Class for comrades

With Natwar Singh finally calling it quits8212;are we being recklessly presumptuous?8212;the nature of public discourse will dictate that the curtains start falling on the Volcker stage. That would be a pity. There8217;s the money trail to be discovered. There8217;s the question of determining whether there were non-Natwar Congress aspects to be revealed. And there8217;s the issue whether the Left has learnt anything from the whole mess.

The Marxists have exhibited an uncharacteristic vocal parsimony over the Volcker issue in the last few days. If the economy of public speech mirrors an extravagance of private contemplation, the Left will hopefully conclude that it needs to look at foreign policy from national interest. To contemptuous reminders from the Left that it always looks at national interest, the answer is that the praxis is problematic because the theory is dodgy. As in the Volcker case, the Left evaluates India and the world through a set of pre-fixed notions. When the USSR acted as the pole star to dogmatic Marxists, this habit resulted in such awful errors as a section of the Left supporting Indira Gandhi8217;s Emergency in the name of international socialist solidarity. There8217;s a possibility of similar Left mistakes on China. China must be engaged by India but India must be wary to arguably the point of sophisticated paranoia about China8217;s expansionist agenda. When has the Left warned us about the Chinese hegemon? It exhausts itself talking about US hegemony.

Of course, national interest demands India be wary of America, too. But to question US motives is one thing, to celebrate a reckless economic populist and quasi-authoritarian figure like Hugo Chavez, quite another. The Left loves Chavez because he calls America names. Is that national interest? Should India ally with Chavez against America? With another version of Saddam Hussein if such a misfortune befalls Iraq? With Iran8217;s 8220;mullahcracy8221;? The BJP and the Congress have both intelligently recrafted their respective foreign policy thesis. Why can8217;t the Left? Of the three political formations, it almost certainly has the greatest per capita grey matter. It8217;s quite a shame so much of that is wasted on 8220;ideological8221; ramblings. Still, there can always be a beginning. So, here8217;s the course summary for the Left8217;s Foreign Policy 101 classes: 8220;Natwar hasn8217;t gone down fighting US imperialism.8221;