E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

New York is not Nagpur
SAILORS and soldiers are known to become homesick because of the nature of their assignments which keeps them away from familiar sights and sounds for abnormally long spells. The feeling can strike anyone at any time even during a short overseas trip. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s America yatra is neither unusually short nor extraordinarily long by unspecified yardsticks prescribed for high profile dignitaries. 

Dissent and ouster 
MR K.N. Govindacharya is not such a tall leader as to warrant a comment on his so-called voluntary withdrawal from political work, but the BJP is a very important organisation meriting notice of its internal developments. Despite his claim to the contrary, he was facing exclusion from the fresh list of office-bearers when he decided to pre-empt the party chief and announced his going on leave for two years. 

All in the same boat
MR A.C. Muthiah is the all-powerful president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) who is a party to the decision to drop some star players from the Indian team after they were probed by the CBI for betting and match-fixing. He also happens to be a leading industrialist who has now been charge-sheeted by the CBI in a multi-crore scam. There are, understandably, loud shouts for his removal from the helm of affairs.

OPINION

Indians as under-achievers
by Anurag
INDEPENDENT India has come to be acknowledged as an under-achiever, both at home and abroad, a few islands of excellence here and there notwithstanding. Perhaps our balance-sheet of the past 53 years testifies to this. Yes, individually most of us may be efficient, but collectively we are inefficient. This, too, I am afraid, might be an understatement.

MIDDLE

Uncleji
by Shriniwas Joshi
MY niece recently sent me an e-mail with a quote “you are an Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi if...

REALPOLITIK

The cold war after Nagpur
P. Raman
TOO much has been made out of new BJP President Bangaru Laxman’s appeal for wooing the Muslims and Dalits into the party. Sections of the Muslims, especially the intellectuals, have responded to the BJP offer, some with contempt and others with impossible conditionalities. However, for the BJP’s own hardliners and the RSS hardcore, the whole thing is a non-issue.

New York is not Nagpur 

SAILORS and soldiers are known to become homesick because of the nature of their assignments which keeps them away from familiar sights and sounds for abnormally long spells. The feeling can strike anyone at any time even during a short overseas trip. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s America yatra is neither unusually short nor extraordinarily long by unspecified yardsticks prescribed for high profile dignitaries. Yet from the seemingly controversial observations he made during a scheduled meeting with the sadhus, sants, and members of the saffron tribe from “back home” it appears that even high profile dignitaries can become victims of the feeling of homesickness. There is absolutely no indication that the Prime Minister was conscious of his being in the USA while inter acting with his soulmates from the days when he was an active member of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. He felt so at home among his own folks that he did not mind airing his views on subjects which even in the politically sensitive circles in India are considered contentious. It must have been an absolutely “at home” ambience at the Sangh Parivar session in New York which tempt him to say what he could not say at Nagpur because of the bad knee. Mr Bangaru Laxman, while being installed as the first Dalit President of the upper caste-dominated Bharatiya Janata Party, had drawn his own Laxman rekha in which mention of the Ram Temple construction and two other controversial issues was banned. He caused many a Sangh Parivar stalwart to miss a heartbeat by unfolding a blueprint for winning back the trust of the Muslims. However, in New York, Mr Vajpayee who is counted among the small tribe of moderates in the BJP inadvertently or intentionally became the first front-line BJP leader to cross the Laxman rekha of Bangaru.

Mr Vajpayee declared on foreign soil that the India of which he was the Prime Minister was not the India of his dreams. He turned the interaction with the sadhus and sants into an occasion for addressing some kind of an election rally at which he routinely asked for a two-thirds majority for his party for implementing the Hindutva agenda. The Opposition parties are already sharpening the knives. And why not? Mr Vajpayee must be the first Prime Minister to indirectly run down his own country during a foreign trip. Such was the overwhelming feeling of being “at home” among the Sangh Parivar members! The Opposition is likely to attack him for including a meeting with the sadhus and sants in his official agenda during his extended America yatra. No one would have asked uncomfortable questions had he as Prime Minister of secular India attended a multi-religious and multi-cultural gathering because it represents the correct profile of the country. The American media must have had a field day playing up the Prime Minister’s poor opinion of his own country. It appears that for a brief moment the usually careful and cautious Mr Vajpayee forgot that he was in New York as Prime Minister of a secular India which his spiritual and ideological soulmates want to turn into the rashtra of the likes of Mr Ashok Singhal, who was among the sponsors of the saffron show in New York. While in Rome he did not act as the Romans do. But the sight of saffron in New York made him feel at home as never before.

