It is obvious that, in fundamental sense, the vidhan elections next week do not represent an extension of the Lok Sabha poll last November. Not only is the atmosphere far more relaxed, the nature of the contest is different. It is as much a fight for ascendancy between the Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as between them and the Congress.
The central leaders of the BJP and Janata Dal have not so much failed to force the state units to agree on common candidates in scores of constituencies in the key states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat as they have not tried seriously enough. And the absence of any kind of arrangement at all between them in Maharashtra, the country’s industrial-commercial centre, speaks for itself. The talk of ‘friendly contests’ cannot cover up the reality of competition between them.
The element of competition between the BJP and the JD was not absent at the time of the Lok Sabha poll. It was reflected in the hard bargaining on seat adjustments. But the competitive element was subordinate to the common desire to defeat the Congress. So, finally, by and large the spirit of give and take prevailed. The story has been largely different this time.
Two reasons for the intensification of competition for power between the alliance partners are obvious. First, Congress is not seen to constitute as serious a threat to both as last November and state Congress leaders cannot be cast in the Ravana role Rajiv Gandhi could be, and was, on the strength of the Bofors payoff scandal. Second, it was easier for the central leaderships of the two parties to make deal among themselves than it would have been for them to impose their views on the state units, even if they had tried.
This would have been particularly true of the Janata Dal which has no organizational structure and leadership hierarchy worth the name. Indeed, to speak of a central JD leadership itself is to stretch the point. VP Singh does not enjoy the kind of power in the Janata Dal that LK Advani does in the BJP, or Rajiv Gandhi in the Congress despite the party’s electoral debacles under his leadership. He has to keep looking over his shoulder to see what Devi Lal and Chandra Shekhar may be planning.
The fragility of the JD leadership and recalcitrance of state leaders such as Chimanbhai Patel in Gujarat apart, there is, however, even otherwise not much cause for surprise over this development. Last year itself, the area of agreement between the Janata Dal and the BJP was essentially limited to the removal of Rajiv Gandhi from the office of prime minister. It has not been widened since. On the contrary, it has shrunk.
To put it rather mildly, the BJP leadership is visibly unhappy over the government’s handling of Punjab and it cannot possibly be indifferent to the Prime Minister’s continuing preference for the left front. It can afford to ignore the second problem for the time being; but Punjab is a different matter. The law and order situation in the state has clearly deteriorated since the National Front government came into office in New Delhi last December, and the local administration is demoralized partly because Governor Nirmal Mukherjee and his mentors in New Delhi are behaving as if fighting terrorism is like arguing a case in a law court or participating in a debate in Parliament. The BJP leadership has shown remarkable restraint so far. But it cannot continue to do so for long. After the vidhan sabha poll, it will have no excuse left either.
The BJP leadership has put off its demand for abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution which confers a special status on Jammu and Kashmir, and it has used its good offices to persuade the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to postpone its plan to start construction of the proposed temple to Rama in Ayodhya on February 14. As a genuinely nationalist party despite the ‘communal’ label that is stuck to it by its all too many detractors among the intelligentsia, it did not have much of a choice in either matter in view of the explosion of terrorist activities in Kashmir. It would have exposed itself (and justly) to ridicule in the eyes of its serious minded supporters if it had behaved otherwise in the face of the grave threat to India’s integrity in Kashmir, the gravest since the first cease-fire with Pakistan in 1948.
The BJP has, however, paid a price for its twin decisions. There can be no question that the retreat from its previous platform on the two issues has dampened the enthusiasm of a large number of its workers and sympathisers. This might not have, or at least need not have, caused undue concern among the BJP leaders if in gratitude VP Singh had drawn closer to them. But he has not. This point becomes particularly noticeable because, as it happens, his CPI-M and CPI partners have felt free to criticize his government’s crucial decision to appoint Jagmohan as Governor of Jammu and Kashmir and the Governor’s decision to dissolve the state assembly.
The CPI-M and the CPI – the Congress is not under discussion right now – have not enhanced their standing with the Indian people by their irresponsible pronouncements on Kashmir. There was a sigh of relief in the country when on the appointment of Jagmohan as Governor, Farooq Abdullah decided to resign as chief minister; and in view of his track record and proven incapacity, indeed unwillingness, to stand up to the secessionists, it is inconceivable that any Indian in his right mind would wish him to be restored to office so long as the terrorist menace has not been contained. But that only further underlines the point that the BJP has good reasons to be unhappy with VP Singh for his continued closeness to the Left.
I am not trying to insinuate that the JD-BJP alliance will begin to unravel after the vidhan sabha poll. But I am certainly inclined to take the view that the existing strains in it can begin to be more visible. For, in addition to the existing difference in the approach to Punjab, another factor will come to operate. Whichever party fares better will be inclined to press its advantage.
A great deal will, of course, depend on how well or poorly the Congress performs in the elections and what happens in it in the months to follow. The two are inter-connected. A relatively good result can bolster Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership and a poor one weaken it further. Even so, the central issue right now is not so much the future of the Congress as of Rajiv Gandhi. The party has survived shocks in the past and it can be depended upon to survive another next week.
