Dealing with the Nuclear Deal: The Failure of the Parliamentary Way

To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament- this is the real essence of bourgeoisie parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.
-Lenin

The future of the nuclear deal after the vote in the parliament: The confidence motion in the parliament got passed by a slender margin last week after a two-day debate, once again demonstrating the muck that the parliamentary politics represents. The government survived, but only after a desperate bout of horse-trading. Once again the parliament was exposed as what Lenin aptly called a ‘pigsty’, an instrument of imposing the rule of feudal-comprador bureaucratic classes over the masses of the country. In the process, however, the way for the nuclear deal has been cleared, with the U.S. president congratulating his Manmohan Singh for performing perfectly the feat of an imperial agent. The desperation of the ruling party to sign the nuclear deal shows the comprador nature of the rulers as a class; it does not matter whether its Cong, BJP or CPM which shares state power, all willingly toe the line dictated by the U.S. imperialism and its economic interests. Even CPM’s tall-claims notwithstanding, its clear that whether the government remained in power or not, the deal had to go ahead.

The clauses that tie India to U.S. imperialism through this deal potentially throw us to the acceptance of slavery. The agreements give U.S. the right to dictate the Indian nuclear energy policy, to put constant surveillance, withdraw its facilities and even to militarily intervene whenever it so desires. The deal cannot be seen in isolation. It is a part of various agreements that India has entered over the last decades with U.S. imperialism encompassing economic, strategic and geo-political aspects, making it the most important South Asian agent of the U.S. imperial interests. The military-industry complex that drives the imperialist arm of the U.S. govt, has been recently facing a slump in its demand for nuclear technology as even the developed countries like France are going for complete dismantling of its nuclear apparatus. So the American military-industrial complex is pushing for new pastures- a trap into which the Indian ruling class is driving the country, while U.S. itself has stopped licensing new reactors since last 27 years.

A false debate? The present deal is just one of the series of treaties and agreements entered in by the Indian state with imperialist powers after 1947, be it the British, and U.S. imperialism or Soviet social imperialism. India’s 'sovereignty', 'national interest', 'independent foreign policy' have been the catchwords, and the whole debate regarding the nuke deal has been carried on by the Left resting on some fundamentally wrong premises. To talk about the nuclear deal as a “threat to India’s sovereignty” is to assume first of all that India is a ‘sovereign’ country. India is sovereign and independent only on paper; it has not yet freed itself from the age-old ties of colonial relations. Only the form of colonisation changed after the transfer of power in 1947. From being a direct colony of British imperialism, India turned to be a country under the colonisation of several colonial powers, most prominently the U.S. imperialism. When it is becoming increasingly clear that the age of rampant liberalisation and globalisation has only strengthened the ties of dependence, India has been nothing but a semi-colonial country bound by its imperialist obligations. The same logic applies to refute the whole notion of it being “against India’s national interest” which too has never been independent of the interest of the imperialist demands and the interest of the subservient Indian ruling class that has nothing but comprador in nature. And as such to shout the slogan of preserving “India’s legacy of independent foreign policy” sounds naïve coming from the Left who as is clearly understandable has failed (or is not willing) to characterise the true nature of the Indian state and its ruling class. And as long as that doesn’t happen, any attempt to stall the imperialist onslaught is bound to fail. With the visible compliance of the ‘mainstream’ Left to the norms of the moribund capital especially in West Bengal and Kerala, the denial of this reality is easily understandable. The question is how long will they be able to fool the people of this country and the students of this campus by indulging in such a faulty debate regarding the reality and the problems facing the people of this subcontinent.

Nature of the Indian State, parliamentary politics, and its failure to counter imperialism: The media is giving the impression that the parliament has stooped to an unprecedented low with the allegations of open buying and selling of MPs. There seems to be a conscious effort to portray the issue of exchange of money within the house as something that has suddenly come to defile apparently the most ‘sacred’ and ‘pure’ institution of the country, that has otherwise maintained its sanctity for the last six decades. The reality however is that this degeneration (if one may call it so) has been there since its inception. Normally such transactions are completed outside the gates of the house. This time the only difference was the reality TV effect, as it happened within the parliament. There is no illusion about the parliament’s true colours among the hungry and oppressed millions of our country, nor is any element of surprise involved in the warped essence of our parliamentary democracy where all it takes to win a Trust Vote is a better ‘jugaad’. And when the parliamentary left complains about this “horse-trading” while participating in what they call a ‘pitched battle’ against the deal within the house, it so appears that they have been unaware of the norms of the number game, living in a fool's-world. And if they knew about this ugly reality, then under what illusion did it leave the issue at the mercy of a number game the result of which depends on opportunistic alliances, sauda of seats and cash. The question today is- can imperialism be effectively combated through parliament that is infested and dictated by a comprador ruling class and big business houses who are themselves the components of the design of the imperialist nexus? To us, the answer is a clear 'no'. It is only through non-parliamentary, revolutionary mass mobilisation that the imperialist’s intervention and the comprador ruling class’s surrender can be effectively combated. The so called ‘Left’ of our country will not recognize this hard reality because it would expose and jeopardise its own position and share in the present status-quo.

