JOSEPH Stalin’s spirit has been showing up at diverse places in recent days, amused, perplexed and despondent. One could see him chortling at the toast King Charles raised to the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood at the White House. He looked saddened to see one of his more erudite followers and among the gentlest of ‘Stalinists’ you would meet saying adieu to admirers in Delhi.

Stalin’s spirit has looked despondent and shocked at his followers in Iran, the Mujahideen-i-Khalq, who are siding with Israel as Western stooges against the country’s battle with imperialism. And he didn’t look too pleased with the election verdict in crucial Indian states whose results were still coming in on Monday and where comrades sworn to Stalinism as their creed just helped Hindu fascism consolidate its hold over India.

Mamata Banerjee lost West Bengal to Narendra Modi on Monday. He was enabled in the task by the secular left led by the CPI-M. Mamata Banerjee offered the doughtiest challenge to Hindu fascism among all the opposition parties. Rahul Gandhi is also a leading challenger to Modi, but far too many of his Congress colleagues look poised to desert him at the first temptation from the ruling classes — Judas pretending to be Nehruvian activists. A woman candidate for the communist party, which together with the BJP sought Mamata’s arrest for any number of frustrated charges, was canvassing with a singular message in her Bengal constituency. The CPI-M’s view of Mamata was so shocking that I recorded the message on the phone to be sure I had heard it right. The........

© Dawn