Stir over CAA kindles respect for Constitution, Left turns zealous converts

Thiruvananthapuram: A flip-side of the protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is that past critics of the Indian Constitution, especially the Left, have all of a sudden become zealous converts to the foundational text of the republic.

Every demonstration demanding scrapping of CAA in different parts of the country invariably begins with the evocation of the Constitution. On Republic Day, there were organised reading of the Preamble of the Constitution. In many places, the anti-CAA campaign spearheads, including political parties, gave a call to hoist the national flag and take a pledge to defend the Constitution.

The new-found zeal for constitutionalism is all the more evident in Left-dominated Kerala. The ruling CPI(M) organised a  ‘human chain’ across the state on January 26, rallying thousands cutting across ideological divides. The massive show against CAA was led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Not only party cadres and sympathisers but also Muslim clerics and Christian priests came out on the street to become links in the chain. It was a roaring success so much so that the public mobilization and oath-taking left the opposition Congress-led UDF deeply worrying, despite it being equally vehement in running down CAA as a constitutional coup by the BJP Government.

Obviously, the discomfiture of the UDF, in which Indian Union Muslim League and Christian dominated Kerala Congress factions are partners, is over the presence of the members of the minority community in large numbers at the LDF-led protests, when the elections to the state assembly is just a year away. As a rainbow coalition, it is crucial for the UDF to retain the support of the minorities to stage a come back to power in the state.

The competitive politics between the two coalitions apart, it is interesting to note that the Left leaders had never in past showed such great enthusiasm for the constitution, as they do now. When the Constitution was adopted seven decades back, the undivided Communist Party of India did not treat it with reverence. In fact, the then Communist leaders had just dubbed it as yet another stunt by ‘national bourgeoisie’ to perpetuate their ‘class interests’. When the country attained freedom in 1947,  the Communist Party brazenly refused to share the national enthusiasm. It then gives a call to topple the government through a revolution, which led to the party getting banned for a while. The Communist stalwarts of the time, mostly ‘upper caste’ elites, saw little merit in the Constitution as a framework that will lead the fledgeling nation along the egalitarian path. A reading of the party documents of the time would reveal that nor did they show much respect to the architect of the Constitution  Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. The Communist theorists held Ambedkar’s republican philosophy a hindrance to sharpening the class contradictions in the society and harnessing the situation to build a socialist revolution.

Of late, not only the mainstream Communist parties but even radical groups like Maoists have started swearing by the Constitution. They say that the Indian constitution is a forward-looking document, whose basics are infallible. They see that resisting with all the strength at the command the ‘assault’ being mounted on the Constitution by the Sangh Parivar is the immediate task of the Left in the country. 

What a change! The sceptics, however, say that they are not surprised by this change as it takes time for the Indian Communists to wake up and accept reality. 

(The author is a senior journalist and political critic)