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Left parties must mobilise secular forces

CHENNAI: The Left parties will have to mobilise secular forces against the twin dangers of imperialism and communalism by devising strategies that combine political intent with cultural aspirations of the masses, K.N. Panikkar, president, History Congress of India, said on Sunday.

Addressing a meeting to commemorate the 10th death anniversary of CPI (M) ideologue and former Kerala Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad, hosted by the Madras Kerala Samaj, he said one of the reasons for the sustenance of the Left movement in Kerala was that it was built on cultural and intellectual renaissance.

The Left in Kerala had also engineered the coalescing of anti-imperialist struggles with the anti-landlord movement, leading to the installation of the first democratically elected Communist ministry headed by Namboodiripad in 1957, he said. It was critical for the Left to evolve theoretically nuanced and politically decisive means of mobilising the roughly 60 per cent of the population which subsisted on less than Rs. 20 a day. At the same time, the Left had to engage with the consciousness of a burgeoning middle class with its paradox of pro-imperialist predisposition and sympathies with core Communist values, Mr. Panikkar said. “It would require a multi-pronged strategy that took into account issues of class, caste and gender issues.”

Mr. Panikkar described Namboodiripad as an extraordinary intellectual who best understood the relationship between ideology and implementation. But, beyond his scholarship, his stature as Left ideologue or a visionary Chief Minister, Namboodiripad’s greatest achievement lay in having established the “concept of the Kerala.” Sashi Kumar, chairman, Media Development Foundation that runs the Asian College of Journalism, said the sheer volume of Namboodiripad’s writings and scholarly analyses was, perhaps, unparalleled in the history of the Left movement in India.

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