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CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat today cautioned the Centre against "toeing" the US line on Syria, which is in turmoil, saying Washington wants the government there to be removed and India to "join their game".US Secretary Hilary Clinton had recently made a statement asking India to take a stand against the Syrian government, Karat said. "If the people of Syria, which has a one party system, want to fight for democracy in Syria, they have the right to do so and India can extend its moral support, Karat said."But no country, particularly the US, has the right to decide who...

Poll rout leaves India's communists in limbo AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE KOLKATA, May 13: The Indian state of West Bengal said goodbye Friday to three decades of uninterrupted rule by the world´s longest-serving, democratically elected communist government. Early results from state polls made it clear that the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI-M, had been swept aside in a landslide that marks the end of an era in India´s modern politics. The victor was the Trinamool Congress Party of firebrand national railways minister Mamata Banerjee, the largest ally of the Congress Party in the federal...

New Delhi: The Left may have staged protests during his visit but US President Barack Obama was "glad" to meet an Indian communist leader last evening. "I am glad to meet an Indian communist. I am told that communists have been part of the (Indian) political mainstream," Obama told CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury at the Rashtrapati Bhawan banquet as they were introduced and both shook hands. Yechury told Obama that the Indian communists have been in the political mainstream "throughout". Marking a departure from their past practice, leaders and MPs of the CPM and CPI, known for their anti-US...

NEW DELHI — Tagged as the world's most electorally successful Communist party, the Marxist leaders of West Bengal might finally be nearing the end of more than three decades of uninterrupted power. The Communist Party of Indian (Marxist), or CPI-M, which has won every election in the eastern Indian state since 1977, is suddenly fighting for survival after suffering a crushing defeat in municipal elections last week. The party's nemesis is India's mercurial Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee, who heads the Trinamul Congress, a relatively new regional party intent on ending the Communists' long-running monopoly on power in West Bengal. "For...

New Delhi - At least 18 people were killed in clashes between workers of rival political parties during village-level elections in India's eastern state of West Bengal, news reports said Monday. The violence between the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the opposition Congress party workers in seven districts that went to polls Sunday also left hundreds injured, the Times of India daily reported. The district of Murshidabad, 200 kilometres north of state capital Kolkata, was the worst affected with 16 deaths during the village council elections, the report said. Villagers and some political workers died in cross-firing near...

All major political parties, including Congress, BJP and the Left, on Saturday lashed out at US President George W Bush for blaming growing demand in India for the spiralling global food prices as the opposition used the opportunity to attack the government. Most parties said a major reason for spiralling global food prices was diversion of land producing foodcrops in the US to bio-fuel production, while Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said Bush was "completely wrong" in his assessment. "George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. And he has just proved once again how...

NEW DELHI, APRIL 20: In trying to put up a strong defence on behalf of its ideological allies in China, the CPM has needlessly sought to drag the Kashmir issue into the debate over Tibetan protests. The latest effort comes from Nilotpal Basu, a key party central committee member, who feels that China is today a “victim of western moralising” just like India was on the issue of Kashmir. “It is a rehash of the same old thing... just as India has been a victim on the Kashmir issue, China is on Tibet,” Basu remarked when asked to explain his...

Coimbatore (PTI): The Left parties in India on Sunday got a shot in the arm in their opposition to the strategic tie-up with the United States, with an American communist leader saying Washington's plan for Asia was to "pit one country against another" and isolate China. Describing the Bush Administration as a "destabilising factor" in the "world polity", Communist Party of USA's leader Terrie Albano said "we have no illusion what they want to do with the Indo-US nuclear deal. They want to bind India into a long-term coalition for them which they can use against another country." In an...

The BJP today alleged that the CPI(M) in Kerala was "appeasing" the muslim community while it was "attacking" the Christians. Party National Secretary Balbir Punj lashed out at the CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan for lauding various muslim organisations while flaying the church for not coming to the negotiating table to discuss fears over reglious freedom for muslim students and other provision of Kerala Education Rules (KER) norms.

Kolkata: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Thursday vowed to oppose a strategic alliance between India and the United States, stating such a move is aimed at countering China. ''We shall not rest in our fight till the strategic ties with the US is snapped out,'' Karat said at a CPM-sponsored programme in Kolkata to celebrate the October Revolution. He said the US was trying to make India its strategic ally in countering China, which is "the most powerful socialist country capable of challenging the might of the US". ''US has also changed its tactics of making Pakistan its...