The debate in the campus and SFI - AISA’s position on the deal: The debates regarding the nuclear deal within campus had reached its peak as the trust vote approached in the parliament. The pamphlet-war being waged by AISA and SFI against each other missed certain crucial issues. What seems very clear is that both SFI and AISA share the same fundamental premises of the debate, although disagreeing on minor details. While SFI donned the cloak of the sole spokesperson against the deal and criticised AISA-led JNUSU of not doing enough to mobilise against it, AISA has been mocking at the opportunism and futility of the ‘opposition’ put forward by CPM to the deal. In the process the core issues at hand were neglected and the emphasis was placed on mud-throwing on each other by these two so called ‘Leftist’ students’ bodies. Rather than building effective public opinion and resistance against the signing of the deal through reaching out to the students, the two suitable representatives of the parliamentary left showed their true colours. AISA and SFI engaged themselves in a shadow-fight over petty parliamentary issues like who has a more problematic electoral alliance and who has been acting more opportunistically than the other. And amidst this whole pointless exchange of words, what was lost and what needs to be emphasized here is the complete irrelevance of the parliamentary politics (including that of the official Left) in effectively opposing imperialism on ground. Both the students' organisations (one of them even claims the legacy of the glorious Naxalbari armed uprising!) are wary of recognizing the inherent shortcoming of the parliamentary way of opposing imperialism, because it will question and threaten their very existence. Today while one of these students' bodies represent social fascism, the other has embraced a NGO-brand of 'activism' and 'accomodate all' approach to politics, abandoning the path of class-struggle and of radical students' movement.

Why are we against the Deal? The deal is another clear instance of the surrender of the Indian ruling classes to U.S. interests. The pretence of playing one super power against another is no longer there in the present uni-polar world. In the name of developing nuclear energy, the agreement gives the U.S. unrestrained powers to dictate the Indian state to follow and be a lackey of its worldwide imperialist designs. It opens the way for a further intensification of the anti-people energy policy, a parasitic science and technology, where the rhetoric of ‘self-interest’ is evidently not the ‘interest’ of the ‘people’ of the country whose chief concerns are still food and livelihood, not a lopsided development of technology in the form of nuclear energy. Real issues of the people can only be solved by a ‘pro-people’ growth of scientific knowledge and its application. But unfortunately, in this country, science has always and continues to serve the purpose of a selected few-the advantaged section in the garb of the ‘larger interest of the people/nation’.

Ever since the transfer of power in 1947, the comprador ruling class of the country have shamelessly offered the country’s market/resources to foreign capital through un-equal treaties and otherwise, thereby facilitating anti-people development. The big dams that were once passed off as the “modern temples”, inevitably in due course of time were proved counter-productive and exposed as anti-people. With numerous such past instances, here again we see just another sell out to foreign imperialist capital in the name of the country’s ‘self interest’ and the state being a lackey of imperialism, this shall continue unabated unless a militant people’s movement is waged against it. If the ‘self’ really refers to the people of the country, then there would be no need of such a parasitic technology for the country’s development. And here it stands pertinent to mention that the Official Left is unhappy with this particular deal because of certain problematic clauses and is not as such opposed to developing nuclear energy even at the cost of the people as is apparent in their state level policy (The CPM government in West Bengal is in the process of building a nuclear reactor by displacing hundreds of peasants from their land). Unlike this partial and lopsided understanding of the nuclear issue by the ‘mainstream’ Left, we on the other hand, on the basis of the aforesaid understanding of the role of technology, do not believe in the ‘pro-people utility’ of nuclear energy in this country. So we are ardently for the holistic opposition to the anti-people nuclear energy issue.

Fighting imperialism, fighting for real freedom: There cannot be any doubt today about the fact that imperialism can only be effectively resisted through the revolutionary peoples’ resistance against it. Mere parliamentarism, and rhetorical protest through the parliamentary path has not achieved anything for the masses. At the same time, wherever in the world’s map effective protest has been registered by genuine peoples’ movement, it has been immediately branded as ‘terrorist’ or ‘fundamentalist’ offensive by the U.S. and its worldwide network of faithful agents. Such white-lies have to be fought in order to strengthen anti-imperialist struggle in the real sense of the term. In India too the revolutionary struggle that has been going on against the state needs to be intensified, because only through a militant, continuous and successful people’s movement against a state that serves as a lackey of imperialism can be effectively defeated. The state will obviously brand such movements as ‘terrorist/separatist/anti-nationalist outfits’ and unleash the most brutal repression on such nationality struggles and genuine people’s movements, but this is the only path to effectively resist imperialist interventions such as the present nuclear deal. It is the responsibility of each one of us to intensify the revolutionary struggle which is the most potent struggle waged by the Indian masses against imperialism.