A political party%u2019s past has many ways of complicating its present. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) suddenly finds itself in a similar mess, thanks to none other than its general secretary. When he launched his crusade against the civilian nuclear deal between India and the United States of America, Prakash Karat obviously had not thought of one consequence of his action. Mr Karat%u2019s anti-American rhetoric has forced him and his party to face some ghosts from its past. The way Mr Karat has railed against the media for dubbing his party %u201Cpro-China%u201D suggests that he has been stung by the criticism. His is the kind of discomfort one has in facing unpleasant truths. Yet, while defending his party against the charge of being pro-Chinese, he argued that the US wanted New Delhi to act as a counterweight against Beijing. Only two days earlier, People%u2019s Daily, the organ of the Chinese communist party, had exactly the same thing to say about the Indo-US deal. It said that the deal would bolster the US%u2019s efforts to %u201Ccontain%u201D China. The Chinese party thus confirms what Mr Karat denies %u2014 the fact that he is really China%u2019s voice.
It is not that this was a secret in Indian politics. Mr Karat has only revived old political memories that his party likes people to forget. The people would now remember that the CPI(M) had always been pro-Beijing, just as the Communist Party of India had been pro-Moscow. They would recall that Indian co
