Dear All,
I find it sad that all those who live in India are being sent headlong into a period of turbulence following the unilateral decision by the so-called Left parties in response to the Indo-US Nuclear Deal to withdraw support from the UPA government. This decision is not a response to basic issues like the rising cost of living, but in support of the chimera of ’sovereignty’ in military affairs. It is shameful that parties that continue to call themselves communist should feel no embarassment at all in exhibiting the worst and most pathetic form of militarist nationalism, premised on the maintainance of an obscene Nuclear military policy. In all likelihood, if the government of the day fails to pass the test of numbers on the floor of parliament, India will head straight for early elections.It will do so entirely because of the ‘Patriots’ on the so called ‘Left’.
The likely beneficiary of this process will be the Bharatiya Janata Party, and if, going by the extensive coverage that the Hindu, usually the mainstream media mouthpiece of the so called Communist Party of India (Marxist) has given to L.K. Advani (the billowing PM in waiting of the BJP), then, it needs to be read as a sign of things to come. A covert entente cordiale between the so-called Left and the Right in Indian politics.
Or, in other words, Prakash Karat handing L.K. Advani the prime-ministership on a platter. A decade or so ago, while Harkrishen Singh Surjeet was ‘managing’ the Congress on behalf of the CPI(M), a similar covert entente cordiale between the so called Left and the Congress (which matured into a full fledged partnership) was as unthinkable, as what augurs, when the ‘Patriots’ of the Left and the Right begin dancing their secret tango.
In this entire episode, everyone has come out in glorious colours, the Congress with its pathetic kow-towing to US interests under the stewardship of George Bush, the Left with its myopic Nuclear patriotism and its abdication of any responsibility towards developing a coherent political programme that is in any way critical of the Indian state’s military Nuclear ambitions, the BJP with its sabre rattling, the Socialists (Samajwadi Party) with their usual cynical opportunism.
And so ends the brief humid Weimar of the Indian Republic. Let us celebrate its demise by recalling how pallid and banal it has already become.I guess we should all now get accustomed to the idea of Narendra Modi as a possible Union Minister of the Interior in the forthcoming years.
best
Shuddha
(Apologies for cross posting a post substantially similar to one already posted by me on the Reader-List.)
