Dialectical wisdom

Indo-Pak engagement has a new idiom, and Laloo Prasad Yadav is its star exponent. Bihari and Bihar-spun wisdom are animating bustling bazaar...

Indo-Pak engagement has a new idiom, and Laloo Prasad Yadav is its star exponent. Bihari and Bihar-spun wisdom are animating bustling bazaars and solemn conferences in Islamabad. When the former chief minister pleaded that the Supreme Court release his passport and allow him to trek across the border to participate in a track two jamboree, it had appeared that he was clutching at any straw to break free from restrictions placed on account of the fodder scam. Little did any of us realise that, in fact, he was on his way to free Indo-Pak interaction from the diplomat8217;s jargon and the peacenik8217;s doggerel. The moment he set off, with a crisp white kurta and spiffy black cap, it was clear that the 30-odd accompanying parliamentarians would be framed out of the show. As Mani Shankar Aiyar admitted a day later, 8220;I feel like a starlet in a Laloo road show.8221;

Laloo has always been a consummate performer. He has an instinct for the apt quip, the optimum mix of earthy humour and cosmopolitan attitude, of irreverence and sociopolitical protest. Give him a stage, and he8217;ll come up with a winning act. His constituents have seen it, his fellow legislators in Parliament have conceded it. His abundant critics long ago confirmed his membership of a select club of canny orators. Yet, who would have realised that legions of fans in Pakistan had also been tracking Lalooisms all these years. Who would have thought that, through bursts of intense Indo-Pak hostility, he had been adopted as a role model in Pakistan. Not for us the elitist ways of an Oxbridge politician, say Pakistani observers, give us a son of the soil like him. Not for us feudal pretenders to power, they shrug as they crowd around Laloo, give us true democracy, a system that throws up a people8217;s representative like him. Hush the interventions of professional peaceniks, they plead, let this Bihari breathe life into Indo-Pak dialogue.

So is Laloo8217;s future calling out to him? Is this going to be a seasonal fling? Or will he remain a mascot for democracy and orchestrator of bilateral overtures? On current form, the former chief minister appears more than able; but will professional arbiters of Indo-Pak ties allow him space? They may argue that his theatrics lead to little substantive progress. But then again, his dialectical contributions could demolish hardened postures.