Communists don't quit

People who said that top leaders of Left parties would own up to grave mistakes and perchance, even resign, after the dreadful show in Bengal and loss in Kerala, can shove a red flag up any part of their anatomy they want to. Communists don’t quit; election outcomes don’t matter. Comrades might retreat for strategic reasons, but come the revolution they’ll be back. Never mind if the revolution hasn’t taken place on Indian soil, there’s always the certainty that the next dawn will be a red one.

Once upon a time, spring thunder rang out over India, rolling down from the highlands of north Bengal. But once it got to the indolent plains it petered out in vulgar street fights and burning tramcars. Did that get you into believing there’s no hope for revolution, ever, in India’s noisy democracy? The comrades will happily examine your head, with or without attached body, in Alimuddin Street. Revolution will come, confounding all doubters, once the consciousness of the people is sufficiently elevated to see through the veneer of imperialism that we’re brainwashed to call electoral democracy.

When it comes, it will need a vanguard to lead it and take over the commanding heights. Who can be trusted to lead the vanguard? Not some ragtag forest-dweller from the backwaters surely, nor some noisome trade union types or, horror, comrades tainted by fighting elections. No, the vanguard needs people of an elevated consciousness, brimming with pristine Leninism, undiluted by the corrupting waters of faux democracy, steeped in strategy sharpened in do-or-die debate at the JNU.

For the moment, therefore, a strategic retreat to speedread the collected works of Lenin. Awaiting, patiently, the signal to storm the imperialist citadel. After all, there’s a reason why communists live as long as they do.