Man in the muddle

Sharad Pawar is a discreet politician who believes in cooking his pies away from the harsh winds of public scrutiny. Therefore, if he came clean on the “three options” — siding with the Congress, siding with the Left, or siding with the NDA — he had been juggling with, it was because he had no option but to do so. On Thursday, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, with an admirable sense of timing, had revealed that there was a serious attempt to bring the Nationalist Congress Party on board the NDA alliance. After being outed so rudely, poor Pawar had no choice but to own up to the possibility of such a merger.

There is good reason why the NCP would like to proceed with discretion on this one. Ever since its inception this party has vouched for the core values of the Congress, minus Dynasty, and “secularism” was routinely invoked by its leaders as a fundamental value for the party. Indeed, on Thursday, NCP leader and Maharashtra home minister, R.R. Patil, had even dismissed all talk of allying with the BJP-Shiv Sena combine because his party was a “secular” one. But the prospect of power, it seems, has a way of saffronising the “secular” in wondrous ways. There is nothing new in this since the aura of power has allowed the BJP to successfully slough off its earlier “untouchable” status. Numerous “secular” formations, from Nitish Kumar’s Samata Party to Sharad Yadav’s Janata Dal (U) to indeed the DMK, have found secular comfort and cushy ministerial positions under the BJP-led NDA umbrella. In any case, the NCP has been more than willing to do business with the BJP, whether it was in forming a government in Goa, or in finding partners in West Bengal, although these contortions have not met with conspicuous political success thus far.

If the NCP decides to go with the NDA, there is no telling how its voters will adjust to the changed scenario. What, however, would be less difficult to forecast are the electric times that will most assuredly come its way in dealing with the Shiv Sena — because a tiger is a tiger, even if it is a fraternal one.