The Prakash Karat-led CPM is in a damage control mode. Recently, it was compelled to circulate a pamphlet among the rank and file to explain why Somnath Chatterjee, a Marxist veteran of forty years, was expelled from the party.

Chatterjee's expulsion has portrayed how the party is still in the mould of Stalinist dictatorship. In a statement on August 1, the Lok Sabha Speaker broke his silence, justifying his stand of not quitting his post despite the tremendous pressure brought on by the party leadership. The average Constitution-abiding citizen will justify every word of Somnath.

Perhaps Karat and his followers got the plot all wrong. Having been part of the parliamentary process, they should have foreseen the consequences of drawing the office of the Speaker into the crossfire of partisan politics.

Chatterjee held his ground, much to CPM's embarrassment, with Karat's decision of his summary expulsion leading to consternation within a section of the party, especially in Somnath's home state of West Bengal.

The party had indeed erred in adding Somnath's name in the list of MPs while withdrawing support to the UPA government and what compounded it was that the leadership didn't bother to keep the speaker in the loop.

But the Somnath saga is just the offshoot of another historic blunder that the Left committed over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The Left parties' stand on the deal is well-known. Actually, more than the deal, it's about the comrades' opposition to the US becoming a strategic ally of India. At one level, the Left's rigid stand, leading to its withdrawal of support to the government and the subsequent trust vote in Parliament, only brings out the inept political handling of the situation by Karat and his band.   

The entire Left is red-faced after the Manmohan Singh government won the trust vote, especially after Karat had vouched to bring it down at all costs.

Even if one finds some merit in the Red Brigade's stand on the nuclear deal (after all there is a vertical divide among the experts too),  the Left leadership, perhaps, committed a political harakiri by precipitating matters in a manner that left no room for them for political manoeuvring.

The best course could have been to just sit tight after withdrawing support without asking for a trust vote when Leaders of all Left parties met President Pratibha Patil. This would have prevented an immediate showdown in Parliament (which they lost) while practically reducing the Manmohan Singh government to a minority government. It's unlikely that in this situation, the opposition NDA would have moved a no-confidence motion with Lok Sabha elections just a few months away and even if it did, the Left had the option of abstaining.

This way the Left could have driven home its opposition to the deal better while at the same time avoiding any projection of its image of being the principal villain to bring down the government, it was indirectly part of in the last four and half years.

In an interview to a TV channel, Karat dismissed any possibility of a tie-up with the UPA after the next elections. Considering the ground realities of Indian politics, such definitive language from a political leader of his standing is surprising.

For now, at the national level it's more of a two-coalition (UPA vs NDA) system with a third one in its nascent stage of revival. In this situation, such statements from Karat are fraught with political dangers. It's difficult to predict how things will pan out after the next general elections and political prudence lies in keeping options open.

The manner in which events unfolded in the past few weeks comes as a stark reminder of the Left's 'historic blunder' of 1996 when hardliners prevented Jyoti Basu's ascent to prime ministership. The parliamentary Left in India had then squandered a historic opportunity to provide an alternative agenda of governance, which looks a remote possibility in the foreseeable future.    

Years ago, Daniel Bell and some others talked of 'End of Ideology'. It holds true, in a post-industrial world driven by technology and economic well-being.  
Whether the Indo-US nuclear deal is good or bad for India's economic well-being is another debate which needs a separate space.