Kerala leaders pin hopes on Sonia magnet

So you wait for Him. He is there behind one of those closed doors, talking campaign with local netas. You wait for him amidst three Gandhi portraits (Indira Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and a garlanded Rajiv Gandhi), a water cooler and a television. There is a programmed disorder around you, and there is also a purple flash: leader’s daughter Padmaja has something to say tosome visitors. Suddenly you realise: this is an extended pre-campaign morning in a don’s den. The understatement is only in appearance.

Silence, and at last, you are with the all-white (footwear included), wide-smiling leader. His namaste threatens to be eternal. One more tea? Thank you. K. Karunakaran, the visiting Kingmaker of Indraprastha, is currently the confident candidate of Thiruvananthapuram. Provincial talks don’t interest him. This leader of designer intimacy, of don’t-quote-me provider of Delhi spices, is too national to be bothered about petty local stuff.

But the "leader" has this basic information: if there is good polling, the United Democratic Front will get 15 to 16 seats out of the 20; the CPI(M) is a divided party (a reference to the factional rise of V.S. Achuthanandan); the State Government is non-functional, and it is the (Marxist) party that rules the State. Inevitable. Had he been here, he would not have allowed this. "I would have finished them in three months". Ah, it happenswhen you are an elder leader of the Congress in Delhi.

And Kerala will vote for a stable, secular Delhi, says Karunakaran. Partly true. In Lok Sabha elections, Kerala forgets the immediate and reaches out to the distant. It even forgets leaders like Karunakaran, who, despite his self-portrait as a larger-than-Kerala leader, is very much a local big daddy for the Malayalis. Of course, they find those morning paper pictures of him with a Delhi backdrop quite impressive.

And he finds the arrival of Sonia Gandhi as Hope Regained. Why? Was it a case of Hope Abandoned with leaders like you? "The values, the values the Nehru-Gandhi family represents. A member from the family means hope." So, she will be the leader even after the elections? "No doubt". And she will be the prime minister if the Congress heads the next government? "No doubt". And no doubt about that too: "The Congress will not support any government from outside."

For Karunakaran, a permanent believer in India’s first parivar, Sonia Unbound marksan occasion of surrogate pride as well. Waving away the man with homeopathic tablets (for the cough), he whispers in joy : "I brought her into politics. Sonia!" He remembers: her loneliness, his kind words, his concerned invitation, his almost parental persuasion. Now she is there. "Hope, she is hope!"

You never had any hope of becoming the king? Tell us, the kingmaker. "Will they allow?" He remembers the refrain of those pre-Sonia days: What business has this Chief Minister in Delhi? And "they’ even created a rift between him and P.V. Narasimha Rao. So "they’ didn’t allow this senior leader to extend his leadership beyond Kerala.

Karunakaran: the leader of delusion. And with him there is the leader of moral relativism. Together, they, Karunakaran and A.K. Antony, embody the cultural plurality of the Congress in Kerala. Karunakaran is an old fox, a great survivor, ruthlessly leaderly and very much part of the horror chapters of the Congress history, specially the Emergency. A.K. Antony, a media-friendlymoralist, is famously austere and, as this correspondent realised, "psychologically evasive".

You reach the moral sanctuary of Antony immediately after your whispering communion with the leader. In the Opposition leader’s official residence, it is absolute normalcy: no leader-seeking Congressmen here, this leafy remoteness is another country, an austere country. The secretary straightaway leads you to Antony. And Antony has already read the day’s Indian Express editorial on Sonia Gandhi.

Antony and Sonia? The same Antony who once threw away the chief-ministership as a protest against the dynasty. Why is it that every Congress leader, including a very distinctive leader like Antony, is taking refuge in an adjective called Sonia? Poor Kerala, the leaders over here are too national to be trapped in geography. So much Sonia. Karunakaran’s "hope" is Antony’s "magnetic power". His explanation: "The Congress was really in bad shape; People were not accepting any other leader." Isn’t it a self-repudiation?"People are not accepting!"

Once Antony’s own morality didn’t accept the legacy of the first family. Here, he thinks, a self-explanation about his moral grammar is called for. "I’ll never lie. I don’t speak out all the truths either. Sometimes I have to remain silent." No bad conscience ? "Oh I just burst out". This moment is an occasion for burst-out or remaining silent? "Even my colleagues sometimes don’t understand me. Still I survive." So you journalist, are you trying to understand me? Fortunately, Antony doesn’t ask the question. Still, this much he reveals about his moral relativism: "My politics is not theoretical. It’s based on experience".

"Lots of mistakes in the past, I admit. There was something wrong with the system. There should be a purification process after the elections." And you, as a politician, were not part of the system? "There was a political failure too." He is for more transparency in the system. Let the war be over. He will start working towards "end of corruption throughsystem-cleansing". The war in Kerala — very national, remember — will be won by the UDF, though Antony won’t predict any specific number. "There will be a UDF lead despite the well-oiled election machinery of the LDF." Local factors don’t matter much, though Antony points out bad economics and galloping prices as contributing factors.

"The UDF is a front of social harmony." That is how Antony explains away the sectarian interests within the UDF. Karunakaran a while ago told you that it was E.M.S. Namboodiripad who started communalism in 1967. Perhaps, the former drawing master didn’t want to be reminded of the monstrous montage of his art: the politics of communal appeasement. Maybe it was theory for EMS. For Karunakaran, it was an industry. For Antony, it is profoundly banal: "There is nothing absolute in politics". Morality nowadays indulges in too many Freudian slips. And you are not professionally qualified enough to read Antony’s mind.

For Karunakaran, Lord Krishna of Guruvayoor gives "peace ofmind". He says, "I never seek him for political purposes". For Antony, the guide may be that framed photograph above him — of Gandhi. No other Gandhis are sighted on the walls of the Opposition leader’s house. Since Antony and Karunakaran are mutually accommodative today, the Congress is surprisingly united. "We have a perfect understanding," says Antony.

Perhaps he will burst out after the UDF lead on February 28. Hope, like Sonia, is magnetic. And less than moral.