RESEARCH

_______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ C PI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat has surprised nobody by stating he does not rule out the possibility of the Marxists' joining a coalition government post-2009 elections that is not led by the Indian National Congress but where the latter plays a participatory role. In their recent interviews, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram, among the UPA Government's prominent functionaries, have spoken cautiously, avoiding direct criticism of the communists, despite the bitterness over the Left's withdrawal of support to the government last year on the issue of India-US civilian nuclear agreement. Any truck with the BJP, however, has been ruled out by Karat, again, not unexpectedly. And no Congressman worth his salt has ever endorsed the idea of a 'national government' comprising all political parties including the RSS's political wing. The post-poll alliance scenario couldn'

... that freed India in 1947 _______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ Today, the attention of this writer was drawn to an article written by Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar on the occasion of India's Independence Day in 2003 (though it appeared in print two days later as that was the closest Sunday, the day when Swami's column appears in The Times of India ). The article insists the British left India, forced more by the indigenous uprising than by its weak economy post-World War II. And the person who brought the article to my notice through Orkut calls the waning of British power as a reason for India's independence an ill-researched theory floated, he guesses, by the Sangh Parivar (why?). The juxtaposition of Swami's Independence Day article with this blog-post, coincidentally penned right after the Republic Day, should help the readers reach their own judgement Another Independence Day has come and gone. Right through history, imperial powers have clung to the