The split in the Communist Party of India has been an earthquake in West Bengal. The breakup of what used to be a monolithic party seems proceeding with a whimper rather than a bang. ~ The Statesman’s editorial, “Not with a bang” ~ 17 April 1964 Kolkata was eerily silent on a normally bustling Thursday.

Promode Das Gupta and Jyoti Basu, architects of the Communist movement, would have deemed the shock and awe as almost unbelievable. Just as Atal Behari Vajpayee would have been delighted beyond measure over the surge of the Right. If in radically different ways, all three were statesmen of a caliber that is now a scarce commodity in the India of today.

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A sense of collective jaw-dropping has greeted the result of the Lok Sabha election in West Bengal. Across the spectrum of parties and politics, the entity that was quite the most astonished on Thursday afternoon, when the leads were beamed on television screens, was the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal. Not the least because the politically conscious electorate of the state had voted overwhelmingly for the Left in seven successive elections between 1977 and 2006 ~ a record of sorts in the international Communist spectrum.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will have to reconcile itself to zero representation from Bengal in the 17th Lok Sabha. Having languished as a legislative non-entity in the Assembly till a few years ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party has now won 18 seats (out of 42) in the Lok Sabha from West Bengal ~ ascending from two seats in the 2014 election. The saffron party is now just four seats behind the Trinamul Congress, and has thus earned for itself the No. 2 slot in the state’s political spectrum.

Even the party’s detractors will readily concur that this is a spectacular feat. It is palpable enough that many, who had voted for the Left from 1977 to 2006, have now pressed the EVM button in favour of the Right. This is the quirk of Bengal politics, such as it is today. Unmistakable is the degree of disenchantment with the Trinamul Congress dispensation under a pugnacious Chief Minister who will have to stew in her own juice for some time yet. Mamata Banerjee was at her abrasive worst when she remarked a week before last Sunday’s final phase that the Prime Minister of India “will be slapped”, hastening to “clarify” that it would be democracy’s “slap”, and not that of the people.

Democracy, in point of fact, has overwhelmingly endorsed Mr Modi’s premiership with another innings at the crease. Miss Banerjee’s clarification was vacuous semantic quibbling that has done but little to make amends, let alone shore up her standing and that of her party. Though the Saradha and Narada scams had little or no impact on Trinamul’s prospects in the 2014 parliamentary election or the panchayat polls last summer, the Chief Minister has a lot to answer for in the context of the predicament that hobbles the former Police Commissioner, Mr Rajeev Kumar.

At a pinch, one could argue that he was used when he headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT). The rest is history, not least the presence of very senior bureaucrats on the political dais at Metro Channel. Overall, her campaign, as often as not supremely arrogant, bristled with soundbytes rather than substance. More accurately, Narendra Modi and the master strategist, Amit Shah, had ratcheted up the pressure with two calibrated campaigns, with a reasonable time-gap. Thus were they able to whip up the fervour ~ nationalistic if you will ~ though the desecration of Vidyasagar’s statue at the end of the day failed to dent its prospects.

That said, there can be no two opinions on the blight that the 19th century Bengal Renaissance has suffered in the wider canvas. The electoral achievement must seem still more remarkable as the party is yet to boast a base in West Bengal, let alone a robust fighting machine to take care of the electoral choice. A pie-chart would indicate that the BJP is now second to Trinamul, a rather unnerving thought two years before the Assembly election.

There is little doubt that the surge of the Right has been facilitated to a small extent by quadrangular contests in several constituencies ~ between the BJP, Congress, Trinamul Congress, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It would be useful to recall that Sitaram Yechuri had advanced his caveat long before the election dates were announced in March. The terms of engagement were just not agreeable to the CPI-M and Congress; the negotiations floundered on the core issue of seat adjustment. As it turned out on Thursday afternoon, the vote was split and to the detriment of CPI-M and the Congress.

It would arguably be instructive for the party to recall the repeated caveats of Jyoti Basu, specifically to forge an understanding with the Congress to keep the BJP at bay. It was not accepted by certain loudmouths at Gopalan Bhavan. As it turned out, the Left’s campaign in Bengal was feeble in the extreme, verily a non-starter with minimal visibility. And it will be hard to escape the conclusion that the CPI-M has lost its interest in electoral politics, despite the dominance of senior citizens in Alimuddin Street, with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee under the weather.

His illness had incapacitated the party’s electioneering, as general secretary Yechuri has lamented. Never since the split in 1964 has the Communist movement suffered so startling a setback, this time truly devastating. Much as it hated to be referred to as a regional party ~ in power in Bengal and Tripura at one stage and now only in Kerala ~ the surge of the Right has virtually driven the Marxists to the footnotes of India’s political history… if not to oblivion as its compulsive detractors might contend. In the net, the CPI-M’s electoral performance has been the worst since its foundation 55 years ago.

This is a tragic denouement for a party that was once rated as the most astute in the spectrum. The survival of the movement, built up adroitly since 1964, is today at stake, and direly so. The political polarisation in Parliament is complete… like perhaps the burial of ideology. Paradoxically enough, the CPI (M) has shown the way towards political eclipse. As the BJP graduates from strength to strength, the CPI-M has shot itself in the foot, and it will take a while to bandage the wound, festering since the summer of 2011 when its 34-year-rule had met its eclipse.

Which isn’t a harsh judgment, only a statement of fact. The Left radical along the Red Corridor, not least Bengal’s Junglemahal, must be enjoying a quiet chuckle. In two radically different perspectives, the verdict is historic both for the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). And rather distressing for the Trinamul Congress, with its singular bastion in West Bengal.

The Congress remains the non-entity with two seats from Bengal. This intrinsically is the quadrilateral equation that has emerged. Let there be peace, without a renewed bout of reprisal and counter-mobilisation. The verdict must be respected. This is the certitude of a democracy, indeed the form of governance that is under threat from India to Indonesia. Democracy is not just about voting. Democracy is about the results of votes being implemented. This is the parable to be drawn from the “breaking news” on the 23rd of May, 2019.

(The writer is Senior Editor, The Statesman)