Commies are coming

The big story in the last two elections in India has been the strong showing of communists. And, as I wondered what was happening it all came back to me.

Four years of undergraduate education in Kerala brought me very close to the communists. I was what I guess they thought "a failure". My uncle was in the local communist party, worked for the party mouthpiece. So, I got introduced to all their student leaders at my college. The first week was quite interesting - all these "leaders" came and introduced themselves to me. Yet, when the student branch came on a membership drive not only did turn it down, I asked my friend sitting next to me to do the same.

Over the next four years I had an opportunity to see them from close quarters, interact with some of them. And, what I saw scared me. Here is a group of guys who are incredibly disciplined (the students would give up the classes for various causes - from literacy drive through political campaigning to stuffing the ballots to ensure that their candidates win). For all their "intellectual and rational" appearances the cadres almost never ever questioned the ideology. They were like zombies. The scariest thing was what happened the day after Rajiv Gandhi's death. Kerala was in the middle of a run up to an election (something that the incumbent communist chief minister had called because they were ahead in the opinion polls). As soon as the news of Rajiv Gandhi's death came the communist cadres near my college went to work. The removed the congress party's campaign posters and made it look like the handiwork of the right wing BJP cadre. Of course, that was not enough to get them back into power.

The communist parties I think believe that if you keep saying the same lies over and over again it will be considered as the truth. And, that seem to be working. So, while Jayalalitha* and others keep changing their policies depending on which way they electoral winds blow, these folks are willing to take a beating once in a while to keep the story consistent.


* What happened to Amma was sad. I thought she did something bold and right when she fired the state government staff when they went on strike and then declared mass conversions illegal. But, she relented on both. Quite stupid because no longer could the actions be explained/ spun in a consistent way.