Dissent and ouster 

MR K.N. Govindacharya is not such a tall leader as to warrant a comment on his so-called voluntary withdrawal from political work, but the BJP is a very important organisation meriting notice of its internal developments. Despite his claim to the contrary, he was facing exclusion from the fresh list of office-bearers when he decided to pre-empt the party chief and announced his going on leave for two years. He is easily the most articulate ideologue and is struggling to put together a set of economic policies for the BJP. That brought him in conflict with the top leadership which is content to move with the changing times. As has been pointed out many times, economic policy is a weak, very weak, area of the party and except for spelling out general and desirable goals, it prefers to heavily concentrate on its own interpretation of culture. In his exercise the former general secretary of the BJP found himself in agreement with the hardliners in the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. Given his capacity to argue his point cogently, it was only a matter of time before he became an embarrassment for the establishment. Both he and the Manch fashion their theory on their perception of a distant past of India when villages teemed with skilled artisans and hardworking farmers, all contributing to general prosperity. Their basic suspicion about the Christian West creates a convergence and dresses up their ideas as both national and workable. As a party spokesman, Mr Govindacharya finds this view attractive and vote-winning but as government policy in the 21st century it is unworkable. That is the friction point, made worse by the absence of an equally effective advocate of the policy of the BJP and of a coalition. Then there is the lack of full-blooded democratic tradition of debate at all levels and arriving at a decision which everyone owns up. When someone decides to speak out, he stirs up trouble for himself and the party.

The issue involved is not about one man and his leaving the party post to find time to recharge his intellectual battery. Nor is it only about the BJP. It is about democratic temper and this country’s inability to foster its robust growth. All political parties, national and regional, have split, mostly following ego clashes. Even the cadre-based and ideology-driven CPM is facing a faction revolt in West Bengal and despite its strict adherence to inner-party democracy, it has not been able to resolve a policy dispute. The religion-based Akalis have often witnessed factionalism. The Telugu Desam Party and the DMK have undergone a three-way break-up. More than policy dispute it is the failure to evolve a conducive personal chemistry which triggers these divisions. Also ambitions. In the case of the BJP the assumption of power has sharpened this process. It spent many years in the opposition but did not prepare itself with well-honed policies to run the government. Each leader brought with him his own agenda and the Sangh Parivar began to speak in several voices. Mr Govindacharya, Ms Sushma Swaraj and Mr M.L. Khurana are not rebels in the conventional sense but dissidents, stuck with a policy once espoused by the party but since abandoned as impossible while exercising power. As the leader of the ruling alliance, the BJP has to project a united image and for that purpose evolve a platform where ideas can be freely aired and a consensus reached. It owes this to the nation.

All in the same boat

MR A.C. Muthiah is the all-powerful president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) who is a party to the decision to drop some star players from the Indian team after they were probed by the CBI for betting and match-fixing. He also happens to be a leading industrialist who has now been charge-sheeted by the CBI in a multi-crore scam. There are, understandably, loud shouts for his removal from the helm of affairs. How can a person who is himself tainted sit in judgement over the fate of others? His name figures in the Rs 29 crore SPIC disinvestment scam along with former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J.Jayalalitha and senior IAS officer C. Ramachandran. Even after Mr Muthiah was charge-sheeted recently before a special court in Chennai, he airdashed to Bangalore to preside over a meeting of the BCCI Working Committee which was to finalise the code of conduct for players. Not only the players but also a section of office-bearers are gunning for him and want him to step down. They have a point. After all, while there is no FIR or legally admissible evidence against Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Nayan Mongia and Kapil Dev, the charge-sheet against Mr Muthiah and others runs into 1,000 pages and there are at least 27 witnesses. The CBI case is that Mr Muthiah, who was a vice-chairman of petro-chemical giant SPIC in 1992, was hand in glove with the then Industry Secretary C.Ramachandran who abused his official position by favouring the company while relinquishing the right of TIDCO (a Tamil Nadu Government undertaking) to invest in the zero conversion bond issued by SPIC, thereby causing a loss of Rs 28.29 crore to the state government.

