Whose mistakes are these?

When will the prime minister stop treating every public platform as if it were a mushaira? First we had insaniyat ke daire mein as the enunc...

When will the prime minister stop treating every public platform as if it were a mushaira? First we had insaniyat ke daire mein as the enunciation of his goal, as if the one thing absent from our Constitution is insaniyat (humanity). Confronted with this piece of nonsense, I asked in Parliament whether the PM was a statesman or a qawwal? Home Minister Advani got all hot under the collar at my turn of phrase, but we are still to be told what is this insaniyat which we are groping towards. Now, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, the PM has pleaded for everyone to forget the ‘mistakes of the past’. But which, exactly, are these mistakes? The mistakes of the last six years that Farooq Abdullah has been chief minister? Or the mistakes of the past four years that Vajpayee has been PM? Or the mistakes of the previous five decades? Or all three? And, in any case, what are these ‘mistakes’ we are required to forget?

Is the biggest mistake of the past ‘rigged’ elections? The BJP/NDA are at one with Pakistan in regarding past elections in J&K as rigged. They only differ on the elections of 1977, which the Pakistanis say were as ‘rigged’ as the rest, but the BJP/NDA believes were ‘clean’. If the 1977 elections were the only ‘free and fair’ elections ever held in J&K, were the elections which set up the J&K constituent assembly in 1951 a ‘mistake’? Or does the mistake lie in 1987 — when Farooq Abdullah left the Vajapyee/Fernandes lobby quite distraught by tying up with Rajiv Gandhi? In which case, Vajpayee must answer the question Rajiv Gandhi put to the BJP-sponsored governor of J&K: how many seats did Jagmohan think were ‘rigged’ in the J&K elections of 1987? Sixteen, replied the governor. Well, even if all 16 had been countermanded, the National Conference/Congress would still have had a huge majority, replied Rajiv.

The much-loathed Farooq Abdullah of 1987 is now the much-beloved ally of the BJP. In 1996, he won all the seats alleged to have been rigged in 1987. So, in the view of the BJP/NDA, is the National Conference illegitimately in power for the last six years? Is that a ‘mistake’ the PM would like the voters of J&K to forget?

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If, on the other hand, the mistake lies in not getting the Hurriyat and other disaffected elements into the electoral ring, then where does that mistake lie? Surely in Farooq Abdullah and Atal Behari Vajapyee having failed to get an inclusive broad spectrum dialogue going with all concerned. Indeed, far from having concerted efforts within the NDA coalition, specifically between the National Conference and the BJP, to jointly chart a common course, Vajpayee has repeatedly gone behind Farooq’s back to deal with not only the Hurriyat but even the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. Farooq has retaliated by disinterring dead demands — not as serious demands but to get his own back on Vajpayee. The confusion is now worse confounded because the PM talks of autonomy while his deputy talks of ‘devolution’. How can anyone, even the National Conference and their NDA partners, know what is on the agenda if the PM and the deputy PM, not to mention their resident Scarlet Pimpernel, the convenor of the NDA, work at such cross-purposes? The PM now says he will talk to everyone he failed to talk to once they get elected. But surely it was his mistake to have neglected for the past four years the National Conference who had got elected to concentrate on everyone else in J&K who had failed to get elected!

The other massive mistake which none should forget — or be allowed to forget — is Farooq Abdullah reneging on his six-year old promise to resettle the Pandits

The BJP-led NDA has averaged 1.5 interlocutors a year, starting with R.K. Mishra, going on to Governor Saxena, then K.C. Pant, then a pause for two bureaucrats, A.S. Dulat and Wajahat Habibullah, then Arun Jaitley, before he got grounded and, at latest count, the high-flying Ram Jethmalani who has now been grounded. Not one of them got anywhere. For the good reason that the hopelessly divided NA-BJP-RSS-PM/deputy PM could not agree among themselves on where they wanted the interlocutors to take them. It is the failure over the six years of Farooq and the four years of Vajpayee to kick-start a comprehensive dialogue with all sections of public opinion and all regions of the state which is the biggest mistake of all. Far from forgetting it, we should be reminding everyone of it so that the biggest mistake of the past six/four years is not further compounded by a vote for the same lot.

The other mistake which none should forget — or be allowed to forget — is Farooq Abdullah reneging on his six-year old promise to resettle the Pandits who wish to return to their homes in the Valley. Did Vajpayee or Farooq Abdullah make even a token gesture, at least a tentative beginning, towards restoring the Valley to the Pandits? If not, why should any Pandit, any Kashmiri, indeed, any Indian citizen, be encouraged to ‘forget’ this betrayal?

And what of trifurcation? Does Vajpayee, the proud swayam sevak, regard the trifurcation proposal of his sponsors as a mistake to be forgotten or as a solution to be endorsed? He claims not to have endorsed trifurcation, but is he going to be consistent in rejecting the RSS line? After all, he succumbed to the RSS between his speech at the Shah Alam camp in Ahmedabad and his notorious speech in Goa? How can any J&K voter trust the ‘secularism’ of a PM who has had so little to show by way of rectifying his party’s ‘mistakes’ in Gujarat? Indeed, can anyone blame the Kashmiris for fearing that the mindset which insisted on Jagmohan for governor will, after Narendra Modi’s defeat in Gujarat, not perhaps suggest Modi for governor in J&K?

(Write to msaiyar@expressindia.com)