It is as easy to praise Mr. Sharad Pawar and his supporters as to condemn them. But neither would be in order, the first because they have defied the party leadership and failed to provide for their actions an explanation which is consistent with established norms of political behavior, and the second because they have acted in conformity with their conscience and assessment of the political situation. On the face of it, this view would appear to be self-contradictory. It is. But it cannot be helped. For, the current developments in Maharashtra raise two separate issues, neither of which can be ignored. However offensive the behavior of the Congress (I) in the coalition government in the beginning, it had of late done nothing to which either the Congress as a whole or any section of it could have taken exception. At least no one in the former party had. And however opposed Mr. Pawar and his associates might have been to the “unity” talks with the Congress (I), Mr. Vasantrao Patil had not defied the party leadership. He had, in fact, withdrawn from the talks well before the deadline fixed by the Congress Working Committee. Surely judged in this context, the action of Mr. Pawar at and his supporters cannot be justified. Irrespective of whether one agrees or disagrees with them, one cannot deny them the right to hold that Mrs. Gandhi has not given up her authoritarian ways, that her re-emergence as a powerful political force constitutes a threat to democracy, that the Congress cannot by itself contain her, that the Janata is its natural ally in the struggle against the forces of authoritarianism, that the Congress (I) was the principal beneficiary of the coalition in Maharashtra and that it was necessary to disrupt it.
This division between the advocates of “unity” with the Congress (I) and alliance with the Janata has not been peculiar to the Congress in Maharashtra. It has in fact been an expression of the schizophrenia that has afflicted the party throughout the country and the national leadership itself. But it has been most acute in the state for the good and obvious reason that here alone the Congress has been in a position to stay on in office in partnership with former colleagues who now constitute the Congress (I). The party could clearly not have gone in for a coalition with the Congress (I) if, to begin with, the revulsion against Mrs. Gandhi, her ways and the excesses of the emergency was as strong as in Mr. Pawar’s case and in that of Mr. Y.B. Chavan, so far his political mentor and patron. On the contrary, it is widely believed that till quite recently the Chavan-Pawar faction was in a hopeless minority in the state Congress legislature party. How Mr. Pawar has been able to turn the tables on the pro-unity group headed by Mr. Vasantrao Patil is far from clear, though it is doubtful that he could have succeeded without a fairly explicit assurance from the Janata that it would let him head the new government. This would suggest that he had maintained clandestine contacts with the Janata leadership without letting his party’s leaders know. That apart, it is difficult to believe either that legislators who were on Mr. Patil’s side till the other day have suddenly woken to the alleged threat to democratic institutions or that Mr. Pawar would have moved out of the coalition and the Congress legislature party in obedience to his conscience if he had failed to win over a majority of MLAs to his side. In that sense he has been as much engaged in the power game as anyone else, including Mrs. Gandhi who, it need hardly be emphasized, is more often than not guided by considerations of expediency.
A spokesman of the Congress Working Committee has been quoted as having said that Mr. Y.B. Chavan was “very sad” over Mr. Pawar’s action. There is no good reason to dispute the accuracy of his observation. Despite the closeness of the ties between them, it is not impossible that Mr. Chavan had not blessed Mr. Pawar’s decision to quit the Vasantdada ministry. In any case, he cannot but be greatly embarrassed by his erstwhile protégé’s action in defying the Working Committee’s directive and forming a coalition ministry with the Janata and its allies. This places him in a difficult position at both the national and the state level, the first because he will not be able to resist the advocates of “unity” with the Congress (I) with the same strength as before and second because he would not know whom to support in Maharashtra. He cannot support Mr. Pawar and his associates because they have left the party and he cannot help Mr. Patil and his colleagues because his relations with them have been strained in recent months on the question of ties with the Congress (I). This is, however, not just Mr. Chavan’s dilemma. Mr. Pawar has complicated matters for all those in the Congress who have been trying to steer the party along a middle course – between the Scylla of Mrs. Gandhi’s party and the Charybdis of the Janata.
This may not appear to be much of a loss to non-sentimental and hard-headed men who believe that at the all-India level the choice is between the Janata and the Congress (I) and that it is pointless to pretend otherwise. Indeed, a fairly strong case can be made for this assessment in view of the results of the vidhan sabha poll in Karnataka, Andhra and Maharashtra last February, the by-elections in Haryana, UP, Rajasthan and the Union Territory of Delhi and the panchayat elections in West Bengal and Bihar. The Congress has fared badly in all these tests of popular support so much so that even its ardent admirers have been wondering whether the party has a future. But the Congress (O) leaders had kept their party alive in equally discouraging circumstances and no one can deny that they played a crucial role at a critical stage in India’s history. But the very act of behaving with great dignity during his solitary confinement and refusing to countenance any kind of talks with Mrs. Gandhi which several other present Janata leaders favoured, Mr. Morarji Desai became an important symbol of resistance to the emergency, the size of his party notwithstanding. Moreover, the political situation in the country remains highly fluid. The constituents of the Janata have not found it possible to move towards genuine integration and Mrs. Gandhi has, on the one hand, not even tried to assuage the hostility to her of a very substantial section of the political class and, on the other, she has collected around her men who do not command much following or respect on their own. In other words, there has been a case for the Congress sticking it out.
All this may be of no concern to Mr. Pawar and his associates if their horizons are limited to Maharashtra. But even in that limited sphere, their move may turn out to be counter-productive as far as their objective of containing and defeating the Congress (I) is concerned. It can split the hitherto dominant Maratha community more seriously than it has been so far, because it is quite possible that Mr. Patil will be able to retain a measure of support in it with or without Mrs. Gandhi’s help. It can aggravate tensions in the Janata patty because the Jana Sangh cannot be too pleased over the possibility that the new power balance may make the Socialists in the party more assertive. Above all, it can strengthen rather than weaken the Congress (I) since a lot of people may see it as the sole worthwhile opposition party in the state. All that is in the future. Meanwhile, the era beginning with the formation of Maharashtra state in 1956 has drawn to a close with the exit of the Congress from office.