Imitation is flattery

It is true that secularism was incorporated in the preamble of the Constitution only during Indira Gandhi’s time but that does not mean that the concept was alien to the party. In fact, it was the cornerstone of the Congress ideology before and for quite some time after Independence. It is not that there was no opposition to it within the organisation. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee is one of the few prominent Congressmen who parted company with the party on this issue. There were others like P.D. Tandon and Dwaraka Prasad Mishra, to name just two, who subscribed to such views but remained within the Congress. The humiliating defeat Tandon inflicted on Acharya Kriplani with the support of Sardar Patel in the Congress presidential contest in 1950 showed the clout the Hindu traditionalists enjoyed.

How-ever, it was the towering presence of Nehru that kept them on the leash.The dismissal of the EMS Ministry in Kerala in 1959 at the instance of party president Indira Gandhi marked aturning point and for the first time questions were raised about the Congress’ democratic commitment. For the tiny state, it gave a foretaste of the Emergency. As years rolled by and the party was taken over by sycophantic elements, democracy became a plaything in the hands of the High Command, which appointed chief ministers only to remove them at its own sweet will. Much the same has happened to secularism.

There is nothing to suggest that the people are disenchanted with secularism. Whether it was on Shah Bano or opening the locked gates of Babri Masjid or facilitating the shilanyas of the Ram temple at Ayodhya or launching the Congress election campaign from Ram’s birthplace or protecting those accused of heinous acts against the Sikh community in 1984, the Congress did not show any compunction in paying scant regard for secularism. This alienated the minorities even as the Congress allowed parties like the BSP and the BJP to poach on its traditional Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe vote banks. Themiddle classes were disappointed because of the readiness the Congress showed in adopting means that allowed imposing Jawahar Bhavans to come up in the Capital and the Sukh Rams to keep crores of rupees in their puja rooms.

So it is not because people have become weary of secularism that the Congress’ vote share has been falling drastically. In any case, not even in one general election did the Congress win more than 50 per cent votes. It would also be interesting to note that the BJP’s success has been because it adopted the Congress stances to a large extent. Socialism may be a dirty word for Gadgil but it still fires the imagination of a large section of the voters, a point proved by the fact that the BJP has not yet repudiated Gandhian socialism as one of its ideological mascots, though few know what the concoction actually means. Its success has primarily been because of its willingness to shed its ideological baggage and traditional positions.

If the BJP has grown from two seats in 1984 to 182 in1999, it is because it showed readiness to strike up alliances with parties belonging to an extremely broad spectrum of ideological positions. Rajiv Gandhi realised in the 1989 elections how incapable he was in countering the BJP’s communalism with his own brand of it. When the choice was between the real and the fake, it is no surprise that they chose the one with a better brand.

The voters cannot be blamed when they do not get a clear choice. Take the case of K.C. Pant and Rangarajan Kumaramangalam. The easiness with which they discarded the Congress to join the BJP tells a tale of its own. In Uttar Pradesh, Congressmen who were elected on the party ticket did not think twice before leaving the party to join hands with Kalyan Singh, the man who while promising that Babri Masjid would remain intact was planning its destruction. When a harmless Pentecostal preacher is waylaid and beaten up in Kerala, A.K. Antony uses the occasion to tell Christians to show restraint. But the same leader rushes to theSecretariat gate to sympathise with the Bharatiya Yuva Morcha workers who we-re accidentally injured in a Congress-SFI clash. As recently as last month, 11 Congress MLAs in Goa had no problem in toppling their own government to allow the BJP to come to power.

Thus when the voter goes to the pooling booth, does he have any guarantee that the Congressman whom he votes for will not turn BJP if it suited him after the elections? The perfect understanding the Congress has with the BJP-led government except on the question of naming Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors case strengthens the growing perception that the BJP and the Congress are two sides of the same coin. Gadgil does not realise that there is a large section of voters who would like the Congress to remain an alternative to the BJP with a clear-cut vision for the future. They would not like it to compromise its ideological position and look up to the BJP for inspiration.

In fact, the very success of the BJP is a tribute to the intrinsic merit of the sixbasic concepts of the Congress ideology that Gadgil has laboriously listed. The BJP looks up to Nagpur for directions but it at least goes through the charade of periodic elections for party posts unlike the Congress which is yet to complete elections in many state units, it may not be secular but it at least talks about equi-distance from religions, it may not believe in planned economy but it finds the Planning Commission quite useful, it may be keen to sign the CTBT and let a horde of multinationals come in but it keeps on shouting swadeshi, it may not believe in non-alignment but Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee never misses an opportunity to attend NAM and Commonwealth summits. Th-us when the BJP incorporates the salient points of the Congress ideology and enjoys power, Gadgil is keen to discard them. How ironic it is!