Vajpayee clears the way

The scene would have been much more wholesome had there been a competitive opposition at the national level. I am unable to induce any optimism on the Congress as a party of the future. It may have played its historic role in keeping one end bottled up, leaving the spaces wide upon for Vajpayee’s evolution as one of the best prime ministers the Congress never had.

Despite recent effort at simulating some movement at the top, the general image of the Congress is that of a limp, lifeless, intellectually defunct coterie content with their sausage cushions at CWC meetings. There is a Congress spread across the country but it is more in the nature of a residual leftover from a once widespread national habit.

The point is not Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. That issue is raised partly to keep her in play as a weak counterpoint. The real problem is the country has not seen her paces as an articulate, inspiring leader and organiser. That the party has not broken up is not because she provides some glue but because the leaders are petrified of being jobless. A strongly recommended sting operation would be to record what Sonia’s ‘‘loyalists’’ murmur to all behind her back and to have a screening of these clips at the next CWC.

I believe Sonia Gandhi is a handicap to the party today and will be more so in the future should she, by some miracle, emerge on top of some coalition. It is probably rank bad manners to say such things but sometimes harsh truths should not be held back. I doubt if Indian society is evolved to a point where it will accept a foreign, Christian prime minister. So far Dr Abdul Kalam has come across as the representative of a catholic, broadminded system. But the appearance of the two highest offices in minority hands will give such a handle to a hundred Togadias as to bring into disrepair the harmonious edifice

Vajpayee is building brick by brick, after that one unforgivable disaster of Gujarat.

The reason why these things are not said publicly is because it is generally recognised that Sonia’s elevation would entail such unspeakable national confusion that it will never come to pass. If this understanding has been internalised by every senior Congress leader, more is the puzzle why the lady still looms as the party’s supervising deity. Every few months we hear Priyanka is likely to be fielded and then it fades out as rumour.

While we await the Congress gameplan, the prime minister is embarked on a dual process: social and political harmonisation of the subcontinent and beyond (with China, for instance) and a churning of the minds. On the Indo-Pak track three processes are on: a dismantling of terrorist camps on the other side, contacts to set up the mechanism for the composite dialogue and more CBMs to add to an accelerated pace of general normalcy in the air.

An important point made by President Musharraf and Foreign Minister Kasuri at their press conferences in Islamabad on January 6 was the role of the media: the media’s support, they said, was imperative for the peace process to succeed. The official media in Pakistan has already taken its cue: the profile of Vajpayee telecast on PTV on January 5 was not just balanced but even adulatory. The Indian media has been generally positive. Indeed, even Panchjanya, the RSS organ, has once again picked up the thread it had left after Agra. Editor of Jang Mahmud Shaam has received a communication from the Panchjanya editor, Tarun Vijay, to revive the joint Panchjanya-Jang essay competition on Indo-Pak peace.

But there are mindsets, some in India, but on a more extensive scale in Pakistan, which constitute the biggest threat to the peace process. Powerful newspapers like Nawa-e-Waqt are still spewing venom out of synch with the popular goodwill this reporter witnessed when a parliamentary delegation visited Pakistan in August and during the SAARC summit.

Tension sometimes becomes a condition of normalcy, a state of being which somehow bestows a sense of parity, equality. Absence of tension, by the same token, comes across as a consequence of some capitulation. People of the subcontinent, Vajpayee told SAARC, had once fought colonialism together in the 1857 war of Independence. The spin Nawa-e-Waqt has given to this statement takes one’s breath away: ‘‘Vajpayee considers united action in the past as more important than the more recent partition’’! It said ‘‘Like the Congress, neither is Vajpayee willing to accept partition nor the two nation theory’’. What an allegation against a man who visited Minar e Pakistan to underscore India’s acceptance of Pakistani nationhood.

In another editorial, Nawa-e-Waqt quotes Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool chastising jehadi groups who stand in the way of a liberal polity. It lashes out at the governor (and Musharraf and Jamali): ‘‘Don’t fool yourselves that your entreaties have brought India to the negotiating table. It is the sacrifice of the jehadis that has forced India to the negotiating table’’. These are powerful interests living in the past. Civil society in Pakistan is increasingly isolating these lobbies.

The Vajpayee-Musharraf statesmanship must further circumscribe these already narrow constituencies by persuasion on the one hand and mobilising civil society on the other.