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Karat calls for nation-wide campaign

Special Correspondent

To educate people about the “adverse effects” of Indo-U.S. nuclear deal

— Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

Reiterating their stance: The former Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan and Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav at a convention on “India-U.S. Nuclear Deal and India’s Sovereignty” in New Delhi on Monday.

NEW DELHI: Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat on Monday called for a nation-wide movement to educate the people about the “adverse effects” of the civil nuclear deal with the United States. “If the government still decides to ignore the voice of Parliament and the people, it will have to pay the consequences. I am clear about that,” he told a convention on the deal and India’s sovereign commitment to an independent foreign policy.

With Parliament unable to discuss the deal due to the “disservice” done by the Bharatiya Janata Party, “an important step to be taken is to go to the people in a big way. It will not just be the nuclear issue. It is part of the overall strategic alliance with the U.S. Many things will happen and are going to happen. We will bear the brunt of many economic policies dictated by the deal. The livelihood of farmers, workers and traders is under attack.”

The recent experience of a jatha along the eastern coast against the naval exercises and the nuclear deal showed that the people could understand issues and respond accordingly. “We should be able to launch a nationwide campaign and hope it would provide the impetus to ensure that this deal is not allowed to go through,” he said while asking all those who opposed the deal to join forces.

Mr. Karat clarified that the Left parties were not aligned with China on the issue. Beijing would have liked India to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but the Left parties have supported the stand of successive governments of not signing it. “That is their [Chinese] stand. The CPI (M) would not be agreeable to that. On the nuclear policy, we don’t agree with what China says. If China supports India at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), we would still be opposing.”

Misconception

Another misconception about the Left stand was that it was satisfied with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement during the discussion in Parliament in August last year. “At that time, the Hyde Act was still a draft Bill but we raised nine queries. After the Hyde Act was passed, the CPI(M) publicly asked the Government four times not to proceed with negotiations till the provisions of the law considered harmful to India were removed. But the government was determined to go ahead. As far as we are concerned there are no double standards.”

The CPI(M) general secretary said the Left parties had learnt some lessons from the entire episode as also from the fact that the government quietly signed a 10-year defence framework agreement with the United States. “After that we don’t go by their argument that ‘trust us’. The Left parties have taken a clear stand that the deal should not proceed further.”

CPI general secretary A. B. Bardhan pointed out that the national Common Minimum Programme was very clear in stating that unilateralism would be opposed. “What congruence can be there in our foreign policy with a country that invaded Iraq four years ago and threatens to bomb Iran in three days? We have clashed with governments on many issues except for foreign policy. It was always independent. Now you are planning to change the fulcrum of that policy.”

Mr. Bardhan said portraying the current controversy between the Left parties and the United Progressive Alliance as a “stand-off” was actually trivialising the issue. “The issue is larger. It is a question of the country’s welfare,” he said, while calling on the participants to take the movement forward.

Nuclear scientists and other experts joined the Left leaders in opposing the deal. Others who spoke against the deal were Telugu Desam Party leader K. Yerrannaidu and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Ram Gopal Verma. In the audience were SP leaders Amar Singh and Jaya Bachchan besides CPI(M) leaders Brinda Karat, Nilotpal Basu, Dipankar Mukherjee, Md. Salim, CPI’s D. Raja and Amarjeet Kaur, Revolutionary Socialist Party’s Abani Roy and Forward Bloc’s Debabrata Biswas.

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