IDEOLOGICAL TREASON AND ORGANIZATIONAL ATROPHY, a Political Appraisal: Post Kerala Assembly Election

The Verdict as Warning:The Kerala State Assembly election constitutes a stern and

unambiguous admonition to the CPI(M) and the LDF.

It is widely recognized that the LDF’s calamitous electoral setback stems primarily from

pervasive public resentment against Sri. Pinarayi Vijayan’s imperious and feudalistic demeanor

towards the citizenry. The conspicuous absence of a courageous, principled activist within the

Party to subject his conduct and administrative failures to unsparing criticism has precipitated

the organization’s ideological and moral degeneration.

The electoral outcome is unequivocally attributable to popular repudiation of the CPI(M)-led

government. This truth must be candidly admitted and resolutely rectified if the Party seeks

political resurgence.

The CPI(M) must effect a comprehensive overhaul of its present leadership, including the State

Secretary, whose tenure constitutes the most ineffectual and pusillanimous in the Party’s history

since its inception.

The organization must henceforth be steered by principled, ideologically committed cadres of

proven integrity and proletarian commitment.

The universal application of Party discipline is indispensable for restoring organizational

credibility. When policies are formulated and decisions adopted, no individual functionary shall

be granted exemption or impunity.

The unconditional exemption of Mr.Pinarayi Vijayan from Party Programmes, which were

mandatory for all other functionaries, constituted an erroneous decision. The nepotistic and

despotic attitude of Mr.Pinarayi Vijayan, his disregard for Marxist ideology, authoritarianism

within the Party, and his predilection for power and luxurious lifestyles engendered a neo-

bourgeois culture. The rank-and-file Party activists and the common masses refused to tolerate

it. Consequently, they exercised their democratic right to vote against Com. Pinarayi Vijayan,

and in the ensuing political tide, the LDF was swept away.

Party discipline and accountability must apply uniformly to every activist, irrespective of

designation, rank, or past service. The Party is above the individual; the collective is above the

leader.

A fundamental reorientation towards the masses is

essential for the Party’s unity and survival. The conduct of Party leaders towards the working

class, the toiling masses, and the common citizenry warrants radical transformation.

The prevailing bureaucratic aloofness, elitism, and commandism must yield to proletarian

humility, democratic ethos, and organic connection with the people.

A decisive renunciation of bourgeois lifestyle is

imperative. Party functionaries must abjure the ostentatious confines of five-star hotels, luxury

conventions, and corporate patronage. They must return to the tea shops, trade union offices,

factory gates, and hearths of the working people. Political work must be organically rooted

among the masses, not insulated from them in air-conditioned chambers.

The purge of corruption from the Party’s ranks is a non-negotiable revolutionary duty. Leaders

who have amassed illegitimate wealth, betrayed their fiduciary trust to the masses, and violated

communist ethics must be identified through rigorous inner-party vigilance and summarily

expelled. Corruption is not a mere lapse; it is ideological treason against the working class and

the socialist cause.

A strategic realignment of political tactics is an urgent

historical necessity. The Party must cease its fratricidal and sectarian assault on secular-

democratic forces. It must instead forge the broadest possible unity of all democratic, secular,

and patriotic forces to resist the onslaught of communal-fascist formations. The principal

contradiction at this juncture is between secular democracy and majoritarian authoritarianism.

All other contradictions are secondary.

The catastrophic erosion of administrative credibility has alienated the electorate. The

government’s failure to deliver on flagship promises — Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund

Board projects stalled, Life Mission housing mired in scandal, and public service delivery

paralyzed by bureaucratic apathy — transformed anti-incumbency into active repudiation.

Governance by announcement, not execution, has shattered the Party’s traditional reputation for

administrative competence. A communist government that cannot build homes, fill potholes, or

disburse welfare pensions punctually forfeits its moral right to govern.

A surreptitious neoliberal deviation in economic

policy has severed the Party’s organic link with its class base. The embrace of corporate-backed

infrastructure, monetization of public assets under KIIFB, and courting of monopoly capital

through ‘Ease of Doing Business’ rankings constitute a betrayal of the Kerala Model of

development. The working class and peasantry discern no substantive difference between LDF

and UDF on questions of land, labor, and capital.

