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Friday, Nov 02, 2007
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Ensure U.S. game is foiled: Karat

Special Correspondent

Kolkata: “If India becomes an ally of the United States of America, it will tilt the balance for imperialism … we cannot accept any step that will subordinate ourselves to the USA,” Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said here on Thursday.

Speaking at a function organised by the State Committee of the CPI(M) to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the November Revolution, he said that “we have to ensure that the USA’s game to make India a strategic ally is foiled if we want to be true to the values of the Russian Revolution.”

He criticised the Centre for remaining quiet “when the USA is training its guns on Iran.” “It is a shame that our government has remained silent when [President] Bush has threatened a World War III over Iran … Why should we keep quiet about the horrific attacks on the Palestinian people by Israel … All over the world there have been protests against the Israeli blockade of Gaza but none from our government. This is the logic of becoming an ally of the USA.”

“This is because in our country our ruling classes believe that being on the right side of the USA and imperialism is the right policy, however cruel and aggressive they are,” he said.

The U.S. wanted “China encircled as Bush recognises that the future threat comes from that country. So having India as an ally has become a priority for the USA,” he said.

“With the end of the Soviet Union, imperialism has renewed, with greater aggressiveness, its move to re-colonise the world.”

“The USA – the most powerful country in the world — has the military power and resources to intervene in any part of the world to advance its hegemony.”

But Iraq and Afghanistan had shown that such might could be challenged and that “imperialism is not invincible, invulnerable and something that cannot be fought,” he asserted.

As for the future of the communist movement in the country, Mr. Karat said that “we in India have a historic responsibility of applying Marxist and Leninist principles to our own specific conditions and make our own revolutionary path.”

Lessons to be learnt

There were lessons to be learnt from the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

“We have to formulate our own strategy, vision and concept of socialism in the world today. While we commemorate the Great October [November] Revolution we do not believe that the way socialism was built in [erstwhile] Soviet Union has to be replicated elsewhere,” he said.

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