Religious Intelligence: Communists Mull Supporting Hindi Nationalists

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<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="MainText" valign="top" width="71%" height="157">Communists mull supporting Hindu nationalists

Sunday, 13th July 2008. 10:13am

By: Vishal Arora.

http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=2298

 

New Delhi: An Indian Marxist leader has surprisingly said that Left parties will be willing to support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) if it forsakes its Hindu nationalist agenda. Indian communists have traditionally opposed the BJP.

</td> <td class="MainText" valign="top" width="29%" align="center"></td> </tr> </tbody></table> “The Left never d to the communal politics of the BJP. That does not mean the BJP all the time did only mischief. It does not mean that. But the BJP could not leave its communal agenda,” Biman Bose, a politburo member, was reported by Indo-Asian News Service as saying. He said this at a dinner hosted by an Indian industrialist Shishir Bajoria on July 10 in London .

 

Bose, a leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), is believed to have made the statement in reaction to the Congress Party-led ruling coalition’s move to finalise a deal between India and the United States that allows Washington to sell civilian nuclear technology to New Delhi .

 

Communist parties were opposing the deal for the last two years. The parties that were lending external support to the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre withdrew support on July 8 after the government decided to go ahead with the India-US civil nuclear deal.

 

On July 26, 2006, the US House of Representatives approved the deal by a legislation that amended Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and thereby allowed the US to make an exception for India to keep its nuclear weapons without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However, the deal was yet to be operationalised.

 

Referring to the BJP, Bose said, “They are to cut religion and politics. They mix up religion and politics. Religion should remain in temples, churches and mosques or in gurdwaras (Sikh temples). That should be the private belief of the person concerned. Religion should not be mixed up with politics.”

 

The BJP has been trying to portray itself as a moderate party in the wake of a coalition era in India . The party leads the opposition coalition National Democratic Alliance, in which most parties do not to Hindu nationalism. However, political analysts believe that the BJP can never leave its anti-minorities stand given its unbreakable relations with its parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India ’s chief Hindu nationalist group that is accused of launching violent attacks on Muslims and Christians through numerous groups linked to it.

 

Parties in India are preparing for the national elections that are due early next year, and could possibly happen earlier if the UPA loses its majority in parliament over the nuclear deal issue.

 

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