They emphasise their young population, their outsourcing advantages, their hyper fast-paced GDP growth and the fact that they may be small on a stand-alone basis ($61 billion GDP, 84 million people), but when added to a global company’s Asean portfolio, they make a big difference to the vibrancy of that portfolio. A Business World article says: “Vietnamese authorities aggressively wooed Intel for investment... largely on the strength of that — and the relentless wooing from Hanoi — Phue said that Intel made the strategic decision to hedge against China... decided to set up a brand new $600 million chipset factory at the Saigon High Tech Park.”

Like everyone else I have grown up on horror stories of the Vietnam war, heard the music, seen the movies, and visited the — to use an American phrase — humongous Vietnam veterans war memorial wall in Washington, DC. So I can understand why America wants to colonise Vietnam, economically speaking. I also have a sense of how bitterly the communists in Vietnam hated the evil empire of America that they forcefully expelled from their country — the “imperialist forces” (to use an anachronistic Karat-ism). Jeff Danzinger, a cartoonist and columnist with The New York Times syndicate wrote recently of how “we had dropped more tonnage of bombs in the temples and fields of North Vietnam than had been dropped by all sides in the entire span of World War II”. Yet, after each trip to Vietnam, I cannot help wondering that the communists in Vietnam seem to have no problem in embracing America for what America has to offer, while vilifying it in their version of history. In the war museum here, to quote from Lonely Planet, “the pamphlet handed out at reception pulls no such punches: it’s entitled ‘Some Pictures of US Imperialists Aggressive War Crimes in Vietnam’”.

Come to think of it, the communists everywhere in the world seem to have managed their hybrid model well — they fight America in the history books and museums while wooing America to help improve quality of life and GDP of the present. It is against this backdrop that I find the report in The Indian Express about Prakash Karat’s book both amusing and puzzling. To denounce The

Indian Express as a lackey of America begs two questions. One, what are China and Vietnam and Russia by that logic? Their economies depend on America, their communist head honchos are all smiles, laying out both hospitality and concessions thick for American business. Two, where on earth do Karat and his party draw their inspiration and ideology from? Don’t collaborate with America for India’s energy security, he says, collaborate with China and Russia. Of course, the fact that China collaborates with America, as does Russia, is something that we aren’t supposed to take into the equation.

I am wondering. Who are the Left representing? Everyone must have a consumer, a buyer, whether Coca-Cola or the CPM. Which aam aadmi segment do they speak for? Which group of voters wants communism and a terrifying embrace with China? And why should we forget what they did to us while we were singing ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’? Can Karat and his party conduct an opinion poll and show us just who in the population, and how many, support their views? Being just an aam aadmi, and not an experienced foreign policy expert or political commentator, I asked these questions of people who knew better. “No one,” was the reply. They don’t have a constituency whose views they represent, I asked incredulously. Also I wondered, why are they doing this? The polls in the media show that they will suffer erosion of vote share at the hustings if they insist on walking down this path. The wise men I spoke to were unanimous — this is not about aam janta. In fact it isn’t even about khaas janta. It is about ideology — without any peer or parallel in the whole wide world. It is a supplier driven ideology with no customers. It is Stalingrad, one of them said. I wonder though, in this battle of Stalingrad, who is the aggressor and who the defender?

The aam aadmi in Saigon, the taxi driver, was clear. “These communists? They ban what they cannot control, like the internet. Bah, useless. If India is the office of the world and China, its factory, we are all asking what of the world can we become?” I guess if Karat and his party have their way, we will have a power crisis anyway (and I am referring to electricity here), and we can gift Vietnam the positioning of ‘office of the world’.

That would indeed be a pyrrhic victory for the Indian communists — and for Mr Karat. As the poem ‘Casabianca’ goes: “The boy stood on the burning deck/ Whence all but he had fled;/ The flame that lit the battle’s wreck/ Shone round him o’er the dead.”

The writer is a management consultant