So the cat is finally out of the bag! A regional party of Kerala [Images] and Bengal now wants to rule the country, run our foreign policy for the benefit of their 'fatherland' and get more Indian soldiers killed by jihadis by denying our army technology and help from Israel. In one sense the transparently dishonest Communists are dead right: The nuke deal is NOT about the nuclear issue at all. It is a means to an end. The end being Indo-US strategic partnership for the next 40 years! This is essentially an adjustment that both countries are making to...

The Marxists of India are running with the hare, and hunting with the hounds. At a time the Maoist guerillas are wreaking havoc across central India, a CPI leader, Atul Kumar Anjaan, advises government of India to release 60-70 Nepali Maoists leaders lodged in Indian jails. Sitaram Yechuri, who attended the opening session of the Nepali Mahapanchayat, has also said that the CPI (M) would pressurise the Indian government to release the Nepali Maoists languishing in jails of India. The idea is a brainchild of Baburam Bhattarai, who heads the International Department of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, and offered...

In Muslim-dominated areas across Kerala, especially those where the Indian Union Muslim League till now has been the undisputed political force and its shimmering green festoons the only political colour, young and old voters stare in amazement at red banners emblazoned with the CPI(M)'s sickle, hammer and star symbol and the slogan "Lal Salam". What adds to their bewilderment is that Lal Salam is printed not in Malayalam but in Arabic. In some places, these banners have been put up, to the untrained eye, provocatively and audaciously near mosques and madarsas. But these banners neither symbolise Communist provocation nor Marxist...

An astonishing feature of India's bumpy ride to great power status is the near-total absence of public discourse on the country's foreign policy. There may be occasional bouts of interest in matters relating to Pakistan and, maybe, China, but these are linked to internal security concerns and questions of territory. In eastern India, Bangladesh, too, features on the mental horizon, but again as a part of the ongoing debate on demographic changes. However, larger questions are invariably subsumed under a grand foreign policy consensus forged by South Block. It is simply not done for either the political parties or the...

India and the United States seem to be working at cross-purposes in carrying forward their strategic interests in Nepal. While the US is supporting King Gyanendra and flirting with idea of supplying arms to the Royal Nepal Army to strengthen the hands of the monarch, India is covertly bridging the gaps between the seven party alliance and Maoist extremists who are locked in a deadly war with the establishment headed by the king. The Maoists on Monday announced a unilateral indefinite ceasefire in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, ahead of this week's massive pro-democracy protests against King Gyanendra's regime. But the...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana The beeline that 'secularists' of various hues - the CPI(M), Congress and Muslim League - are making to the Coimbatore Central Jail to pay their political obeisance to Abdul Nasser Madani will astonish only the uninitiated. The jailed jihadi reportedly masterminded the February 14, 1998, Coimbatore serial blasts that killed 59 people, but narrowly missing the main target, then BJP president LK Advani. Madani's communally inflammatory speeches predate his involvement in the Coimbatore blasts. Because of all these 'qualifications' he is a 'secular' icon in the...

Under pressure to crack down on a Maoist rebellion, Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, will review counter-insurgency plans at a meeting with state chief ministers to be held on April 13. In the wake of a recent hijacking of a train by Maoists in the northern state of Jharkand and the storming of a jail in neighbouring Bihar, Mr Singh has been criticised for failing to prevent the collapse of local government in vast swathes of the country. Thirteen state governments met in New Delhi on Friday to thrash out a strategy to combat Maoist guerrillas operating with increasing impunity...

Even as someone who has difficulties with many aspects of President Bush’s policies I found myself on his side last week when the streets of Delhi and Mumbai filled up with the sort of people who oppose him. They were a motley crew. A melange of Marxists, Islamists and well-meaning loonies of activist genre and if they should ever be in a position to create the world of their dreams it would be a totalitarian, Marxist, Islamist theocracy. How scary is that? Give me the US of A any old time. It is a free society as is our own,...

Kathmandu : Nepal's Maoist guerrillas took advantage of the ceasefire called by them in September to buy arms from India, the official media here reported Friday. The Rising Nepal daily, the mouthpiece of the government headed by King Gyanendra, said the information was given to the Royal Nepalese Army by an ex-Maoist "combatant". The informer, the daily said, was a 13-year-old girl from Ilam district in eastern Nepal. Ishwara Neupane aka Richa, who reportedly surrendered to security forces and was presented at a press conference at the district administration office in Jhapa, also in eastern Nepal, was quoted as saying...

NEW DELHI, July 8: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers as they are commonly known, are providing military training to the Maoist rebels of Nepal in Bihar near the Nepalese borders. Some French trainers have also been hired, a Maoist rebel leader revealed to the South Asia Tribune.