At least in Gujarat, many would have thought, given the passions Narendra Modi has stirred up, the Opposition would be anxious to get its act together. To mount a united challenge to Modi when elections come, to ensure that the BJP does not make it past the winning post by default. At least in Gujarat, it may have been safe to presume, there would be an urgency in the ‘secular camp’ to talk alliances. All indications so far, however, are that the Opposition is still incoherent, still riven in Gujarat. Till news last came in, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party has made overtures to the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party is sounding tantalisingly ambiguous about its famous opposition to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, but the Congress itself is non-committal about making the required gestures and the necessary concessions for forging a united front with smaller parties in the state.So what else is new? The Congress’ silence, its refusal to reach out and take the early initiative, especially in the matter of alliance-making, surely cannot surprise. It is of a piece with the party’s proclaimed resolve to go it alone at Pachmarhi. It is in consonance with the general hauteur that has come to be associated with the style and substance of Sonia Gandhi’s politics. Be it in Uttar Pradesh earlier, or in Gujarat now, India’s largest party of the Opposition has shown a distinct reluctance to negotiate, to accommodate and adjust — the sine qua non of coalitional arrangements. As surefootedly as the BJP has used alliances with smaller groups to pave its way to power, its main rival has hemmed and hawed and skirted the issue, when not rejecting the possibilities outright. It is admittedly a bit early yet, but it may well be that the strongest opposition to Modi will come from Keshubhai Patel and others like him within his own party, rather than from the Congress.There are other signs as well that the Congress may not exactly be Modi’s worst nightmare come true. By all accounts, the party’s campaign under Shankarsinh Vaghela borrows from that of his rival. There is the same pandering to ‘Hindu’ sentiment, a similar regressiveness. This unwillingness to align, this purveying of a softer, kinder Hindutva, is a larger portent.
