The thrust and parry of politics throws up its own little asides that can always be trusted to yield a snigger or two. But there is a political point that raises its head. For some reason, it is always more difficult for the Opposition to find the right language and response when it comes to both defending itself and making itself heard. Remember Sonia Gandhi’s clumsy attempt to counter BJP’s barbs in the heyday of the NDA dispensation, when she tried to cut Atal Bihari Vajpayee down to size in her indifferent Hindi by questioning the stability of his “manasik santulan” (mental balance)? The language was so out of character with normal political discourse that it was she herself, not Vajpayee, who bore the brunt of that verbal assault. For the BJP, being in the Opposition appears to be even more traumatic, given the fact that it had until the other day complete suzerainty over a shining India. So now when a rail mantri chooses to derail its “manasik santulan” by waving ancient copies of Time magazine detailing the Babri masjid demolition and the alleged role of its leaders in it, what do the BJP’s zealous spinmeisters do? Hose down that mischievous little fire with some liquid petroleum by distributing to a hungry media the full text of the Time articles, which included a story replete with damning references to the said leaders. This self-goal brings to mind a similar exercise by the RSS last month. In its anxiety to clear itself of the HRD minister’s charge of having been a party to the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, it ended up publicising a letter from the then home minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, written to Jawaharlal Nehru some 28 days after that assassination, which while exonerating the RSS went on to damn V.D. Savarkar. Patel had written: “It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that (hatched) the conspiracy and saw it through”. Uncomfortable words indeed at a time when the Opposition was gearing up to embarrass the Congress over its treatment of the Savarkar legacy. Moral of the story: it’s tricky being the Opposition in the era of an alert press and 24-hour television because you never know when that well-crafted boomerang you hurl at the object of your wrath comes right back at you.
