socialism type Old Left “should mean space for a stronger left movement, a ‘new left’ if you like, that reflects the aspirations of the mass of people more creatively, with more imagination and greater integrity”. Time is indeed out of joint here! But, this is indeed the case; this is a response from the old New Left, or the non-parliamentary Left in India.

That there’s a response is not surprising. Well, nothing should surprise one in this case: the tone of moral superiority, the deafening silence on the complicated relationship – the discontinuous dialogue if you like - between the parliamentary, Stalinist Left and the non-parliamentary Left. Is it at all possible to speak of two spaces, without overlaps and seepage? For instance, in what space does one support, vote for and sometimes actively campaign for the Stalinist parties with the completely justified aim of defeating the Hindu nationalists?

Besides, for those who claim an abiding space in the society for “the left as a culture of democracy and resistance,” isn’t it simply undialectical to state, “Votes have never been a real marker of the strength of a political movement and its culture”?