Thread by @shrikanth_krish

The 2019 election has been acknowledged as a watershed already

But one under-discussed aspect of it is that it marks the death-knell of the Left in India as a major political force

The share of the Left vote which was at 23% in 1952 has been reduced to under 2.5% in 2019

It marks the end of a chapter in Indian politics

The near terminal decline of an important strand in Indian politics, whose roots go back 150 years

This might be a good occasion to reflect on the history of Left wing politics in India

Reflect on its incipience, its growth, its many political achievements, and the reasons for its stunted development and its imminent demise

But before we get started on this survey, it is worthwhile to clarify a few things

What do we mean by the Left?

By "Left" I am referring not merely to the two Communist parties, but the socialist parties of various hues that have influenced India over the past 100 years

Parties, to varying degrees, committed to the ideal of a class struggle and social ownership of the means of production

So the label encompasses -

CPI
CPI - Marxist
CPI - Marxist-Leninist
Revolutionary Socialist Party
Forward Bloc
Socialist Party
Praja Socialist Party
Samyukta Socialist Party
among others

The label does not include the Congress of course. Which may be a center-left party but not quite "socialist"

Nor does it encompass caste based outfits and regional parties, which may toe a socialist line, but which don't quite fit the classic definition of the "Left"

E.g.

Janata Dal and its offshoots
Samajwadi Party
Rashtriya Janata Dal
etc.

Before we get started, some numbers to illustrate why 2019 marks something momentous

Here's a look at the seat tally of "Left wing" parties (as defined above) in parliaments from 1952 to 2019

"Left" wing parties won 50 seats in the first Lok Sabha. Reached an all time high of 82 seats in 1967

Reduced to single digits in 2019

In 1952, the “Left” was represented in the Lok Sabha by not just the Communist Party, but several other socialist parties - parties that have gone into the pages of history and which we barely recall today

Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party of Acharya Kripalani
Socialist Party of Jayaprakash Narayan
People’s Democratic Front - an offshoot of the Communist party with a regional base in Telengana

Several of them

Here’s an examination of how seats were distributed across Left Parties in every general election since 1952

Notice the wide prevalence of socialist outfits throughout the early decades and the shrinking of the “Left” to mean just the two communist parties in our time

In terms of vote share, the decline is even starker

In 1952, 23% of the electorate voted for the parties identified as belonging to the “Left”

This remained stable at around 10-15% for much of Indian history, before having a free-fall in the past decade

Here’s how the vote shares have been distributed across parties since 1952

Back then, the leading party in terms of vote share was not CPI but the Socialist Party - which accounted for 11% of the vote, while CPI was at just over 3%

So the numbers clearly suggest that we are now at the end of a long tradition in India politics.

And we must use this opportunity to reflect on history a bit and ask some difficult questions

Why did the “Left” never take off in India?

Why is Socialism in the classic sense unpopular in India despite India being an incredibly poor country?

Did the left-wing character of the Congress post 1960s rid the Socialists and Communists of talking points?

Did the Indian institution of Caste come in the way of creating effective narratives around Class struggle?

Questions worth asking

The origins of the “Left” as a strand in Indian polity go very far back in time. It even predates the Russian Revolution

And some of the early key figures were in Bengal - a region where the Left has remained formidable for the longest period of time, along with Kerala

One early figure is a man named Shashipada Banerji - 1840 to 1924

Brahmo Samaj leader and Social reformer

The “Working Men’s Club” that he founded in 1870 is viewed as one of the very first labour organizations in India

He was also the founder of a journal named “Bharat Sramajibi” - which enjoyed a circulation in excess of 15K at its peak

But Banerji may not be regarded as a Socialist, let alone a Communist, in a modern sense. He was more akin to a philanthropist. A well wisher of the working class

Hardly an advocate of class struggle

But socialist ideas were very much in currency in Bengal at the time. Even a nationalist figure like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (who we don’t even remotely associate with the “Left” today, was influenced by socialism

Here’s what he wrote in his collection of essays - “Samya” (Equality) in 1879. Revealing

It was in 1912, that Karl Marx first found explicit and significant mention in Indian literature. In a write-up titled

