Poll tactics alone won’t defeat BJP: Karat

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member says it will be ‘erroneous’ to underestimate its ‘pan-India strength’

Prakash Karat

Training the spotlight on the differences within the CPI(M) on its place among the Opposition parties, the party organ, People’s Democracy , edited by former general secretary Prakash Karat, has warned to take a “clear-eyed” view on fighting the BJP-RSS by a united Opposition.

His comments should be seen in the context of the stand of party general secretary Sitaram Yechury and the political line adopted by the party congress last month for keeping the door open for better coordination with Opposition parties, including the Congress.

In an editorial in

People’s Democracy on Wednesday, Mr. Karat said that electoral tactics alone were not enough to fight the BJP-RSS combine.

The post-election alliance of the Congress and the Janata Dal(S) had renewed talk of a united Opposition taking on the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

Cautioning against this, Mr. Karat suggested that it was necessary to have a “clear-eyed view of the way the fight against the BJP-RSS forces can be carried forward”.

He said that despite the reverses suffered by the BJP in the Gujarat Assembly elections and in Karnataka, it would be “erroneous” to underestimate its “pan-India strength”. “It would be facile to think that electoral tactics alone would be enough to defeat the BJP,” the edit says. The growing discontent against the BJP rule needed to be channelled through movements. “It is the struggles developed on economic and social issues which are undercutting the support garnered by the BJP,” Mr. Karat said.

Setting the stage

And only these movements would help setting the stage “for working out electoral tactics which will help to maximise the pooling of the anti-BJP votes in each State”.

In an editorial last week, he similarly warned of “soft Hindutva” peddled by the Congress, and said the results have had a sobering lessons for “those who want to fight an authoritarian-communal regime”. “The visits of Rahul Gandhi to temples and mutts have proved to be a flawed and compromising approach to counter the Hindutva forces. Nor was the Congress able to convince people that it had anything better to offer in terms of economic betterment and their livelihood issues…” he said.