Sikkim-Competitive Communalism

October 22, 1977 THE latest of the calls from the CPI for "left-democratic unity", which would presumably lead to the envisaged "left-democratic national alternative" to both the Janata party and the Congress, has to be seen as yet another effort on the part of the party to re-establish its radical credentials hopelessly compromised after years of practising what even those outside the communist movement have come to see as a class collaborationist line. Though the appeal is addressed to the CPI(M) as well as to communist formations outside the CPI(M), in practical terms it has to be seen as being addressed principally to the former.