The Party’s sectarian arrogance and cultural

alienation from Kerala’s pluralistic ethos have engendered mass resentment. The

instrumentalization of state power to suppress dissent, criminalize artistic expression, and

intervene in religious-reform debates has positioned the CPI(M) as an adversary of civil liberties

rather than their custodian. Commandism in the cultural sphere, from police conduct during

festivals to the mishandling of Sabarimala and curriculum controversies, has consolidated a

broad anti-LDF front spanning believers, secularists, and liberals. A communist party at war with

its own people’s culture cannot win elections.

The systematic demoralization and disempowerment of

the Party’s cadre base has eviscerated its electoral machinery. Area committees and local

committees have been reduced to conduits for implementing diktats from the State Secretariat,

stripped of political initiative. Factionalism has been replaced by sycophancy. Fear of disciplinary

action has extinguished inner-party democracy. When cadres cease to believe they own the

Party, they cease to defend it in the streets and polling booths. An army without morale cannot

win a war.

The abject failure of ideological renewal has rendered the

Party incapable of interpreting the new Kerala. The CPI(M) has no coherent analysis of gig-

economy (a labour market characterized by short-term, flexible, task-based work arrangements,

as opposed to permanent jobs) workers, the NRI precariat, climate refugees, digital surveillance,

or the aspirations of educated unemployed youth. Its programmatic documents remain trapped

in the 20th century, while the BJP and Congress deploy sophisticated identity, welfare, and

aspirational appeals. A vanguard party that cannot theorize its conjuncture becomes a

rearguard. Ideological bankruptcy precedes electoral bankruptcy.

The CPI(M)’s indiscriminate and sectarian denunciation of the Congress Party and its leader

Rahul Gandhi has objectively facilitated the expansion of the BJP in Kerala, enabling it to secure

three seats in the Assembly. This represents a perilous harbinger of communal-fascist

entrenchment in Kerala, a state historically renowned as ‘God’s Own Country’ for its secular

ethos. Such an outcome is the direct consequence of the CPI(M)’s erroneous political-tactical

line.

The CPI(M)’s mechanistic and undialectical hostility towards the Indian National Congress,

particularly its vituperative targeting of Rahul Gandhi, has created political space for the BJP’s

incursion into Kerala, resulting in its unprecedented acquisition of three Assembly seats. This

development constitutes a grave portent of communal-fascist consolidation in a state that has

hitherto exemplified secular coexistence. The phenomenon is attributable to the CPI(M)’s failure

to correctly identify the principal contradiction and its substitution of sectarianism for united front

tactics. The Party framed local and regional political agenda and party line for the restoration of

their power against national-ideological- interest of their National Alliance of the secular parties

led by Indian National Congress. It is an irreparable injury to the secular and democratic

alliance.

The CPI(M)’s blind, unremitting, and often vulgar polemics against the Indian National Congress

and Rahul Gandhi constitute a cardinal strategic blunder. By elevating a secondary contradiction

with a secular-bourgeois party into the principal antagonism, the Party has objectively aided the

BJP’s growth in Kerala. The BJP’s victory in three constituencies is not a mere electoral

fluctuation; it is the material consequence of the CPI(M)’s political-tactical bankruptcy.

This sectarian line has fragmented the secular-democratic vote, demoralized anti-Sangh Parivar

forces, and legitimized the BJP as the ‘real opposition’ to the LDF. It signifies the dangerous

penetration of communal-fascist forces into Kerala’s polity, threatening the state’s syncretic

traditions and secular fabric — the very foundation of ‘God’s Own Country’.

The CPI(M) has failed to grasp that at the present conjuncture, the principal contradiction is

between secular-democratic forces and Hindutva majoritarian authoritarianism. To target Rahul

Gandhi with greater ferocity than Narendra Modi is to abandon Marxist-Leninist class analysis

for petty factionalism. This line must be repudiated forthwith if the Party is to arrest the advance

of fascism in Kerala. Unless the Party and LDP correct their political and party lines, it will be a

challenge to Indian Democracy.