In election posters dead people are mandatory. But in Kerala, the featured dead people are Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. India’s ties with Israel is the biggest crisis facing Kerala right now according to the campaign speeches. The previous crisis – if the library of Alexandria was burned by Arabs — was somehow amicably resolved.
India’s deal with Israel is a big issue for the Communists because of the recent Indo-Israeli missile deal, which will protect India from, to borrow the Prime Minister’s words, “neighboring countries.” Now the Communists have become more Nehru than Nehru himself .
Nehru’s opposition for the creation of Israel, did not stand his way of asking their help during the 1962 war with China. Nehru asked David Ben-Gurion for help and Israelis sent military equipment. During the 1965 and 1971 wars too Israel sent mortar rounds, while our so called friends did pretty much nothing. India also demanded that while Israel sent ammunition, they remove any Israeli markings from it. The ammunition was obtained regularly as demanded and India condemned them in public and always supported the Palestinian cause.[Einstein, Nehru and Israel]
One way to be a Nehru is to oppose Israel while asking for help. (There are other ways too which is left as an exercise to the reader). This is exactly what the Communists did.
While the party is against Israel, one of their ministers, C. Divakaran of CPI, wanted to import Israeli bulls to impregnate Malayali cows; the Kerala bulls were only good for calling hartals. The goal of this exercise was to combine business and pleasure – for the Israeli bulls. The Israeli bulls were expected to do their magic and many mooos later milk production was to increase by 20%. Even the farmers unions were enthusiastic about this: they identified the hill station of Mattupetti for the bulls to sing songs.
C. Divakaran was not setting up new standards in Nehruvian school of geo-politics; he was just following the path of Jyothi Basu. During his tenure as the person in charge of taking Bengal to stone age, Basu wanted an industrial tie up with Israel. It also turns out that we blogged about this in 2003.
Thus we have Nehrus all around us, replicating rapidly, like Agent Smith in Matrix Reloaded. There is no problem with that, but if only they stopped dumping the other stuff which the bull produces on us.
