CPI-M
upset over fiction targeting Surjeet
Indo-Asian
News Service
New
Delhi, June 7 (IANS) The Marxists have no love for a genre
of fiction that takes digs at their leaders. Author Darshan
Singh is feeling the heat over a book that caricatures former
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary
Harkishan Singh Surjeet.
Darshan
Singh of Punjab has come out with a novel "Bhaau"
- about the backroom manoeuvres supposedly plotted by Surjeet
to stich together the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) government in May 2004.
The
CPI-M is not amused, even if Surjeet is not named in the book.
The character, however, has a strong resemblance to the man.
"Authors
should check out their facts - whether it is Surjeet or Manmohan
Singh. There should be no wilful intent to destroy anybody's
character," a CPI-M politburo member told IANS.
Darshan
Singh, who knew Surjeet from his Punjab days, has defended
his work saying that it encapsulated a story of "virtual
reality".
The
blurb on his book described the leading character, believed
to be Surjeet, as an "imaginary politician".
"Bhaau",
written in Punjabi, described how in 2004, a top Communist
leader, Karam Singh Kirti, tutored a European lady, presumably
Sonia Gandhi, heading one of the largest parties in India
(presumably the Congress), to form a secular coalition.
The
UPA coalition, headed by the Congress, took power in 2004
with the support of the Left parties.
Surjeet spent much of his time in the sweltering month of
May that year, shuttling between Gandhi's residence here at
10 Janpath and the CPI-M party headquarters and exhorting
the UPA to get its script right.
"Bhaau"
described the strands of political discord that marked relations
between Kirti and "PR", a hardliner in his party.
Surjeet
and his colleague Jyoti Basu had serious disagreements with
Prakash Karat, considered then a hardliner, over the CPI-M's
proximity to the Congress. Karat is now party general secretary.
The
CPI-M is yet to discuss the novel by Darshan Singh, said an
insider. But Arundhati Roy's novel "God of Small Things"
was definitely "based on wrong facts," the source
said.
Arundhati
Roy used the name of E.M.S. Namboodiripad, then still living,
to play the part of a landlord. Namboodiripad was CPI-M general
secretary between 1977 and 1992. The landlord turns his ancestral
home into a hotel in Roy's book.
The
CPI-M and Namboodiripad hit out at Roy for promoting "sexual
anarchy" and "bourgeois values".
In
an article published in Deshabhimani, a CPI-M organ, Namboodiripad
dismissed Roy's portrayal of Communists saying: "I am
proud of my individuality as a Communist that Arundhati sees
as a flaw and my lack of sexual deviant sexuality that Arundhati
sees as a matter of credit."
Indo-Asian
News Service
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