Blasphemy to party

Indian communists over the years have unbent a little on the party diktat that comrades as rationalists should eschew religion.

Indian communists over the years have unbent a little on the party diktat that comrades as rationalists should eschew religion. CPIM committees regularly organise pandals for Durga Puja, taking the plea that these are mass contact programmes with a cultural, rather than a religious, significance. But while the cadres are allowed some latitude, party leaders are expected to be more circumspect. In the past, eyebrows were raised when Jyoti Basu8217;s wife was seen visiting a place of worship and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee distributed invitation cards for the thread ceremony of his grandson. But these were minor aberrations compared to that of West Bengal Sports and Transport Minister Subhas Chakraborty, who recently publicly proclaimed his godliness. Chakraborty not just visited a temple but declared publicly that he was a Hindu first, a Brahmin next and after that a Marxist, though he retracted later. The maverick Chakraborty has long been a thorn in Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee8217;s side. In fact, in the last Assembly polls, a section of the local CPIM tried to sabotage his election from the Salt Lake constituency and he managed to retain his seat by a very narrow margin.

Touching faith

PERHAPS the CPIM could learn from another staunchly anti-God party, the DMK, which is increasingly reverting to bourgeois customs. It is now a common practice in the DMK to touch party president M Karunanidhi8217;s feet, something which was considered unthinkable a few years back.

Eyeing its estate

AN annual meeting of the United News of India general body early next week is likely to trigger off a fierce debate since Media West, an investment wing of Zee TV, is trying to buy a stake in the 45-year-old news agency, which offers English, Hindi and Urdu news services. UNI8217;s 1,000-odd employees are campaigning to prevent the takeover, charging that the bid to buy shares from the present trustees, who are all newspaper owners, is really a slick method of grabbing the agency8217;s valuable buildings and real estate holdings all over India. UNI, which was set up to prevent PTI from being a monopoly disseminator of news back in the Sixties, is today making a loss of Rs 4 crore on a Rs 24-crore turnover. The news agency does need to introspect on its working methods and relevance, what with myriad television channels much faster on the draw, with major news breaks, than news agencies.

Maunvrat on Pope

ALTHOUGH early morning is not normally a good time for inviting the media, since journalists tend to start their day around noon, the forenoon function last week to release Subramanian Swamy8217;s new book, Hindus Under Siege 8212;- The Way Out, was unusually well-attended. A crowd of correspondents and cameramen mobbed RSS Sarsanghachalak K S Sudershan, who was the chief guest along with the Kanchi Shankaracharya. Every journalist wanted to know Sudershan8217;s views on the Pope8217;s remarks on Islam. Sudershan, not known to mince his words, however, steadfastly refused to comment on a subject that would normally be considered close to his heart. The RSS has taken the line that it should stay out of this controversy and let its two favourite targets, Muslims and Christians, battle it out amongst themselves.

Misty-eyed Musharraf

PAKISTAN Foreign Office officials looked distinctly crestfallen at the joint press conference in Cuba to announce the resumption of Indo-Pakistan talks. Even President Pervez Musharraf appeared stiff and uneasy. Musharraf8217;s discomfiture was actually because of the cold blast from huge Soviet-made airconditioners which had fogged his spectacles. The General, however, refrained from wiping his glasses for fear that his gesture would be misinterpreted by the media.

Rudderless minus Sonia

THE National Advisory Council is virtually moribund after Sonia Gandhi8217;s departure. The prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Foundation RGF is also in decline after she resigned following the office of profit controversy. The stagnation in the foundation is evident from the fact that the RGF has not appointed a new director for Contemporary Studies for almost a year although Bibek Debroy quit as director last October. The once very active Panchayati Raj unit with which eminent persons like the present Rural Development Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar were associated has practically ceased to exist. Even the lectures by prominent personalities such as Hillary Clinton, Robert McNamara, John Galbraith and Margaret Thatcher at the RGF are now few and far between.

Capital games

REPORTS of dubious authenticity on Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit being pulled up by the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi for the Delhi government8217;s lack of preparedness for the Commonwealth Games emanate from Ajay Maken8217;s camp. The Minister of State for Urban Development would like to step into Dikshit8217;s shoes and if he cannot make it as chief minister he nurses the hope that the Commonwealth Games portfolio will be transferred from the Delhi government to the Urban Development Ministry. The divisions in the Delhi Congress were evident last week when Sonia inaugurated the water treatment plant at Sonia Vihar in Delhi. Dikshit made sure that her detractors in the Delhi Congress, Maken and DPCC President Ram Babu Sharma, were placed in the second row of the dais.