To be fair, the charge-sheet has nothing to do with the affairs of cricket. But the stigma does stick. Like Caesar’s wife, the board’s President ought to be above suspicion. That he no longer is. The charge-sheet erodes his moral authority to clean up Indian cricket. The problem in rooting out corruption in India is that the deeper you dig, the more of it you find. No institution and no person is proving to be fully above board. Two wrongs do not make one right. Yet, when those who can take action are themselves found to be suspect the whole attempt to punish the guilty gets bogged down. Because only pots are available to call the kettle black, the thick coat of soot spoiling the face of society never gets to be removed. The players suspected to be involved in match-fixing will now try to turn the focus on the BCCI president and other office-bearers whose houses were raided by income tax officials. They cannot say that they are not guilty. All that they will claim is that before investigating us, punish so and so first. Such dialogues sound very impressive when mouthed by Amitabh Bachchan in “Deewar” but in real life they make for a pathetic rendering. The investigation will move in circles and very little will come out of it. In place of cleansing, we may have to bear with more scum accumulation. That is an alarming scenario, indeed!

SINO-INDIAN BORDER DISPUTE
Why the President drew a blank
by Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri

DURING his recent visit to China, if President K.R. Narayanan hoped to get a positive commitment from the Chinese leaders on a speedy resolution to the border dispute, he must have been dismayed by the rather cold response from his Chinese counterpart. During his talks with President Jiang Zemin, he brought up the issue, only to be reminded that such “difficult historical disputes” could not be settled overnight and needed both time and patience from both sides. Mr Jiang pointed out that China had resolved most of its other border disputes, including those with Russia, the Central Asian Republics and Vietnam, but the border problem with India involved some knotty questions, and rushing it would serve no purpose.

Under an agreement signed in 1993, both sides are committed to delineating the line of actual control as early as possible, but as many as 13 meetings of the Joint Working Group on the border question and other technical sub-groups have failed to make much headway. The Indian position is that China continues to illegally occupy 38,000 sq km of Indian territory in Kashmir, besides 5,180 sq km ceded by Pakistan to China. Beijing, on its part, lays claim to 90,000 sq km of territory in Arunachal Pradesh, and is yet to recognise Sikkim as an Indian state.

Mr Narayanan stressed that right now, to make a meaningful initiative, the two sides should exchange maps on the LAC. But the Chinese leaders made it clear that they were not in a hurry. However, a spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that his government could consider a “comprehensive agreement” with India to settle the border and “other related issues” between the two countries. He added that the groundwork for such an agreement was laid when Beijing and New Delhi signed a border accord in September, 1995.

If such a “comprehensive agreement”, at all comes to pass, there is no reason why every Indian should not welcome it because it will reduce India’s military burden to a great extent and facilitate a degree of flexibility in India’s military planning, especially in the deployment of forces on the western borders. But knowing the Chinese penchant for realpolitik regarding the Himalayan frontier, one wonders at what cost these limited gains would be secured. However, given a few basic facts, there is no distinct possibility of any such agreement leading to the stabilisation of the line of actual control as the permanent boundary.

The Chinese deny the validity of the McMahon Line on the grounds that Chen I-fan, the Chinese plenipotentiary at the Simla Conference (1913-14), was not a party to the Indo-Tibetan agreement on what was later called the McMahon Line; that China was actually ignorant of the boundary negotiations between the British and Tibetan plenipotentiaries, Sir Henry McMahon and Lonchen Shatra; and that the Lonchen had no authority to negotiate the boundary without Chinese approval.

