It’s a pity Narendra Modi who attended Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral didn’t attend Fidel Castro’s. This was not a leftist occasion to be left to middle-ranking politicians led by Rajnath Singh. It was a celebration of the Third World at which India’s voice and presence would have honoured our own past in honouring Castro’s memory, and acknowledged the future hopes of all Afro-Asian nations.
The weapon with which Chile’s Salvador Allende is said to have killed himself in 1973 when capture seemed inevitable was a gift from Castro with a golden plate engraved with, “To my good friend Salvador from Fidel, who by different means tries to achieve the same goals”. It’s the goals that are important, not the means. Many Afro-Asian politicians who led their countries to independence shared those goals, but for a variety of reasons heroic men like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukarno and Mao Zedong failed to achieve their aims. Castro was not unaware of this. Pope John Paul II’s comment about higher wages and “proper housing” when he visited Cuba in 1998 prompted Castro’s wry comment that some papal speeches read as if they were written by “a journalist from Granma (Cuba’s Communist Party newspaper).
Cuba’s free education and medicare ensured people had enough for their needs. But greed is a different matter, and being next door to the lavish consumerism of the United States, especially of Florida, playground of the super rich, fuelled some amount of discontent. It was forgotten that Castro had ended what was in effect American paramountcy. His achievement lay in ensuring his country’s independence even under the shadow of the world’s last superpower.
Castro records that after Allende’s death, a sorrowing Mrs Gandhi told him, “What they have done to Allende they want to do to me also. There are people here, connected with the same foreign forces that acted in Chile, who would like to eliminate me.” But if anyone had real cause to be afraid of US machinations, it was the Cuban leader. As he himself said, “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”
Jack Kennedy’s abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 was one of the many attempts to overthrow him. The following year’s Soviet missile crisis might have provoked an even more dangerous clash if the Soviets hadn’t pulled out. The US bullied Cuba, Haiti, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. It split Colombia to create Panama to acquire the Canal Zone. It also occupied 45 square miles at Guantánamo Bay which Cuba calls “usurped territory” and wants back but where the US has its high security detention camp. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s warning that it was “incumbent on all civilised and orderly powers to insist on the proper (read US) policing of the world” expressed the thinking underlying the Monroe Doctrine.
Castro’s Cuba alone held out after the burly bearded 32-year-old revolutionary descended from the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1959 to take over Cuba after more than 30 years under two corrupt and tyrannical American protégés, Gerardo Macheto and Fulgencio Batista. They fled to Dominica (under another US-protected dictator) when the legendary Che Guevara defeated their forces. Discerning Indian prime ministers appreciated his significance. “The first person who came to see me was Prime Minister Nehru,” Castro told an interviewer describing his early days in power. “I can never forget his magnificent gesture. I was 34 years of age, not widely known. I was tense. Nehru boosted my morale. My tension disappeared.” Rajiv Gandhi followed in 1985, and Manmohan Singh in 2006.
Castro himself visited India twice (1973 and 1983) as Mrs Gandhi’s guest. One was for the inauguration of the seventh non-aligned summit where he famously enveloped Mrs Gandhi — his “sister” as he called her — in a bear’s hug before handing over the chairman’s baton which had been his since the Havana summit. When news of Allende’s fall reached him in war-torn Vietnam he promptly flew back via Calcutta where Jyoti Basu and thousands of people (but not the chief minister, Siddhartha Shankar Ray) welcomed him at Dum Dum airport.
It wasn’t until P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr Singh introduced their reforms and moved India closer to the US that the Cuba connection came under serious strain. Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, Castro’s foreign minister for some 20 years, spent 10 days in New Delhi in April 1992 hoping for at least 100,000 metric tons of rice in lieu of sugar and credit. Such bargains had been struck before on the anvil of non-aligned solidarity, always drawing angry strictures from the US which accused India of helping its enemies and flirting with dictators which was rich considering some of Washington’s protégés. India was evasive, fearing American reprisals, while Indrajit Gupta asked if the American navy would invade or Carla Hills, the US trade representative, impose fresh sanctions. George Fernandes tried to persuade trade unionists each to donate a kilogramme of rice and asked the government to provide free transport regardless of American wrath.
As the furore continued, Mr Narasimha Rao quietly gave instructions to sell Cuba10,000 metric tons of non-Basmati rice and the same quantity of wheat for Rs 10 crores. It turned out to be a gift, as he knew it would. The money was written off in January 1999, two and a half years after Mr Narasimha Rao stepped down. It was a reminder to the US that because of its national image, sense of self-respect and vigorous domestic sentiment, India would never board the American bandwagon. Nor would India ever betray an old friend.
A grateful Castro called the gift the “Bread of India”, because it was sufficient for one loaf of bread for each one of the then eleven million Cubans. India also provided $2 million dollars during a catastrophic earthquake. Castro was always appreciative. “The maturity of India, its unconditional adherence to the principles which lay at the foundation of the non-aligned movement give us the assurances that under the wise leadership of Indira Gandhi, the non-aligned countries will continue advancing in their inalienable role as a bastion for peace, national independence and development…”
A friendly nation’s appreciation matters. That was reason enough for India to be represented at the highest level at Castro’s funeral. What matters no less is the balance Castro tried to strike between what he called “the vulgar materialism of the West” and the “humanist alternative to extant capitalism”. The Karnataka wedding that reportedly cost Rs 500 crores, with a single saree priced at Rs 17 crore and jewellery worth Rs 90 crore, with horses, elephants, camels and chariots adding to the pomp, showed that vulgar materialism is not confined to the West. It’s just what India cannot afford.
