The Left has been opposed to the India-US civilian nuclear deal right from the day Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had hammered out an agreement with US President George Bush last year. The Left was not just opposed to the deal. It had threatened to withdraw support to the government if Manmohan Singh went ahead with the deal. So, when the UPA government did go ahead with the deal early this month, the Left withdrew its support. That stance of the Left was completely understandable. What one could not understand was the Left's untiring efforts, subsequently, to pull down the government even if that meant being on the same boat as its arch enemy, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

There were even reports that a senior Left leader did not discount the possibility of his party supporting a BJP-led coalition at the Centre, provided the saffron party shed its "communal agenda". That statement has not yet been challenged or contradicted by the Left parties or the leader in question. A few days later, the CPI-M general secretary visited BSP boss Mayawati, sparking off rumours that the Left might even consider seeking her support with a view to defeating the UPA government. The Left's opposition to the India-US civil nuclear deal was at least consistent and arose from its belief and ideological position. But the stance of the BJP (which acknowledges the US to be India's strategic partner) on the India-US civil nuclear deal has been wholly inconsistent. And the BSP is not yet known for its views on this issue.

So, it was difficult to understand why the Left would even think of joining hands with these two parties to defeat the UPA. The only explanation was that the Left was so piqued by the Congress' insistence on the deal that it wanted to teach the Manmohan Singh government a lesson by defeating it on the floor of the Lok Sabha. But was that a mature response from the Left? Perhaps, a more principled stand would have been to withdraw support to the UPA and not look for any alliance that might seem opportunistic with the sole aim of defeating a government. This is a view that has come from some Left leaders in Bengal, who have expressed their apprehensions about adverse electoral consequences of voting along with BJP to defeat the UPA government.

Even the Constitutionally sacred position of the Lok Sabha Speaker was not spared from such politically embarrassing initiatives. The Left parties included the name of the Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, in the list of the members of Parliament submitted to the President while withdrawing support to the government. Worse, sufficient pressure was exerted on the Speaker to resign from his position. So far, the Speaker has managed to resist such pressure. Within the Left, senior leaders from Bengal have questioned the need for seeking Mr Chatterjee's resignation particularly when he was appointed to that position unanimously. But the Left wants to claim Mr Chatterjee as a Lok Sabha member when the trust votes are counted in the Lok Sabha next week. Compulsions of politics can indeed force a political party to throw all principles and conventions to the wind. That this could happen even to the Left is a major disappointment.

No less disappointing has been the conduct of the Samajwadi Party (SP), which bailed the Congress out by promising it the crucial support. It used APJ Abdul Kalam's endorsement of the India-US civil nuclear deal, among other things, to convince itself and its political constituency that all was well with the pact. It has shown no qualms about airing its economic agenda, which seems to be a slightly reworded agenda of a major industrial house. That this agenda is not just to benefit that industrial house but also to place its rivals in a disadvantageous position makes it shameful. The UPA government may have bought more trouble than it had bargained for by seeking the SP's support. It has to pay a price for having got the SP's support to save the nuclear deal. But the point to be noted is that the SP's behaviour in this ongoing political drama does not surprise anyone. But the Left's behaviour does make one wonder if all political parties in this country have now become indistinguishable from each other — banking less on principles and more on opportunism.