After Congress' big win in Karnataka, it looks like the CPM is coming around to the view that a grand alliance against the BJP in 2024 is not possible without the grand old party.
No less a leader than the CPM state secretary M V Govindan himself called the victory a 'big step in Indian politics'.
"This way the BJP has been swept out of South India," the CPM state secretary said while inaugurating a pre-monsoon sanitation drive in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday.
"BJP is the biggest threat. It should be defeated in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. If the BJP wins in 2024, the RSS, which will turn 100 in 2024, will kill the secular and democratic spirit of the Constitution," Govindan said.
In what is seen as a CPM acknowledgment of the Congress' role in giving this pushback against the BJP a major impetus, he said: "From this victory, the forces opposed to the BJP have derived great strength to resist this BJP onslaught on the Constitution."
And with an urgency the left party has never exhibited before, the CPM state secretary said: "The anti-BJP votes in all states should be brought together." The message would not have been more clear if Govindan had plainly said that the CPM should work with the Congress to bring about the mobilisation.
In fact, this acceptance of Congress' role in resisting the BJP signalled a dramatic shift in Govindan's stand. Right after the Karnataka verdict, the CPM state secretary had said that only the CPM had the ideological heft to take on the BJP.
But there were differing voices inside the CPM. Culture Minister Saji Cherian said the Congress should take over the leadership of the secular front. The editorial in the CPM mouthpiece 'Deshabhimani', which appeared on Monday, echoed Saji Cheirian's sentiment.
"The Karnataka verdict offers a big hope for the country's secular and democratic forces," it said. "This victory could be the beginning of the end of the RSS-controlled Modi-Shah pair," it added.
Till now, the CPM, against the wishes of many other regional parties like the DMK, wanted a national secular front sans the Congress.
The CPM had reasoned that the Congress was too weak to mount any major offensive against the BJP. It argued that the 2019 verdict was a testimony of the electoral disaster that would result if the Congress is set against the BJP as its main opposition.
Post the key Karnataka verdict, CPM's thinking seems to have undergone a subtle change. Now it wants the Congress to be part of the secular coalition. Nonetheless, the party is still hesitant to give the leadership role to the Congress.
"Instead of believing that it had suddenly acquired national strength and, under such an illusion, become arrogant, the Congress should be mature enough to make wise and informed political choices based on the realisation of the threat posed by the BJP," the Deshabhimani editorial said.
"It should cooperate in forming alliances with strong regional parties in such a way that the maximum possible anti-BJP votes are mobilised in each state. If it attempts to adopt a big brotherly attitude, the Congress would do well to look back on what happened in 2019," it added.
Govindan, too, said something similar on Monday. "The Congress should be able to shed its own selfish political interests and work for an anti-BJP politics that the country is in need of at the moment. A unity that could mobilise anti-BJP votes should be made possible," he said.
Clearly, the CPM is no longer averse to having Congress in the grand alliance against the BJP in 2024.
Nonetheless, the CPM is still not ready to accept that the Congress is better placed to take on the BJP at the national level.
"That the Congress can take on the BJP is merely an argument. Besides Karnataka, the only other state where it can put up commendable shows are Gujarat and Rajasthan. But the Congress's plight in these states is miserable," he said.
However, like the Deshabhimani editorial, Govindan was less critical than cautionary in his latest approach towards the Congress.
"Congress should be very careful about what is happening in Karnataka. It is a known fact that the BJP has the wherewithal and the inclination to purchase MLAs... Don't forget the fact that eight of their MLAs, including the opposition leader, had joined the BJP during the Bharat Jodo yatra," he said.
