The government has done well to defy the pressure from the Communist parties and go ahead with the joint air exercises with the United States at Kalaikunda in West Bengal on Monday. While the CPI(M) promises massive rallies today, the Left Front government in West Bengal appears to have reassured the government that these will be peaceful. This seemingly happy compromise, in which Delhi concedes the left parties’s “right to protest” and Kolkata assures that they will be “token”, tides over a potential national embarrassment for the moment. However, the government’s problems with the CPI(M) on the national security front have barely begun. For the CPI(M) has chosen an adventurist path ever since Prakash Karat took charge.Since 1992, India has conducted joint military exercises with the US. All governments that followed, including the United Front government (’96-’98) supported by the left parties, have found it useful to continue with this policy. In questioning this national consensus, the CPI(M) has proffered the trivial argument that military engagement with the United States undermines India’s independent foreign policy. That this argument is ideologically motivated stands out from the fact that the CPI(M) has not objected to India’s exercises with either Russia or for that matter with China, which Delhi claims is in occupation of Indian Territory. The Left definition of “independent” foreign policy as permanent opposition to the US appropriately belongs to the fringe and not the mainstream. CPI(M)’s doublespeak does not stop here. Even as Karat demands an end to India’s engagement with the US, his politburo colleague and the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has the US on his travel plans. Bhattacharjee’s predecessor Jyoti Basu too had travelled to the US to attract foreign investment in the mid-’90s. That the left says one thing in Delhi and does another in Kolkata is of no political consolation for the UPA government. If there were any expectations in the country that the Left parties with their 62 seats in the Lok Sabha would contribute wisely to the shaping of foreign policy, they are being belied every day.Barring the intellectually lazy opposition to the US, the Karat line has so very little to offer on the many challenges that confront India on the external front. The Manmohan Singh government, however, needs to find ways to limit the huge potential damage to India’s foreign and national security policies that today’s rallies in West Bengal herald for the future.
