The 2024 Lok Sabha election results in Kerala should ring the alarm bells for the Left. Not just because the BJP won a historic first seat, but also because the NDA registered a 3.57%-point increase in vote share to 19.21%; and the BJP crossed 30% of the vote share in three Lok Sabha constituencies (from one in 2019), came first in 11 Assembly segments (from one in 2019), and second in nine segments (from seven in 2019). Some of this was at the expense of the Left strongholds. Nevertheless, this moment is not a mere electoral setback occasioned by anti-incumbency, public finance troubles of the CPI(M)-led government, and allegations of corruption against it.
The communist movement in Kerala is one of the most important mobilisations of the peasant and the working classes in the Global South. Its success was in how it tried to address together a variety of exclusions based on class, caste, and linguistic identities. This was achieved through struggles and entrenchment in the arena outside elections: in civil society and the cultural sphere. This hegemony of the Left “common sense” in Kerala society is what is being challenged with the rise of Hindutva.
This rise has been foretold in the non-electoral arena — for example, the fact that Kerala has had among the highest numbers of RSS shakhas in India. This has only accentuated in the recent years with their heightened activities around temples and festivals. Hindu nationalism, has followed, ironically, the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s prescription for communist revolutionaries in a capitalist society. That is, to be engaged in a “war of position”, a long-drawn-out cultural struggle to counter the dominant ideology and gain spaces of influence for one’s own weaker ideology.
The rightwards shift of the cultural sphere is an outcome. Despite winning the 2021 State elections, the Left has been hard pressed to meet these challenges. The communist parties have de-radicalised since the achievement of major economic goals such as the land reforms. Their conversion into electoral machines means that mass movements and ideological struggles were given the short shrift.
The Sabarimala temple entry for women issue is an example where the Left, after initially seeking to counter the Right, had to soften its stance. Rather than proactively fashion new ideological programmes, the Left has been reacting to the Right’s rise producing vacillations and contradictions. Thus, it counters the popularity of Sangh Parivar’s celebration of religious festivals like Janmashtami by organising its own “secular” processions on the same days, in which, on occasion, religious deities have slipped in. In order to offset its potential vote loss among the majority community, it takes up issues like that of Palestine. However, it fails to call out the terror by Hamas against civilians.
The Left is also set back further by the development of authoritarian tendencies, and a personality cult around Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. This is unprecedented in Kerala, and in the Indian Left who practise collective leadership along with institutionalised processes for internal democracy. These tendencies have translated into intolerance towards dissent through police cases against political leaders and journalists.
It would be catastrophic for the Left to believe that it can counter the Right by adopting the latter’s playbook or by electoral engineering. It can only happen through a reinvigorated democracy in which the tasks of class, caste, and gender equality are completed. Dalits and Adivasis are still at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy of Kerala, belying the promise of communist equality. If the marginalised find the new imaginations offered by the Hindutva forces attractive, it is also located in secular disenchantments. In the present elections, amongst the OBC Ezhavas/Thiyyas, 32% voted for the NDA.
In 1996, the Left government had initiated the People’s Plan, participatory planning from the bottom-up. Since then, the local governments have lost some of their critical powers. A reimagination of Kerala’s welfare state requires a strengthening of its local democracy against destructive top-down development projects or economic populism, which again mirror the Right.
Nissim Mannathukkaren is Professor, International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Canada
