The mini general election has returned a verdict in favour of the status quo in New Delhi, as I hope to be able to establish. Nothing could have been better in the given situation when the country is facing the gravest threat to its integrity since independence and needs a Prime Minister who is not unduly harassed by domestic political concerns.
VP Singh would have been entitled to ask for a free hand to cope with the explosion of violence in Kashmir, leading among other troubles to a mass exodus of the Hindus from that land of the ‘great experiment’ in ‘Kashmiriat’ of which they were supposed to be an inalienable component, even if the electoral verdict had been different. As it has turned out to be, he is assured of the nation’s unstinted, though not uncritical, support.
VP Singh himself can rise enormously, in my opinion, in the public esteem and acquire the status of a statesman if he was to declare that the ‘investigations’ into old controversial deals such as Bofors and HDW would remain suspended so long as the Kashmir crisis persists in its present acute form. I am aware that his powerful partisans, especially in the press, will not easily permit him to adopt such a course of action, even if he was so inclined. But he himself should at least examine calmly and dispassionately whether the country can right now afford the luxury of the self-mutilating exercise which is what the investigations must amount to.
The poll last November was in substance, though inevitably not in form, a referendum on Rajiv Gandhi versus VP Singh and the Indian people gave a clean verdict in favour of VP Singh. On the face of it, the issue was Bofors. In reality, the issue was Rajiv Gandhi’s record as Prime Minister. In plain terms, VP Singh is under an unshakeable obligation not only to see to it that his integrity remains beyond dispute while he holds the office of Prime Minister, but also to prove that he is a more effective Prime Minister than the man he has replaced.
Kashmir is the test case for VP Singh and after that Punjab. Posterity will judge him on the basis of his performance in the two states and not by his success or failure to establish the charges of corruption against Rajiv Gandhi.
A qualitative change has taken place in the nature of the challenge the nation faces in Kashmir. Patriotism demands that every other consideration is subordinated to the obligation to meet this challenge. If this entitles VP Singh as the country’s chief executive to the people’s support, it also obliges him to place himself above partisanship and unseemly controversy.
This is a call for national consensus and not a national government. To take up the second issue first, an attempt to form a national government will be divisive. Not to speak of bringing in the Congress, VP Singh cannot persuade even the BJP and the CPM-CPI combine to join his government. And were they to set aside their mutual antipathy and agree as a result of some miracle, he will almost certainly not be in a position to accommodate them in a manner they are entitled to, by virtue of their numerical strength in the Lok Sabha. The BJP and CPM-CPI leaders have, therefore, been well advised not to entertain such a proposal for the time being. George Fernandes and others of his persuasion should realise that attempts at quick fixes are potentially dangerous and should be avoided.
A national consensus is not the product of a mechanical exercise. It is the product of an individual leader’s or a group’s capacity to throw up an approach which commends itself in some measure to every significant section of a society. That is how the consensus under Nehru was evolved; that is how a new consensus can be evolved. Nehru could not have succeeded if he had taken it upon himself to humiliate opposition leaders such as Jayaprakash Narayan and even Ram Manohar Lohia. VP Singh cannot succeed if he continues to treat Rajiv Gandhi as a personal and permanent enemy.
As for the vidhan sabha poll, it is not as easy to categorise the results on party basis as commentators assume, or have of necessity to assume, in order to be able to make any general statement at all. For instance, while a vague and ill-defined entity called the Janata Dal contested the elections, it did not to do so as VP Singh’s formation. He was at best a reluctant campaigner for it. In fact, in Bihar he put his reluctance to campaign for the Dal as such on record when he deliberately skirted certain constituencies and said at some public meetings that the people should vote only for deserving candidates. In the process he acknowledged the validity of the charge that the Dal had chosen criminals as its candidates in several constituencies, especially in Bihar.
Rajiv Gandhi’s participation in the election campaign was not so reluctant, nor, for that matter, his involvement in the selection of the party’s nominees. But it was not his poll either, as was the case last November. The issues in the vidhan sabha poll were not wholly local; they could not be, because, with increasing integration of the country’s economy, the distinction between national and local issues has got blurred. But the principal actors in the case of both the Congress and the Janata Dal were the state politicians and the results reflect their popular appeal or lack of it. Thus Biju Patnaik has swept the polls in Orissa on the strength of his personal appeal and Sharad Pawar has beaten back the Shiv Sena-BJP onslaught in Maharashtra on the strength of his hold. The former owes little to VP Singh and the latter to Rajiv Gandhi.
The BJP is, of course, a different story. The party fought as a well- knit organisation should, with both the national and states leaders working together in a common endeavour. But the BJP is a different kind of party, though its discipline too broke down in a number of constituencies where the rebels refused to fall in line. There can be little doubt that the leadership will attend to this problem and not allow its principal asset to be frittered away as it tries successfully to extend its support base. Too tight discipline on the RSS pattern is, of course, not compatible with a wide popular support base. But a compromise is not only necessary but also possible.
