What next?

Perhaps Kunwar Natwar Singh learnt just a little too late in the day the politically expedient art of self-reinvention. So his BSP faccedil;ade too fell through. The party promptly labelled his actions mala fide, accused him of indiscipline and expelled him. Singh8217;s choice as external affairs minister by the UPA in 2004 had felt like an aberration, and for good reason. Here was old baggage when India had already changed flights. It wasn8217;t for nothing that America-friendly middle-class India had shuddered at this blast from the Cold War; at this embodiment of the licence raj, of Nehruvian self-containment, call it what you will. Singh personified all that refused to change about India.

But ever since Volcker got him, he has remade himself many times in the image of his self-interest. After the loss of his ministry and his suspension, he played the bean-spilling rebel and supped with political enemies and some allies, all of them undoubtedly happy to embarrass his party and themselves. He also took recourse to identity politics, recasting himself as a Jat leader and warning the Congress that further 8220;humiliation8221; would be perceived as an insult to his caste. He made himself an outcast who might yet get offers from multiple opportunists, some casteists, some not. Finally, he was course-corrected out of the picture.

Of course, both the Bahujan Samaj Party and the former external affairs minister knew what they were doing when he joined the party four months ago. Perhaps the man who thus came in from the cold got a bit impatient. So now the party has expelled him claiming that he had joined it with 8220;ulterior motives8221;. Those of us innocent enough to believe that he had indeed joined in good faith 8212; and that the BSP was not looking to acquire some of his intellectual airs 8212; will be, no doubt, shocked.