When will they learn?

I fail to understand how fresh polls will sort out India's problems. If a coalition government is associated with political instability, it...

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I fail to understand how fresh polls will sort out India’s problems. If a coalition government is associated with political instability, it is almost certain that no party will win a clear majority in the next Lok Sabha either. The BJP may gain a few seats and the Congress may lose some. Still it will be a hung Parliament.

But why should a coalition government be considered unstable anyway? It is more democratic than the dynastic rule the country has had for four decades. And now when Sonia Gandhi’s name sufficed to get the Congress to pull down the United Front government, the virtues of a coalition, which disperses authority, are all the more endearing. What gives space to small and marginal forces in the national process is something positive. The coalition is an expression of regional aspirations and it has functioned fairly well.India is at a political threshold. Several types of identities — religious, caste, language and regional — are vying for a place in the sun. The confrontation among them is far from resolved but has, in fact, got aggravated because earnings and investments have not kept pace with demands. Nor has there been the supremacy of the rule of law, which could have stalled tragedies like the killing of 61 Dalits at Lakshmanpur-Bathe in Bihar and communal rioting in Coimbatore. Caste and communal differences are still raw. And tyrants, who are close to the throne, take advantage of this.Four governments in two years bring no credit to any country. But until political parties amend their agendas, any common ground will prove elusive. Parties remain parochial. They still act as if their only raison d’etre is to grab power. Tomorrow when they go in the field to campaign they cater to narrow, chauvinistic tendencies, which tear the flimsy fabric of nationhood still further. The country needs to evolve a national perspective but parties are too politicised to realise this. Once India is damaged beyond repair no party will be able to put things together.

The BJP, the largest party in the dissolved Lok Sabha, has already announced that it would not compromise on the building of a temple at the disputed Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid site. Nor would it give up its agitation on the scrapping of Article 370, which gives Jammu and Kashmir a special status. In other words, the party will remain as strident as ever on the issue of religious identity. How does this contribute to the nation’s unity, something that the BJP apparently espouses? The party’s first statement is not about poverty or unemployment or such basic problems. Where is the room then for a national consensus?

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The party is using the same rhetoric that led to its being treated as an untouchable. How can other parties join hands with the BJP when its agenda remains communal? It is not a question of staying away from a party, it is the question of isolating such forces as may disintegrate the country. The subcontinent has witnessed death and destruction following the playing of the religious card by the Muslim League before Partition. India cannot risk its future with another party that has a similar mindset. The BJP is fomenting hatred against nearly 120 million Muslims. The party will have to change its agenda to be acceptable to other parties or, for that matter, the country. Hinduvta has to be abandoned, not diluted, as the party seems to feel. It is bad per se. Why don’t we have Bharatiyata instead?

The BJP should introspect. Why do other parties shun it? Not a single member, much less a constituent of the United Front, went to the side of the BJP despite Atal Behari Vajpayee’s unethical appeal for defection. Even presuming that 40 members of the Congress did indeed offer to support the party, it could not manage just seven more. This speaks volumes about the commitment that MPs have to the principles of secularism. The BJP should have realised this when, after the last election, almost all political parties constituted a front to keep it out. It will happen again.

Take the second largest party, the Congress. It nearly destroyed India’s integrity by making an issue of the Jain Commission report. How unreal the accusations look against the background of Indira Gandhi’s consistent help to the LTTE. Thank God, the United Front did not yield to the demand to drop the DMK from the government. Had it done so, the UF would have revived the North-South divide. In the Parliament lobby I heard many southern MPs alleging that the north first got rid of Rao, then Deve Gowda and was now trying to oust the DMK. It was after a long time that the DMK came into the mainstream. Driven to the wall, it would have been forced to raise the old standard of revolt against the Union. Tamil sentiment had already been hurt by Justice Jain’s remarks. The Congress should have been more circumspect. Parties do not damage their country for dubious political gains.

Comical as it may sound, the Congress wants to make the report its electoral plank. It labours under the belief that the party can exploit the sympathy wave which the Jain Commission’s observations are supposed to have created in the country. The Congress gained whatever it could from the sympathy factor when the party won a number of seats in the second round of elections, held after the assassination in 1991. Even then UP, the home state of the Gandhis, returned only four out of 85 members to the Lok Sabha. The Congress could be in for a surprise. The final set of Bofors papers, which makes the full disclosures, will reach Delhi any day and there could be renewed electoral interest in the scandal. The Thakkar Commission report, which indicts even Congressmen for Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, will not help the party’s image.

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The third combination, the UF, may also distort the national agenda if and when its splits into its 14 constituents. Caste and regional appeals will blur the image of a united India. In the past, the Centre did not allow the states to assert themselves. This time the states did not want the Centre to assert itself. The UF struck a balance by giving every entity a say without damaging the Centre’s pre-eminence. The UF’s internal bickerings handicapped the government. It could not take certain decisions which it should have. Still its record is impressive.

So once again the nation prepares to go to the polls with the same parties, the same leaders and the same rhetoric. This is not a healthy situation and should, ideally, change. A lot depends on the number of social activists and civil libertarians that makes it to the Lok Sabha. Such a group, however small, of people committed to human values, could promote the cause of the poor and exploited. It is to them that the nation will turn when it is restless, dissatisfied and troubled.