A meeting of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretariat on December 29 (Friday) reportedly drew a bleak political inference that the Congress’s alleged ambivalence about attending the consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya would subvert the anti-Hindutva politics that lay at the secular heart of the broad anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) INDIA bloc.
Speaking to journalists, CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan said the Congress’s backsliding on secularism, the party’s apologetic defence of the Hindutva agenda and failure to yoke regional and democratic forces to the INDIA bloc opened the door for the BJP to win in the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
He also said that the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the Congress’s key ally in Kerala, risked losing its credibility among influential Muslim social organisations by appearing to condone the Congress’s indecisiveness and “political pauperism”, citing the technicalities of alliance politics.
