The BJP leadership deserves to be warmly commended for its October 17 decision to withdraw support from the VP Singh government in case the latter blocks LK Advani’s rathyatra to Ayodhya and the construction of the proposed Rama temple at the Janmabhoomi site in that holy city.
In a basic sense, the decision has been a foregone conclusion since Advani launched on the rathyatra at the historic Somnath temple on September 25 amidst more than ample indications that the self-styled Raja and the UP chief minister would use the full might of the Indian state to stop Rambhaktas (worshippers of Rama) from even getting to the Janmabhoomi site, not to speak of their allowing them to construct the temple. Battle-lines had thus been drawn weeks before October 17. Neither side could thereafter retreat without considerable loss of face and credibility.
Advani has taken the plunge with great reluctance; only a little earlier on September 18, he had allowed his name to be associated with a resolution of the communal harmony committee of the National Integration Council which suggested that the BJP’s support for the VHP’s plan to start construction of the temple on October 30 was far from irrevocable and, indeed, that it was still willing to join in ‘explorations’ to find an ‘amicable’ solution acceptable to Muslim leaders.
The resolution was duly publicized by the government to the great embarrassment of Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, incidentally chairman of the committee in question, obliging the BJP’s leadership to boycott the subsequent meeting of the National Integration Council in Madras on September 22. All that, however, is not central to the present discussion.
The relevant point is that once Advani had begun the rathyatra, he had, as it were, blown up the bridges behind him. He had nowhere to go except forward. And as he moved forward, he discovered, to his own and everyone else’s amazement, he had released a roaring Ganga of Hindu emotion as no one has since Gandhi.
By the same token, this spectacle of aroused Hindu emotion, even if temporary and centred on the single issue of the Janmabhoomi temple, could not but entrench the casteist formations led, above all, by VP Singh, with Mulayam Singh Yadav in the rashly assumed and crude role of a drum beater, in the determination to do all in their power, exploitation of Muslim fears and susceptibilities not excluded, to frustrate the successful culmination of this triumphant march in the shape of the Rama temple.
This assessment of the current scene is centred, inevitably, on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue. But for a correct perspective, it is necessary to go back to the Vidhan Sabha poll last March. Apparently staggered by the BJP’s impressive performance in the elections to the Lok Sabha last November, wholly unacceptable to him in view of his design to build a new winning coalition based mainly on the so-called other backward castes and Muslims, and his own vaulting ambition to emerge as the leader of India, VP Singh had already begun to try and cut it down to size. That was the obvious implication of his show of distaste for the BJP, as if it had imposed the alliance on him, and his refusal to share the platform with it in the election campaign.
To his credit, VP Singh has demonstrated a remarkable ability to fool most people in his political career of about two decades. Thus one has to be extremely wary of him. At any rate, I have never taken him at his word. I have not believed for a moment that he is genuinely for or against a programme, ideology, or person; the Raja, as I have written in this space earlier, is for VP Singh and VP Singh is for the Raja.
As such I am persuaded that even as early as last winter, he made the shrewd calculation that in the final round he would confront the BJP, and that it was necessary for him to start containing in right away. He then expected the Congress to split badly, either on its own on account of the electoral debacles, or as a result of a push by him in the shape of ‘evidence’ of Rajiv Gandhi’s direct involvement in the Bofors payoff scandal. I am, in plain terms, suggesting that ‘secularism’, ‘anti-communalism’, and concern for the well-being of Muslims has had little to do with his actions.
It is apparent from LK Advani’s recent statements that he was not insensitive to the fact of the Raja’s hostility towards the BJP; he has recalled VP Singh’s refusal to share the platform with it in several places in the election campaign last March. But clearly he and his colleagues regarded it as inadvisable to show recognition of this reality in public. They kept their cool even in the face of such provocations as VP Singh’s decision to recall Jagmohan as governor of Jammu and Kashmir without even the show of prior consultation with them, devious official moves to bypass the BJP’s demand for statehood for the Union Territory of Delhi, the government’s utter indifference to the plight of the Hindu and Sikh refugees from Kashmir, the absence of any serious attempt to persuade Muslim leaders to see reason on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, and indeed, ill-disguised incitement of them, especially by Mulayam Singh.
Perhaps the BJP leaders were victims of their own anti-Congressism which prevented them from realizing that the Janata Dal, with its casteist character, was a far more deadly enemy of their concept of Hindutva. Perhaps they were too keen to preserve the undoubtedly impressive gains of the last Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls to wish to risk a fresh election. Perhaps they calculated that time was on their side in view of the factional infighting in the Janata Dal and the near paralysis of the Congress leadership.
