If it is at all permissible to place a broad interpretation on the outcome of the present poll, it can only be that the people of India have voted against government as such. West Bengal is the only exception.
This exception, of course, admits of the inference that in West Bengal alone we have a government which is reasonably honest. Indeed, such an inference has been drawn. But implicit in it is the proposition that the same CPI(M) is perceived to be corrupt in Kerala where too it is the dominant partner in a leftist coalition government. Even the supporters of Jyoti Basu would baulk at this implication.
The proposition that the people of India have voted against the government as such does not suffer from such an infirmity. The election results in one state after another speak loud and clear in its support. Tamil Nadu provides the most eloquent illustration. One reason why the DMK was swept into power in that state only last January was said to be that the AIDMK was widely perceived to have been corrupt; now the same AIDMK has re-emerged as the dominant political force in the state. There can be little doubt that the seats the Congress(I) has won are Jayalalitha’s gift to it.
The popular alienation from government, regardless of a particular government’s party affiliation, reflects a deep rooted political reality. Indian politics has become notoriously corrupt, inefficient and arbitrary but it is inescapable at the same time. The people can replace one set of politicians with another but they cannot, with reason, entertain the hope that things will improve significantly. Rajiv Gandhi has met the fate he has precisely because he was seen to embody such a possibility and he was seen in that light precisely because he was regarded as a non-political figure who happened to be catapulted into the office of Prime Minister.
I, for one, can see no escape from all this unless measures are taken to reduce drastically the role of government in the national life. But one has only to advance this proposition to recognise its weakness. The government has assumed so much power in the name of economic growth and so many responsibilities in the name of social justice since Independence and the people, especially the so-called opinion makers, have got so used to dependence on official agencies that it is difficult to visualise popular pressure building up in favour of a small government. Thus, as far as I can see into the future, the Indian political scene will continue to be turbulent.
Also India cannot escape another rule of politics in the Third World. The beneficiaries must turn on the benefactor, or benefactors. Rajiv Gandhi provides an interesting illustration. The Indian middle-class has never had it so good as in the last five years and yet it turned on him with unbelievable ferocity as soon as the charge of corruption was directed at him. And as the Harijans have acquired an intelligentsia of their own with a middle class status, thanks to the Congress, they have begun to seek an independent political identity, independent, that is, of the Congress.
Kanshi Ram’s Bahujan Samaj deserves careful attention precisely because it fulfills this strongly felt and growing need. The Muslim issue is more complicated but not totally different from the Harijan question. Both these points should be kept in view in any discussion on the future of the Congress(I) because it has enjoyed the support of these groups which may no longer be assured.
Putting these long-term problems aside, I find it extraordinary that hardly any commentator has taken note of the obvious fact that Indian politics has lacked coherence and unity since 1967 when the decline of the Congress party became palpable. Even in 1967 two southern states, Andhra and Karnataka, voted differently – strongly in favour of the Congress – from north India. The party lost office in all northern states from Himachal Pradesh to West Bengal. If this divergence was not too glaring then, it became so in 1977 when the South rushed, as it were, to the rescue of Indira Gandhi (Indramma) and she lost her seat in her home state of Uttar Pradesh. And the South has now stood by Rajiv Gandhi even more solidly.
Going by our experience for more than two decades, it appears highly unlikely that the Congress(I) would ever again return to its pre-1967 pre-eminence and thus be in a position to end the North-South political divide. We have, therefore, to look for a different kind of solution if we are to restore to the Union government the right to speak and act in the name of the whole country. The Janata Dal government will clearly lack such authority as did the Janata government in 1977-79.
I have a solution to offer even if it is not likely to command support at this stage. There was no way out in 1977 because the dominant party of the North, the Janata, and the dominant party of the South, Indira Gandhi’s Congress, were at war with each other and there was no party in between. Now the situation is somewhat different in that the North has not thrown up a party which can claim to speak for it exclusively. In plain terms, the BJP can claim to speak for the North as much as the Janata Dal, and an alliance between it and the Congress(I) need not be inconceivable, at least in theory and in due course of time. And theory is all that I am discussing.
The BJP doubtless has secured far fewer seats than the Janata Dal but that is so largely because its leadership was far more accommodating than its JD counterpart on the question of seat allotment. Moreover, the fact remains that the Dal has been as much a beneficiary of the anti-Congress sentiment the Ramjanmabhoomi issue stirred up among the Hindus as the BJP and that the Dal was not entitled to this advantage and would not have got it if it was not associated with the BJP.
The BJP has contested the poll on an anti-Congress (anti-Rajiv to be more precise) platform. Then there is the long history of mutual hostility between the two parties for four decades. Even so I would like to make the point that at least the supposed ideological divide between the Congress and the BJP is not so big as their leaders, especially Congress leaders, might wish us to believe. For, it cannot be seriously disputed that the RSS lent Indira Gandhi a helping hand in the elections in Jammu and Kashmir and the Union Territory of Delhi in 1983 when the loss of her strongholds in Andhra and Karnataka had seriously eroded her authority, that without victory in Jammu and Delhi Indira Gandhi would have found the going even rougher than it was already, that this support was extended by the RSS leadership at the cost of the BJP and solely for patriotic reasons, convinced as it was that it was imperative to reduce the pressure on her if she was to be able to cope, for example, with the Pakistan-backed Sikh terrorism in Punjab.
