CPM-Muslim-Christist bhai-bhai? No more.

CPM-Muslim-Christist bhai-bhai? No more.

The fraudulent, time-serving Marx-Mullah-Missionary alliance is unraveling.

Jayanth Jacob says there is a dent in CPM’s minority base. Read on….

kalyan


Dent in CPM’s minority base
JAYANTH JACOB (Kolkata, Telegraph, 11 June 2008)

http://telegraphindia.com/1080611/images/11court.jpg

New Delhi, June 10: The CPM may style itself a champion of minority causes but the proportion of Muslims among the party’s membership in Bengal has been falling steadily.

The revelation comes a month after the party lost two districts with large minority populations in the panchayat polls. And a year and a half ago, a central government-appointed committee painted a bleak picture of Muslims’ socio-economic condition in Bengal, ruled by the CPM for the past 31 years.

The CPM’s own data show that only 14.67 per cent of its members in Bengal are Muslim (as of 2007), down from 14.90 per cent in 2004 and 15.2 per cent in 2001. In absolute terms, there are only 47,190 Muslims among the 321,682 members of the country’s most vocally secular party in its citadel state.

In May, the Trinamul Congress had wrested from the CPM the zilla parishads in East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas, where land-acquisition fears are believed to have been compounded by Muslim disenchantment with the Left following the Sachar report.
The report, submitted to the Centre in November 2006, showed that Bengal’s Muslims lagged as badly in education, jobs and income as anywhere else in the country.

Bengal CPM leader Nilotpal Basu, however, said: “The minorities and weaker sections always believed in the policies of the CPM. I don’t think this percentage drop is something that can give one a definite conclusion about Muslims not joining the party ranks.”

Yet a similar trend is seen in many other parts of the country too (see chart). In Gujarat, where Muslims may be thought to be in dire need of a secular champion, only 6.38 per cent of the CPM’s members are Muslim compared with 9.59 per cent in 2004.
Tamil Nadu, a supposedly sunrise state for the CPM where it held the last party congress, also throws up an uninspiring picture. The minorities (Muslims and Christians are counted together in the state) make up just 2.74 per cent of the CPM’s total membership, down from 4.4 per cent in 2004.

Proving that the plunge in percentage has not been caused by Hindus joining the party in droves, the total CPM membership in the state has dipped from 94,343 in 2004 to 90,291.

In BJP-ruled Rajasthan, where the CPM is struggling to get a toehold, Muslim membership has nearly halved from 9.78 per cent in 2004 to 5.13 per cent in 2007.
Lok Sabha MP and CPM central committee member Mohammed Salim refused to call this a trend. “A drop in percentage in some states can’t be taken as a trend of minorities moving away from the party. Our party neither favours nor discriminates against anyone on the basis of caste or religion. Our members are from all religions,” the leader from Bengal said.

The CPM data do show a marginal increase in the proportion of Muslim members in Left-ruled Kerala and Tripura. But the percentage in these states is still very low, far below that in Bengal.

At the all-India level, Muslims make up 10.22 per cent of the party’s membership — 100,376 members out of 982,155. No corresponding figure was available for 2004.
However, the political organisation report placed at the CPM’s 19th party congress at Coimbatore had said: “More efforts should be made to recruit Muslim and Christian minorities in the party.”

“We need to come up with more action plans to inspire the Muslims and other minorities to join the party,” a CPM leader acknowledged.

http://telegraphindia.com/1080611/jsp/frontpage/story_9395243.jsp#CPM-Muslim-Christist bhai-bhai? No more.

The fraudulent, time-serving Marx-Mullah-Missionary alliance is unraveling.

Jayanth Jacob says there is a dent in CPM’s minority base. Read on….

kalyan