Big Brother Congress has literally closed all its orifices to the communist menace that so threatens the internal–to an extent, external too–security and stability of India. Headed by an extra-constitutional Prime Minister and comprising mostly criminals, the UPA government itself poses a threat to the country.

Prakash Karat after taking over the reins of the Communist Party, has wasted no time. In what he thought would be a secret meeting with a terrorist leader, Baburam Bhattarai a Nepali Maoist eminence, Karat had not bargained for the Slimes, which reported the meeting. In its disco-style reportage, the Slimes says:

One of Nepal’s top Maoist leaders, Baburam Bhattarai, is being quietly chaperoned around here by Indian intelligence agencies, which recently organised a meeting between him and CPM general secretary Prakash Karat.

This is what our intelligence department, which has (had?) gained some acclaim recently, is up to: rolling out the red carpet to terrorists. Of course, I maybe just pumping more hot air into the rumour balloon–it is likely that the intelligence guys are not really involved. Returning to Karat, the Slimes gives us another piece of information why Karat chose Baburam. Apart from ideological sodality, the two also connect at another common level.

Although the meeting was facilitated by intelligence agencies, Karat and Bhattarai have a common link - they share their alma mater, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

So there you have: the desi madrassa that breeds Marxist terrorists who, post-indoctrination, occupy powerful positions in politics and the media and like parasites, feed on the plant that gives the sustenance they require. These white-collar do-gooders are more dangerous than the folk they recruit–whether these are the genuinely-wronged peasants who join the Naxal movement or the over enthusiastic college/university students. For those wondering why India lost its chance to draft a sensible policy with regard to Nepal, the answer probably lies somewhere inbetween–the covert (and overt) support from our Red Terrorists to their Nepalese bretheren and to the pressure they’ve repeatedly exerted on the UPA, specifically the Congress party to stay away from tackling Naxalism.

The guys at the Public Affairs Magazine wonder whether the current Nepal crisis will tread the same (disastrous) route as the IPKF. And caution in no small measure against such development.

But history seems to be repeating itself in Nepal, and as tragedy more than farce. The Nepal project seems bigger than anything we attempted in Sri Lanka, and is almost the size of Bangladesh’s creation in idea, although it is different in some respects. Regime change was never the idea behind our intervention in Sri Lanka, but it is coming into the Nepal calculus one way or another. A section of the government and the UPA want King Gyanendra’s monarchy dismantled, and a full republican system in place, while the army, and the realists in the administration, say to let things be.

The realists got prime minister Manmohan Singh to commit military aid against the Maoists, and to assure Nepal that India was keen to strengthen both the monarchy and multiparty democracy. But the idealists in the foreign office who hate the monarchy, and the ideologues in the Left, particularly the CPI-M, who love the Maoists more, have not entirely given up on their enterprise of regime change in Nepal.

The Karat-Bhattarai meeting exposes another shameful–if not deadly–face of the Left: that it is running a parallel government. The PA Magazine recognizes this very perceptively:

What we have is a very dangerous, Sri Lanka-like situation building up in Nepal. The CPI-M has no locus to interfere in the internal affairs of a foreign country, and it is not even a part of the government to make these contacts. Frankly, who is Prakash Karat to engage a section of Maoists, and who would be responsible if this produces new rumbles in the Indian Army? This is an extreme case of exercising power without responsibility.

And hammers more insight:

That the UPA is not a government in the real sense of the term is fairly evident, but this is now impinging on foreign relations. India appears a divided house abroad, and this is killing us. Everything that we aspire for will now be put on hold until foreign powers know who they are dealing with, and at what level of strength.

Divided house? How can a coalition that consists mostly of enemies who are unlikely to make peace ever with each other, come to agreement on any issue? We have hardcore criminals pitted against each other: Lalu bhai vs Paswan bhai, the DMK, which is content only to garner plum portfolios, the Congress, which only wants to pursue vendetta instead of governance, and the Left, which pretty much does as it pleases. The Parliament has therefore, in my eyes, become nothing better than a battlefield for organized gangwar: inside, words (sometimes microphones, paperweights, etc) become the weapons, and outside, in some remote village in UP or Bihar, these same gangs use real weapons.

What is interesting is Karat, according to the Slimes, had confirmed the meeting earlier:

When contacted, Karat confirmed the meeting, although he did not share details.

But did a quick volte face when he suddenly realized that this would be potentially damaging. Standard commie technique, as revealed by Arun Shourie in his book. So says Comrade Karat:

General Secretary Prakash Karat today described as “untrue” a media report saying that he had met Maoist leader from Nepal Babburam Bhattarai here.

The report that “I have met a Maoist leader from Nepal in a meeting arranged by the Indian security agencies is untrue,” Karat said in a statement here.

“No such meeting was held,” he said.

Expectedly, the Slimes has shot back

Stung by an embarrassing exposure of a clandestine meeting between Nepali Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai and CPM chief Prakash Karat, the government and its Marxist ally were in the denial mode on Thursday. They claim that no such a meeting had taken place with the help of Indian intelligence agencies. The hush-hush meeting was reported by TOI on Wednesday. There was no reaction that day. On Thursday, however, in a terse three-line release, Karat said, “The report in the TOI that I have met a Maoist leader from Nepal in a meeting arranged by the Indian security agencies is untrue. No such meeting was held.”

Interestingly, it was Karat himself who had confirmed the meeting to TOI. A careful reading of his statement would also indicate that he is only denying the role of intelligence agencies in arranging the meeting, not the event itself.

This was exactly in line with the stand that Bhattarai took. According to agency reports from Kathmandu, the Maoist leader has denied that Indian agencies organised the meeting but didn’t deny the meeting itself. While they seem to be acting in concert, sources affirmed that the agencies, indeed, brokered the meeting.

And at the end of the same report, the Slimes reveals another disturbing news:

Their disclaimers now are easy to understand. There is an Interpol red corner notice against Bhattarai and he is expected to be arrested and turned in by Indian security agencies. If despite that, he is moving around here, and that too boldly enough to meet the boss of a top government ally, it is reasonable to believe that the agencies were winking at it all, if not colluding with Bhattarai.

Arun Shourie’s question once again resonates in my ears: are we serious about defending the country?