NATIONAL POLITICS

Shastri Ramachandaran on Thackeray-Deve Gowda Meeting

At a deeper, and more important, level the Thackeray-Gowda meeting indicates that in the ardour spawned by the amorality of coalition politics the terms of endearment are constantly changing. Each constituent is, even if not explicitly, distrustful of the others and even on the lookout for new partners and sources of support. Since the coalition is not held together by any ideology but the glue of office, this sticky pursuit need not exclude ideological foes. It is like a marriage condemned from the beginning as one which will turn sour requiring, therefore, the presence of hopefuls in the aisle.

Deve Gowda, despite seeming to be out of his depth in the treacherous political waters of Delhi appears to have grasped the benefits of charting his own course. His partners may speculate, protest, jeer or distance themselves from his actions but can eventually be humbled into submission. All that he has to do to accomplish this is tell them that he did not want this job; that he came with three bags from Karnataka; and that if they do not want hm he can pack those three pieces of baggage and return to Karnataka. This mantra has not failed so far.

Baffled Partners

The Thackeray-Gowda rendezvous has outraged and baffled UF partners but their own history of compromises has made cowards of them all. Gowda has yet to be openly confronted by any of the UF constituents for transgressing the 'secularist-communal' divide to chat with Thackeray. The CPI and the Congress have been the loudest, after Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav, invoicing their objections with the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) taking care to record their disapproval. V.P. Singh, in his own inimitable style, sought to contain the damage  to the image of the UF by flying down to Bombay to meet the widow of the Sena's alleged victim. But none of them has squarely denounced Gowda, and is unlikely to do so.

Gowda's advantage is that no immutable dividing lines between 'communal' and 'secular', 'democratic and 'fascist' have been drawn before. These lines are drawn during the course of action, dictated by political opportunism and incestuous possibilities of who can go with whom for what objective, unless such lines are firmly drawn by principles all obligations to 'secularism' will remain imagined and all duties to 'democracy' fake. None of the UF constituents or leaders can live down their past of association or collaboration with forces that would fit their definition of 'communal' and 'fascist".

The Congress party harbors in its ranks leaders who have not only made peace with the Shiv Sena but ever struck covert deals with it. Bachchan's association with Thackeray has never been a secret and neither Rajis Gandhi nor his widow let this fact sully their friendship with the Big B. His being embraced by the "first family of dynastic politics has never been considered an odious liability by Congressmen who are today berating Gowda for meeting Thackeray.

The CPI, which was virtually a Congress poodle during the authoritarian years of Indira Gandhi and gleefully joined in the repression of Jayaprakash Narayan's movement and the terror regime of the Emergency, betrays all the evangelical ardour of the new convert. This was the same CPI which had joined the Congress in mounting an "anti-fascist" conference to discredit the rising democratic tide against Indira Gandhi's absolutism. Laloo Yadav, who now coddles the CPI, was an activist in JP's movement. Today the 'anti- fascists' of yore have joined the very "fascist vermin" they scorned in the seventies.

Fearful at the BJP having come within striking distance of power, the DMK has been proclaiming that i does not believe in "political untouchability". This is an advance alibi in the event of the party having to keep on the right side of one that may come to rule at the Centre Despite the repression of its leaders and cadres after the dismissal of its ministry during the Emergency, the DMK embraced the Congress in 1980 and was willing to do so again in 1996. Instead, it settled for Congressmen, who thought they had left the parent party, had been inveterate foes of the DMK.

The TMC leaders who flaunt their secularist credentials as part of the UF coalition were not averse to keeping their lines open to the BJP. And P Chidambaram's admiration for Rajiv Gandhi was never affected by the latter's friendship with Bachchan Chidambaram... felt 'suffocated' in the Congress of Narasimha Rao but not in the party's authoritarian structure commanded by Indira Gandhi or her two sons N. Chandrababu Naidu's TDP has ceaselessly accused the Congress of being "undemocratic" and "communal". Bu Naidu finds himself in a bind over the Alamatti dam he takes refuge in the company of Narasimha Rao.

Even an omnibus entity like the UF care accommodate only one person in the driver's seat. There cannot be a driver and a committee assigned to the task of steering.

(Source: The Times of India, 11 September, 1996)