If Jyoti Basu and George Bush say democratic yearnings in Burma must receive a boost and the Manmohan Singh government’s position appears to be not radically different from the Hu Jintao regime’s, there’s more to it than the curious couplings domestic and international politics produce. It is no one’s case that Burma represents an easy diplomatic/realpolitik choice. Also, unabashedly moral political positions are often informed by the lack of immediate tangible interests on the part of the advocate. So experience-wary foreign policy watchers may well say that America’s and CPM’s strong advocacy of a democratic change in Burma is thanks to the fact that neither Washington nor Goapalan Bhawan has an immediate strategic stake.

But, and this is the factor that New Delhi must never underestimate, given the very different domestic political arrangements in India and China, the former doesn’t have and shouldn’t accord itself blasé flexibility when assessing dictator versus democracy battles elsewhere. Burma’s gas reserves, its importance vis-a-vis troubles in India’s North-East, its location as a gateway to South-East Asia, all this and more are valid considerations. But the basic fact that should inform New Delhi’s views should be the same that is informing Bush’s and Basu’s: those on Burma’s streets are demanding basic rights from those in Burma’s palaces. Therefore, it is discomfiting that India should appear as not taking a line very different from China’s.

That is why when reviewing the Basu-Bush thesis against the India-China one, this newspaper, while fully conscious of energy-starved India’s policy conundrums, appreciates what the CPM and America have said on Burma. That instinctive signal of solidarity for anti-authoritarian regimes is crucial if foreign policy is not to lose its moorings. We have had plenty of misgivings about foreign policy choices of the CPM, including its frozen-in-time antipathy to America, which contrasts with its openness to China. But, as always, we make it a point to acknowledge India’s communists getting it right. Manmohan Singh’s government has presided over a wonderfully productive engagement with America and is enduring a difficult alliance with the CPM. For the first time in its life perhaps, it should listen to what both Washington and Gopalan Bhawan are saying.