Karat & Bardhan to sing Happy Birthday to Castro

NEW DELHI: This is one bash the communists are certainly not going to miss. CPM and CPI general secretaries Prakash Karat and AB Bardhan are visiting Havana to attend the birthday celebrations of Cuban leader Fidel Castro on August 13. Communist leaders from across the world are gathering in Havana for a Left re-union of sorts.

As Castro, whose movement was an inspiration for the Indian Left, turns 80, Mr Karat and Mr Bardhan will rub shoulders with communist leaders from other Latin American countries including Hugo Chavez. The guest list for the celebrations includes renowned Latin American writer and Castro’s friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as legendary footballer Diego Maradona, who apparently, sports Castro and Che Guevera tattoos.

After fighting what they dub as a pro-American foreign policy back home, the two Indian communist leaders will be spending four days in Cuba, the island nation where communists captured power in 1959 under Castro’s leadership. The two are also scheduled to spend a night in Paris on their way back.

During the celebrations in Havana, there will be concerts, a Cuban gala, colloquium and an exhibition of Castro’s pictures. Besides, Chavez, the Indian Left leaders are likely to meet communist leaders of Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, China, Russia and Vietnam. The birthday celebration, probably the first of its kind, is being organised by an organisation called “Foundacion Guayasamin’, which is headed by Ecuador.

The visit by the Left leaders comes just a month ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s NAM tour in September. The Left was upset with the Prime Minister’s reluctance to meet the Cuban foreign minister in order to invite the PM for the NAM summit. They had alleged that it betrayed the government’s anxiety to please the US at a time when the Indo-US nuclear deal was waiting for the approval of the US Congress.

The Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque was apparently deputed by Fidel Castro to visit India with a personal invitation for the Prime Minister to attend the NAM summit. According to sources, the Cuban minister was given a date, but just four days before arriving in India, was told that the Prime Minister was busy and the invitation could be handed over to minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma. The Cuban embassy subsequently handed over the invitation to the government.

In addition, like every year on July 26, the Left is also celebrating the “Cuban Rebellion Day”, when Castro led a band of guerrillas who attacked the Moncada garrison, paving the way for the “triumph of the Cuban revolution”.