Lessons for Left

•Saubhik Chakrabarti’s ‘My comrade vs your comrade’ (IE, October 2) was wry but incisive. Communism has never owed loyalty to anything other than its ideology. To communists, pure nationalism has been an anathema. During our freedom struggle, the CPI was neutral to the British; today, Indian communists are indifferent to abrasive Chinese posturing. The Balco episode is no exception. Communists are extremely uncomfortable in democratic set-ups. But under India’s well-functioning democracy, they were compelled to run state governments. To set up a modern education system, new-age industry and effective administration was against their grain. US bashing couldn’t offer them sustenance beyond a point. Events like Nandigram were not event or place-specific, but reactions to unfamiliar challenges to a political entity born of the French and Russian revolutions and other class struggles. Yet, the democratic umbrella under which Indian communists function has also enabled an osmosis of democratic values into the red stream. A hard lesson is being learned by the Left. Hopefully, a wiser Left will emerge in our polity.

— R. Narayanan Ghaziabad

Dividing for votes?

• This refers to the editorial ‘Permit Raj’ (IE, September 30). All political parties have formulated their so-called ideologies to woo voters. The BJP is obsessed with Hindutva. Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav play the secular card. Now, it’s Raj Thackeray who’s all for the Marathi Manoos. Such thinking reflects his fossilised and sectarian mindset. How can he foist his agenda that non-Maharashtrians can’t settle and work in Maharashtra? It suggests he wants a state for Maharashtrians only, which goes against the spirit of the Constitution. Whether MNS’s electoral strategy will benefit the Congress-NCP alliance or not will be known only when the results are out. But the fact remains that such an agenda is a recipe for disaster.

... contd.