The Left not looking right
The sudden muddying of India’s position on the iaea Iran vote, courtesy nervous outbursts of the beleaguered Natwar Singh, does little credit to a country that sees itself — and is increasingly seen by others — as a sure-mature adult in the comity of nations. Decisions such as these — India had cast itself against Iran in the last iaea meet — are taken with due deliberation, not merely on the specific issue concerned, but also on wider implications such decisions might have. For a domestic scandal to suddenly plunge a key international decision into uncertainty is not the sign of a grown up polity, irrespective of whether that decision is right or wrong. There were reasons India decided to vote against Iran at the iaea; the travails of Natwar Singh cannot be seen to be altering those reasons, or Indian foreign policy. But there is a far more alarming trend unfolding around India’s position at the iaea over Iran — sensitive domestic concerns are being linked to what is essentially a foreign policy issue. And the Left, otherwise the more enlightened of our political formations, is leading the way up what could be a perilous path. For well-established ideological reasons, the Left was opposed to India voting with the United States and other western countries against Iran at the iaea. But when Natwar Singh suddenly found himself engulfed by the Volcker revelations, the Left saw its chance and moved even harder; it went out of its way to support Natwar Singh, it may even have encouraged him to threaten a flip of the vote on live television. There is a basic fallacy here with the Leftist argument. At home, they support, and very rightly, a secular dispensation; the religious politics of the Hindu Right is anathema to them. And so it should be in a country constitutionally and emotionally committed to secular principles. But in the case of Iran, they are prepared to back a regime that is the flip side of what a Hindu Rashtra might be. As events made apparent, the Left was prepared to go even further. At a rally in Lucknow, Left leaders openly spoke of the close cultural links Indian Shias have with Iran in order to beat up support for a change in the Indian vote. There is no questioning the strong religious and cultural links Shias in this country — and the world over — have with Iran. But to argue that foreign policy should be altered because of these links is to open the Shias to exactly the kind of allegation that Right-wing zealots in this country have been making about Indian Muslims at large — that their loyalties lie elsewhere. Were Iran to put a foot wrong tomorrow — and it could, given the tenor of its ruling dispensation — are we to then justify persecuting Indian Shias for the actions of the Iranian regime? Slicing off Indian Shia sentiment and linking it to our foreign policy is a dangerous tactic. It will only make India’s minorities even more vulnerable.
Communists may be playing a perilous game with Indian Shias
By Sankarshan Thakur
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