Opinion | Democracy For Some, Bullets For Others: The Indian Left From Tiananmen To Jantar Mantar

It is this selective moral outrage, one standard for ideological allies and another for everyone else, that lies at the heart of the Indian Left's credibility problem.

Thirty-seven years ago, thousands of students and ordinary citizens took to the streets of Beijing, demanding political reform, greater freedoms and an end to official corruption.

The People’s Republic of China responded by crushing the student-led protests in and around Tiananmen Square with military force. Estimates of the death toll vary widely between official and independent accounts, but one fact is beyond dispute: hundreds, and possibly many more, lost their lives during the crackdown.

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More than three decades later, the events of 4 June 1989 remain among the most heavily censored subjects in China. Public discussion of the massacre is tightly restricted, and even indirect references to it are routinely suppressed. Collective memory itself has become a casualty of the state’s censorship apparatus.

The Chinese government has never apologised for the crackdown. On the contrary, it has consistently defended the military action as necessary to preserve stability. In the official narrative, the use of armed force against student protesters was not a tragedy to be acknowledged, but a decision to be justified.

As the world watched in horror while Chinese troops opened fire on unarmed protesters demanding political reform, there was one major political formation in India that chose not to condemn the crackdown. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) instead defended the actions of the Chinese Communist Party, passing a resolution that justified the military intervention as a necessary step to restore order.

At a moment when much of the democratic world was appalled by the brutal suppression of a peaceful student movement, the CPI(M) stood in defence of the regime that ordered it.

Thirty-seven years later, the Tiananmen Square massacre continues to expose the extraordinary double standards of sections of the Indian Left. The contrast remains striking even today. For those who speak incessantly of civil........

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