Author: Shri Punj
Publication: Organiser
Date: February 24, 2008
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=225&page=7
[This is a rejoinder to Sitaram Yechuri's
article in The Hindustan Times dated February 7, 2008. It was sent to the
paper by Shri Balbir K. Punj, but he received a reply from the newspaper rejecting
the rejoinder saying, "unfortunately it is difficult for us to carry
the piece in the next one week as we have commissioned pieces that are in
the pipeline... and a week later the topicality of your piece will be lost".
We carry this piece, in the context, as it was sent to us by Shri Punj.-Ed.]
Introduction: By the way why do the Marxists
play down global threat of Islamic terrorism? Is that to placate their constituency
of Muslim appeasement ever since the united CPI supported the demand for Pakistan
from the very beginning? Yechuri wants to remind L.K. Advani about the Babri
demolition case; that is only a political charge. Why is our comrade forgetting
(conveniently?) that Advani voluntarily relinquished public office when he
was charged about corruption based entirely on a diary entry till he was cleared
of the charge by the courts? Advani's five decades long public life is an
open book.
When a Marxist professes to play both the
philosopher and the prophet, we are reminded of all the great prophecies from
the Marxist stable that have gone into the dustbin of history. In the case
of Sitaram Yechuri (Hindustan Times February 7) all the facts are on their
head, which does not speak much of the JNU certification. As for the comparison
with Barkis, isn't it a top Marxist leader who says his party had done him
wrong when the Prime Ministership was within his reach in the mid 1990s? It
was that Barkis who was willing but his party's aging Punjabi leader wanted
a figurehead at the end of the political rope and they found a "humble
farmer" to go along. The rest was history played as a comedy.
To come back to the prophecies from the Marxist
stable. Marx himself predicted the end of capitalism; it is the end of communism
that we witnessed in the 90s. Does anyone hold the Red Book of Mao in China
today? Yes, Yechuri and his men hold it up in India. In China, Mao is dead
as dodo behind the market economy. Yechuri wants us to believe that the NDA
government's liberalisation policy brought ruin to the people. The NDA regime
in fact ended the economy of shortages; and Aam Aadmi could get a phone, an
LPG connection, cement, steel, edible oil, sugar etc., etc. without waiting
in a line endlessly and paying under the table.
And if liberalisation is a devil, why is Buddhadeb
Bhattacharya rolling out the red carpet for not only the Tatas and Jindals
but also for the Salim group and for Mitsubishi and others? If protecting
the people from "neo-liberal policies" is what his party stands
for, why should CPM keep in power a government headed by the father of liberalisation
himself and his finance minister who sings hallelujahs to market and not Marx
and regularly does Haj to Devos?
Yechuri wants to remind L.K. Advani about
the Babri demolition case; that is only a political charge. Why is our comrade
forgetting (conveniently?) that Advani voluntarily relinquished public office
when he was charged about corruption based entirely on a diary entry till
he was cleared of the charge by the courts? Advani's five decades long public
life is an open book. But how the Marxist leaders are at each other's throat
over corruption is best demonstrated in Kerala where the Marxist Chief Minister
and his party chief are daily accusing each other's faction of corruption
and the High Court had to order CBI enquiry into some of the charges.
From where did Yechuri get the idea that Advani
is "blinded by his devotion to US imperialism". It was the NDA Government
that went ahead with Pokhran-II disregarding the strong opposition from the
US. This was something that the earlier Congress government tried to do but
backtracked under the American pressure. When India demonstrated its nuclear
weapons' capability in 1998, what was Yechuri's party doing? It was aligning
with China and the US to criticize India's nuclear efforts. That is perhaps
the way Yechuri and his party "defend national sovereignty". Forget
the duplicity during 1962, even now the Marxists will not speak against China
clawing in on our territory.
Even the lizards should laugh when Yechuri
speaks of Left's "consistent opposition of communalism". Taslima
has no place in Left ruled West Bengal because she wrote something that orthodox
Muslims do not like. In Muslim majority Malaysia, the government fires at
and indiscriminately jails local Hindus for protesting discrimination against
them. But the comrades here are too busy to notice as they join orthodox Muslim
demonstration against the hanging of a ruthless and bloody dictator like Saddam
Hussein.
In the Marxist jargon the touchstone of India's
foreign policy being independent is a hate Israel plank, in season and out.
India gave up that attitude long ago and not under the NDA rule. Even the
Arab countries are no longer all anti-Israel even as Palestinian President
Abbas and Israeli government are trying to work out a permanent peace arrangement.
It is convenient for Yechuri to forget that the NDA Government did not favour
US invasion of Iraq or NDA Prime Minister Vajpayee rejecting the invitation
of the US President to visit Washington for negotiating with Pakistan at the
height of the Kargil crisis.
In Yechuri's mind, it is only Advani's visit
as Home Minister to CIA Headquarters that remains green forgetting the fact
that India and the US are perforce to collaborate to contain the global flue
that Islamic terrorism has brought on the world. If CIA has enormous information
on Islamic terrorism it is but right that the Indian Home Minister also seeks
to benefit from it. Before throwing such stones, Yechuri should have done
some introspection-after all it is the Indian Communist Party, both united
and split, that received regular legacy of funds from the Soviet Union and
served the Soviet cause with diligence as recent exposure of classified documents
from the KGB reveal.
By the way why do the Marxists play down global
threat of Islamic terrorism? Is that to placate their constituency of Muslim
appeasement ever since the united CPI supported the demand for Pakistan from
the very beginning? And the political theory advanced by their ranking intellectual
EMS that India is not one country but a confederation of many nationalities?
Marxists defending national sovereignty, my foot?
The Gujarat that Modi had advanced as his
election platform was an agenda of development. Therefore, if BJP proposes
economic and social development of all people as its election plank, it should
attract more parties to align with it in a national coalition to win power
in the coming general election. NDA is very much alive and is kicking as the
endorsement of Advani's leadership was announced from the NDA platform. On
the other hand it is the Third Alternative that Yechuri and his comrades sought
to set up that has collapsed even before the ink on the MOU dried as the AIADMK's
distancing from it shows.
Yechuri claims to speak for the people of
India while his party's influence is limited to only three states; it is nowhere
in the whole of the Hindi belt. In West Bengal the CPM led coalition is floundering.
The recent food riots and the Forward Bloc's demonstrations expose the Marxist
game of green room collaboration between exploiters like fair price shop owners
and the party apparatchiks. If anything is certain after the next election,
it is that the Left will no longer be in a position to dictate terms to the
Central Government whether that government is formed by the NDA or UPA.
NDA and the BJP might have lost in 2004 but
that is electoral politics. In 1984 the BJP was reduced to just two seats
in the Lok Sabha but under the dynamic leadership of Advani, the party sprang
back to a decisive role in 1989 and raised its strength further in 1991 and
1996, finally storming the gates of power in a coalition under Vajpayee in
1998 and 1999. It has both the political roots and expanded strength to regain
power now that it is rejuvenated under Advani's leadership.
(Writer can be contacted at punjbk@gmail.com)
