Ajit Roy
No real prospect of displacing the Hindu
fundamentalists from power in India
Kolkata 27 May 2003
Except
for the ambiguous promise of unfreezing the India-Pakistan cold war relations,
the political scene in India today does not really encourage an optimistic
view of the health and prospects of the Indian democracy. One sentence
in the prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speech in a public
meeting at Srinagar, the beleagured capital of the Jammu & Kashmir
State, on April 18, has drastically changed the bilateral communications.
By proposing a reopening of talks with Pakistan without the usual precondition about the cross-border terrorism, Vajpayee has initiated a process which is chugging ahead under its own steam, small setbacks and occasional retreats from stated positions notwithstanding. Pakistan promptly followed by inviting Vajpayee to Islamabad.
Concrete steps like refilling of the envoy’s post in both Islamabad and New Delhi, reopening of the snapped air, rail and road links, and exploration of trade and cultural exchanges are being visualized. An unofficial Pakistani peace delegation, already landed in this country, is steadily winning the hearts and minds of the people in New Delhi and some other State capitals it has visited. Occasional bouncers from both sides strike some discordant notes now and then, to be followed by renewed bids for harmonious overtures once again. Indeed, there is an unmistakable revival of a climate of hope for a good neighbourly relations in both the countries after the dismal failure of the Agra summit two years ago.
Realization of the deadend reached
Commentators who see behind this new turn the armtwisting, however gently, by George W Bush and his emissaries, may not be entirely wrong. Though there has been a more enduring stimulus at work at the same time in both the countries: the realization of the deadend reached after a ten month-long expensive and dangerous confrontation of million-strong armed forces across the socalled Line of Control. Resort to nuclear war excluded, there is no alternative to de-escalation through diplomatic give and take.
A slow realization of this reality is the real motive power of this new round of diplomatic initiative, that is, after Vajpayee’s Lahore visit and the aborted Agra summit. The RSS-BJP core of the power bloc in New Delhi and the Military-Islamist complex at Islamabad are both so hopelessly dependent upon the continuation and intensification of the bitter Indo-Pak faceoff for survival, that they cannot easily reconcile themselves with a closing of this hostile chapter. This lies at the crux of this subcontinent’s politics today!
There is unfortunately no real prospect of displacing the hindu fundamentalists from the core of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ruling in New Delhi. Not that the present regime has any claims to success in governance. Except for the occasional display of the benign countenance of prime minister Vajpayee, that is, as long as he retains the statesmanlike mask to hide the hardened features of a lifelong RSS activist, the Union government’s record is heavy on the deficit side with inefficiency and corruption, on top of its condonation of the Gujarat pogrom.
BJP has managed to rope in diverse political forces
The BJP-led government’s real source of strength lies in its skill in managing its allies inside the NDA and outside, coupled with the lackluster functioning of its principal national opposition, the Congress (I). The BJP has managed to rope in and cling to the erstwhile Socialists on the one hand and on the other its polar opposite in the social-cultural arena, the sworn enemies of its Manuvadi anchorage, Kansiram-Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), with a motley of regional parties in between. The Congress (I), on the other hand, has hardly any ally anywhere, except for its tenuous linkage with Laloo Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar and the Nationalist Congress led by Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, which is more a liability than an asset considered from Sonia Gandhi’s personal leadership angle.
The Congress (I) may do better than the BJP in the coming round of polls
in four States at year-end, as it had done in the polls in Himachal Pradesh,
Jammu & Kashmir, and Meghalaya last year. But this cannot be regarded
as an earnest of the Lok Sabha general elections in 2004, the Congress
(I), as mentioned earlier, is practically without any significant ally
in any part of India.
As for itself, the Congress (I) has no impressive presence today in five
major States of India, viz., UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and
Tamilnadu. Moreover, though still a major force among the minorities,
Dalits and Adivasis, it is facing serious challenges among these segments
from the Right, Left and the middle. Hence, the Congress (I)’s hope
of emerging with a plurality of its own in the next Lok Sabha is far from
realistic. That this leaves the field open to the BJP to manoeuvre a working
plurality after the next general elections through its very flexible and
skillful alliance tactics is not fully realized by the secular democratic
opposition forces, including the major Left formations.