Whatever the motivations and calculations, there can be no question that from last March onwards, the BJP leaders sat waiting to be hit, and that as the Raja hit them again and again, they rose only to swear continuing loyalty to him on the plea, above all, of a popular anti-Congress mandate, whatever that might mean in the face of 40 per cent vote for the Congress against less than 18 per cent for the Janata Dal in the last Lok Sabha poll. It is unbelievable but incontestable that the BJP was not fully shaken even when the Raja unleashed the ultimate weapon for the emasculation of the Hindu socio-economical political fabric in the shape of decision on August 6-7 to implement the Mandal Commission ‘report’ (read fabrication).
This was, of course, an assault on the entire Hindu society. But the BJP as such was not exempt from it. It knew that VP Singh had placed it in an extremely perilous situation. Even so, it reacted in the mildest manner possible. Indeed, it could not formulate anything like a proper response even after hundreds of thousands of students had risen in revolt by the third week of August against the Raja’s dastardly move to mandalise India and individual boys and girls, in their teens, had begun to immolate themselves. Remember that Vajpayee presided over, and Advani attended, the famous (or infamous) communal committee harmony committee meeting on September 18, that is a full month after the student revolt.
In a sense, we have reasons to be grateful to VP Singh and his aides. If they had not publicized the committee’s resolution in violation of the accepted convention, Advani and Vajpayee would have in all probability attended the National Integration Council meeting in Madras four days later and been party to the adoption of the same anti-VHP and anti-Janmabhoomi motion. From the BJP’s own point of view, that would have been an unmitigated disaster. The party has fortunately escaped that disaster, thanks partly to the government’s unprincipled cleverness, but mainly to him (or them) who conceived the rathyatra plan and have implemented it. This is a stroke of genius as was the countrywide Shilapoojan programme and the Ekatmata campaign earlier.
At the time of writing on October 17, it is not fully possible to anticipate the course of the rath. Its opponents have used the Mandal fantasy to mobilize support against it in Bihar. This can lead to widespread violence, the shape and consequence of which cannot be foreseen. But if somehow the rathyatra survives the hostile environment deliberately promoted in Bihar, it is bound to be checked in Uttar Pradesh. Mulayam Singh cannot, and will not, allow Advani to reach Ayodhya as planned on October 29. Thus, as of now, it is difficult to think of circumstances which may avoid the withdrawal of support by the BJP to the VP Singh government.
While I cannot rule it out completely, I do not believe that the Raja will resign and pave the way for the election of another Janata Dal-National Front leader capable of preserving the JD-BJP alliance, such as it is. For one thing, I do not believe he possesses any kind of conscience which would make him introspect and recognise the havoc he has wrought; he is an insecure man emotionally; as a rule such men invent grievances and enemies; they do not reflect; one has only to read his own version of his childhood to appreciate the validity of my assessment of him. For another, he has surrounded himself with buccaneers who will not let him move out of his make-believe world and face the reality.
The other alternative open to him in the event of withdrawal of support by the BJP would be to recommend dissolution of the Lok Sabha since it can safely be assumed that the Congress will neither split nor rush to his aid. Again, while I am in no position to say that he is unlikely to recommend dissolution. I do not think he is yet ready for a fight.
Be that as it may, the point needs to be made straightaway that VP Singh heads a minority government, and that as such his recommendation is not binding on the President. If this view could by any stretch of the imagination be said to be open to question, it has been put beyond dispute by the latest BJP decision. In all but name, the Raja has ceased to command majority support in the Lok Sabha. Indeed, if he had any sense of honour, he would have sent in his resignation to President Venkataraman by now.
In any event, if and when he resigns, the President should invite Rajiv Gandhi to form the next government and the latter should accept it, not on the basis of promise of support by the Communists and/or a section of the Janata Dal, which is likely to materialize, but following an explicit statement by the BJP that it would not vote against him in Parliament. And it should be accompanied by a statement by Rajiv Gandhi himself that he is taking over in order that some kind of calm returns and it becomes possible to hold free and fair elections to the Lok Sabha.
It should be self-evident even to the meanest intelligence that free and fair elections are just not possible under a dispensation headed by VP Singh and his collaborationists in the disintegration of India. That is the reason for proposing an interim government by the Congress. It should also be equally obvious that a fresh poll is necessary if we are to have a government capable of clearing the wreckage that the scion of Raja Jaichand’s family shall be leaving scattered all over the land.
Sunday Mail, 21 October 1990