Comment Delicate Axis BJP govts coalition traumas Diversionary Tactics Moves to dilute crimes in Gujrat by calling for debate on conversion Sports Jyotirmoyee An Appraisal

Suranjan Das

The BJP-led motley coalition is certainly not marching forward. Instead, it is limping backward and forward in the face of one crisis after another. The Vajpayee regime appears to be increasingly pulled apart by contradictions between the BJP government and the Sangh Parivar on the one hand, and fissures and bickering amongst the coalition partners on the other. In recent months such dichotomies have come to the fore on following issues: government’s economic agenda, communal flare-ups, Indo-Pak relations, ministerial functioning and cabinet expansion.

In tune with economic restructuring programme of its predecessors and the mandate of the WTO, IMF and World Bank the Vajapyee government is determined to open up insurance industry to foreign sector and amend the 1970 Patent Act to facilitate the entry of multinationals. But this has irked the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, a Sangh outfit that has gone to the extent of dubbing the Vajpayeee government as `videshi government’. It has urged a national debate on globalization and questioned the priorities of international funding and regulatory organizations. Faced with the Manch salvo, Vajpayee did succeed in pressing ahead with his economic reforms measures at the recent BJP national executive. Yet, many of his ministerial colleagues reportedly maintain links with the Manch. The BJP leader Govindcharaya was even a key speaker in a debate on Globalization organized by the Manch on January 1 1999.

While the nation was basking in the glory of Amartya Sen’s winning of the Noble Prize, the VHP found a `Christian conspiracy’ behind the award. Despite initial silence, the Prime Minister – sensing the national mood – opted to snub the VHP’s remarks on Sen, noting: I do not agree with their (VHP’s) views. We are proud of Sen and I would like to meet him, more because I want to seek his advice on economic matter". Subsequently, Vajpayee met Sen and appreciated his pleas for interventionist functions of the state in the realm of social uplift.

Communal distemper has been running high in the country since the BJP assumed the reins of power in Delhi. But it acquired a new dimension when Christians became the target of the VHP and the Sang Parivar-led Hindu atrocities. This occasioned another move by Vajpayee to distance himself and his government from the Hindu outfits. He asserted that his party was not involved in the carnage and contended that the VHP could be allowed `to continue like this’. He even proclaimed "Fundamentalism and narrow thinking have no place in our country or the constitution". Yet, the Prime Minister’s confidant Pramode Mahajan is on record alleging attacks on Christians in Gujrat being "blown out of proportions". He ascribed the spate of violence to conversion attempts by Christian missionaries in the guise of helping the poor. At the same time the VHP working President Ashok Singhal chasitised "some BJP leaders" for ignoring facts and commenting adversely against his organization.

The pursuit of Gujral doctrine by the UF government resulted in a significant improvement of India’s relations with her South Asian neighbours. But the establishment of BJP government with its Hindutva agenda rightly sent wrong signals to our immediate neighbour –Pakistan. The nuclear exercise at Pokhran finally sent Indo-Pak relations downhill. The situation reached a crisis point when BJP’s ally Shiv Sena issued fatwas to disrupt Indo-Pak cricket series and thwart moves for bus services between Delhi and Lahore. In the night of 6 January the Shiv Sena activists damaged Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla pitch, the scheduled venue for India’s first test against Pakistan. But on15 January in an address to sports personalities Vajpayee asserted: The tour will take place. No one will be allowed to disturb the matches". He even noted: "What is the bravery in digging up pitches in the middle of the night. If you want to show your bravery and fight terrorism, go to the border and face the bullets like our soldiers are doing". But the Shiv Sena still lies undeterred and we need to wait and watch the fallout of differing perceptions of two leading partners in the coalition.

Another issue on which the coalition has not been speaking in the same voice is the unceremonious ouster of the naval chief Vishnu Bhagat. While the PM and his Defence Minster are maintaining their rigidities on the matter, the AIDMK supremo Jayalalitha has asked for an independent inquiry into the episode. Questioning the propriety of the manner in which Bhagat was dismissed, she criticised the central government for denying the right of self-defence to an official who had served the navy with distinction for nearly four decades. She has demanded that the people of the country should be taken into confidence on the episode.

Bickerings within the ruling front recently assumed such serious proportions that Vajpayee was forced to postpone his scheduled cabinet expansion. The immediate issue at stake is the Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee’s demand for the railways portfolio and the refusal of the current incumbent – the Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar’s refusal to sacrifice his office. Stung by the BJP President Kushabhau Thakre’s characterization of her demand as `irresponsible’, Mamata has temporarily abandoned her plan to join the Union cabinet and has once again threatened to withdraw support from the regime `at an appropriate moment’. Vajpayee is now in a strange predicament. He had advertised his planned expansion of the ministry to impart greater unity and efficiency to his regime. But the exercise had an opposite result: exposure of dissensions within the coalition and making Vajpayee appear as `helpless’.

Vajpayee today thus frantically is trying to steer a rudderless and sinking ship. If he cannot make his own house function, how can he manage the nation? But it would be perhaps wrong to over-emphasize the contradictions within the Sangh Parivar or dichotomies within the ruling coalition. It would be ahistorical to think of a fundamental rift between the BJP and Sangh Parivar. The BJP rode on the crest of the Sangh Parivar generated Hindu fanaticism to assume power in Delhi. The BJP cannot survive as a political outfit without the support of such frontal organizations like theVHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal. The Sangh Parivar has to occasionally distance itself from the BJP government for tactical reasons to maintain its extremist Hindu chauvinist stance at the popular level. But both the BJP and Parivar have one common aim – to implement the Hindutva agenda by capturing state power. Besides, both work for fulfilling the class interests of landlords and bourgeoisie. There could be divisions and differences within the BJP itself. But they would not be settled in the way such differences are settled in a bourgeois democratic party. Instead, they would be resolved within the fascist RSS culture. We should be careful about the current preoccupation of the bourgeois media to portray the apparent differences between Vajpayee and the Sangh Parivar to present the former with a humane face. Both have the same political aim and it could be that the entire show of differences is more a matter of strategy to misguide the people. At the same time despite bickering amongst the coalition partners, they are likely to close their ranks in the face of a secular and democratic challenge. This has happened repeatedly in the case of Jayalalitha and Mamata, and is likely to be the case in future.

We need not ignore tensions between the BJP and Sangh Parivar and contradictions amongst Delhi’s ruling coalition partners. But we should not be over-enthusiastic about it. The only way to fight the politics of religious sectarianism and blatant surrender to bourgeois-landlord interests and the force of globalization – as manifested in the working of the present BJP-led government in Delhi – is to develop and sustain a broad Left, Democratic and Secular movement.