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politics Thackeray’s remark has catapulted the firebrand orator to the highest league of prime-ministerial hopefuls. The moot question is — is she cut out for the job? By Aditi Tandon RestrainT is a rare quality, but 60-year-old BJP leader Sushma Swaraj has it in plenty. Sushma, who has proved her mettle in political statecraft, has refused to be drawn in by the huge compliment Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray paid her, calling her the “only person who is intelligent, brilliant in the BJP… and would be a great choice for the post of Prime Minister”.
J&K
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Sushma BJP choice for PM? Thackeray’s remark has catapulted the firebrand orator to the highest league of prime-ministerial hopefuls. The moot question is — is she cut out for the job? By Aditi Tandon
RestrainT is a rare quality, but 60-year-old BJP leader Sushma Swaraj has it in plenty. Thackeray’s comments rocked the BJP boat, not just because he described her as a potential prime-ministerial candidate, but also because he described her as the “only one”. This, when the BJP is selling to the allies the line that it has a “number of capable leaders to fill the slot” — Hindutva poster boy Narendra Modi, Leader of Opposition (LOP) in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, party president Nitin Gadkari, and former president Rajnath Singh. Add to the list, veteran leader LK Advani, who the RSS wants to play mentor. “The decision will be taken by the NDA at the time of the polls,” say party leaders Mukhtas Abbas Naqvi and Balbir Punj. Another NDA ally, Bihar Chief Minister and JDU leader Nitish Kumar, has advocated the need for naming the leader ahead of the polls, with the rider: “The leader should have secular credentials.” For Sushma, the journey to the top has not been free of hurdles. Married ahead of the Emergency, she and her husband Swaraj Kaushal (both defended George Fernandes in the Baroda dynamite case) joined Jai Prakash Narayan’s movement. She soon found herself marshalling the oratorical skills to the advantage of the anti-Congress forces that won the 1977 elections, with the Janata Party forming the government. Sushma, then just 25, was called in on the Socialist Party quota to contest the Assembly elections from her home segment Ambala Cantt. She won and landed in Devi Lal’s Cabinet with eight portfolios, becoming the youngest Indian minister. In 1984, she joined the BJP and returned to the Haryana Assembly, contesting on the BJP ticket in 1987. It was only in 1996 that she was first elected to the Lok Sabha from South Delhi. Eloquence of speech sets her apart. Though Jaitley shares her skill, he speaks in English, appealing mostly to the urban class. As the Leader of Opposition (LOP) in the Lok Sabha (she assumed charge in February 2010), Sushma has used her oratory well to corner the government on price rise, 2G Spectrum and CWG and coal scams. Even BJP’s arch rivals, the Left leaders, despite their reservations about her “inflexibilities as LOP”, swear by her talent. “Sushma is an excellent orator. No one matches her eloquence. But an LOP must also possess the qualities of running the House smoothly. Sushma can be obdurate,” CPM leader Basudeb Acharia says. Some Opposition leaders consider her quite aggressive. “She appears to hurl brickbats on the government, unlike Vajpayee whose punches would not hurt. She appears to provoke the government and stimulate hardliners,” says a Lok Sabha leader. Her conduct in the House has, however, drawn more accolades than criticism, especially when she took on powerful ministers like P Chidambaram. Her call for justice for Bhopal gas victims in 2010 moved Advani to tears and impressed leaders across party lines. In 2010, as a member of the committee for the selection of the CVC, Sushma had refused to endorse the decision of the Prime Minister to appoint the then Telecom Secretary PJ Thomas as the CVC. In March 2011, the Supreme Court struck down him appointment, saying the selection panel had failed to consider the pending chargesheet against him. SAD’s Harsimrat Badal says: “She is the best orator out of the 545 MPs. She conveys the sense of people better than anyone else.” Naresh Gujral, Harsimrat’s colleague in the Rajya Sabha, says: “She is a serious candidate who would be acceptable to secular forces,” he says, warning: “In politics, often names that circulate first are the first to be eliminated.”
Pro-federal stance
Sushma’s pro-federal stance also holds her in good stead. She has raised regional issues formidably in the Lok Sabha. From the cause of Telangana, Sri Lankan Tamils, Amarnath pilgrims to Kokrajhar violence, she has taken along everyone, including the Left. Bhartruhari Bahtab of the BJD, formerly an NDA ally, agrees: “She puts forth the Opposition point forcefully. However, we see little chances of her emergence. We believe 2014 would see the rise of regional leaders.”
