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Journalism of Courage
Just when Atal Behari Vajpayee was looking buoyant, senior General Secretary of the BJP, K.N. Govinda-charya, has thrown a pebble in the pond. And now Home Minister L.K. Advani and Spokesman M. Venkaiah Naidu have dived in to steady Vajpayee. But the ripples continue to multiply.
Since the pond has been disturbed in the middle of an election campaign, everyone in opposition to the BJP is not going to allow it to settle down. Ram Mandir, Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code have now been inextricably injected into the campaign. In other words, the BJP has introduced another string to its violin, whether Vajpayee likes it or not. When the party plays on the national stage with its National Democratic Alliance orchestra, this string will not be touched. But the BJP candidate in a given constituency can play the string provided the social composition of this constituency is attuned to this addition and responds positively to the saffron melody.
Vajpayee8217;s close advisers are of the view that Govindacharya walked into a Congress trap, that reporters were set up by the Congress to ask the simple question which no BJP leader can answer without annoying one group or the other. If your purpose is to embarrass the BJP, it is a good question; if your tactic is to let sleeping dogs lie, it is not a helpful query.
Let me give you an example to make my point. For years the West used Ayatollah Khomeini8217;sfatwa against Salman Rushdie to embarrass Teheran. Every Iranian leader since Hashemi Rafsanjani told you privately that Iran had no intention to carry out the fatwa, but since the fatwa had been issued by the late Imam Khomeini who had been accorded the status of Wali Faqih or the Intermediate Imam, no power in Iran could publicly repudiate the fatwa. If your intention was to embarrass Teheran and keep up the tension, ask any Iranian leader whether the fatwa had been withdrawn and he would either say no or hum and haw, exactly as Venkaiah Naidu did the other day when asked about Govindacharya8217;s statement.
Advani8217;s statement makes a lot sense. The days of one party rule are over, he said, and the BJP8217;s commitment to the three taboos is irrelevant since the party visualised a future only with coalitions. Embedded in this statement is the BJP8217;s new commitment to a federal India. This is a much more fundamental departure from the original Jana Sangh8217;s vision of a strong, centralised, Akhand Bharat, with Hindiand politicised Hinduism as the binding forces 8212; much more fundamental than the ritual retention of three items in its party resolutions.
Those in search of a left-of-centre or a liberal polity face a dilemma. The BJP was once a tight, very ideological pressure group which became a mass movement in the context of the Mandal-Mandir politics and is now settling down to becoming a quot;party of governancequot;. When Bill Richardson visited India in April 1998 as President Clinton8217;s special envoy, what left an imprint on him was his conversation with Advani. The Home Minister dwelt at length on the BJP8217;s roadmap towards quot;becoming a party of governancequot;. The dilemma for the liberals is this: should this tendency be encouraged or will this encouragement make the BJP unmanageably powerful?
Look, the liberals say, has not Govind-acharya spilt the beans? Remember, Vajpayee did not condemn the burning of the churches in Gujarat but asked for a national debate on conversions? Did he not insult Dilip Kumar by delayinggiving him that appointment instead of chastising Bal Thackeray?
My experience as a journalist during the Janata government from 1977 to 8217;80 and the past 18 months have given me some proximity to Vajpayee as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister. In fact I have travelled with him to Pakistan twice 8212; once when he was Foreign Minister and more recently on that bus to Lahore. I can say one thing with certainty: if Vajpayee is communal, then I have known many more communal Congressmen. But the Govindacharya statement places a question mark on my testimony.
The Govindacharya episode has resurrected an old question: will Vajpayee be in control in the event of the NDA being returned to power or will the quot;maskquot; be set aside at some stage?
This sort of fear, however, does not take into account the dynamics of political processes. You cannot go into electoral combat, share details of national security with coalition partners and remain unchanged. The evolution of coalition culture will impose upon the BJP changeswhich will make it an organically different entity from what it was at the outset. Likewise, its coalition partners will change. A similar churning process is proceeding on the other side of the political divide where the second and the third forces will criss-cross and in the heat of political reality will either weld or meet in parts.
