Communist parties are famed for their discipline and unity, which are viewed as symbols of organisational strength. However, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), now confined to Kerala, is undergoing a period of instability and disintegration. The party is experiencing an existential crisis from the bottom up, from Branch to the State Committee. The latest examples of this are the developments related to the ongoing triennial party conferences in Kerala.
Rebel movements and inner-party conflicts have previously been hidden from the outside world. The party’s cadre structure enabled it to keep everyone behind an iron curtain. Today, however, there is widespread public criticism of government and party top leaders, even during branch committee meetings. When the party entered the area committee meetings, it went further, causing an enormous explosion and split in many places. Local leaders, the cornerstone of the Communist Party, are leaving the party and joining the BJP on a regular basis in Kerala. Ordinary workers, including men and women, have locked up state committee representatives attending the party’s Thiruvalla area committee meeting in Pathanamthitta District. Sometimes, the state secretary had to appear in person to resolve issues during the meetings. Meetings in several places had to be rescheduled several times. In certain areas, including Palakkad district, the rebels staged alternative party meetings. Rebel voices were raised in meetings across Kerala, and several of them had to be cancelled. In short, present occurrences imply that the Communist Party’s potential for survival in Kerala will be greatly affected.
The emergence of the BJP in Kerala inspires ordinary communist party workers to speak out against corruption and harassment of women by Communist Party leaders. Previously, rebels and those who quit the party were eliminated. As a result, they kept their opinions to themselves out of fear of the party. The situation has now changed, and many people are bravely speaking out against the leadership and quitting the party. For example, in the last Lok Sabha elections, Attingal, a Lok Sabha seat in Thiruvananthapuram district, had a triangular contest. V Muraleedharan, the BJP candidate who received more than 30 per cent of the vote, recently made the CPI(M) area committee secretary, and his son, a member of the Mangalapuram local committee, joined the BJP with his family and supporters in the presence of Suresh Gopi, Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, V Muraleedharan, former Union Minister of state of Parliamentary and External Affairs, and K Surendran, BJP State President. His switch, which has been working for CPI(M) for four decades, has inflicted a significant blow to the party.
A similar incident occurred in Alappuzha district, one of the CPI(M)’s power centres in Kerala. Bibin C Babu, former deputy chairman of the Alappuzha Municipality and current district panchayat representative, joined the BJP after leaving the communist party after 42 years of membership. Moreover, five prominent politicians, including a CPM branch secretary in the area, joined the BJP. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Sobha Surendran, the BJP candidate, had won more than one lakh votes in Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency compared to 2019, scoring 28 per cent. The BJP also came first in two assembly constituencies of the Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency and third in two others by a margin of 200 votes. As a result, the Communist Party lost its sitting seat due to the BJP’s advance, and there was a loss of votes even in its many bastions. Alappuzha, Kerala’s most Hindu-populated region in terms of percentage, serves as a base for the Communist Party. Previously, individuals who left the CPM joined either the CPI or the Congress, but now everyone relies on the BJP. As party conventions advance to the district and state levels, the issues will likely get more complex, and more people will join the BJP.
The Communist Party was commonly referred to as the Hindu Party in Kerala. However, In the previous decade, the party has appeased Islam to a greater extent than the Congress and the Muslim League. This has sparked strong animosity among ordinary Hindus who have worked for the party for years. Apart from that, people are attracted to the BJP’s developmental vision for a ‘Vikasit Bharat’, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the country’s global image. However, the party, which struggled to retain workers owing to its outdated ideology, attempted to survive for a while by assaulting and murdering RSS-BJP workers and calling for hartals and bandhs. At a period when public opinion was strongly against such tactics, the party’s objective was to seek Islamic appeasement with increased vigour. To this end, the Hindu dharma was widely vilified, and Islamic extremists, including the banned PFI members, were accommodated in the party. However, since 2016, the continuous rule, corruption, communalism and double standards have alienated the party’s vote base, the Hindu community. This is leading to the disintegration of the party, similar to Bengal and Tripura.
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