Before you call me a "commie lover", let me declare that I’m a wishy-washy liberal who distrusts all ideologies because any kind of dogma has totalitarianism built into it. My heroes are Willy Brandt, Adlai Stevenson, Olof Palme, Roy Jenkins and Jawaharlal Nehru, all centre-left politicians passionately committed to democracy and freedom.
Besides the name-calling the deal debate threw up, what has been most revealing is the intense hatred shown towards those who dared to question the deal; and to people like me who were generally in favour of the deal but felt it was not worth the supreme sacrifice—losing the government. The demonisation and vilification of both groups earned the ultimate insult, "anti-national". Almost the entire English media was convinced that those who opposed the agreement were "on the wrong side of history". And this charge was taken to the extreme, warning that if the Manmohan Singh government reneged on the deal, India would become a pariah state.
Thus, instead of being anti-American, India is madly, blindly, incoherently smitten with Uncle Sam. It is a 24x7 love affair in which the current setback is a minor stumble. So, how did 59 comrades block India’s tryst with destiny? That’s a story yet to be told.
