Congress flip-flop on Chinese anti-US seminar

An invite riddled with errors made the rounds of social media last week, announcing a seminar on Taiwan and a ‘Chinese photographic exhibition’ at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad in Bengaluru, on the morning of August 28. Organised by the India-China Friendship Association (ICFA), Karnataka, it listed Leader of the Opposition and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah as a chief guest alongside the Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong and Consul-General of the People’s Republic of China in Mumbai Kong Xianhua. The agenda of the seminar: to discuss the “interferance of U.S. imperilist in the internal affairs of the People’s Republic of China” (sic). When BJP leaders including party National Secretary CT Ravi raised doubts about Congressmen siding with China– “Is this MoU signed by Rahul Gandhi with Chinese Communist Party the reason behind this support to China?” read a tweet by Ravi–Siddaramaiah took to Twitter to express surprise at seeing his name on the invite. “I declined the invitation of India-China Friendship Association to participate in their event which will be held tomorrow… I declined to participate as my party’s & my position are against the agenda of the program,” his tweet said. L Hanumanthaiah, a Congressman and Rajya Sabha MP, who is listed as a speaker at the event, also tweeted the same message almost verbatim. The two other Congress leaders listed as participants at the event are former minister HC Mahadevappa and PGR Sindhia, a senior Janata Dal (Secular) leader who recently joined the Congress.

Sources close to the matter say the Congress High Command, which has been drawing fire for its alleged pro-China stance, asked the leaders to desist from attending the seminar after it became a political issue. The event was to be presided over by K Srinivas Gowda, MLA from Bidar who is also the president of the ICFA, Karnataka. Earlier this year, the JD(S) suspended Gowda on charges of violating the party whip during the Rajya Sabha elections. At the time, Gowda had made a statement claiming that he had voted for the Congress “because I love it”. Speaking to OPEN, Gowda said Siddaramaiah was not involved with the ICFA event and that his name had been wrongly included in the invite. However, he insisted that the event would take place as planned, and that the other Congress leaders would attend. “I am the state president of ICFA. There is no question of cancelling it. We could not conduct it properly due to Covid for the past few years,” he said.

V Bhaskaran, a former RBI employee and the octogenarian general secretary of ICFA, Karnataka, clarified to OPEN that the seminar had to be cancelled. He added that “the exhibition of over 250 Chinese photographs was inaugurated and will remain on display at the venue till September 3rd”. The exhibition is a yearly event. Police sources said that the city commissioner’s office had personally overseen security arrangements ahead of the event that was to be attended by the Chinese ambassador.

While hostilities along the border have made it difficult for ICFA veterans to bat for Indo-Chinese friendship, a long-time member said this was the first time an event had to be cancelled since the organisation was re-launched post-Emergency. “There was talk of taking action against Chitrakala Parishad for agreeing to host the event. Many of us got hate mail. We decided against hosting the seminar in such an environment,” he says.

The India China Friendship Association was formed in Bangalore on November 1, 1949, under the leadership of Mulka Govinda Reddy–he went on to become a Rajya Sabha MP–as the first president of ICFA Karnataka. Pandit Sunderlal Sharma was the first national president. Reddy led the first delegation from the erstwhile Mysore state to China in 1950 and it consisted of five members. According to ICFA, it is a “national people’s organisation engaged in people-to-people diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China”. “The aims of the Association are to enhance people’s friendship, further international cooperation, safeguard world peace and promote common development. On behalf of the Chinese people, it makes friends and deepens friendship in the international community and various countries around the world, lays and expands the social basis of friendly relations between China and other countries, and works for the cause of human progress and solidarity. It implements China’s independent foreign policy of peace, observing the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, while carrying out all-directional, multi-level and broad-area people-to-people friendship work to serve the great cause of China’s peaceful development and reunification and contribute to the building of a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity,” says a Facebook page managed by the Delhi chapter of ICFA. According to the page, ICFA has established friendly cooperation with nearly 500 nongovernment organisations and institutions in 157 countries.

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