BJP/NDA does not shine from any reflected glory
True, the BJP/NDA does not shine from any reflected glory in the company
it keeps. The AIADMK in Tamilnadu and BSP in UP which rank high in the
BJP’s design for the Lok Sabha elections in 2004 have gained a lot
notoriety for using against their political opponents the powers of detention
given by the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). A telling indictment
of the AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa came from the outspoken
Chief Election Commissioner who called her actions shameless and not in
tune with “civilized democracy wherein we deal with politicians
of some repute”.
After Mulayam Singh created a great row with allegations
of Mayawati’s corruption, she retaliated by registering over 200
criminal cases against Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh,
the two leaders of the Samajbadi Party, the main opposition party in the
State. The two Singhs have so far escaped arrests, thanks to a four week
stay order granted by the State High Court, but thousands of their supporters
have been arrested for organising militant protests. Even the president
of the State BJP, Mayawati’s coalition partner, decried this as
her “politics of personal vendetta”!
After a Supreme Court judge had remarked in course of a hearing that
“So many State governments have misused POTA and the Centre is doing
nothing about it”, the Union Home ministry has appointed a panel
headed by a retired High Court judge to review POTA’s working.
The Congress (I), and for that matter the Opposition as a whole, have
been unable to project any major issues, cases of scams and scandals apart
(which, however, are aplenty), to put the ruling alliance in the dock.
No much difference on the Iraq issue
In basic economic and foreign policy spheres, there is not much to distinguish
them from one another. This was strikingly evident when on the issue of
the Iraq war, the great debate in Parliament hinged upon the choice of
a word and settled for `deplore’ in preference to `condemn’!
Although there are lots of inner-party parleys and reshuffling of the
same old pack of the tired old leaders, there is no evidence of hammering
out any clear and firm political guidelines. Witness, how the two poll-bound
neighbouring States, ruled by the Congress (I), opt for conflicting tactical
lines. While Rajasthan plumps for tough action against hindu fundamentalist
provocation by arresting the notorious International Secretary of the
Viswa Hindu Parishad, Pravin Togadia, the neighbouring
Madhya Pradesh opts for ultra soft hindutva line by campaigning for a
ban on cow slaughter.
Dimming of the Left Front Government’s image
Perhaps a more serious setback for the prospects of democracy in the
country is the considerable dimming of the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government’s
image in West Bengal. Its commitment to secularism is beyond question.
But its democratic and socialistic credentials, however, have come to
be more and more questioned. The police high-handedness in general and
more particularly towards the more-Left political forces and the marginalized
sections has come under considerable criticism from judiciary and human
rights institutions.
Offences against women by antisocial elements, often enjoying the CPI(M)
and the administration’s patronage, have become a frequent occurrence
in the State which was relatively free from such offences.
The recent three tier Panchayati Raj (local self-government) polls which
have given the CPI(M) a very sweeping victory have exposed very serious
violations of democratic norms and witnessed orgies of violence.
Though more than one half of the 40 or 42 deaths in election violence
were from the CPI(M) ranks, even the CPI(M) chief minister and two Left
Front parties held the CPI(M) responsible for many of the aggressive incidents.
The tragedy is that by all counts, the CPI(M) would have won hands down
without resort to the scale of violence it resorted to.
Same social-political formations dominate the parties
This is not to deny that the Trinamul Congress, led by Mamata Banerji,
in alliance with the local BJP, represented a grave threat to the evolution
of the democratic polity in West Bengal and had to be checkmated. But
how?
Some serious social scientists argue that a part of the CPI(M)’s
rural base does not differ from the aggressive Trinamul elements in social
origins. The electoral clashes took the violent form they did, because
they represented a civil war of sorts in some areas between the same social-political
formations, headed by relatively affluent farmers who have become rich
and powerful by handling huge public resources pumped through the Panchayati
Raj Institutions.
AJIT ROY
Monsun 2/03 (Webb-bilaga
till SYDASIEN)
Sidan skapad 24 juni, 2003