Comrades have turned loyal foot soldiers in Biden’s war against Putin’s Russia. If you have noticed the Stalinist left “intellectual” and left controlled media coverage of the ongoing Ukraine crisis, you would have noticed one strange thing.

Until the other day, these Bhadralok and Babumoshai were brave anti-imperialist warriors. Anything the Americans said or did was automatically imperialism, warmongering and oppressive. It was to be opposed tooth and nail, preferably over a peg of good whiskey at some Lutyens Bungalow or “cultural institution” that studies Panditji’s contribution to India.

India was supposed to be a brave “non-aligned” nation, which was, of course, the code word for knee jerk anti-Americanism and support for Soviets invading Poland, Hungary and putting down an uprising in Czechoslovakia.

A rebuke from the US President was something an Indian PM was supposed to wear with pride as a badge of honour.

Everything from failure of monsoon to lower yield in wheat crop was blamed on “CIA saazish”. 

We were supposed to buy oil from Iran, care a damn about sanctions imposed by the “great satan”. We were told allying with Israel was evil.

We were supposed to support the murderous despot Chavez stand firm in resolve against attempts by the imperialist, colonialist Americans to sanction and bully the nation into submission.

Castro was our hero! Who cares if he doesn’t know the spelling of the word elections? After all, that is what true “democracy” is all about.

We must name our streets after mass murderers and despots of the global left ummah, comrade Pol Pot excepted. Maybe I am wrong, there is some street in Kolkata named after him or Ieng Sari.

Kim Jong II, the drunkard womanizer and mass butcher that forced his subjects to live on rats, roots and wild weed was an “enigma” as described by a leading left “liberal” daily, The Hindu. CPM workers can be seen carrying their son’s portrait on street corners. Never mind that he killed his own relatives and countless others, blowing them up with cannons and having them eaten by wild dogs. After all, what matters is he stood firm against Americans.

The list is long. Kanchan Gupta has pointed out how, barely weeks before the vile dictator Ceausescu and his wife were deposed and shot to death, with hundreds of soldiers volunteering to fire the bullet, JNU intellectual comrade Yechuri went to Romania and wrote glowing tribute to him and the regime!

Today the same left directly and via its intellectual, academia and media ecosystem wants us to obey Biden’s dictates on Russia. 

We are told there is a “moral” price to pay for not going along with Uncle Sam’s plan for global domination. We should stop buying oil from Russia, never mind that Germany still buys. 

The liberal warriors who want us to sing Iqbal and Faiz, want Pakistani cricketers and movie stars free access to our money, pappi-jhappi and lighting candles at Wagah borders, wants us to go along with banning anything Russian, even if it is just a 20-year-old musician or long-dead Tchaikovsky! 

Every day our “independent” media asks White house press handlers at least a dozen times “Are you OK with Indian buying Russian oil” and relay their comments on front pages, warning India and Modi will pay a price. Not an hour goes by without some “reporter” asking some American nobody if they think India’s stand is fine with them and giving coverage to their replies. If I were a white American, I would stay clear of our TV studios and any Indian looking guy asking for soundbites!

Now that Biden is ok with Maduro, his killings notwithstanding, we are also supposed to turn on a dime, and start buying from Venezuela? Tomorrow it could be the Mullahs of Iran that become new friends of woke left. Then all would be fine, let Iran hang their gays from rooftops. The pronoun thumping woke crowd will look the other way.

I am not saying their hypocrisy should surprise you, but have you asked yourself why?

The reasons are not hard to trace. Just follow the money!

When I was a young executive, a senior executive often told me, “Ganesh, go abroad. You will earn the same money. But it is in the dollar and 18 times more”. You can guess when by looking up the exchange rates. 

For the left intellectual ecosystem long used to Lutyens lifestyle, living off the table scrap of the Nehru dynasty, the abrupt derailment of the gravy train in 2014 came as a rude shock. For a while, it looked as if that was a freak result that would soon be “rectified” as happened in 2004. But it became increasingly clear the good ol’ days ain’t gonna come back anytime soon.

But then a new, richer source of cash flow opened up. That’s the woke left “progressive” network in the West, especially in the USA. Its rise was timely. It is corrupt and unprincipled, hypocritical and condescending but then when did that matter?

George Soros and his sort allocated billions for regime change in places where they didn’t like the smell of grassroots democracy. Then there are the Church groups, evangelist networks, Ford Foundations and many others. Some are, of course, genuine do-gooders fooled by the left ecosystem charlatans’ clever use of poverty, conflicts, and depravity, a product of their own long years of direct and indirect rule, into potent franchises for fundraising.

If you are in their good books, you or your little NGO on the side are never short of funds. Career doors open. Academic gigs and frequent flyer miles are yours for the asking. Op-Ed chances in leading liberal dailies open, for $2 a word or better. You can find interesting places to abuse Modi from, be it Paris cafes or Stockholm seminars. You can even become a Professor at Harvard…oops that was a typo. 

If you cross them, you are cancelled. No one will touch you with a ten-foot pole. Twitter and Facebook will ban you.

So next time you hear a fearless comrade asking why India is not opposing Russia, or standing by Biden, just follow the smell of dollars.