Kolkata: Leftist thinker, writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali will participate in an event organised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in New Delhi on January 24 on the occasion of the `Anti-imperialist Day.'

"I certainly want to create in India an anti-imperialist awareness and have accepted the CPI (M) invitation to be present there," the Pakistan-born, Oxford-educated intellectual told The Hindu here on Sunday.

Mr. Ali will not take part in the protest rallies being organised by the Left parties during United States President George Bush's proposed visit in May. "But I will be there at the public event [on January 24] to encourage people to protest against that visit ... he, in my opinion, is essentially a war criminal and is being welcomed and greeted as if he were some ordinary Head of State. I think people in India should show their anger," Mr. Ali, a board member and the editor of the New Left Review, said.

`Of the Left'

"I am a person of the Left. I travel all over the world. Not just in Asia; I visit Latin America, the United States a lot, I've been to Venezuela several times, and wherever I go I do try to strengthen the anti-imperialist forces, forces fighting against the Washington consensus, and to my limited abilities help them as much as I can. I am doing this here as well," said the author of `The Clash of Fundamentalism' (2002).

On his campaign against imperialism Mr Ali said: "It's not just in India. I do the same in Pakistan where the Left is virtually non-existent. I was in Malaysia not so long ago for a conference where I also spoke on the need for a united anti-imperialist front in the Asian countries as is being envisaged now in Latin America."

"I haven't been to India for 15 years. This is a country for which I have a great deal of affection because of its past. So if I can be of any assistance to the progressive forces here I will be very happy."

"I'm not attached to any particular organisation. I am an independent person and writer. But I hope some of the things I do here will be of help and we can discuss things more openly," he said.

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