The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Tripura is not merely a change in the dynamics of the state’s politics; it tells many more things. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had hegemonised state politics for more than two decades by deception and repression. It had faced no stout opposition since the fragile moral position of the Congress failed to educate people against Manik Sarkar’s misrule. The party in power had no vision for the welfare of the people and developmental agenda. The CPI(M) has a unique style to control the politics of any state. Its cadres form a parallel bureaucracy and the state bureaucracy and police are made subservient to the former. They lack autonomy and independence. Both the common people and the business class have to depend on the party units to get their work done.

Another feature of their rule is completely marginalising the alternative voice from university campuses to village streets. They allow their cadres to use violence and the police are compelled to support their hooliganism. They used it in West Bengal where allegedly more than fifty thousand political murders had been recorded in three decades of their rule. Similar tactics they adopted in Tripura where systematic eliminations and threats led the people to either follow the CPI(M) or remain passively non-political. In Kerala, political murders of the RSS cadres since 1969 is a unique tale in the political history of India. More than 300 RSS-BJP workers have been killed by CPI(M) cadres and thousands wounded, faced threats of physical attacks and harassed in many ways.

There is one more characteristic of Communist politics. Although they chant the theory of democratic centralism and collective leadership, they are the biggest votary of individualism and have internalised hero worshipping. In Bengal, they projected Jyoti Basu as a messiah and in Tripura it was Manik Sarkar. Basu in Bengal used violence to suppress political opposition both within the party and outside it. So did Sarkar in Tripura. In Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan has marginalised the party stalwart VS Achuthanandan, who was a former Chief Minister, and the party Politburo endorsed every political criminality and undemocratic characteristic of regional satraps. Manik Sarkar is another classic example. He too sidelined the supporters of Dasarath Deb, who was the chief architect of the party organization in Tripura, since Deb’s daughter was not given space in the party. The tribals who formed the social base of the party still remain in poverty.

Sarkar’s image as an honest Chief Minister has been another deception. The state has been corruption ridden under the CPM rule. The party has innovated another unique method of corruption, ie, cooperative corruption. The lowest unit of the party to the state secretariat, the uppermost unit, enjoy the fruits of authoritarian rule and collect party tax. Therefore, no critical voice is left within the party and democratic centralism is mutated into Stalinist centralism. Sarkar in Tripura and Vijayan in Kerala are its living examples.

The RSS has been working in the Northeastern states for more than six decades. It has not been smooth sailing for the saffron cadres. Radicals and extremist groups organised violence against them. Apart from Christian and Islamic fundamentalist groups, mafia of various kinds used elimination as a tool to prevent the RSS from making inroads in the region. The nation was shocked when four senior RSS pracharaks, Shymalkanti Sengupta, organisational in-charge of Northeast, Dinendranath Dey, working in southern Assam, Sudhamay Dutta and Subhankar Chakravarty, both posted in Agartala, were kidnapped on August 6, 1999, and later killed. This had not stirred non-RSS forces in the country as they presume and propagate that violence against RSS is a result of the RSS ideology.

Undeterred by the propaganda of pseudo-seculars and violence against it on the ground, RSS has increased its strength by organically connecting people. In New Delhi pseudo-seculars propagate that RSS has been destroying the diversities of Northeast, its culture, language, and dialects. However, what the people of Northeast experience is completely the opposite.

RSS has been working to preserve dialects and tribal sub-castes who are facing extinction. RSS students organisation has been conducting a project called Students Interstate Living for the last three decades and thousands of students of the region have benefitted from it. RSS leitmotif has been to end the understanding deficit between the people of Northeast and other parts of the country. From Arunachal to Assam, Manipur to Meghalaya, Mizoram to Tripura have been witnessing saffron resurgence. RSS has authored a script of nationalism in the region and Narendra Modi enjoys the faith of the people. Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya vindicate the new script of RSS. But Tripura says something more. It is a preface of the end of the CPM rule in Kerala. Pinayari will be the next Sarkar.

The author is founding Honorary Director of India Policy Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank. Views expressed are personal.