Buddha veers away from Left view on PM’s Oxford speech

Known to hold views divergent from that of his party, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya has congratulated Prime Minister Man...

Known to hold views divergent from that of his party, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya has congratulated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his ‘‘successful’’ visit to the UK, and also on his ‘‘scholarly’’ speech at the Oxford University.

Written last week, the five-line letter, sent by the CM’s secretariat, is bound to have ruffled some feathers at the meeting of the CPI(M) politburo. The party had been vocally critical of Singh’s speech at his alma mater, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate. The PM had praised the British Raj in the speech, saying that they had built most of the institutions in India.

Bhattacharya, contrary to the party view, was apparently ‘‘impressed’’ by the speech and thought it was ‘‘scholarly.’’

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This was stated in the letter sent on the CM’s behalf by his Principal Secretary Arun Bhattacharya on July 25. Media Advisor to the PM Sanjaya Baru confirmed the CM had indeed written to the PM, complimenting him on his speech.

The Left parties had been critical of both Singh’s US visit, mainly the joint Indo-US statement, and his Oxford speech.

JNU professor and part of the CPM think-tank, economist Prabhat Patnaik, had vociferously attacked the PM’s speech in the party’s weekly organ, People’s Democracy. Patnaik contended that unlike what the Prime Minister would believe, ‘‘India did not ‘meet’ the dominant empire of the day. India was conquered and colonised, her economy plundered, and her people as a whole, irrespective of class, converted for the first time into inferior beings in their own country.’’

However, the West Bengal CM—strengthening his image as bit of a reformer among Left leaders—did not hesitate in expressing his own views. Sources said that there was more to the PM’s speech than just the British Raj, and that he had also referred to Rabindranath Tagore in glowing terms. ‘‘Probably, Bhattacharya was impressed with that,’’ sources said.

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