On Big Brother, mum's the word for CPM

Author: CL Manoj
Publication: The Statesman
Date: July 27, 2003

When the BJP-led govern­ment finds itself in a spot of bother, as it did over the issue of Chinese incur­sions into Arunachal Pra­desh during the Prime Minister's Beijing visit, the CPI-M is always first off the block.  Ready with written and verbal con­demnations.  But three days after the Arunachal controversy, and even af­ter the foreign minister has given a statement in Parliament, the Marxists are being as inscrutably silent as the wiliest Chi­nese mandarin.

Inquiries at the CPI-M headquarters, AKG Bha­van, in Delhi whether the party has any statement on the issue produced a list of absent leaders. Mr Har­kishan Singh Surjeet is in Canada, Mr Prakash Kar­at in London, "other senior leaders are not available" and, perhaps most inter­estingly, Mr Sitaram Ye­chury and two other leaders are visiting China.

But globe trotting polit­buro members are not a new phenomena in the workers' party.  That has never stopped the CPI,-M from reacting earlier when the party sensed that the government is in trouble.

Observers here have started wondering wheth­er the silence a part of the CPI-M's warm relation­ship with the Chinese Communist Party.  The undivided Communist Party of India split, among other reasons, over the pro-China faction's stand on the 1962 Indo­-China conflict.  That fac­tion formed the CPI-M and it refused to recognise that China had actually attacked India.

The CPI, on the other hand, had criticised China then and it is doing so now.  The party's national execu­tive member, Mr Atul Ku­mar Anjan, today rejected the Chinese claim that Ar­unachal Pradesh was not part of India.  "There can't be any dispute on this count.  Both Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim are inte­gral parts of India".  He also said the party wants "the PM to make a statement on the issue of Chinese incur­sion across the IAC since it happened during what the NDA and BJP claimed was a 'path-breaking' visit by Mr Vajpayee".

Arunachal CM: Aruna­chal Pradesh chief minis­ter Mr Mukut Mithi today said the Vajpayee govern­ment should be 'more as­sertive" with Beijing with regard to Indian territory, PTI adds.
 

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