NATIONAL POLITICS

Rajmohan Gandhi on the Dying Congress

In the statement announcing his resignation from the Congress chair, Mr. Rao said: "During the period I was in positions of power, including that of Prime Minister, I have not done anything violative of law nor have I done anything which might bring discredit to my party or my government".

Alleged violations of law by Mr. Rao are now the business of courts and investigative agencies, but I am interested in his view that he had done nothing to hurt the credit of the Congress or of the Government over which he presided. Whose reputation was enhanced, the Congress's, the Government's or his own, when one after another Mr. Rao's ministerial colleagues were exposed in scandals and had to quite office in disgrace?

If Prime Ministerial responsibility has any meaning, then the Prime Minister is surely accountable for the misdemeanors of colleagues chosen and supervised by him. This accountability need not call for a Prime Minister's resignation whenever a Minister is guilty of misconduct. For a succession of Ministerial misdemeanors, the Prime Minister, who was also the Congress president, has to take the blame.

If Congress corruption was effectively communicated, so was the party's failure to speak up and stand up for what it believed in. Alternatively appeasing Muslim and Hindu communalism, and forward and backward casteism, the Congress betrayed its soul.

The fear of losing a vote bank proved stronger than any fear of crucifying its convictions.

"Settle through negotiations or we will have the dispute settled through the courts." Instead of taking such a line towards the Ayodhya disputants, the Congress leadership resorted to double-speak and alternate appeasement. Thereby it brought about its own decline and a rise in communal feeling.

It was better to lose an election and retain self- respect than to betray decades of history. That Indians are one as all humanity is was the idea that the Congress had fought for since its birth in 1885. The Congress fight did not prevent Partition but it powerfully contributed to integrating India emotionally.

By yielding to the fear and lure of communal - and caste winds, the Congress has undermined the unity of a nation it had once helped build, without reaping any political gains. Fear and greed proved bad guides.

Cash for power and power for cash became the Congress fever. Under its grip Congress leaders lost contact with the ordinary citizen's life and chores.

An excess of comfort and unpunished rule-bending produced a sense of a divine right to rule, and a refusal to introspect or to hear criticism. Finally, prolonged. profligacy seems to have consumed almost all the fruits of the tapasya of forefathers.

But the Congress will not easily die. The tapasya of the founders and forefathers as formidable, and over the decades the Congress penetrated every corner of India. Even today between a fourth and a third of the Indian people seem willing to vote for the Congress.

But death is not impossible, and the decline is pronounced. Only in two ways can the decline be arrested. If a senior Congress leader finds the courage to be really honest about his transgressions and to face the consequences, he would become the first mason of a new Congress structure. Even power and position might seek him out after a while. Provided his repentance is genuine, he would be more attractive than the numerous leaders protesting their innocence.

The other way would be for any unblemished Congresspersons to wage a resolute fight against corruption and for a uniting national agenda - not a fight for their own positions.

Since there are not many signs of movement along either route, the Congress' decline seems likely to continue.

 (Source: The Hindu, 14 October,1996)

M.D. Nalapat on the Future of the Congress

In giving credit for Narasimha Rao's resignation to the court cases against him, political analysts have ignored another factor: the erosion of authority of the AICC president within his own party. In the past few days, Rao has had to jettison the Punjab Pradesh Congress president - a loyalist of his to appease his dissidents within the Congress Working Committee. He has had to watch mutely while Mamta Banerjee, Priyaranjan Das Munshi and Subrata Mukherjee set up a parallel PCC. Two days ago, an entire state government slipped out of Congress control, when Gegong Apang walked out of the party in protest against the appointment of a PCC chief.

It appears that the Congress party is hurtling towards extinction. Bits and pieces are breaking away, sometimes to other parties (the Ajit Singh case), sometimes as separate groups (Arunachal). The writ of the AICC now stops at the gates of the party headquarters. The party has ceased to exist as a coherent entity. It has become an ever-dividing mass of small fiefdoms, in which its members fight each other rather than other political formations. Within a year, given the present rot, the party is likely to dissolve into a hail of splinters.

As Indira Gandhi demonstrated in 1977-78 and LK. Advani is doing so today, a politician under indictment from the courts can hold on to office, provided the rank and file or the public back him. It is only when a politician's credibility with his constituents has collapsed function, as it has done in the case of Rao does an adverse court verdict destroy his ability to function, as it has done in the case of Rao.

While Rao has become the symbol of the disease that is killing the 111-year-old party, he was only the latest of three leaders who presided over its fall. The process of replacing grassroots leaders with sycophants began with Indira Gandhi after the 1973 Congress Working Committee elections when Vayalar Ravi and Chandra Shekhar got elected despite her disapproval. Thereafter, reappearance under Narasimha Rao in 1991, but was put internal democracy was stifled. It made a brief on hold by him a year later, when arch-rivals Sharad Pawar and Arjun Singh got elected to the CWC.