The first argument is correct. Chen never participated in the Indo-Tibetan border negotiations between McMahon and Lonchen Shatra. Chen’s real concern was to fix a boundary between Inner Tibet and Outer Tibet, the two zones into which it was proposed to divide Tibet and thus solve the conflict between Tibet and China in the region and ensure peace. But the next two arguments of the Chinese are disingenuous.

A close scrutiny of the maps produced by McMahon at the conference exposes the untenability of the Chinese plea of Chen’s ignorance. The Indo-Tibetan boundary as shown in these maps runs counter to the Chinese idea of the boundary. This could not have escaped the notice of even a layman, not to speak of a veteran diplomat like Chen. But he did not protest against the transparent contradiction, not because of ignorance, but because the Chinese were not interested in the tribal region north of Assam. At the Simla Conference the sole concern of the Chinese was to secure as much of the forward boundary as possible for Inner Tibet. The Salween river which they were prepared to accept as boundary lay far away from the Indo-Tibetan frontier.

The other argument that the Lonchen had no authority to negotiate the Indo-Tibetan boundary is a typical example of the Chinese capacity for specious reasoning. It is based on the assumption that Tibet then, as now, was part of China which is what no historical evidence supports. The forcible Chinese seizure of Tibet in 1950 may have now changed the status of that country. But it was quite different on the eve of the Simla Conference. At that time, there was not a shred of Chinese control in Tibet. And by agreeing to negotiate the Tibet-China boundary with the Lonchen, the Chinese automatically recognised his authority to negotiate his country’s boundaries independently of any Chinese approval.

For the Chinese far more important is Ladakh where across Aksai Chin they have built a road from Sinkiang to Tibet in order to hold the latter in control, and have also seized a large chunk of Ladakh territory. They justify this territorial banditry on the ground that Ladakh has no recognised boundary with neighbouring Sinkiang and Tibet. It is true that no international boundary in the modern sense exists in Ladakh. But a boundary known by custom and tradition has been in existence since time immemorial. Traders, herdsmen and nomads, the only people who traversed the inhospitable, alkaline plateau of Aksai Chin, recognised this boundary which on the ground was represented by some distinct natural features like mountain passes. This was a good enough boundary for practical purposes in a country of stupendous mountain ranges.

In the 19th century the British did try to lay down an internationally recognised boundary of Ladakh in cooperation with the Chinese, but drew a blank because of the latter’s non-cooperation. Following the inexorable Russian advance in Central Asia after the Crimean War, the British woke up to the danger of a Russian push on the northern frontier of India. Hence they carried out extensive explorations to fix a strategically viable boundary in the Hindu Kush-Muztagh-Karakoram-Himalaya border lands. They discovered that the Chinese regarded the Kuenlun range as the southern boundary of Sinkiang, and that there was a broad belt of territory intervening between the Kuenlun and the Karakoram.

The British were reluctant to shoulder military responsibilities north of the Karakoram, and hence deliberately ignored the persistent claim of the Kashmir Darbar to Sahidulla, north of the Karakoram. But lest the Russians occupied the land and threatened the Indian frontier, the British actively encouraged the Chinese to expand southward and occupy the land up to the Karakoram. Thus British imperialism boosted Chinese expansionist designs in High Asia, a fact never admitted by the Chinese.

It is rather strange that many in India believe that an honourable and permanent settlement of the border dispute with China is possible. As a matter of fact, this is not possible so long as Tibet is occupied by China. It is only with an independent Tibet that India can hope to have an honourable and lasting settlement of the border dispute.

From the Indian point of view, the root of the problem can be largely traced to the Himalayan blunder and moral hamartia committed by Pandit Nehru when he signed the self-denying treaty of 1954 in which Tibet was recognised as a region of China. Nehru lived enough to rue his blunder, and India ever since has been paying for his diplomatic betise. By recognising Tibet as an integral part of China, which no Indian government had previously admitted, Nehru countersigned the death warrant of Tibetan independence.

