.. "Cooperative federalism" ... was at all times a dangerous doctrine, for it looked on India not as a nation but as a commonwealth of states. The sum total of each state's interests was held to represent the national interest. Jayalalitha has shown us all that the Centre exists to conciliate rival state demands, not pander to them.

... Jayalalitha will still compel Prime Minister Vajpayee to answer the question: Is this one nation or a congeries of states? Is Tamil Nadu home to Tamilians – or to Indians who are Tamilians? The same applies to every other state of the Union. Which and what of your narrow state interests do you have to sacrifice for the privilege and advantage of belonging to that larger entity called India?

It is ironic that the BJP is being obliged to wrestle  with this conundrum. Because hitherto it was on the "Hindi, Hindu, Hinduism" axis that the Sangh Parivar had evolved its vision of India. For it, in its ideological origins, there was no place for compromises with the infinite diversity of this country. The very word "composite" was, and remains, anathema to it. The quest for power is, however, a relentless taskmaster and the BJP is discovering that it is only by being less itself and more like everyone else that the mandate to rule can come within its grasp.

... Just as the BJP, on growing from a club of early morning PT fanatics into a parliamentary party, lost its famed discipline and found itself untrained to deal with dissent, so also - as it sheds its Aryavarta perspective – it may find itself unable to cope with Bharat, Bharatiyata and all which that entails.

... If Vajpayee fails to acknowledge that Jayalalitha is the state, she is going to make him eat cake. Rao survived because he was not dependent on her. Vajpayee is pathetically so.

... And she will not forgive him if he does not give her the answer she seeks. And terrible will be her vengeance ...                                                    (Source: The India Today, March 30, 1998)