Forced to choose between his party and the Constitution, the chief minister of Kerala, V.S. Achuthanandan, has opted for the latter. The state secretary of the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Pinarayi Vijayan, is under the CBI scanner on charges of corruption. The official line of the CPI(M) is predictable — the charges are politically motivated. Mr Achuthanandan, a veteran of the CPI(M) — he is the only one alive among the thirty-two members of the united communist party in Kerala who broke away to join the new CPI(M) — has refused to toe this line. He refused to criticize the Kerala High Court that ordered the CBI probe, or the investigating agency. The case goes back to a time when Mr Vijayan was power minister and only a fraction of the huge sum of money that had come in for a cancer institute was actually disbursed for the same purpose. This prompted the suspicion that the money had gone elsewhere to feather nests. This incident raises questions about the squeaky clean image that the CPI(M) portrays of itself and of the governments that it leads in West Bengal and Kerala. The party needs to think about this rather than remain smug and look for conspiracies and political motivations around every corner.

There is, however, a much more important issue involved here. This pertains to the attitude that the CPI(M) harbours towards the Constitution — the fountainhead of the Indian Republic — and the judiciary — one of the pillars of the Indian State. The CPI(M) as a political party operates within the confines of the Constitution, and ministers who belong to the CPI(M) swear by it. Yet there have been many occasions when it has become apparent that India’s leading communist party has scant respect for the Constitution and the institutions created by it. Its treatment of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, is an illustration. The CPI(M) prefers to have it both ways: it functions within Indian democracy, takes advantage of the rule of law and then, when it suits its own narrow ideological interests, proceeds to abuse the system. The chief minister of Kerala must be applauded for putting the Constitution above his loyalty to the party. The applause is all the more deserved because he is an honourable exception among communists. The party is always right is a dogma that is opium for the comrades.