His earlier promise (or threat) to be ready to move to the opposition benches notwithstanding (September 17 aboard the plane on the way back from the Mandal rally in Madras), it could have been easily predicted, as it was in this column last Sunday, that V.P. Singh will not resign on withdrawal of support by the BJP. It is truly pathetic that any experienced observer of the current Indian scene should have expected him to behave differently.
If the Raja was the kind of leader he has pretended to be all too successfully all these years – a man of honour who scrupulously abides by his commitments and is not at all attached to office and power – he would, indeed, have sent his resignation to President Venkataraman just as Atal Bihari Vajpayee communicated his party’s decision to withdraw support to the V.P. Singh government on October 23. But it has long been obvious that he is not that kind of man and leader.
V.P. Singh’s has been a single-minded pursuit of power ever since he managed to gain access to Indira Gandhi’s durbar in the troubled 1969-71 period when she was desperately looking for supporters whenever she could find them. Since then he has not stopped at anything to reach his goal – sycophancy of the most abject kind to Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Arun Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi (in that order), dissimulation to the point of appearing to be another Jayaprakash Narayan, if not Mahatma Gandhi, and manipulation. Such men do not give up power for the sake of principles.
If there was any scope for mistaking the Raja to be the kind of man he is not, it should have been removed on August 7 when he announced his decision to implement the so-called Mandal Commission report without consultations with his BJP and Leftist allies. At the most charitable, the move could admit of no interpretation other than that of being a desperate bid to hold on to office, whatever the cost to the country. As the cost became evident in the shape of violent demonstrations in large parts of the country and acts of, and attempts at, self-immolation and suicide by students, mostly in their teens, the Raja did not waver at all. His true face thus stood exposed to public view. If some of us have still chosen not to look at it and to remain mesmerised by the old tattered mask, we have only ourselves to blame.
As it happens, V.P. Singh has not been under pressure to resign, thanks to the inability of the leaders of all three major political formations – the Congress, the BJP and the Left – to recognise that they face an extremely dangerous and unprecedented situation and that this calls for a new response on their part.
Thus the Left has remained too obsessed with anti-Congressism and the Congress with anti-BJPism to heed the magnitude of the threat facing the country, and to realise the urgency of removing V.P. Singh from the awesome office of Prime Minister. The BJP’s room for manoeuvre has been smaller than that of the other two in view of the Raja’s moves to corner it and isolate it from its VHP and RSS support base, on the one hand, and the virulent condemnation of it, particularly on the Ram Janambhoomi issue by the Congress and the Left, on the other. Even so it could perhaps have shown greater foresight and resilience than it has.
The Raja’s Mandalisation move and incitement of Muslims on the Ram Janambhoomi question clearly left the BJP leadership no choice but to decide to withdraw support to the government in case it stopped either Advani’s rathyatra or the kar sera in Ayodhya. But it is doubtful whether it anticipated that the withdrawal of its support would not by itself ‘persuade’ V.P. Singh to resign and that it has to do something more to bring him down. For if it was so aware, it could have unilaterally made the statement that it would stay neutral if Rajiv Gandhi staked claim to office. Rajiv Gandhi is no friend of the BJP but he is also not so deadly an enemy as the Raja. It may still not be too late for the BJP to face this reality and act accordingly.
The Raja could not have been expected to resign for another reason. Even if he concluded on October 23 that the show was over bar the shouting, he would not wish to step aside and allow someone else to move into his place as leader of the Janata Dal parliamentary party (JDPP), especially in view of Rajiv Gandhi’s clear and repeated statement that the Congress is prepared to support a Janata Dal government headed by anyone other than V.P. Singh. It is difficult to say whether Rajiv Gandhi has been anticipating a major split in the JDPP, or trying to encourage one. Either way, he has been unrealistic. The possibility of split in the JDPP, significant enough to throw up a new Congress-backed government, has not been on the cards and the Raja has in all probability been aware of it.
Chandra Shekhar is an alien among the backwoodsmen who constitute the Janata Dal and are guided solely by narrow personal and casteist considerations; and Devi Lal is too weak and short sighted a character to lead a successful revolt against the Raja, or even to be seriously concerned over the havoc V.P. Singh has wrought in 11 brief months. In any event, the Raja offered some bait to Devi Lal in anticipation of withdrawal of support by the BJP and the Haryana patriarch, as was only to be expected, readily bit it.