Even early this year when Rajiv Gandhi was already, as it were, under siege, on the Bofors payoff issue, the RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, made a gesture of goodwill towards him in the form of a public statement to the effect that an alternative to the Congress was still not on the horizon. This gesture was rejected for a variety of reasons which it is not possible to discuss at proper length in this article. But it is obvious that some of the Congress spokesmen, especially the self-styled leftist ‘progressives’, live in a make-believe world of their own, unable and unwilling to recognise the reality around them, and that Rajiv Gandhi, whether prompted by them or on his own, still believed that the Muslim vote was secure for him. The more pertinent point, however, is that the patron saint of the BJP did not regard the ideological barriers vis-à-vis Rajiv Gandhi insuperable and that his gesture was not unrelated to the elections that were due by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the outcome of the 1989 election bears such striking resemblance with that of the poll in 1977 that it has understandably provoked the speculation that, as in the late seventies, it may be only a matter of time before the Congress is on the come-back trail. The speculation is still muted; for, much of the intelligentsia, at least in north India, is as averse to Rajiv Gandhi as it was to Indira Gandhi in 1977. But the intelligentsia proved irrelevant in the political arithmetic then and it is bound to prove irrelevant in coming months.
Rajiv Gandhi is, of course, not destined to repeat the performance of his mother. But that he may well do so in spite of himself, that is, in spite of his proven ineptitude for political management and his apparently incurable fondness for men and women of little substance, reputation and, indeed, dependability. The situation in 1989 too is different from what it was in 1977 and that should be kept in mind in assessing Rajiv Gandhi’s prospects.
Even so it was evident within weeks of the formation of the Janata government in 1977 that it was bound to disintegrate under the weight of its internal contradictions, it is even more evident now that the Janata Dal does not have much of a chance to survive in office for long. It is not possible to fix its life span. But that is not necessary either.
The Janata Dal is assured of the support of the Left, possibly on a stable basis, though one cannot possibly be too sure, especially in so fluid a situation. But that by itself is a strong enough guarantee that the Dal cannot possibly retain the backing of the BJP for long. Indeed, L.K. Advani’s letter to N.T. Rama Rao already makes it obvious that the BJP is uneasy over its decision, unavoidable in the given situation, to support a Janata Dal government even from outside. This feeling of discomfort can only increase because it is certain that the CPI(M) and the CPI would, if anything, step up their campaign of calumny against the BJP. The Janata Dal leadership will not be in a position to restrain them even if it were so inclined. But as it happens, V.P. Singh and his supporters will not be so inclined.
Assuming that the ‘alliance’ proceeds smoothly till January, it is likely to face a major crisis then as then Vishwa Hindu Parishad resumes digging in connection with the construction of the proposed Rama temple in Ayodhya. It is possible, but highly improbable, that the Muslims would agree to the shifting of the Babri mosque to another site. It is equally improbable that the VHP would agree to postpone digging and await the verdict of the Allahabad High Court.
If the two assumptions are reasonable, the prospect is one of head-on collision between the Janata Dal government in New Delhi and Lucknow and the BJP. There is not much room for manoeuvre on either side. If it would be a matter of life and death for the BJP, so would it be for the Janata Dal. Neither will be in a position to compromise, the former because it owes its present electoral success to the sentiment aroused by the VHP’s shila pujan programme all over the country and the latter if only because it will be obliged by virtue of its office to stop the construction of the temple.
On top of it all, it is difficult to regard the Janata Dal itself as a viable political outfit. Its support comes mainly from upcoming peasant castes (generally called the ‘other backward castes’) in north India which are engaged as much in an intense struggle for status and power among themselves as they are engaged in a fight against the present order which they believed is dominated by the Brahmins and the Banias.
The first too is a two-way struggle. Each powerful caste in every village is divided into rival factions and each caste seeks the top position for itself. To illustrate the point, I may add that two prominent Jats in a village must head two factions and neither can reconcile himself to a Yadav in a superior position for long even if he is obliged to do so temporarily in order to deal with the rival Jat first.
Rival warrior groups have been known to come together in the past for a common purpose, as in the case of the Khalsa misls under Ranjit Singh against the Moghuls. What has taken place now under the auspices of the Janata Dal in UP and Bihar is a political variant of it in a democracy where the ballot box can serve in place of the lathi and the bullet, though the political warriors are not wholly averse to the use of the lathi and the bullet.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh could rule because the help of the Punjabi Khatris was available to him. The Janata Dal leadership has nothing comparable to lean on. I am in no position to say whether an awareness of the inherent weaknesses of the Janata Dal accounts for the desire of some Janata Dal leaders, including possibly V.P. Singh, for a major split in the Congress so that they could align themselves with the anti-Rajiv faction. But that is a forlorn hope. The re-election of Rajiv Gandhi as leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, despite the disastrous defeat, puts paid to that hope.
All in all, my assessment would be that in addition to voting against government as such the Indian people have voted for another election in none too distant a future.
Sunday Mail, 3 December 1989