Taking on party leaders
In her career spanning 35 years, Sushma has faced 10 direct elections. With three terms each in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, she has been fearless. At the height of Vajpayee’s popularity in 2000, she slammed his economic policies, accusing him of abandoning the “Swadeshi” agenda. Vajpayee still inducted her into the Cabinet as Health and Parliamentary Affairs Minister — a role meant for the PM’s confidante. BJP insiders hail her ability to accept challenges. In October 1998, on the party’s call, she went as the Delhi Chief Minister 40 days ahead of the Assembly elections, at a time when BJP’s Sahib Singh Verma was facing sure defeat due to poor governance in Delhi. “Sushma won her Hauz Khas Assembly seat despite some party leaders working to defeat her,” insiders say. When the BJP lost, she courageously proclaimed: “Ghar ko lagi hai aag ghar ke chiraag se”, ruffling many feathers. She resigned from the Assembly (even though Vajpayee wanted her to stay) and retained her South Delhi Lok Sabha seat, lying low for a while before being called in again to fight Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Bellary during the 1999 polls. “The Congress had never lost Bellary, but Sushma accepted the contest and lost by 50,000 votes. In the subsequent polls, the Congress candidate from Bellary won with one lakh margin,” says a political observer. Many second-generation BJP leaders like Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu have evaded elections.
Winning hearts
In May 2010, she surprised everyone by visiting “Veer Bhumi”, Rajiv Gandhi’s resting place, on his death anniversary. She revived the Vajpayee tradition of crossing narrow political lines. In 2002, she won hearts in Pakistan when, during an official visit, she resisted the attempts of a TV interviewer to provoke her. The anchor kept slamming her for counting NDA’s successes when 12,000 people had died in Gujarat. She stayed calm and later said: “I restricted myself as I was a guest of Pakistan.” She has buried the hatchet with Sonia Gandhi. They now share a warm relationship, so much so that Sonia recently called her up to break the Parliament logjam. Her stint as Information and Broadcasting Minister, when she banned bold ads and enforced TV entertainment code, earned her the tag of a puritan. She reviewed the FDI in print media and set up six AIIMS clones — a move now being implemented. GC Malhorta, Lok Sabha secretary-general in Vajpayee’s regime, says: “She has shown an average Indian woman that political success is possible, notwithstanding dynasty.” Her daughter, 28-year-old Bansuri, is a criminal lawyer in the Supreme Court.
Advani supporter
Sushma reveres Advani. She is often seen in the Lok Sabha fending off crisis caused by Advani’s interjections, the most recent being his “illegitimate” remark against the UPA-II. Even earlier, she had endorsed his leadership saying: “We are the followers of Hindu culture. We don’t talk of successors when leaders are there.” On the political stage, too, she follows Advani. She recently excused herself from the BJP’s Mumbai convention after the removal of Modi’s rival Sanjay Joshi from a party post. In doing so, she followed Advani, her mentor.
The RSS factor
Sushma may have pitted herself against Modi by saying that his magic may not work beyond Gujarat. Her aggression is sometimes seen as immature, like her comment that the Congress made “mota maal” in the coal scam or her jig at the Rajghat while protesting a crackdown on Ramdev’s campaign. Another challenge for her is to impress the RSS. Her traditional Hindu “bahu” image and “moral” stands (she had asked Doordarshan anchors to wear full-sleeved blouses and cover their heads) might help Sushma, though she is not known to enjoy RSS support. If she can get the RSS nod, the rules of the game will change in her favour. But whether she can lead from the front and meet the expectations of the people, only time can tell.
Career Graph
Feb 14, 1952: Born in Ambala Cantt to ayurveda vaidya Hardev Sharma and Laxmi Devi 1972: Graduated in law from the PU 1975: Married Socialist Party worker Swaraj Kaushal; worked with Jai Prakash Narayan 1977: Won the Assembly polls from Ambala Cantt on Socialist Party ticket 1977-79: At 25, the youngest Cabinet minister in India under Devi Lal 1980, 1984, 1989: Lost LS polls from Karnal 1990: Elected to RS 1996: Won first LS election from South Delhi 1998: Re-elected to the LS; I&B, Telecom Minister; replaces Sahib Singh Verma as Delhi CM 2000: Re-elected to RS 2007: Wins Best Parliamentarian Award; made first spokeswoman of a national party 2009: Wins LS polls; elected Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha
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J&K
‘Ase kaya Pakistan seeth, gaur payee ase panun gar vushan.” This is a common refrain in Kashmir nowadays. Translated roughly it means, “What have we to do with Pakistan, first we need to have a look within our own house.” This is the same Kashmir where people would swear by Pakistan and not tolerate a word against the neighbouring country. The construct of the prism through which Kashmir has been looking at Pakistan is undergoing a dramatic change — a change that has come at a great price the people of the Valley have had to pay over the past 22 years. Estimated conservatively, more than 50,000 people have been killed in what is called as a “movement” by separatists and “proxy war” by the Indian establishment. And the price paid does not lie buried in graveyards alone, it is visible in everyday life. The Valley has struggled hard in these two decades to regain the tag of a “safe tourist destination” and gain some kind of confidence in self. Despite separatists’ claim that it was an indigenous struggle of the Kashmiris for the liberation of their motherland from “Indian occupation”, the fact that all “over-ground” cheerleaders of the secessionist movement and those wielding guns understand is that Pakistan has played a massive role in creating the period of violence and bloodshed in the Valley. Pakistan had found in the Kashmiri youth — disillusioned by the rigged Assembly elections of 1987 — willing partners to work for its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a “State within the State in Pakistan”. Pakistan’s own doing
Today disenchantment has set in among common Kashmiris — barring, of course, a group of diehard Pakistan loyalists with pockets of influence in Kulgam in south Kashmir and Sopore in north Kashmir — because of what they have seen over the years.
