Batting for China

Prakash Karat, the seemingly all-conquering general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is certainly breaking new ground. He has given a certificate of integrity to Manmohan Singh, sups with the Congress while giving the glad eye to rival political formations, and now advocates his version of what the Common Minimum Programme stipulates: an 'independent' foreign policy for the country. He thinks that China is going to be the principal challenger of the United States's global and regional hegemony and, in that context, that the US seeks to induct India as an ally in an Asian stand-off. In his view, therefore, India's correct response should be to break off diplomatic ties with the United States . This rather startling and certainly original line of thought leads to some obvious questions.

For, it is China and not the US with which India has a longstanding border dispute. It is China with which India is engaged in a long-term contest for influence with other countries in the region "" Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh , to name some of India's immediate neighbours. It is China and not the US which has been busy helping Pakistan with its atomic bomb and missile programmes, which have a direct bearing on India's security. And it is China, not the United States, which has set up a listening post in the Bay of Bengal and which is developing Gwadar Port at the mouth of the Gulf, which is the source of much of India's oil supplies. It is also China and not the US which has competed against India for Myanmar's gas, and won the contract. It is China, more than the United States, which is tying up supplies of oil and gas in Central Asia, which India would like to have access to. One could go on, but the point should be clear: whether or not China is the rising power that will be a check on American hegemony, it is Chinese hegemony in the region that India has to worry about.

Mr Karat may share communist sympathies with China's rulers, but surely he can recognise that "socialism with Chinese characteristics", when it comes to dealings with the external world, is simply another form of Chinese nationalism. Is it that Mr Karat cannot see what should be obvious, or is it that he refuses to do so? In any case, India in Mr Karat's view is the side-show, the main contest is between China and the US. So why does he not advocate China breaking off diplomatic ties with the US before India does it?

And what would India do, after breaking off diplomatic ties with the US? Take back the 80,000 Indian students studying in the US and imbibing bad capitalist ideas, or send them to Beijing University instead, in the same way that Indian students would go in the old days to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow? What about the US being India's principal trading partner, as well as a vital source of technology? Will China pave the way for India to get special status from the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and assured supplies of uranium? And perhaps China will give India the military hardware and technology that India would otherwise get from the US. In short, Mr Karat's position is so outlandish that it beggars description. If someone had to caricature the positions that an Indian communist adopts, it would be hard to beat this. For here is the one politician who has almost single-handedly blocked India's civilian nuclear deal with the US, not so much because he objects to specific aspects of the deal (which too is the case) but because he disapproves of the growing relationship between the world's two most important democracies, and he now advocates a diplomatic break that is not born out of India's interests but China's! Surely, it is fair to ask, in whose interest is Mr Karat blocking the civilian nuclear deal?