Having made the above caveats about the Janata Dal and the Congress, however, I would repeat what I wrote last week. Which is that unlike last November, in the present elections the element of competition has been stronger than the element of cooperation between the two alliance partners.
In this competition, the BJP has clearly fared far better than the Janata Dal. The Dal’s sweeping victory in Orissa cannot be compared with the BJP’s similar success in Madhya Pradesh. For, while Madhya Pradesh is not only a vast state but also a part of the Hindi heartland, Orissa stands by itself and its capacity to influence the course of events in other states is limited. A majority for the Janata Dal in Bihar would, of course, have been a different proposition. It would have more than offset the BJP’s victory in Madhya Pradesh. It would have reinforced the Dal’s claim to represent the wave of the future in North India.
I do not wish to apportion blame for the unprecedented, even if not unexpected, violence and violations of the electoral process in Bihar, though I am inclined to take the view that the state Janata Dal leaders and their supporters have by far been the worst culprits. I wish to spotlight the twin facts that victory in Bihar was vital for the future of the Janata Dal and that its leaders assumed such a victory to be a foregone conclusion to the point where they were just not interested in negotiating seat adjustments with the BJP. The inference is unavoidable that the Dal’s poor showing in Bihar represents a major setback for it even independently of its ‘friendly’ competition with the BJP.
Meham, the constituency of Om Prakash Chautala, Haryana’s Chief Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal’s son, is like a little pimple on the Janata Dal’s face compared to the large scar of Bihar. But the pimple is so placed as to draw adverse attention to itself, however much you may wish to avert your gaze from it. It is an embarrassment the Dal could have done without, especially in the context of the violence and failure in Bihar.
But while the BJP has done better than the Dal, it has faced disappointment in Gujarat, possibly in Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Maharashtra is not relevant in a discussion of the relative strengths of the BJP and the Janata Dal; there the contest was between the Congress headed by Sharad Pawar and the Shiv Sena-BJP combine. But Gujarat and Rajasthan are different.
This incidentally brings me to the point I have made at the beginning. The outcome of the poll favours the status quoin New Delhi precisely because neither the BJP nor the Janata Dal can form government in Rajasthan and Gujarat without the support of the other. And cooperation in the two states, regardless of what happens in Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where the BJP commands a clear majority on its own, cannot but reinforce the desire to preserve the existing arrangement in New Delhi.
It will be naive to suggest that this arrangement can last forever. Strains are bound to develop in it in course of time. But it is not only not desirable, as argued earlier, that they should develop in the present context of the grim challenge in Kashmir and Punjab, it is not even likely that they would, given the cool-headed and unhurried approach of LK Advani, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other BJP leaders. It was, therefore, extremely naive for the Congress leadership to believe that BJP-Dal tie-up in Gujarat offered it an opportunity to break the alliance by offering to support a wholly Janata Dal government in Gandhi Nagar.
I do not know who is, or are, responsible for this faux pas – Rajiv Gandhi and his whiz kids or some other political ‘genius’ or ‘geniuses’ in the party. But the question of the authorship of the ‘grand design’ need not detain us. We are only concerned with the fact that the Congress continues to be led or influenced by such ‘geniuses’. Surely that cannot be said to augur well for its future.
It would, however, be wrong to draw rash conclusions about the party’s future on the basis of one’s assessment at present either of the quality of its leadership or its performance in the vidhan sabha poll. The party has not fared worse than it was generally expected. Indeed, its performance in Maharashtra and Bihar has exceeded the expectations of even its supporters.
When all that can be said against the Congress has been said, it deserves to be remembered that it still remains the only national political organisation we have in the country. It doubtless cannot revive its fortunes on the strength of old slogans and attempts to regain its Muslim and Harijan clientele. It needs a new strategy. The issue is not just Rajiv Gandhi; the issue is the need for a new approach as much to the question of strategy as to that of leadership.
Finally, my assessment that the Indian people have voted for the status quo in New Delhi would be invalid if, in my view, it was still open to VP Singh to try and split the Congress. I am convinced that such a course is not open to him, except at grave peril to himself and the country. An attempt to split the Congress, even if unsuccessful, will put an intolerable strain on the alliance between the BJP and the Janata Dal and thereby expose the country to risks which no prime minister worth the name would wish to take in the present circumstances.
The presence of widespread discontent in the Congress against Rajiv Gandhi’s style of leadership has been indisputable for some years. In view of the electoral debacles last November and now, it may well find public expression, as it did not and could not when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. But it is likely to be contained if VP Singh makes his of interest in a Congress split known. Even otherwise, the danger of a serious and meaningful split does not appear to be particularly great. The ground on the Dal side of the fence has also by now become rather crowded, especially in states like UP and Bihar. There is not much room for new entrants.
Sunday Mail, 4 March 1990