Tenuous ties

It is public knowledge that there are no permanent allies in politics. The truism, however, does not mean that the electorate must take in its stride the conflicting and confusing statements emanating from the Bharatiya Janata Party about its tie-up in Tamil Nadu. The BJP is not sparing itself blushes by its periodic exhibition of embarrassment over the pact with Jayalalitha8217;s All-India Anna DMK. The party seeking to enhance its national status by association with strictly regional allies has been faced with a special problem in Tamil Nadu. It has had to answer questions about the compatibility of its clean-government slogan with the corrupt image of the AIADMK and its charge-sheeted leader. And, the answers have been ambiguous. While the party8217;s earlier stance that it will abide by the court verdict on the charges was unexceptionable indeed, pronouncements on the issue attributed to Atal Behari Vajpayee have been unclear. His disavowal of the BJP8217;s intention to part with Jayalalitha, if found guilty, doesnot certainly add to its appeal as a cleaner alternative. More serious is the damage done by a senior party functionary with a flurry of formulations running counter to the BJP8217;s campaign. Govindacharya, who raised a hornet8217;s nest in the Hindutva camp by reportedly calling its prime ministerial candidate a quot;maskquot;, has not helped its cause either with his alleged description of the alliance as quot;an aberrationquot;.

The subsequent denial of the statement would have been more convincing, had it not been accompanied by a high-minded rationale advanced for the alliance, implying the unacceptability of the arrangement otherwise. The controversial party ideologue has claimed quot;social significancequot; of a far-reaching kind for the alliance. A similar claim was made, after all, for the BJP8217;s ill-fated and short-lived power-sharing pact with the Bahujan Samaj Party. The social contract did not prevail then over cynical politics, and cannot be taken more seriously by the common man now. A more credible argument is that suchalliances are the party8217;s answer to its opponents8217; attempts to make it a political quot;untouchablequot;. They can also be seen as signs of a change in the BJP8217;s perception of the Dalit and Dravidian camps as untouchable. The view, however, cannot find wide acceptance, given the unaltered outlook reflected in the party8217;s manifesto.

Candid confessions of Govindacharya8217;s kind, and contradictions following them, are not going to serve the purpose of the alliance for the party or its professed national objective. More pertinent and politically honest will be to project such pacts as an unavoidable prerequisite of stability at the Centre. This is an end whose desirability will not be denied by the poll-weary electorate. Creation of doubts over the alliances, and their durability, can hardly strengthen the party8217;s stability plank. The BJP has been at pains to point out that, while the United Front government represented a post-election alliance and could not endure as a result, it has forged pre-poll alliances in orderto form a viable coalition at the Centre. The case, far from a cast-iron one without an agreed programme among the allies, will be weakened considerably further by treating this and other alliances as tenuously temporary.