Abani Roy’s world

It is a curious world indeed where a Marxist-Leninist MP uses US sanctions as the yardstick to gauge the safety of allowing a domestic corporate entity’s merger with another,from a foreign land,one with big market shares in countries facing sanctions from the American state. Either Indian Marxist-Leninists have of late undertaken a subterranean overhaul of their Weltanschauung that we didn’t notice,despite their studied hostility to economic reforms and the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal; or the grand leftist anti-imperialist (read: anti-US) rhetoric has been drained of its life-blood. Perhaps,in truth,it’s just one human individual’s idiosyncrasy. Nevertheless,the Revolutionary Socialist Party’s Rajya Sabha MP Abani Roy’s strange letter to the PM — asking him to prevent the proposed merger of Bharti Airtel with South Africa’s MTN — has expectedly disconcerted the party,whose general secretary and West Bengal unit have responded sharply,denying that the RSP wishes to intervene in corporate matters and claiming that Roy had written the letter without consulting the party.

Well,the RSP,small as it is even in its state of origin,is ideologically to the left of capital-courting Big Brother CPM from all visible and audible evidence. Roy himself has said that the Left should have withdrawn support to UPA-I much earlier — in 2005,over price rise and economic reforms. Now,his party has always been critical of Stalinism,without really adhering to Trotskyism. But could one be forgiven for being tempted to wonder if Roy’s second proposal to the PM — to immediately bar government functionaries from using Bharti’s telecom services — has a hint of the Stalinist instinct behind it?

Roy is a veteran of letters on corporate affairs to the Centre. This one,he says,was prompted by fears of India’s national security being compromised since MTN is present in Iran,Syria,Sudan,Ivory Coast — all states under US sanctions. That’s either downright inconsistency in someone consistently critical,on record,of US sanctions and policy towards Iran — and even of India’s anti-Iran stand at the IAEA — or unnatural ideological flexibility in one who believes a communist should be rigid. Or maybe,Roy,unwittingly,has graduated to India’s post-ideological politics.