Can't rule out merger of Left parties in future: CPI(ML) Liberation's Dipankar Bhattacharya

New Delhi, Jun 21 (PTI) A merger of the Left parties some time in future cannot be ruled out but no immediate possibilities as such are there, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said.

He also said in the days to come, as the climate crisis becomes a major political issue, the Left will be in focus again.

In an interview with PTI, the CPI(ML) leader said differences remain amid different Left parties, but added that India needs a strong Left formation.

Asked about the possibility of a merger of the Left parties, Bhattacharya said, "I will not rule it out, but I don't really see any immediate possibility." "There was one communist party in India till 1964. It has been in history that there have been differences and the differences led to the formation of different parties," he said.

"So maybe in future, yes, because India does need a strong left formation... There are political and ideological differences. There may not be very major differences, but till the differences are sorted out, it is difficult to expect complete unification," he said.

The Communist Party of India (CPI), which was founded on December 26, 1925, was split in 1964 and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formed. Discussions around reunification of the parties have resurfaced from time to time. However, no agreement has been reached.

The CPI(ML) meanwhile originated from the Naxalbari movement of 1964 and was founded in 1969. The CPI(ML) Liberation was formed after a split in the party in 1974.

Bhattacharya said differences remain among the Left parties in terms of policies as well as articulation.

"Like in terms of politics, ours is more people oriented, more struggle oriented. If you are more struggle oriented, if you are trying to be more consistent on every issue, we try to be as consistent as possible," he said.

He said areas of agreement are probably more now and that is a good sign because there is a growing area of agreement where they can mostly work together.

Asked if he would advise the Left parties such as Communist Party of India (Maoist) to come to the mainstream, he said, "I think they think that in their own way they are a mainstream party. So it is not for us to define what is mainstream and what is off stream. So parties actually learn through their own experience." Bhattacharya gave the example of Nepal and said there used to be a Maoist party and for years together they were not in parliamentary kind of politics.

"But in their own way, as the situation evolved in Nepal, I think they changed track and started doing something else. So I will wait for the Maoists here to evaluate their own experience," he said.

Asked about the situation of other Left parties, which have eight MPs in Lok Sabha this time, a climb down from 59 MPs in 2004, he said the Left story differs from state to state.

"For example in Bengal, the Left front was in power for 34 years. And when the Left Front was in power, we have never been part of the Left Front. We maintained our independent existence, as an independent Left party," he said.

"I think it started with Singur and Nandigram. That's when things started going downhill and somehow they have not managed to recover," he said.

Bhattacharya said probably stability of the government became more important for the CPI(M) at that time.

"I think that's how the struggles became secondary to the stability of the government. For example, if you look at Singur and Nandigram, it was fairly obvious to anybody looking at the society that the farmers were not at all happy with this whole idea of land acquisition," he said.

Asked about the Left parties' dependence on alliance to win elections, he said it is "interdependence".

"I don't look at it as dependence. It's interdependence because I think we have gained as much as our allies have gained," he said.

On the decline of the Left globally, he said the deeply democratic content of the Left has not been manifested ever.

"People talk about how the Left has been good in terms of economic redistribution, about solving poverty, about solving unemployment and so on and so forth. But where the Left has been found wanting is, let's say, democracy, about human rights, about individual liberty.

"So, that has been one critic of the Left movement and I don't say that it is completely out of place. There is a major reason why the Soviet Union collapsed," he said.

Bhattacharya, however, said in the days to come, as the climate crisis becomes a major political issue, the Left will be in focus again, as many people, especially students and youth, look at climate change not as some kind of a disaster which has happened but as a result of capitalism.

"They can very easily relate it to capitalism, the kind of inequality and obscene kind of opulence and ostentation... where wastage is in-built, wastage-oriented kind of consumption.

"So, they have a critic. I mean, it can sound Gandhian or Marxist, but they have a far stronger criticism of capitalism than probably we have built all these years... So, I think that with all this climate crisis politics, this is going to take us in the Left direction. That will give the Left a new basis to grow again," he added. PTI