Congress and the Commissar

As I watched Commissar Karat and his fellow commies charge the prime
minister with bartering away India's
`sovereignty' in exchange for the nuclear deal, I wondered if they
were suffering from historical amnesia.
Or do they just choose not to remember our Soviet era in the hope
that nobody else will either.

Well, having become politically conscious in those bleak decades, I
remember all too well. I remember
that all our weapons came from the Soviet Union and all the shoddy
consumer goods we produced were exported
to that country in a form of commerce that was more barter than
trade. I remember what a shabby, hopeless
country India was on account of this restricted engagement with the
world. I remember how India's foreign
policy was so dictated by the USSR that we did not even dare condemn
the invasion of Afghanistan? How
is it that the comrades did not see any threat to our sovereignty in
those bad old days?

If our sovereignty was strong enough to survive when all anyone
talked about when they discussed India
was `our starving millions', then it is more than likely to survive
now when the economy is growing at
nearly 10 per cent and we are considered an `emerging economy'.

As a proud Indian who relishes the fact that we no longer wander the
world with a begging bowl in our
hands, it disgusts me when people talk of our `sovereignty' as if it
were so fragile that it could be
destroyed by a single treaty. But, it is not about a single treaty,
is it?

What bothers our lefties is our growing closeness to the United
States. In the words of a statement that
arrived in my mailbox from Medha Patkar and a couple of her NGO
pals, "This deal is part of a successful
attempt by the United States to build a strategic relationship with
India, in confronting the rising
capitalist challenge from China, where India will be used as its
client in the region."

Thank you, Ms Patkar, for spelling it out. China is indeed a
capitalist country today and it does not
want India to begin to compete, so it uses our communists and muddle-
headed activists like Medha Patkar
as a fifth column. Well, it's time that the prime minister took them
on, even if it means sacrificing
his government. Let him state clearly that a closer strategic and
commercial relationship with the United
States is in India's national interest and if the Marxists and sundry
other political parties think otherwise,
then let them put their case before voters in the next election and
see what happens.

As every poll indicates, the average Indian thinks friendship with
the United States is a good thing and
a very large number think the nuclear deal is in India's national
interest. On my travels these days,
I constantly run into people who harangue me for not writing strongly
enough against those `Chinese agents'.
And it delights me to inform you that the Hindi press is currently
filled with articles that revile Commissar
Karat and his comrades for their inordinate fondness for China. The
sense I get of the public mood is
that our communist parties are not going to get enough seats to bully
whichever government comes to power
after the next general election.

May I happily predict that the party that is going to suffer most
over its cussed and incomprehensible
opposition to the nuclear deal is the Bharatiya Janata Party. Last
week, its ally, the Shiv Sena, broke
ranks on the issue, and if the BJP bothers to conduct its own poll,
it is likely to find that its voters
are no longer sure that the national interest is safe in BJP hands.

Where it was looking quite strong a few months ago, it now looks like
it is going to be in no position
to lead a coalition government, leave alone win even the seats it
currently has in the Lok Sabha. Good.
Another spell on the opposition benches may restore some sense of
reality.

The real beneficiary of the prime minister standing up to the
Commissar will be the Congress. There are
optimistic murmurings from party headquarters even over the
possibility that the government may fall
as soon as next month. As for the prime minister, he has not looked
more prime ministerial since he took
the job. As someone who has been critical of many of the things he
has done and failed to do in the past
three years, may I say that over the nuclear deal, he has behaved
like a statesman. It would be a terrible
shame if he is forced to back down now by those pressures the Left is
so adept at exerting over the Congress'
crypto-Marxists.