If one can hopefully treat the Kerala chief minister’s remarks as a one-off, the Mumbai tragedy has seen the continuation of the Left’s efforts, including earlier ones by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, to find a niche in the nationalist narrative. There was a time the Left was at best indifferent to what are broadly called national security matters or stories of patriotism. Recall the dismissive Left attitude to the investigation into the 1998 Coimbatore blasts. Marxists then sounded as if concerns over targeting senior political figures was just over-excited bunkum. That is why CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat’s reference to Achuthanandan’s “homage” to Sandeep Unnikrishnan is important. Clearly, the Left’s attitude to the armed forces and national security is changing. But the Left’s efforts are hobbled by three problems.

First, the Left carries the intellectual baggage of Marxist internationalism. This has been discarded almost everywhere. But what Raul Castro doesn’t want to talk about and China’s ultra-nationalist communists hold in contempt still excites Left politicians in India. The second reason why the Left seldom sounds convincing in its periodic articulation of the idea of India is also thanks to theory. The “thinkers” in Delhi continue to be deeply suspicious of what they see as the nationalist project of “privileged classes”. This theory comes up against two realities. Contrary to Marxist profundities, material conditions never wholly explain the alchemy of nationalism. Also, prosperity is increasing in India. Millions of people have been added to what is described roughly as the middle class, and in rural India the insufficient presence and therefore the hunger for, not indifference to, modernity set the social and political context. Class matters (so do, sadly, caste and religion), but what matters most is the demand for a ticket to modern India.

... contd.