The usual sound and fury mark Day 1 of Ayodhya debate

If the Opposition talked of the impropriety of the three ministers continuing in office, the Congress had to defend its own role in opening the locks of the temple in Ayodhya and in allowing the shilanyas to be performed.

And this was seized upon by the treasury benches to turn the tables on the Congress.

The BJP’s allies chose to keep their speeches for tomorrow while Mulayam and the BSP’s Mayawati who had nothing to lose and everything to gain targeted both the government and the Congress. One exception was Vaiko of the MDMK who invoked the Emergency in his attempt to embarrass the Congress. ‘‘You talk of Hitler but what happened during the Emergency?’’

As expected, the initiator of the debate, S Jaipal Reddy of the Congress, tore the government apart, making Home Minister L K Advani and Prime Minister A B Vajpayee the focus of a devastating attack peppered with smart one-liners and phrases. But in the end, it looked as if he overdid his bit with much of his speech going over the heads of even his own partymen.

Reddy did not have it easy what with the BJP shouting brigade constantly heckling him but he managed to cause enough embarrassment to Vajpayee who sat patiently for a good part of the debate. His concentration was on unmasking the real Vajpayee and proving that he was not the liberal everyone thought he was.

‘‘The Prime Minister has now completed his pilgrim’s progress from hypocrisy to theocracy,’’ he remarked. And about his statement linking the temple construction with national sentiment, Reddy was at his acerbic best. ‘‘This was not a slip of the tongue, not even a Freudian slip, it was a slip of the mask,’’ he said.

The BJP fielded Law Minister Arun Jaitley as its first defender. The first thing he did was to get back at Reddy, a recent convert to Congressism, which left him squirming. ‘‘When I read your speech of 1992 (when Reddy was a Janata Dal member) in the Rajya Sabha and heard your speech of today, I knew some men have an infinite capacity to reinvent themselves,’’ he quipped.

Just as Reddy’s speech was high on form and not really so on substance, so was Jaitley’s defence. He made a laboured attempt to draw a distinction between the involvement of a person in a political agitation and someone chargesheeted in a criminal case. In the case of Minister of State for Defence Harin Pathak, the resignation was on a point of principle. ‘‘His name was mentioned in a murder case and he didn’t want to embarrass the government. He felt morally bound to step down,’’ he said.

Veteran Marxist Somnath Chatterjee and P R Dasmunshi of the Congress took off from where Reddy had left and hit out at Vajpayee for interfering in the due process of the law. ‘‘You are exonerating the ministers…Is it not interference, Mr Prime Minister?’’ Chatterjee said.

Vajpayee, he said, had surrendered to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. ‘‘The only way to remain in power was to rouse the passions of the people and divide the country,’’ he remarked.

Jaipal Reddy unplugged
* The PM has completed the pilgrim’s progress from hypocrisy to theocracy. He has mounted the chauvinist Hindu tiger, I’m afraid he will end up inside the tiger. This (his statement) was not a slip of tongue, not even a Freudian slip, it was a slip of the mask:

* Lord Ram permeates the entire Universe, but L K Advani wants to pin him down to 2.78 acre of land in Ayodhya.

* When I gave the notice (for censure motion against Advani, Joshi and Uma) I had bargained for a drizzle, I got a downpour and now now I have ended with a deluge. I expected to hit big fish but hit upon the biggest whale: Prime Minister Vajpayee himself.

* Uma Bharti is a restless soul who keeps transmigrating from ministry to monastery and back to the ministry…Murli Mahonar Joshi confuses his history with mythology, philosophy with geology and astronomy with astrology…Advani has wrapped medieval ideas in modern techniques.