HVK Archives: No honour left
No honour left - Mid-day
M V Kamath
()
26 April 1997
Title : No honour left
Author : M V Kamath
Publication : Mid-day
Date : April 26, 1997
I am frankly amazed at the -amount of attention that is being given
to the Leftist parties, particularly the CPI and CPM. And I am
amused at the copious tears that are being shed by our
intellectuals for the overthrow of Deve Gowda. First let me deal
with the Leftists.
I am old enough to have followed their "progress" during the last
60 years. And the nicest thing that I can say about them is that
they are enemies of the country. M N Roy had a premonition of
their evil designs and left them quite early in the game. Does
anyone remember the twists and turns that the comrades indulged in
from 1939 to 1945? First they called the Second World War an
imperialist war. Then, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, it
became a people's war. They cooperated wholly with the British
government. Following the Quit India movement, the Reds indulged in
hunting Indian patriots and betraying them to the British police to
he jailed and tortured. How I wish my old friend M Madhavan (who
was to become Mayor of Bombay) were alive! He knew a lot about
these betrayals. But let that go.
After India became free, the comrades followed the Stalinist line
and called Nehru and others "running dogs of Anglo-American
imperialism". They failed to protest when Soviet encyclopaedias
wrote disparagingly of Indian national leaders and their struggle
for freedom. Following Independence came the Telangana movement of
uncompromising terrorism. All in the name of revolution. Then
followed the terrorism in Naxalbari - also in the name of
revolution. That the peasants are no better off is another matter.
When the Chinese invaded India, the CPM was frankly on the side of
the enemy And had the Chinese forces come down to Calcutta, one may
be sure they would have been welcomed with open arms by the CPM.
What does one say about these people? Would it be right to call
them traitors? When the Leftist parties came to power in Kerala,
one of the first things they did was to carve out a Muslim majority
district to pander to Muslim fundamentalists. Malapuram it is
called, I guess. I suppose they call it high-mindedness, not
communalism. As a matter of fact, the undivided Communist Party
was one of the loudest to support Jinnah's two-nation theory Today,
they have the cheek to call the BJP "communalist", whatever that
means. It also amuses me to hear the comrades say they will not
have any truck with the Congress. How very, very patriotic.
Friendship, said our wise ex-prime minister, is not a marketable
commodity. He should tell that to his Left Front supporters. Deve
Gowda, incidentally, said in his speech that he had never put a
knife in anyone's back. Never? Does Gowda recognise a person
called Ramakrishna Hegde? Was it Gowda who deserted the Janata Dal
party to join Chandrashekar and later to 90 back to Hegde, tail
tucked in, to ask for forgiveness? Hegde took him back. But when he
was nominated to the prime ministership, Gowda's first act was to
persuade (not that Laloo Prasad required much persuasion) the
Janata Dal president to drum Hegde out of the party. If that is
not knifing a friend in the back, what is?
And why are our intellectuals swallowing Gowda's bait, as they say,
hook, line and sinker? Gowda it was who initiated the
investigation of the shenanigans of Congressmen that so upset
Kesri. Gowda's argument is that cases against Congressmen had been
pending even before he had become prime minister. That is a half
truth. And Gowda surely knows it. In any event, why did he have
to ask Joginder Singh to head the Central Bureau of Investigation?
Everyone knows that Singh is Gowda's blue-eyed boy.
This is not to say that Congressmen should not be investigated.
Indeed they should and with greater vigour than ever. But the
outsider's perception of these investigations is that they were in
the nature of a political threat to Congressmen, that said in so
many words. Behave, or else! Kesri got the message and he struck
first.
No tears need be shed for Gowda. Kesri may be wanting to be prime
minister and he would turn out to be no better than Gowda, if not
worse. But primarily Kesri was out to escape the clutches of the
CBI and this he knew he could do only if he were prime minister.
Or be in a position to name the prime minister. Both Gowda and
Kesri were playing a dirty game. Now both have lost. And one might
claim that this is good riddance of bad rubbish.
We need to have fresh elections. The people will willingly go to
the large numbers to throw the out. And the rascals are m the
United Front and in Congress; let there be no mistake about it.
One may not like the way Kesri went about scheming against the
United Front, but there is no need to shed tears for it. It
eminently deserves to be booted out. As for the constituent
parties that make up the UF, the less said the better. They are a
basket of rotten eggs, pretending to virtues they never possessed.
There has to be a limit to conning. Spending some Rs 500 crores on
fresh elections is not too much, if that means putting democracy
back on its rails. If the great mass of people still want a hung
parliament, so be it. At least the people can't say they have not
been warned.
(M V Kamath, veteran political commentator, takes on all comers)
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