After the signing of the April, 1954, agreement, the euphoria about “Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai” reached a new pitch with an exchange of visits between the Prime Ministers of the two countries, providing occasions for considerable mass hysteria. On the surface, at any rate, Tibet and the frontier dispute seemed a long way off, if not indeed forgotten. The rift, however, was soon apparent if, for the moment, cleverly hidden from the public gaze.

Against the powerful current that seemed to sweep nearly everyone away, a few lone voices could still be heard, though the prevalent din made them almost inaudible. One of these was that of Sir Olaf Caroe, Deputy Secretary in the Foreign Department in the early 1930s. In a letter to The Times (London) in November, 1954, he pinpointed in particular the problem of north-eastern frontier and underlined the fact that China’s absorption of Tibet now makes the location of this frontier a matter of direct international dispute between China and India. In effect, China may claim a slice of Indian territory measuring 250 by 100 miles in extent. This is much more than infiltration.”

Historically, Tibet had never been an integral part of China, although they had fluctuating relations. Even the British never regarded China as the “sovereign” of Tibet. This was what Nehru did. With Tibet under the thumb of the oldest surviving empire in the world, it would be a flight of fancy for India to hope for an honourable and permanent solution of the border dispute.

The writer, a former Professor and Head, Department of Political Science, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta, is Emeritus Fellow, University Grants Commission.

Indians as under-achievers
by Anurag

INDEPENDENT India has come to be acknowledged as an under-achiever, both at home and abroad, a few islands of excellence here and there notwithstanding. Perhaps our balance-sheet of the past 53 years testifies to this. Yes, individually most of us may be efficient, but collectively we are inefficient. This, too, I am afraid, might be an understatement.

I am not talking of the underperformers, a la cricket, but of our creaking socio-economic infrastructure and all that goes with it. It touches the life of each and every individual and has a bearing on the bottom line. A few examples would suffice.

In Ludhiana and its salubrious suburbs, there must be at least five lakh inverters and generators which at an average rate of Rs 20,000 account for an investment of Rs 1000 crore, enough to instal an additional thermal power plant of a few hundred megawatt. The latter option, besides ensuring good quality and quantity of electricity, will drastically downsize the nuisance of noise and air pollution, whereas the former is a sheer waste of scarce resources.

Ditto for the private expenditure incurred on pumps, water purification equipment, tubewells, etc. Much lesser investment by the local municipal body may make sure that the additional water requirement is more than met in terms of both quality and quantity.

The story is no different in the field of education, health care, housing and civic amenities. Aggregate the expenditure incurred by the parents of students on private coaching far exceeds the investment required to be made to equip our schools and colleges with the necessary infrastructural facilities and to attract capable and competent teachers.

Similarly, a well-functioning public health system will put a check on profiteering in private clinics. Mushrooming private nursing homes are flourishing by fleecing the poor and the rich alike who have no faith in government hospitals where conditions are awful and appalling. As for integrity and ethics, the less said the better.

The bigger picture which emerges is just shocking. Resources are wasted without the systems of education, health care, electricity and water supply improving. They are decaying exponentially. A sub-optimal use of resources, this.

This is something like repairing a road after every monsoon season to provide employment to labourers, mindless of the high costs and low productivity of the resources. It is society as a whole which suffers in the process.

Examples can be multiplied. Growing criminalisation of society and the polity has forced the well-off to hire private security. Gosh, why does one pay taxes to the government? The Supreme Court, while chiding the Karnataka government in the recent melodrama which unfolded in the wake of Dr Rajkumar’s kidnapping, made it amply clear that the maintenance of law and order was the fundamental duty of the state government, and if it could not do its duty, it should quit and make way for somebody who could do it.

The conclusion is inescapable that the services are inadequate not for want of resources but because the latter are not mobilised and prevented from going waste. Waste leads to the activities and transactions which are not essential, and this adds to the costs. Ultimately, it costs a lot to society as a whole. For instance, urban transport is both energy-and-capital-intensive. Hence buses rather than private cars should be encouraged. We are short of roads too.

