When we look at the composition of CPI(M)'s key decision making body, the Polit Bureau, people having serious impact on Hindi heartland are rare.
Published Mar 25, 2025 | 3:38 PM ⚊ Updated Mar 25, 2025 | 3:38 PM
An image from a CPI(M) rally. (Facebook)
Synopsis: For the Left, in general, to make any progress in the Hindi heartland, it has to comprehend the language and life of those people who primarily communicate in Hindi.
In this article I am going to deal with the peculiar problem that the Left movement, irrespective of shades, is encountering in contemporary India.
The country is engulfed with the question of the imposition of Hindi. The last high point of this never-ending issue was in 2022, when Home Minister Amit Shah, while addressing the Parliamentary Official Languages Committee, said that people from different states should communicate in Hindi instead of English.
He also informed the said committee that the Union government transacts 70 percent of its business in Hindi.
Data presented by The Hindu dated 19 August 2022 highlighted that more than 90 percent of the population communicates in Hindi only in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
In states like Maharashtra, Bihar, Punjab and Arunachal Pradesh, around 50 percent of the people communicate in Hindi. In Karnataka, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, people communicating in Hindi are less than 15 percent, and in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, it is less than 10 percent.
Tamil Nadu has already up its ante on this issue, to which the Left is yet to match its voice with the same strength.
Before further venturing into this question, I propose to postulate that in any party, people who man the key organisational structure indicate its areas of influence as well.
Thus, if we look at the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the core of its leadership comprises those from Uttar Pradesh, whereas, in the case of Akali Dal, it is from Punjab.
Similarly, the core of the BJP top brass hails from the Hindi heartland and the key functionaries in the Left movement mostly from non Hindi regions.
There is a direct proportional relationship between the policies these parties pursue and the geographical areas of their influence.
This also forces us to think in another angle that is directly linked to Left in India and the expansion of its footprints. Now, it is officially acknowledged by all the Left forces that they have failed — even after hundred years of their existence — to make inroads into the Hindi heartland.
For the Left, in general, to make any progress in the Hindi heartland, it has to comprehend the language and life of those people who primarily communicate in Hindi.
Surprisingly, when we consider the top two Left parties in India, the CPI and the CPI(M), there used to be a reasonable representation from Hindi states among the key policy making units like central secretariat and Polit Bureau— since the days of its inception, till the major split.
Recounting the recent history of CPI and CPI(M) will help us to comprehend the problem grappling with the Left movement in India.
Since the inception of Communist Party of India, eight out of 11 General Secretaries used to be from Hindi states; but the long standing general secretary of CPI, Chandra Rajeswara Rao, was from Andhra Pradesh.
Similarly, for the CPI(M), if we limit our focus to the sixty years since 1964, only non-Hindi region leadership has been at the helm of affairs for the majority of the period.
Of its general secretaries, only HKS Surjit could be named as an actual Hindi-speaking leader who represented CPI(M) followed by Sitaram Yechury. Even though Yechury did not have his roots in the Hindi region, he was the only person widely accepted by all seniors in the political landscape as the ace Hindi speaker from the Left.
When we look at the composition of CPI(M)’s key decision making body, the Polit Bureau, people having serious impact on Hindi heartland are rare.
Most of the Polit Bureau is filled with the people from Kerala and West Bengal along with Andhra and Tamil Nadu having a limited presence.
After BT Ranadive, Maharashtra — another stronghold of the CPI(M) — did not have its presence in the Polit Bureau till Ashok Dhawale was roped in three years back.
Now the question arises: Why am I referring to these in the name of Hindi question? Because the lack of representation of Hindi states in key policy making bodies means the issues of these regions gets only ephemeral references. Moreover, all the political and tactical questions will be, as a matter of fact, decided by keeping in view the interests of regions represented by the leadership.
For example, the classification of fascism or neo-fascism is being decided by the CPI(M) keeping in view its rivalry with Congress in Kerala instead of expounding the foundational Leninist principle to comprehend the political realities, ie concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
This is also evident from a short video clip that was released in the wake of the raging discussion in the media about Prakash Karat’s clarification note, wherein Tammineni Veerabhadram is seen saying, “Calling the present BJP government at the centre fascist or neo-fascist is not at all a problem, but the problem is the tactical line that follows.”
This clearly indicates the fears of the orthodox in CPI(M) about how to deal with the question of Congress in the wake of neo-fascism deepening its tentacles in the country.
Similarly, CPI(M)’s tactical approach towards the BRS is also guided by its blinkered vision of the federal front floated by none other than K Chandrashekar Rao in pursuit of his ambition to emerge an alternative leadership at the national level — despite his constant backing of the BJP on all legislations, including draconian farm laws and labour codes.
Even with the recently released draft political resolution, the party approached BRS with much softness in the section dealing with regional parties. All this indicates the influence of people in the highest positions in the decision-making bodies regarding policy and tactical issues, rather than the party basing its actions on the concrete realities confronting the movement.
Coming back to the question of Hindi and the Left movement in India: Despite its presence for more than a hundred years, all the Left parties have grossly failed to make the core literature of Marxism available in Hindi as much as it is in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Bengali.
Moreover, this is the time for the Left in India to comprehend the problem of the Hindi question and the Congress to examine whether it wants to emerge victorious from the existential crisis it is facing.
Despite referring to the alienation of the Hindi heartland as a key obstacle to the expansion of the Left in India, the presence of both main Left parties across the country has little to do with addressing the issues that hamper its expansion.
The Left parties should focus on increasing the representation of the Hindi heartland in its leadership and work towards endearing the people thereby addressing the issues of bread and butter.
Another historical project that Left in India should have jointly taken up is the production of vast quantity of literature in Hindi and making it available to the reading youth in the comings years like the RSS had done through its Gorakhpur press.
However, we have yet to see if these suggestions will reach the ears of who is who in the Left movement in India.
(The writer is a lawyer, and cultural critic. He was previously associated with the CPI(M). Views expressed here are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