The Janata Dal president, S.R. Bommai, has ‘possibly’ let us into V.P. Singh’s ‘calculation’. He has told us that 80 Congress and 30 BJP MPs (obviously belonging to the so-called other backward castes) will vote for V.P. Singh on November 7 when the Lok Sabha meets in a one day emergency session. It is difficult to say whether Bommai has let loose a canard intended to demoralise the Raja’s opponents in the JDPP or whether there is some basis for his ‘claim’. It is, however, no secret that meetings of ‘OBC’ MPs, cutting across party lines, have taken place in recent weeks and that Congress leaders in particular have been concerned over this development.
It is not possible for a rank outsider like me to assess the seriousness or otherwise of the possibility of a split in the Congress and perhaps the BJP as well on caste lines on the specific question of V.P. Singh’s call for a vote of confidence. But there can be little doubt that the Raja and his men would seek to promote such a split, that they would be more than willing to make support for them attractive enough for the M.P.s sought to be seduced, and that there would be no dearth of resources for the purpose. Vajpayee and the Congress spokesmen have warned of the danger of horse trading, an euphemism for buying of M.P.s by the party in power, and I do not believe that they have invented this threat to the integrity of our public life, such as it is, at the Centre. We have long been familiar with it in the States.
This obliges me to add that in giving V.P. Singh a whole fortnight to ‘prove’ his majority in the Lok Sabha, President Venkataraman has not shown sufficient sensitivity to this potentially disastrous possibility. He may well have acted within the parameters of the Constitution. But it would not have been unconstitutional for him to ask for proof from the Raja in support of the latter’s claim that he was assured of a majority in the Lok Sabha despite the withdrawal of support to him by as many as 90 M.P.s.
Indeed, implicit in the claim itself was admission of the plan to buy support, or win support on a casteist platform. As such the President did not need to be told by the Congress and the BJP to be wary. It is possible that the Raja would not have obliged. But the Head of State would at least have done his duty by the people of India. His task had admittedly been complicated by Rajiv Gandhi’s reluctance to stake claim to office even after V.P. Singh had lost his title to it. But that too need not have prevented the President from demanding a list of his supporters from the Raja. The country faces a critical situation and the Head of State cannot in all conscience be said to have risen to the occasion.
That is, however, an old story. President Venkataraman has thrown away the initiative and he cannot seize it now. He may have gone by the Constitution but he has left the Raja free to play merry hell with it.
Clearly his mendacity knows no limit. Only a week ago (October 20), he got the President to issue an ordinance, without a precedence in the history of this country on various counts, which was intended to pacify the BJP even if he was offering it the proverbial too little and too late. And yet last Wednesday (October 25), he issued a statement virtually declaring war on the BJP, making it out to be an enemy of “secularism, judiciary and democratic principles”, without any sense of embarrassment that he had depended on its support for the past one year and sought to retain it till two days earlier.
He has similarly appealed to all “secular forces to unite, irrespective of party affiliations” as if he has never engaged in any attempt to destroy Rajiv Gandhi politically and as if he has never entertained, and does not now entertain, the desire to split the Congress. Perhaps his definition of “secular forces” includes only those who are willing to help him stay on in power. But we cannot be sure that he will not spring another surprise on us before the fateful November 7, incidentally anniversary of the Communist revolution in Russia which the poor Russians are struggling so valiantly to dispose of and forget.
I certainly shall not be surprised if he tries to persuade the Left combine, headed by the CPI-M to join the government as a regular partner and make an offer to other “secular and democratic forces” willing to come in.
The main obstacle (the BJP’s support for the government) in the path of the Left having disappeared, it is possible that it may agree to share power with the Janata Dal. From the Raja’s point of view, nothing can be better. It will help him discipline his own dissidents and increase his appeal to certain sections of the Congress and the intelligentsia. At the very least, it will make it difficult for Rajiv Gandhi to oppose V.P. Singh’s motion for a vote of confidence in his government.
From whatever angle we examine this possible move, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Raja’s target is not so much the BJP as the Congress and Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership of it. Having been declared the enemy, the BJP is, by the same logic, substantially protected against manipulation. Thanks to the herculean efforts of the VHP, backed by the RSS, it also possesses in Ram Janambhoomi a platform which enjoys enormous popular support.
As I view the scene, the Congress leadership is in real danger of being outmanoeuvred and it is, in my view, too frozen in its thinking to be able to cope with the challenge. It has taken up what may be called a middle position on both crucial issues confronting the country – Mandal and Ram Janambhoomi. This could be said to have made some sense so long as the JD-BJP alliance was in place, even if under strain. The alliance has broken down and the new polarised situation calls for a clear choice of the principal and immediate adversary on the part of the Congress leadership. The chances are that Rajiv Gandhi will continue to try to sit in the middle and risk being hit by both sides.
Sunday Mail, 28 October 1990