If CPM general secretary Prakash Karat seriously hopes to derail the Indo-US nuclear deal, he would know that the only way to do this is through the political process.

This involves conceiving a gigantic war strategy, which in turn involves seeking a spectrum of allies. In the Mahabharata war, no tribe was too humble to be wooed by the ultimately successful Pandavas. Yet the most astonishing aspect of current CPM thinking is an inability to negotiate new political friendships and break the stranglehold of sterile ideological paradigms.

Two silent, but staggering, ideological mutinies have taken place in our neighbourhood, but have gone almost unnoticed because the West has kept quiet and India’s imitative elites can’t think for themselves. I speak, of course, of the once Communist China and the former Soviet Union.

Both have lessons for the Left Parties and left-of-centre chattering classes, which have been penetrated by the American establishment to the chagrin of the Left. That is why the solitary, but singularly devastating, defection from the ranks of the Left was Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who resigned his controversial Office-of-Profit only on the day of the Confidence Vote on 22 July 2008. He proved invaluable to the ruling dispensation when he refused to postpone voting after the cash-for-votes scam was reported to him, and persuaded the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. L.K. Advani, to play ball. Another unpleasant surprise (for the Left) was Harvard Master Amartya Sen coming all the way to a Delhi television studio to support the nuclear deal, though it is quite outside his area of expertise.

To return to the mutinies, witness the re-emergence of Russia under then President Vladimir Putin. In a nutshell, what Mr. Putin has done is to carry the moral kernel of the communist vision into a new Russia rising on the strength of sovereign (national) wealth, married to nationalism and the traditional religion and spirituality of the Russian people. The horrors of Leninism-Stalinism are not replaced by the bestial Corporate Tyranny of the West, but the individual pursuit of material stability allowed under the moral authority of the Russian Orthodox Church and the physical strength of the Russian State.

The case of China is less apparent, but will manifest more overtly in coming months. China, of course, is one of the greatest purveyors of sovereign wealth funds. Less well known is the fact that it has woken up to the dangers of moral sterility and cultural vacuum – a dangerous historical experiment that eroded its civilisational foundations and made it prey to dangerous foreign intrusions, especially after it opened up its economy. That China has learnt its lessons shows in the successful Olympics – I don’t mean the gold medal tally, but the success in preventing hordes of evangelists slipping into the country by confiscating all imported Bibles and making some strategic arrests! Confucius Centres are now being opened all over the world, and China is atoning for the folly of treating religions alien to its soil and ethos at par with its natal faith.

That brings us to the vapid Indian elite that peddles slogans while obsessively striving for wealth available-for-free (i.e., for which others will pay the price). There is growing jubilation in this crowd – which cuts across party lines – that the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi has succeeded in getting a lame duck regime to compromise India’s nuclear capability. Worse, a regime clearly on its way out has promised Washington that it will NOT examine the best nuclear deals available when making purchases, but will wait till America is legally enabled to make a deal with India. Even the East India Company never had it so good!

If Mr. Prakash Karat looks at our neighbourhood, he would realise the importance of foreign origins and foreign allegiances in subverting nations. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, product of a US-sponsored coloured revolution, has a Dutch or American wife. The President of Ukraine is also married to an American, and the Polish Defence Minister who signed the recent controversial missile defense shield with the US is an American citizen who was born there in the famous helicopter-making Sikorski family. It is widely known that many other members of East European governments have American citizenship or have been educated and trained there.

This is significant, and probably explains why the World Bank babu who “accidentally” became Prime Minister of India promptly undertook “administrative reforms” (sic) that involved opening the entire IAS to American penetration via the American universities. Any new dispensation in New Delhi must immediately put an end to this infiltration. We should also put in place a system that monitors serving bureaucrats who send their children abroad, and particularly see if there is any connection between the jobs held by children and the posts occupied by their parents in New Delhi.

To go back further, it should now be evident why the Vajpayee Government was sold a lemon and instigated to open India to a dangerous concept called ‘dual citizenship,’ which mercifully, only the blooming menace of Islamic jihad prevented from becoming a reality. The twin-lemon sold at this time was the myth that the Indians who migrated to America and London in quest of Mammon constituted a ‘valuable resource’ that India should pay heed to. Many skillfully-groomed public intellectuals (whatever that means) now descend on India several times a year to tutor the chattering classes and New Age cultists about how to re-craft Hindu society to conform to the comfort and convenience of Christian America. They are ably abetted by an army of retired government servants.

Sonia Gandhi’s Quattrochi-Bofors saga is well-known, but her stranglehold over the UPA is not even whispered about. Mr. Karat should know that the legendary Soviet dissident, late Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned that a nation must always guard itself against foreigners seeking its wealth or wanting to invade (or dominate). Any regime that disarms the nation is immoral and illegitimate – and this is what Sonia Gandhi has made the UPA do by de facto attacking our nuclear capabilities.

The way out – and the way forward – is for the Left to shed the burden of Nehruvian Secularism and its arid anti-Hindu bias, to manfully embrace Sanatan Dharma as the civilisational ethos of India, to admit it provides honour to religions born elsewhere, to end the offensive baiting of the Hindu community when its fights for cultural survival in its native land, and to invite all well-meaning individuals and groups to face the external threats and internal fifth column undermining the nation.

If Mr. Karat is serious that if the Left has a say in the next Government it will scrap the 123 Agreement, then he must know that it is his responsibility to ensure that the Left has sufficient intellectual and moral leverage with the next set up in New Delhi. This means a working relationship with the entire political spectrum, to work out a viable Action Plan for the immediate and not-so-immediate future.

There is an immediate need to galvanise the nation – to demonstrate that the UPA has betrayed the nation by compromising its strategic security and failing to meet its energy needs (the last lie being repeatedly made by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi). The people should be told that energy is decades away, will come at a prohibitive cost, and will not cover more than 6% of total needs!

More pertinently – people should be told that if India buys multi-billion dollar reactors and is DENIED Uranium because, say, it signed the gas pipeline deal with Iran – then the famous 123 Agreement can be invoked, and it DOES NOT HAVE AN ARBITRATION CLAUSE! Yes, it is a one-sided slave treaty.

It may be pertinent to add that while India agreed to clauses stipulating the return of fuel in the event of a nuclear test, there was NO attempt to negotiate a return of Indian investment in buying the reactors thus rendered useless. Surely this was the first question a self-respecting regime should have raised?  

The Left should ask the entire range of non-Congress political parties to commit in advance of the elections that no matter what the Lame Duck Manmohan Singh regime promises to the Lame Duck George Bush regime – the next Indian Government will ensure that there is NO NUCLEAR COMMERCE with AMERICA! At any price.

No effort must be spared to make it clear to Washington that the Indian Parliament and people dislike the deal. Political parties may also like to commit in advance that they will move in concert to bring about appropriate Constitutional Amendments to ensure that no future government can commit the nation to such serious constraints without honest information, debate, and consent.