Since the 1970s, the AICC president has in effect preserved the privileges of a small clique of unelected officials that constitute the party secretariat. These were chosen on grounds of personal loyalty, and catch attempted to use the office to build up a political empire. Only sycophants of the AICC leadership were allowed to hold positions, irrespective of their lack of integrity or popularity.

Rao had an opportunity to change that. He declined. Instead, he continued not just the style but even the personnel of the earlier regime. Not surprisingly, the base of the party continued to shrink. The United Front can hope to pick up most of the pieces once the Congress collapses.

(Source: The Times of India, 23 September, 1996)

Narasimha Rao's Interview with Kuldip Nayar

The weakening of the Congress had led to the mushrooming of political parties. These were of various colors. But he was not so much worried about them as about the Bharatiya Janata Party, "a non-secular party in a secular country with a secular Constitution".

"The BJP wants to polarize India, 85% of the people on the one side and 15% on the other. This polarization is going to be disastrous for the country. If you take Ram as your weapon, I cannot fight Ram although I can fight you. I refuse to believe that Ram belongs to you. You are trying to monopolize Ram." "I cannot understand why an appeal in the name of religion was allowed when it went against the grain of the Constitution. It was an unequal fight. Non-secular matters should not be brought into the democratic process of secular India. Elections in a secular democracy should allow only secular issues, no other issues, particularly no non-secular issues."

"Much is being said about Hindutva, Hinduism, Indianness etc. The Supreme Court also has given a kind of pronouncement. It appears that according to many BJP friends, Hinduism is equal to Indianness. Then, is the Indian Evidence Act equal to the Hindu Evidence Act?"

The worst period in the country was the 13-day rule of the BJP. Even before getting a vote of confidence, they went about doing things which even a legitimate government would hesitate to do. Their Law Minister wanted to start all types of inquiries and made no secret of his intentions against whom he was moving.

"My information is that the party has taken copies of various files and documents before it left office," Narasimha Rao alleged. He did not elaborate. But it seemed that he had some solid proof. Where did things go wrong? He paused for a while and said: "The demolition of the Babari Masjid". I tried for a consensus for two to three years. The parting of ways came on 6 December, 1992. That day the consensus was broken".

"I am not to blame. If one of the parties go with a non-secular, religious programme saying that they are going to build this or that, the results cannot but be disastrous. There are communities which may be having a lot of difficulties, constraints and conflicts in the religious affairs but election is not the way out for resolving them".

(Source: The Mainstream, 7 September, 1996)         

Mani Shankar Aiyar on Secularism

It is something of a mystery that secularism held unchallenged primacy when the majority community was most threatened and is under most challenge when the majority community is most secure. Secularism as a canon of statecraft was fashioned in the white heat of Partition and all the terrible consequences of Partition for the co-religionists in West and East Pakistan of the majority community of India.

Indeed, the proximate cause of the foundation of the Jan Sangh by Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookherjee in 1951 was the maltreatment of the Hindu minority in East Pakistan even four years after Partition was a settled fact. Yet, what almost all Indians wanted was that India should rise above such inhumanity. Instead of avenging itself on the Indian minority, the nation as a whole moved to protect them. The party of vengeance, the Jan Sangh, got but two seats in the Lok Sabha in the elections of 1952. Today, in their reincarnation as the BJP, they are the biggest single party in the House.

Why has this happened? In sociological terms, I suggest the reason is that 50 years after freedom, the parameters of the argument have shifted from issues of citizenship, identity and security to the question of a common charter of human rights for all Indians. Contradictions have emerged between the "liberal" position and the "secular" position. These contradictions cannot be brushed aside or left to simmer. Reconciling the two is feasible - but has not really been attempted. The result is that the communal forces have succeeded in camouflaging their essential communalism in the garb of human rights activism.

They have masked their original questions about the citizenship, identity and security of the minorities into questions of human rights. While secularists must continue unmasking the communalists and struggling for the preservation of the half-century old consensus on citizenship, identity and security, this must be accompanied by an earnest endeavor to reconcile identity, culture and freedom of worship with imperatives that are commonly accepted as uninfringeable human rights. it is not a new definition of secularism that is called for, but a new agenda for secular activism.

(Source: The Sunday, 18-24 August, 1996)

Lakshmi Kantamma on Narasimha Rao

Narasimha Rao is a completely dependent man. He is like a creeper. He cannot stand on his own nor can he take his own decisions. I do not know what all could have influenced him when he was the P.M. but it is obviously his family had tremendous influence over him.

Narasimha Rao is a genius among intellectuals. But his intelligence is perverted, and perverted intelligence is the most dangerous. He did not learn the fact that intelligence is a two-edged weapon and that it can cut him too. He is also the most ungrateful person and he has no political morals. He has no sense of gratitde. He has been ungrateful to all those who helped him. I am still trying to understand him. He has no sense of shame. Narasimha Rao is like a cat who shuts her eyes and drinks milk, thinking nobody is watching.

He is clinging to his position and chair because he suffers from an inferiority complex, he is fearful and insecure, lacks courage and inner strength. He is completely corrupt.