“Karl Marx - a Modern Rishi”

by one Lala Hardayal in the Modern Review, a respectable Calcutta journal

Two years later in 1914, the first biography of Marx featured in the Malayalam language - by one Ramakrishna Pillai

But it was with the Russian Revolution of 1917 that the socialist wave in Indian thought really took off

Many strands in Indian political life were greatly influenced by it

The Ghadar Party, comprising of expatriate revolutionaries in Canada and Punjab, were heavily influenced by Bolshevik ideals

Lala Hardayal, whom we have alluded to, was an influential Ghadar leader

Elsewhere in Punjab, young men like even Bhagat Singh were very much taken in by Socialism, So the penetration of these ideas wasn’t just coffee table talk. It was fairly deep

In 1920, the Communist Party of India was founded in Tashkent of all places! One of its co-founders was a gentleman named Manabendra Roy (MN Roy)

An interesting man who founded the Communist Party of Mexico, even before he was involved in founding the Communist Party of India

Interestingly Roy got disillusioned with Communism in his later years, and abandoned the Communist party post world war 2

Meanwhile the Congress party itself was also impacted by the “Leher” in Socialist ideas

There was a socialist caucus within Congress - the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) which was founded in 1934

Its leaders included the very young Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia as well as Minoo Masani!!

Men who would play key roles in post independence Indian politics

Here’s a pic of JP and Lohia in a CSP rally in 1936

Interestingly Minoo Masani, a co-founder of CSP, moved completely away from Socialism to the other side post independence

He embraced free market economics, and became a collaborator of Rajaji and a stellar leader of the conservative, right wing Swatantra Party!

So the key point to note here is that some of the progenitors of Communism and Socialism in India (men like MN Roy and Minoo Masani) underwent major conversions of sorts (especially Masani) later in life

However the intellectual and political traditions they kickstarted remained a fixture in Indian life for many many decades. Until now that is

Subhas Bose founded another left-wing party, the Forward Bloc in 1939, after being pushed out of the Congress by the Congress Right wing clique and Gandhi.

The Forward Bloc remained a political party long after Bose’s passing, and in fact has won seats in just about every Lok Sabha from 1952 till 2014 with 1-2 exceptions (as you can check in the table I shared earlier in the thread)

Meanwhile the CPI (founded in the early 20s), obtained a foothold in Kerala in 1937, when several influential members of the CSP (Congress Socialist Party) became CPI members

Among them - EMS Namboodiripad

There was considerable co-operation between socialists and communists in that period. EMS for e.g was both a CPI member and a general secretary of CSP

But throughout this period, the CPI remained an illegal entity. It was only in 1942 that it was legalized by the British Govt, in part because of the War effort, and the British alliance with Soviet Union against Nazi Germany

In the 1946 provincial elections, the CPI was a contestant in 108 of the 1585 seats. It won 8 seats, and nearly 700K votes. Impressive given that the electorate back then was barely 10% of the adult population

In the years immediately following Independence, Communist party leaders were involved in several local rebellions against monarchs and feudal lords. Most notably in Telengana

Puchalapalli Sundarayya is an example of a prominent CPI leader who was involved in the violent peasant revolts and guerrilla warfare in Hyderabad state

In fact the People’s Democratic Front that won 7 seats in the first Lok Sabha (1952) was an offshoot of the CPI, and centered around Telangana - comprising mostly of leaders who had led the revolts few years previously

In the 1952 elections, we have already seen how impressive the performance of the Left was.

The Socialist Party (comprising of JP among other leaders) got the most votes (11% vote share) but in terms of seats the CPI was the leader with 16 seats despite just 3% of the votes

Interestingly most of CPI’s seats were from Madras, and not Travancore-Cochin

In the state elections of Travancore-Cochin in 1952, CPI was banned. But it was a matter of time. 5 years later in 1957, history was made.

