This analysis of the mid-term election leads further to other factors that have started taking shape in the political thinking of the country.

There is a talk of polarisation — polarisation in the sense that there should be two ideologically different groups based on the split. I can understand a sort of a polarisation and thinking going on in the country. But when we think in terms of polarisation in the Congress, it means that the idea is to ideologically split the Congress into the extreme right and the extreme left. Is it the right thing to do? I have come to the conclusion that this is a totally wrong assessment of the situation. This will be a completely wrong approach to remedy the situation. Congress has stood historically for democratic socialism. It has accepted programmes and won its place of honour in the hearts of the people. Nobody has proved that the policies of the Congress have failed us. Possibly we may have failed ourselves; but we cannot say that the Congress policies have been failures. We see that at the present moment different types of people are coming forward and saying that let us try to convert ourselves into rightist groups. Some try to prove that there is not much of distinction between us and the Swatantra Party. Some say, well, we are very much nearer the Jan Sangh. On the other side, there are others who urge that let us go and try to have some sort of alliance with the leftists. What this leftism means, I do not really know. There are certain prophets of doom who are spreading the thought that in 1972 the Congress is going to lose the majority at the Centre and, therefore, start thinking in terms of coalition from now on. Coalitions with whom and for what purpose?

Let us try to take a realistic view of the political picture or political scene of the country today. With whom we want to go and coalesce and for what purpose? I see the political scene like this: on the left side there are two parties, or more than two parties perhaps, the Communist Party and Democratic Socialist Party as they call themselves. On the right side there is the Jan Sangh and the Swatantra. With whom do you want to coalesce? Have we anything common with Jan Sangh? Have we anything common with the Swatantraites? One is a non-secular party; the other is the party for status quo. On the other side are the Com­munist Rightists and Communist Marxists. I find that commu­nism and Communist parties in India are suffering from their own self-contradictions. We know this Communist rightists party. I do not want to criticise any political party as such, but it is much better that everyone of us analyses the political scene to find out whether we have got anything in common with them. The Communist rightists party functioned for 20 years before it split. It split, because the leadership was taking their instruc­tions from somewhere outside the country, from Moscow.