CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury has been a votary of Opposition unity against the ruling BJP. He has hailed the voters of Karnataka for stopping the BJP’s juggernaut. The veteran Marxist has also firmed his grips in the CPI(M) after the recent Party Congress in Hyderabad. Yechury spoke to BusinessLine on his party’s attitude to an anti-BJP alliance, on why the Trinamool Congress continues to be an adversary, and the possibility of a system of proportional representation. Excerpts from an interview:

What are the lessons from Karnataka? Is Opposition unity possible in all States? For example, will you have an understanding with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal to defeat the BJP?

The unity of secular and democratic forces to pool maximum votes, to defeat the BJP, will have to be done on the basis of a regional arrangement, not on the basis of any sort of an all-India front. This is the experience in history. Be it the HD Deve Gowda-led United Front government of 1996, or the 2004 UPA government, they were formed post elections. What happened prior to that, on both instances, was that secular democratic parties got together at various regional levels. Karnataka reconfirms this position.

In Karnataka, the BJP had the advantage of an incumbent Congress government. But in spite of that, they ended up where they are after an extremely unethical campaign of communal polarisation.

Their communal polarisation for electoral benefits, apart from their larger agenda of converting the secular democratic republic of India to an RSS version of Hindu Rashtra, is creating tremendous problems for our country.

In West Bengal, these local body elections have clearly shown that there is a murder of democracy under the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government. More than 45 people have died. Our appeal to the secular democratic forces will depend on each region. Our objective is to oust the BJP government to save India, and to oust the TMC government to save Bengal. So there is no question of a unity across India. It varies from State to State.

Your campaign in Karnataka was pegged on economic issues, such as bank NPAs. Why did it not translate to votes?

A tremendous loot of the country is going on and at the same time, a tremendous burden is being imposed on the people. We know the case of NPAs, and how the people responsible for it left the country. What needs to be projected is a policy alternative to this government, and that must be pro-people. To prevent such a policy alternative from becoming popular, the RSS-BJP resort to communal polarisation. So communal polarisation is not only the worst vote-bank politics, but it also deflects the attention of the people from rallying together for policies that improve their daily lives.

BJP managed to win a good number of seats with a vote-share lesser than their opponents…

I think we should seriously consider moving towards a system of proportional representation, or at least, partial proportional representation. Except for a few States, where the parties that formed the government got more than 50 per cent of votes polled, nowhere in the country is democracy operating in its real sense. More than 50 per cent of the total electorate has never really voted for anybody who formed the government. In the strictest sense, it is not the rule of the majority; it has always been the rule of the minority. Now this anomaly has to be corrected.

The CPI(M) Party Congress ruled out a political alliance with the Congress. What do you mean by that?

By political alliance, what we mean is that the Congress is a ruling-class party. It has represented the interests of the Indian ruling classes for many decades. What we are seeking to do is to provide alternative policies, to replace this ruling class alliance with one led by the working class. Therefore, no political alliance is possible with such parties.

We have said in our Party Congress that the main danger to the country comes from the BJP government. So, we cannot treat the Congress and the BJP as equal enemies. Therefore, we have defined where we can cooperate with the Congress: in Parliament, outside Parliament, in mass struggles. We also stated very clearly that when elections come, appropriate tactics will be deployed by the CPI(M) in order to maximise the polling of the anti-BJP votes.

You hailed the unification of communist parties in Nepal. What of efforts to unite the Left in India?

The merger of any communist party with another communist or Left party can only be on an ideological basis. The parties in Nepal ironed out their differences. That does not automatically translate to [a unification of Left parties in] India.

[But] this can happen in two ways. One: when the leadership shakes hands and announces a merger. But this is historically established as unsustainable. The other method is through militant struggles of class and mass organisations, [a process] which will build unity from below.

Currently, there is greater cooperation between the CPI and the CPI(M) in initiating joint struggles. Also, right now, the situation in India is that the communist parties do not have the luxury of spending time on ironing out ideological differences. We are in the midst of a very big battle to save our secular democratic foundations.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW