Some friends

The CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat seizes every opportunity to embarrass or berate his party’s coalitional ally at the Centre with astounding alacrity. It’s an alacrity that goes beyond the call of duty, or indeed the dutiful exposition of revolutionary politics. The sympathetic shoulder Karat has just extended to Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh, for instance, cannot be read as a mere attempt at ideological clarification or diplomatic manoeuvring. By roundly lecturing the Congress on the follies of phone tapping, Karat in fact contravenes one of the unstated rules of a coalitional political arrangement — that one does not consort with the ‘opposition’ to condemn a political partner.

Let us be clear about this, the SP is arguably the political force most hostile to the Congress at the present moment. The fracas over the alleged tapping of Amar Singh’s telephone is just the latest episode in a long saga of skirmishes and is a matter best left to the two warring parties to sort out. It would have been sensible on Karat’s part to have seen it that way and discreetly tip-toed his way around the issue. But cutting the Congress to size has become so much of a habit with Left politicians that they no longer bother about the basic courtesies due to a senior political partner. Karat would do well to remember how Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party had conducted itself during the days of the NDA government. Although the TDP had serious reservations on many policies and stances of the BJP, it took great care not to appear at odds with its senior partner publicly, except on grave issues like that of the Gujarat riots.

If managing contradictions is a revolutionary duty, then the Left had better get it right. It had extended support to the Congress in order, or so we have been told, to keep the BJP from coming to power at the Centre. Then why does it often — in its anxiety to demolish the Congress ideologically — sound so much like the BJP? Why does it — when required to play the part delineated in the National Common Minimum Programme — display the instincts of a kick boxer? Why does it — when expected to be a part of the ruling coalition — sound so very much like the Opposition? Now don’t tell us that the West Bengal and Kerala elections require the Left to expound on the illegality of phone tapping, and the like. We really can’t buy that.