The CPI defeated the Congress and stormed to power to form the government in Kerala. The first time anywhere in the world that a Communist party had been democratically elected to power (barring San Marino)

EMS Namboodiripad was the chief minister

In 1964, the CPI split into two -

The CPI and CPI (Marxist) - both parties are with us to this day

The basis for the split appears to have been around political strategy

While CPI favored greater collaboration with the Congress, CPI (M) sought greater distance and greater ideological purity

Today, CPI (M) remains much more dominant than CPI, both in West Bengal and Kerala.

Interestingly enough this ideological division between the two parties persisted even as late as the 1990s - when in 1996, CPI was open to joining the United Front government of Deve Gowda

Whereas, CPI (M) chose to stay more aloof, and provide outside support!

Meanwhile the Socialists were no less strong in Indian polity than the Communists in the early period - throughout 50s-60s

The Socialist party won 11% of the votes in 1952, as already alluded to. Besides that there was also the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party, founded by Acharya Kripalani. The KMPP won 6% of the vote in 1952

So these two socialist parties between them won 17%!!

In the late 50s, they merged to form the Praja Socialist Party - a party that won over 10% of the votes in 1957

But in the 60s, Socialism weakened, while the Communist party vote shares continued to stay healthy.

The Praja Socialist party split, with a breakaway faction called Samyukta Socialist party, which was influential in the 60s-70s

The Lohia wing was associated with SSP, and so was George Fernandez, who in later years, would serve in conservative right wing governments like that of Vajpayee! As Defense Minister to boot!

The fate of Socialist and Communist parties was very starkly different in the decades between 70s and 90s -

While the two Communist parties remained strong in their two regional bases - Kerala and West Bengal, the Socialist parties declined terminally thanks to the Emergency

The formation of Janata Party - an amalgamation of all anti-Indira forces in 1977 - meant that many parties on both the Left and the Right lost their identity post merger

Be it Swatantra on the Right, or parties like Praja Socialist party and Samyukta Socialist party on the Left

By staying aloof from the JP movement, the Communist parties maintained their distinct identity to live another day. Whereas, Socialism died as a political force

In the 80s/90s , as Janata Party broke up, the various shrapnels thrown up by that implosion transformed into the different caste based parties of North India

Be it Janata Dal in Bihar, or Samajwadi Party in UP

While these parties called themselves “socialist” (Samajwaadi) they were not left-wing in a classic sense

Their embrace of caste and identity meant that they were a far cry from the left-wing ideal espoused by JP, Lohia, Fernandez

Fernandez in fact was an honorable exception.

In terms of staying away from identity politics and forming the Samata Party in 1994, along with Nitish Kumar - which can be regarded as the last “socialist” party of India

But Samata too eventually bit the bullet, when it merged with JD(U). And became a regional Bihar force

The Communist parties on the other hand, remained regional forces. Strong in WB and Kerala. In fact the CPM ruled WB from 1977 till 2011.

But the decline of CPM in Bengal started in the new millennium with the emergence of a regional Bengali power

The Mamta led Trinamool, a party that broke away from the Congress

So clearly the decline of the Left in India can be attributed to 2 reasons -

A. Caste - the politics of caste is more potent in India than the politics of class

B. The Left got overwhelmed by other regional powers which articulated regional aspirations in a more effective way

2019 was the final blow for the Left in India, though a pretty severe blow had been dealt in 2014 as well

The mass shift of the Left vote to the BJP tells us something. Its lesson probably is that the Indian voter is not as ideological as the Left would like!

The Left’s ideological attempt to side against the wishes of the masses in Sabarimala also served them poorly resulting in a resounding defeat in Kerala as well

It also points to one of the major failures of the "Left" I India -

The failure to understand the Indian psyche and a tendency to underrate the religious character of the Indian masses

That brings this survey to an end

Left wing politics never took off in India.
Despite having a long and checkered history

Many reasons

Indian diversity
The conservative Indian character
Regional faultiness
Caste
The Hindu predilection for order and non violence

One can go on

Much to learn here for students of politics. Imported ideologies, removed from Indian culture, dont work very well in India.

Let’s conclude on that note

Postscript 1: in the penultimate tweet I intended to write "regional faultlines"

Post-script 2 : References for this thread are mostly from public sources / wiki. But this link was also very useful -

academia.edu/2954965/Indian…