Apart from other factors responsible for the prevailing state of affairs, it is the lack of accountability in our system which breeds cynicism and distrust at all the levels. Those who are honest in the wider sense of accountability run the risk of being marginalised within their peer group as also in the wider society. This results in lack of commitment and sub-optimal utilisation of human and material resources. And policy failure takes place both because of the inadequate allocation of resources and the ineffectiveness of expenditure.

It is a pitiable paradox that even when resources exist, the common man is made to believe that the country is short of resources. Thus poverty is as much artificial as it is real.

And corruption is at the core of it all. Chief Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal must be serious when he says that corruption-free service should be made a fundamental right. Enforcement of this right will empower the common man. Promotion and perpetuation of illegalities in all walks of life has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy. As many as 72 countries are less corrupt than India. Our country’s black economy constitutes 40 per cent of its GDP. Few people appreciate that the black economy is not a parallel economy but an integral part of the national system. It is high time our academicians, professionals and policy-makers initiated a national debate on the reasons of and remedies for the black economy which has sapped the national potential and stunted India’s growth all these years.

Uncleji
by Shriniwas Joshi

MY niece recently sent me an e-mail with a quote “you are an Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi if:

1. when there is a sale on toilet papers, you buy 100 rolls.

2. you call fluorescent lights “tubelights” and a flashlight “a torch”.

3. you ask your dad a simple question and he tells you a story of how he had to walk two miles barefoot just to get to school.

4. you call an older person you never met before “uncle,” and 21 other traits.

Well, in this piece, I am concerned with what a barber, a dishwasher, a waiter in a restaurant, a conductor in a bus, a counter-clerk in a post office or a bank or anybody who walks on two youngish legs (I never had the occasion of meeting a chimp) calls me “Uncleji”. I am “Ankleji” to a Punjabi Mistry and “Unkilji” to a teacher from Badayun with whom I had a chance meeting in a seminar. I do not mind that. But I find it tough to manage my demeanour when a lady hardly a few years younger addresses me as Uncleji. Perhaps it is because “time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty.” It is with great persuasion and after several years that a woman crosses this critical age.

Agreed, the woman wants to pretend that she is perpetually young. That is why Madhuri Nene-nee-Dixit has expressed the desire to perform opposite the latest heartthrob Hrithik Roshan. But what about the masculine vim? It is seldom esteemed. How many of us are really ready to accept the salutation Uncleji even from girls in teens? Remember that story? Introducing her extremely curvaceous honey-blonde friend to his grandfather, the boy told her, “And just think, he’s in his nineties.” “Early nineties, that is,” the old gentleman added with a mischievous wink. About myself, I confess that when a child told me that he was crying because the young girls refused to play with him, I also felt like crying.

But the youth does not see us as we, so called Uncleji, see ourselves. In a quiz programme, I remember a young VJ asked the age of one among the invited audience and when he said that he was in fifties, he along with others guffawed to say that you were in need of Viagra to stood out in that show. Again, a gentleman several years after retirement thought of marrying. He could get his thought converted into reality. It was a strange happening for the people of Shimla though it is common in the First Cities. After marriage, he went to a doctor and told him that he be examined thoroughly for he wanted a boy-heir to his property. The young doctor examined him and said, “Uncleji,...” The gentleman took exception to the use of the pleasantry and asked the doc to address him as Mr..... The doctor used his wit to say,” Mr....you may be heir-minded but you are not heir-conditioned.”

The cold war after Nagpur
P. Raman

TOO much has been made out of new BJP President Bangaru Laxman’s appeal for wooing the Muslims and Dalits into the party. Sections of the Muslims, especially the intellectuals, have responded to the BJP offer, some with contempt and others with impossible conditionalities. However, for the BJP’s own hardliners and the RSS hardcore, the whole thing is a non-issue. What really worries the RSS is to what extent Atal Behari Vajpayee would go ahead with his ongoing liberalisation plans for the BJP. On this will depend its future relationship with the post-1998 BJP. Thus the three-day deliberations at Nagpur has indeed heightened the mutual suspicions and mistrust.