This phenomenon in a Kashmir — which in the 1960s reverberated with slogans like “Hum kaya chayate, Pakistan, hamara leader Ayub Khan” (We want Pakistan, and our leader is Ayub Khan) — is not the result of any of Indian psychological war, nor the Army’s Sadbhavana (goodwill) operations. It is Pakistan itself that has caused it. Pakistan had embarked on a new strategy in the 1980s. It replaced the word Pakistan with “azadi”, or freedom. “This was done because our handlers in Pakistan felt that it had a wider appeal in the Valley,” Javed Ahmad Mir, one of the four founders of militancy in Kashmir, had told an interviewer. Secondly, the international community would not blame Pakistan directly for the turmoil Kashmir would experience with the onset of the armed war against India, which India calls a “proxy war”. In the early 1990s, the campaign cost Pakistan Rs 10 crore a year, which went up to Rs 50 crore by 2000, and is today estimated at Rs 100 crore — peanuts. Kashmiris started realising the fact that Pakistan was turning the Valley into a battleground without directly stepping into it. Pakistan’s Kargil debacle strengthened that view. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)-based Hizb-ul-Mujahadeen chief Syed Salaha-ud-Din had slammed Pakistan for withdrawing troops from the trans-Himalayan heights in 1999. It was one of the reasons that in July 2000, the Hizb opted for a unilateral ceasefire and proffered dialogue with the Indian government. However, the pressure from the ISI on Salaha-ud-Din made him take a U-turn, and the ceasefire was buried. Dedication suspect
The disenchantment with Pakistan has two reasons — spoken and unspoken. One is the feeling that Pakistan pursues its own interests, for which it can dump its Kashmir cause. They are conscious of the fact of how Islamabad and its leadership ditched the Taliban in 2001. The other reason is Pakistan never intervenes directly, and when it did during Kargil War in 1999, it was for its own strategic interests of cutting the supply routes to the Siachen glacier, where India is in an advantageous position strategically. A major shift in the thought process of Kashmiri militants and people alike was the way Pakistan turned its back on the Taliban in the face of American threats, and the famous quote of the then US President, “Either you are with us, or terrorists”. The Taliban, the well-nurtured child of Pakistan’s ISI, was dropped like a hot potato, and Pakistan sided with America in assault on Taliban and Al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan and Pakistani areas on its borders with Afghanistan. This triggered a feeling in Kashmir — first in whispers, which later turned louder — that if Pakistan can do this to Taliban, it can do anything with Kashmir too, even abandon it. The fears turned out to be true when Pakistan gave up its claim on Kashmir and went for a four-point formula of then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in December 2006 — irrelevant borders, demilitarisation on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), self-governance, and an overarching apex body to look after the affairs of the state on both sides of the divided Jammu and Kashmir. Voice of leaders
For common Kashmiris, when Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a devoted leader pleading the cause of Pakistan in Kashmir, denounces Pakistan and warns it against shifting its stance, or condemns what is happening within Pakistan — killings and massacres and the denunciation of Taliban, Pakistan Taliban for killing their fellow countrymen, it wakes them to the grim reality in Pakistan. “We don’t want a Pakistan-like situation here,” said Parvez Ahmad, a resident of down town Fateh Kadal in Srinagar. He is a driver and wants to earn a decent living. “I have to feed my family, I will not go and pick up a gun to kill people.” Seeing the gruesome images from Pakistan on Pakistani TV channels — which were part of their own lives for almost two decades — Kashmiris flinch at the thought of ever joining Pakistan or ever becoming something like Pakistan. The situation in Pakistan, where sectarian attacks, bombings of the air and naval bases and the recurring gory face of terrorism in the market places, school buses and the mosques, has made the Kashmiris have second thoughts about Pakistan itself.
Turning points
Oct-Nov 1993: Hazratbal crisis May 1995: Burning of Charar-e-Sharif shrine 1999: Kargil conflict 2002: Assembly elections 2011-12: Massive arrival of tourists |
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Sushma, who has proved her mettle in political statecraft, has refused to be drawn in by the huge compliment Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray paid her, calling her the “only person who is intelligent, brilliant in the BJP… and would be a great choice for the post of Prime Minister”. 