This assessment is based on my appreciation as much of its personality as of its history and its all-India and all-section appeal. As I see it, the Congress is like the Hindu society – apparently amorphous and ill-organised but extraordinarily resilient; not for nothing has it been compared with the Kumbh mela and the banyan tree. The looseness of its organizational structure, contrary to the conventional wisdom, is its strength and not its weakness, though it creates problems when a charismatic figure such as Nehru or a master politician such as Indira Gandhi is not available to head it. Above all, it still commands overwhelming support among the Brahmins, who bridge the various divides in Indian society and polity and thereby sustain pan-Indian political order.
I have invariably found myself in sympathy with those who have left the Congress or been driven out of it in the past; and I find myself in sympathy with those who have left it recently. After all, there is a limit to human patience; surely even Congressmen can be driven to despair not only by intrigues and neglect but also by the leader. This applies as much to Indira Gandhi as to Rajiv Gandhi. Indira Gandhi just drove self-respecting Congressmen crazy and it was not always possible to discover a larger purpose behind her actions. The same has been the story in Rajiv Gandhi’s case; only the problem has been exacerbated by his immaturity and brashness and his tendency to lean primarily on aides who are equally immature and brash. Yet a replacement of the Congress by anything other than the Congress has not been, and does not yet appear to be, a feasible proposition.
Rajiv Gandhi’s survival as its leader is, however, a different proposition. It is indisputable that he has mismanaged the party’s affairs and led it to one electoral defeat after another, culminating in the rout in the poll to the Lok Sabha last November. That record should not be ignored in a discussion of his vulnerability on account of the Bofors payoff scandal which may be followed by others – HDW submarine, Westland helicopters and now Airbus 320. But to say that Rajiv Gandhi has made himself vulnerable is not to pronounce that he is personally guilty of corruption.
That final result will determine Rajiv Gandhi’s fate and perhaps VP Singh’s as well. If Rajiv Gandhi is found guilty, he cannot survive as leader of the Congress. If he is found innocent, he shall become invulnerable, regardless of his failures as leader of the party in the past five years. In that event, VP Singh’s position will be in jeopardy, though it would be premature to speculate that he may be forced, or feel compelled, to resign as Prime Minister. He has made investigations into the Bofors matter a central plank of his government’s agenda and thus made his own future dependent on its outcome.
The general assumption is that the Congress Parliamentary Party will split if Rajiv Gandhi is clearly and badly compromised and that a substantial number of Congress MPs will move over to the Janata to enable it to end its links with the BJP. I am not so sure. I am also not sure that in the event of Rajiv Gandhi being embarrassed, the CPP will make overtures to VP Singh and elect him its new leader.
In any event, if the Congress splits or accepts VP Singh as its leader, the Janata Dal too is almost sure to split. The so-called ‘other backward castes’, the dominant agricultural groups in north India, constitute its main support base and they have, with the increase in their wealth and education become too ambitious and aggressive to wish to accommodate themselves, or to be accommodated, in the Congress.
But while a commentator can sit back and wait for the events to unfold themselves, surely the BJP leadership cannot take a detached view of these speculations. It must be deeply concerned. After all, it has not been fighting the Congress for four long decades only to produce a change in its leadership and that too, in the present context, from a rather inept Rajiv Gandhi to the master tactician VP Singh. He has without doubt emerged as the most skilful and popular political figure in the country. Only he lacks anything like an organisation. Backed by one, he can become unbeatable.
By this reckoning which cannot be dismissed, the BJP cannot have much stake either in Rajiv Gandhi’s fall or in a Congress split unless it is in a position to fill the resulting vacuum. Clearly it is not in such a position.
This must reinforce the conclusion that the vidhan sabha poll next week is as much a contest between the Janata Dal, however loosely organised, and the BJP, as between them and the Congress. With the possible exception of the elections to some vidhan sabhas in 1978, no assembly poll has been so significant since Independence as the present one. The one in 1978 witnessed the victory of the Indira Congress over the rival faction which included in it most of the then party heavyweights. That decided that the Indira Congress was the real Congress and thereby paved the way for her return to office in New Delhi less than two years later. The stakes are not so obvious now; they seldom are at the time of the event.
Meanwhile two significant developments have taken place which deserve to be noted. Rajiv Gandhi has spoken of the migration of the Hindus from Punjab as a result of the ‘soft’ attitude of the VP Singh government towards the terrorists and the Congress party has presented a memorandum to President Venkataraman on the deterioration in the law and order situation in the state. This does not mean that the party may move away from its supposedly ‘secular’ platform and espouse the cause of the Hindus. But a slight modification in its stance can create problems for the BJP. The Congress is not an anti-Hindu party in the sense the two communist parties can be said to be. Indira Gandhi was definitely a believer in the greatness of Hindu civilisation and the relevance of Hindu practices such as various forms of Yagnas. If Rajiv Gandhi is not quite disposed that way, he is not ‘secular’ in Nehru’s sense either.
The Pioneer, 25 February 1990