But some people never change. Since its birth in the wake of the Chinese aggression on India, the CPM has not changed, it has not grown; rather it is in a time warp, a prisoner of its past. The party had appropriated perfidy its guiding principle and it lives true to the tutelage of its founding father EMS Namboodiripad, who was absolutely confused about the Indian position on Sino-Indian border dispute.
At the party plenum, where it used to hail Chairman (Chinese) Mao, Our chairman, EMS declared, the dispute is over the territories which India claims as its and China claims as theirs.
Namboodiripad had refused to condemn the 1962 Chinese aggression. He was pro-Beijing, stating that it was a conflict between Socialist China and Capitalist Indian state. ?Dogmatic assessment of the class character of the Nehru government as well as the role a socialist country should play in relation to a non-aligned country, made the Chinese Communist Party resort to force rather than peaceful negotiation as the means of settling the border problem?, the then CPM general secretary had said in his typically dialectical idiom. The CPM leaders were put behind bars by the Nehru government for undermining India'swar efforts. A segment of the undivided CPI then opposed the EMS line and forced him to split and form the CPM.
Look what Prakash Karat, the present general secretary of the CPM, says about the provocative Chinese claim over Arunachal Pradesh by that country'sAmbassador to India, Sun Yuxi on the eve of the Chinese President Hu Jintao'svisit. Repeatedly pressed by the media for a CPM clarification, Prakash Karat, keeping intact with his Chinese fixation, refused to join the rest of the political class in condemning the Chinese Ambassador'sclaim. He even refused to accept the stand of the UPA government, which his party is supporting, that Arunachal is an inseparable, integral part of India. He said: ?We have our understanding of the border and they have their understanding. So there is a problem. And the two sides are trying to settle?? Clearly, it is difficult for the CPM to stand for India, though it stands on Indian soil.
Sitaram Yechuri went a step further. He said: ?These are disputes.? He suggested a resolution to the dispute: Don'ttransfer populated areas on either side. In other words, Yechuri does not think that the Indian government is correct when it says that whole of Arunachal Pradesh belongs to India. China is already occupying illegally 38,000 sq.km. of Indian territory on the Kashmir side, which the Indian Parliament has vowed to vacate.
Ever since the UPA assumed office the CPM has become more explicit in expressing its old fascination for China and its desire to privilege their interests. The Left parties particularly the CPM have been brazenly using their leverage with the UPA to push Chinese interests, the same way as they lobbied for the killer Maoists in Nepal. The CPM has been carrying out a sustained campaign for protecting the interests of the Chinese companies investing in India. The BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad in a perfectly reasonable description of the CPM credo remarked, ?By seeking to covertly justify Chinese claim over Arunachal Pradesh, and openly lobbying for Chinese companies seeking to invest in Indian projects the CPM has established the fact the colours of 1962 are still fresh in 2006.?
The Indian political opinion is appalled by the treacherous CPM stand. The party has a dubious tradition of supporting divisive anti-India campaigns. Equally it is in the forefront abusing and name-calling the nationalist parties in the country. It has accused the UPA, for instance, as a stooge of the US for signing the Nuclear deal and voting against Iran. But it is not ashamed of its own blatantly partisan stand akin to treason on China, at a time when its political clout is at its peak and is almost a partner in the central government. The patriotic political parties in the country should openly condemn and disassociate themselves from the 21st century stooges of a regime that craves territorial expansionism and warmongering. The country will have to examine, if it is constitutionally acceptable in a democratic parliamentary system to allow a political party to function only to promote the interests of other countries, unfriendly to India.
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