Left parties on Thursday equated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remarks that “many forces” would not like to see India realise its potential with that of Indira Gandhi raising the bogey of foreign hand to justify imposition of Emergency and sought a clarification from him.
While CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said it was “disturbingly familiar” to Indira Gandhi’s arguments, CPI’s D. Raja said the Prime Minister should clarify which “forces” he was talking about in his statement in Parliament yesterday.
In his statement on the police action against Anna Hazare and his supporters, Dr. Singh had said, “We are now emerging as one of the important players on the world stage. There are many forces that would not like to see India realise its true place in the comity of nations. We must not play into their hands. We must not create an environment in which our economic progress is hijacked by internal dissention.”
Terming the statement as “curious”, Mr. Yechury said, “This sounds disturbingly familiar to the arguments advanced by late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who invoked the bogey of foreign hand to justify the imposition of internal Emergency in 1975.”
“The Indian people had heroically defeated such an attack on democracy then and they are today more than ever determined to foil any such effort”, he said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of CPI(M) organ ‘People’s Democracy’
“Strangely, such a caution comes from this UPA government which voluntarily chose the status of becoming a subordinate ally of U.S. imperialism”, Mr. Yechury said.
CPI National Secretary Raja said, “If the Prime Minister has something in his mind that some forces are undermining India, he must identify these forces and clarify who are the persons who are trying to undermine India.”