The RSS has never objected to the mlechhas sitting with the aryaputras on the BJP dais. For formality sake, its own shakhas are open for all those who believe in the RSS programmes. So there cannot be any formal objections to inviting the Muslims to join the BJP. It had leaders like Sikander Bakht and Arif Beg. If they all had to eventually bow out after faithfully serving the party, that highlights their inherent incompatibilities. Since Vajpayee cannot be unaware of the mainstream Muslim’s age-old mistrust, the hardliners fear that he might go the whole hog to appease the minorities.

This could be done only by convincingly proving that the new BJP would dump all traces of Hindutva without any reservation. This calls for changes in all basic party documents, the tone and tenor of its leaders and an entirely new attitude and approach to the minority question. Suspicious as they are, the minorities are not going to trust the new BJP unless it makes public commitment in this regard. Vajpayee will also have to do more than oral disowning of the traditional supremacist programmes of the RSS or its outfits. Many in the RSS parivar do not entirely rule out such a scenario.

At the moment, the Prime Minister’s camp might be testing the waters — to gauge the Muslim mood and the effectiveness of the RSS defences. Caution has been his watchword whenever he had encountered determined resistance from the party traditionalists during the early days. And in each case he outwitted them and emerged stronger. K.S. Sudarshan can no more hoodwink Vajpayee to drop a Jaswant Singh or force his pet themes. Vajpayee uses a mix of his popularity with the NDA allies levers of power and his own indispensability to humble the RSS bosses and their supporters in the BJP. Even while respecting it as an institution, he could curtly ignore its protests and force its outfits to withdraw — or hopelessly tone down — all their protest programmes.

The unconcealed anger in the anti-Vajpayee camp is illustrated by curious parallels and mythological anecdotes. One such epithet compares him with the pouranic Poundraka Vasudev. Taken in by the court sycophants, Poundraka, a petty king of the Karush kingdom, proclaimed himself as the real avatar and began sporting peacock feathers and flute as the young Krishna. He also sent troops to Dwarka to oust the ‘imposter’ (real Krishna) from the seat. Apparently, the analogy is to Vajpayee’s efforts to usurp all powers to himself on the (‘false’) claim that he is larger than the RSS itself. The grapevine presumably predicts a tragic end to “all Poundraka Vasudevas”.

Then there is a rather inhumane joke about how providential intervention frustrates the moves to make the BJP stand on its own feet. If the silent debate in these circles on the post-Nagpur situation is any indication, a growing section within the RSS parivar has begun seeing unconcealed designs to make the new BJP over and above the RSS itself. According to this school of thought, encouraged by his repeated success in subjugating the RSS and its outfits — even to the extent of disdainfully disregarding them — on each issue, the ruling camp thinks in terms of incorporating traditionally alien groups like the Muslims. If health permits, they feel, Vajpayee would mould the BJP into the ethos of the Indian National Congress which he has been able to achieve partially.

According to them, influential sections in the PM camp calculate that a truly national and heterogenous BJP could more than compensate for the loss it may suffer due to the non-cooperation of the RSS in such an event. This will enable the new party not only to occupy the Congress space, with its minorities, but large sections of the Congress may use the opportunity to seek fortunes on the winning side. Today’s BJP, it is admitted, is certainly more formidable than what it was under the presidentship of Vajpayee in the early 1880s. A non-cooperation by the RSS had then reduced the BJP’s strength in the Lok Sabha to just two. It is not going to be the same again.

Though at the moment such a scenario looks quite far-fetched, influential sections in the parivar feel convinced that the Vajpayee-led BJP has, for all practical purposes, gone out of the parent body’s control. Whatever relationship has turned cool and formal. Lack of cordiality and traditional respect have already caused a wall of suspicion between the bosses of the parent body and its political wing. Decisions taken by the Cabinet in quick succession are often viewed in the parent body as a display of pure arrogance and defiance. Especially on issues considered sensitive to the RSS. Unlike in the initial states, there is not even an effort to interact.

