| NEWSNOTES Power to Secularism
 Too many things are happening to the
Congress at the same time. With elections only a few months away and the country expected
to give a definitive nod to secular politics, the developments in the Congress are being
keenly watched. The issue at stake has snowballed from a question of validity of a person
with foreign origin to claim executive power to a major revolt within the party ranks with
three heavyweights, Sharad Pawar, Purna Sangma and Tariq Anwar, being expelled for
questioning the ethics of Sonia Gandhi aspiring for the highest executive seat in the
country, namely the Prime Ministership.
Things have moved at a rapid pace with Ms Gandhi resigning from the AICC presidentship and subsequently rejecting the entreaties of the party to return while the CWC expelled the three leaders for dissidence. Mr Pawar, with a major support base in Maharashtra, with Mr Sangma in the north-east and Mr Anwar in Bihar are likely to form a new front but have at the same time said that they had only raised questions within the party which they thought were legitimate and without any reason for such precipitative action like expulsions. However, the question now extends beyond the parameters of simple Congress politics. A question has been raised which had already been answered by the framers of the Constitution; what is important here is the way the country will respond to the changed equations within the Congress. It cannot be denied that Mr Pawar has a major popular support in his state and in fact, a major leader like the former chief minister of Maharashtra, Mr Sudhakar Naik, has already sided with him. The Congress in Maharashtra has already split while the country awaits another break within the larger organisation nationwide. However, not all is lost with the Congress with another heavyweight, Mr Suresh Kalmadi, deciding to return to the Congress after a brief sojourn with regional politics though here his unqualified differences with Mr Pawar may have been the true decider. L |
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eaders like Mr
Chandra Sekhar and Mr Ram Vilas Pswan have openly supported the possibility of Mr Pawar
forming a new front while Ms Mamata Banerjee has made noises about the new Congress
grouping sharing a platform with her, and thus by proxy, with the BJP. While fronts are
being made and unmade with unflinching regularity, the question uppermost in the minds of
the countrymen is whether Mr Pawar will uphold the traditions of secularism to which the
Congress ideology remains faithful, at least on paper. That is the main question; the
CPI(M) has made it clear that a new front could be open for discussion once Mr Pawar made
his intentions clear on the question of secularism and comes out with his programmes. The
Left has always maintained that the Congress has been a better bet as far as the question
of secularism is concerned and that the BJP has to be shown the door on this basic
question alone. If Mr Pawar chooses to uphold the traditions of secularism for which the
country was justifiably proud of the Congress at one time, then new equations will emerge.
For the betterment of the country.