London: The Marxists feel "beleaguered" and
"besieged" in their citadel West Bengal, with party supremo
Prakash Karat conceding that it will be an uphill task to
retain power in the state, where they have ruled uninterrupted
for over three decades.
The impressions of the CPI-M General Secretary on the
party's status in Indian politics, particularly their
stronghold West Bengal, were given by British Marxist
historian Eric Hosbawm in the latest issue of the prestigious
British journal New Left Review.
Hosbawm said the Indian Marxist leader told him recently
in West Bengal that the party felt "beleaguered and besieged"
and apprehends that it might fare badly against the Trinamul
Congress in the Assembly elections scheduled for 2011.
In an article in the prestigious New Left Review,
Hobsbawm counts the "collapse of the CPI-M in West Bengal"
among developments that have surprised him the most since he
wrote the 'Age of Extremes' on the 20th century in 1994.
He terms the development as something "I really wouldn't
have expected" while discussing the changes that have taken
place across the world in the first decade of the 21st
century.
The 92-year-old historian and prolific author said the
industrialisation policy that led to the taking away of land
from peasants had a very bad effect and "was clearly a
mistake".
-PTI
First Published: Tuesday, March 02, 2010, 21:52