The Communist Manifesto exhorted workers of all countries to unite, but Indian communists always delighted in dividing themselves. Even the most arduous analysts of leftist politics in India will find it difficult to count the exact number of communist parties in the country. Given their love of divisions and splits, the merger of the two major communist parties should be of some political consequence. However, it is rather too early to take talks of such a merger seriously. This is not the first time that the idea has been mooted or debated. The remark by Sitaram Yechury, a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), that the possible merger has to undergo a “process” sounds like typical communist rhetoric. But the curious thing about the latest idea of a merger is that it has come from the CPI(M). For many years, the Marxists treated the same proposal from the Communist Party of India with disdain and even suspicion. The CPI(M)’s response reflected the arrogance of the so-called ‘Big Brother’. If the party is showing signs of change, that surely has much to do with the end of its 34-year rule in West Bengal.

However, the real significance of a merger of India’s two big communist parties lies not in what forces them to go for it, but in whether it will change the reunited party. Born eight years after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and four years after the founding of the Communist Party of China, the CPI has remained on the margins of Indian politics. Obviously, Indian communists failed to connect to the realities of the country’s politics and to the ethos of Indian society. Their assessments of mass politics have been proved wrong time and again. A merger of the CPI and the CPI(M) will remain an issue only between the two parties and will be of little consequence to Indian politics unless Indian communists initiate genuine changes in their ideology and politics. Indian communists have an extraordinary knack for clinging to discredited ideas that have been discarded even by their compatriots in other countries. If they are to be relevant in Indian politics and society, they have to accept that Karl Marx failed to foresee the world we live in. Indian communists need to change their old ideas and ways, but they would do well to reinvent themselves as nationalists first.