A comrade’s dream & dilemma

Raj Bahadur Yadav

Having done my MA (English) from Kurukshetra University in the early eighties, I was bursting with enthusiasm for social change. The tales of simplicity of Ch Charan Singh, comrade Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet impressed me the most. I was all praise for the lifestyle of Jyoti Basu, who dressed in spotless white kurta and dhoti, and wore chappals. I closely watched when Ch Charan Singh addressed the farmers, sporting a Gandhian cap, occasionally taking a close look at his wristwatch. Comrade Surjeet wore his white turban in a peasant-like manner and would respond even to an ordinary party worker’s questions gently, without being condescending or showing any sign of annoyance, as most high-profile leaders of the present times seem to do these days.

 I was born in a tiny hamlet of small farmers in Pratapgarh district of UP in 1960, but was brought up and educated in Hisar. Now almost 60 years old, I find myself often asking, why do people leave behind their home and hearth in search of greener pastures? Why do they find it hard to forget their native village? Is it really possible for us to flourish in politics without lots of money? My intellectual curiosity about such perennial riddles of life landed me in the company of comrades.

To my pleasant surprise, they belonged to different castes and ethnic groups.  Many of them, being too frugal to splurge on good food, clothes and shoes, spent their entire lives in party offices. I salute them, for they were people’s real heroes. It is also a painful fact that some of them felt tired in their long ideological journey, grew disillusioned and found themselves on the horns of dilemma due to frequent electoral debacles. They seemed to be too puzzled to inspire others. In the distant past, it was rare to spot a turncoat in the left parties even, at the district level. Now, you can easily come across one or two comrades everywhere, who have dumped Marxism for personal gains. Politics is unpredictable! Many people fondly remember Charan Singh’s famous statement, ‘The path of India’s development passes through its villages.’ People like me hoped that the CPI and CPM would comfortably fill in the political vacuum caused by his death in 1987 and win people’s mandate to remove poverty, unemployment and caste oppression from UP. They would put a permanent end to mass migration from villages to towns. But the BSP founded by Dalit ideologue Kanshi Ram in 1984, acted as a spoilsport to this lofty dream.  Left parties lost many of their Assembly seats to BSP candidates in subsequent elections. Comrades must also introspect why they were politically decimated in West Bengal and Tripura. They ought to know that it is people, and not leaders, who bring in democratic revolutions.  Comrade Lenin perceptively remarked, ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.’