In some cases, ministers or senior leaders who cherish maintaining the umbilical cord had to face the official wrath. At least at one stage, the veteran leader Sunder Singh Bhandari was found to the best choice for the BJP presidentship. But the PM’s camp scuttled the move as it feared that a strong-willed, imaginative person might function as a parallel centre. Under lacklustre Presidents, the BJP as a political organisation has become practically moribund. All sorts of vested interests have crept into the body, ousting genuine RSS-oriented elements. What is worse, there is a tendency even to privately hail it as “deideologisation” and “opening up”.

All this has been happening in stages. Initially when the three controversial issues like common civil code were frozen, it was a consensus-based strategic move to keep the parivar’s own government in power. This was on the express understanding that the concessions were purely temporary. RSS circles also talk of a tacit understanding on treading a two-track strategy by which the BJP and its government would play the gentleman’s role even while the other parivar outfits would be free to pursue their own programmes without violating the law of the land. It was with such great hopes that the RSS had cooperated with the Vajpayee Government to rein in the VHP-Bajrang Dal extremists and the party hotheads in Gujarat and elsewhere.

It is alleged that Vajpayee’s present take-it-or-leave-it approach was contrary to this “honest” informal understanding. In the balance sheet, it is now realised that Murli Manohar Joshi alone had made earnest efforts to further the Hindutva cause. Others simply follow the “Congress” policies. On the other hand, the persistent official government stand on issues like campaign against the missionaries, for the Ayodhya mandir and “unnecessary appeasements” like more for Haj facilities — once the BJP itself had decried them — have adversely affected the parivar cause. Thus instead of furthering the “cherished” RSS ideals, the present government has only harmed it.

Even the meetings of the National Executive and Council ever since the Chennai session have confirmed the worst fears about Vajpayee’s intentions. It is not only a question of introducing policies considered alien by the RSS. Nor is it the failure to make the party real watchdog and vibrant movement to put forth effective policies. Instead the whole effort on the part of the present effective leadership has been to perpetuate the Congress culture in the BJP. The Congress-style one-leader cult — as against the time-tested, elaborate system of consultation and consensus in the parivar — has already got established.

The culture of sycophancy at Race Course Road and Ashoka Road is as strong as in 10 Janpath. Govindacharya’s case epitomises the atmosphere of mutual suspicion, arrogance and intolerance. This is being taken as a warning to all those hesitate to toe the official stand — imposed without discussion and consensus — to fall in line without any inhibition. Incidentally, the anti-Vajpayee camp believes that Govindacharya’s ouster was pushed through so crudely on the basis of reports by certain official agency — a practice attributed to Indira Gandhi when she was considered as an authoritarian Prime Minister-cum-party chief. Grapevine has it that the PM camp has a reliable loyalty list of BJP functionaries.

Of late, the parivar hardliners have also begun hitting back at the Vajpayee camp in a more determined fashion. They use every available forum to spite Vajpayee and his friends. Back from Nagpur, UP BJP chief Kalraj Mishra visited the Babri mosque site to declare that ‘mandir yahin banayenge’ (we will certainly build the Ram temple here), just to heighten the anti-Muslim fervour. Soon after this, none other than Govindacharya asserted that the BJP remained committed to Hindutva. The VHP’s international incharge charged the Vajpayee Government with ‘backstabbing’ the Sadhus. From Rajasthan, VHP’s Nrityagopal Das ridicules Vajpayee’s position on several Hindutva-related issues. What has been veiled accusations earlier, have now become blunt and direct.

Developments after the Nagpur session has further intensifed this bitter cold war between the two sides. The issue is not of bringing in the Muslims. It is a crisis of confidence about the very intentions of the rival sides. While the hawks have become impatient, both sides on this tug of war are treading rather cautiously. Neither side is likely to push it to the brink immediately. Saner elements on both sides are still trying to avert a direct confrontation. The question at the moment is how long will this uneasy peace continue.

Spiritual Nuggets

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

— Majjhima Nikaya, 117.
Mahachattarisaka Sutta