76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST struggle against the ruling Congress and its government which are essentially pursuing the same class policies as the Syndicate Congress and other parties of the right opposition. It was these differences within the left opposition that were cleverly used by the ruling Congress to bring down the two United Front governments of Kerala and West Bengal.6 These different lines led to defection of the Right Communist Party to the Congress led by Indira Gandhi, and of the S S P and the Syndicate which formed what was called the 'grand alliance5. The unity of the left opposition parties was broken by the Congress split and Nam-boodiripad wishes . . . that if only the unity of the left opposition parties was not broken as it was broken after the Congress split—if the Right Communist Party and the PSP had not joined the Congress bandwagon and the SSP had not nursed illusions about the 'grand alliance' parties—the left democratic parties as a whole would have been represented in the fifth Lok Sabha in far larger numbers than they were.7 J^few Manoeuvres and Resistance Subsequent events once again proved that the policies of the Congress Party whether in the name of Avadi Socialism or Garibi Hatao were pursued against the masses and in favour of the bourgeois-landlord classes. These policies hence led to rapid disillusionment among the masses and to serious economic crisis in the Jubilee Year. The disenchantment, which was sought to be arrested in the process of supporting the Bangia Desh struggle, was revived after the victory of the people in that country. The support to Bangia Desh itself arose out of big changes in the international arena. The Nixon-Kissinger initiative for normalizing the relations between China and the United States, as well as between USSR and the United States, had just come into the open. The United States, the USSR and China were thus on the point of coming out as the biggest three in world politics, each of them interested in a detente, while each of them was also manoeuvring with one against the other. India's support was of great significance for the USSR in this triangular relationship, while Soviet support was equally important for India. This, therefore, was the beginning of a new phase of India's external relations—a phase of continuous manoeuvre between India and the United States, India and the USSR and India and China. The ruling classes therefore came to acquire a position in which they could be relatively independent in dealing with all the three major powers in world politics. This capacity for manoeuvre did, of course, ultimately depend on the economic power that they acquired,since a weak India would not be able to use the new advantageous position that had arisen because of the new world situation. But the very fact that they could manoeuvre prevented them from being completely dependent on one