http://web.mid-day.com/columns/vir_sanghvi/2005/march/105006.htm The belted cow By: Vir Sanghvi March 6, 2005
Anyway you look at it, the result of the assembly election in Bihar is a mess. It is clear now; over the next few years, Bihar will follow UP into the politics of instability. The media have focused on the election in Congress-BJP terms. Should the Congress have handled Lalu Yadav differently? Could it have done better as a part of Lalu�s Yadav alliance? Others see the result as a shot in the arm for the BJP and argue that it is now back in the national reckoning. But, from my perspective, the present mess in Bihar is not about Congress-BJP rivalry. It is about a ghost from the past � the old Janata party � and the manner in which a historical legacy has been turned into caste-based chaos. If you look at the figures, there are three real winners in Bihar. Lalu is still the major force with 73 seats. Nitish Kumar is second with 54 seats. And Ram Vilas Paswan is third with 30 seats. Add these numbers up and you get 157 seats, a decisive majority in a house of 243. Only 15 years ago, that would have been a Janata Dal victory. All three men � Lalu, Nitish and Ram Vilas � belong to what might be called the Janata/ Janata Dal stream of Indian politics. All three have a history of opposing the Congress and all three were associated with the last proper Janata-type government to run the country: V P Singh�s Janata Dal ministry which took office in 1989. I don�t want to turn this into a history lesson but for readers with short memories, here are the basic facts: Janata was formed in 1977 to fight Indira Gandhi. Put together by Jaiprakash Narain, it united socialists, Lohia-ites, old Congressmen, rural notables and the Jan Sangh. >From the time it took office in March 1977, it soon became clear that there >were really two parties struggling to get out from under the Janata name: the >Jan Sangh and the rest. Eventually, the Janata government collapsed in 1979, >over the issue of dual membership (of the RSS as well as Janata), when Sanjay >Gandhi appealed to Charan Singh�s greed and venality. By 1980, there were two Janata parties. There was the old Janata, represented most visibly by Chandra Shekhar, its President, and there was the Jan Sangh version, headed by A B Vajpayee. The Jan Sangh�s brand of Janata called itself the Bhartiya Janata Party and tried to inherit Janata�s legacy of principled, middle-of-the-road, secular opposition to the Congress led by Indira Gandhi. But in the early 1980s, it was Chandra Shekhar�s Janata that represented the principal opposition to the Congress. It won a major victory in Karnataka (where R K Hegde was installed as Chief Minister); Chandra Shekhar himself captured the national imagination when he went on a Bharat Yatra; and many people believed that after the next General Election, Chandra Shekhar would head a Janata government. History is full of ifs and buts so we�ll never know how valid this assumption was. But what is clear is that every calculation was turned upside down by the assassination of Mrs Gandhi in 1984 and by the emergence of the charismatic Rajiv Gandhi, who promised a new style of governance. To the horror of Chandra Shekhar and his Janata cohorts, the anti-Indira vote at that election (the anti-incumbency vote) did not go to the opposition. It went to Rajiv � who was seen as a better alternative than Chandra Shekhar et al -� therefore to the Congress. Though both Janata and the BJP were wiped out electorally in the 1984 Congress landslide, Janata still remained the principal party of opposition. Certainly, all the people who are now leading lights of Bihar politics (Lalu, Nitish, Paswan, etc) remained part of the Janata tradition. When Rajiv lost the 1989 election, it was Janata that took office. Ironically, it was with this victory that the party signed its own death warrant. Instead of sticking with Chandra Shekhar, R K Hegde or one of its traditional leaders, Janata allowed itself to be taken over by a gang of Congress defectors, three of whom � V P Singh, Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammed Khan � had been ministers in Rajiv�s government and at least one of whom (VP Singh) had actually supported the Emergency (which Janata was formed to fight). V P Singh never believed � given his background � in the anti-Congressism that was Janata�s hallmark (to this day, I don�t think he�s said a word against Indira Gandhi or even Sanjay, whose prot�g� he was) and so, was constantly insecure about his position as Janata Prime Minister. He fell out with Chandra Shekhar, with his own Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal and then eventually, even with Arun Nehru and Arif. Desperate for a plank of his own, he chose casteism. By notifying the Mandal Commission report (which had hardly featured in the Janata Dal manifesto) he not only transformed Janata which had, till then, been a centrist party opposed to the Congress�s corruption and dynastic rule, but he also changed politics in the Hindi belt forever. Once Janata became the party of caste, it was bound to splinter along caste lines. Till then, Nitish and Lalu had been together. Now Lalu became a Yadav leader and Nitish a Kurmi leader. In UP, Mulayam Singh stopped calling himself a Lohia-ite and focused on Yadavs instead. Ram Vilas focused on his dalit supporters, and so on. After V P Singh destroyed the basic ethos of Janata, the caste leaders operated on the basis of their caste loyalties. And those with no caste bases struggled to survive. Chandra Shekhar and Hegde were doomed. George Fernandes attached himself to Nitish to benefit from his base. Others tried similar stratagems. Seizing the opportunity, LK Advani repackaged the BJP, not as an heir to the Janata tradition, but as a straight-forward Hindu party. His rath yatra was a direct response to Mandal and when the BJP finally brought V P Singh down, it marked the beginning of the end of the Janata tradition. Despite sporadic attempts to revive Janata as a Third Force, the ideological space in Indian politics is now divided between the BJP and the Congress. All the old Janata hands have had to take sides. Some, like Nitish, George, Sharad Yadav, Yashwant Sinha and the late R K Hegde went with the BJP because of their traditional anti-Congressism. Some, like Jaipal Reddy (and perhaps Lalu) went with the Congress to protect secularism. Some have played all sides: Paswan has been in the NDA and UPA governments. Mulayam has made his own arrangements with the BJP while spouting secular rhetoric. Two major consequences have followed. One: Secularism, which was once a given within the political mainstream has now become an issue to be debated. None of the so-called secular Janata types who went over to the BJP said a word about Gujarat and even Paswan, who now claims to be a champion of Muslims, did not resign from the NDA government over the massacres. Two: In Bihar and UP, politics has become more about caste and community than about ideology or governance. (Otherwise how can you explain why, after 15 years of misrule, Lalu still heads the largest party in the new assembly?) The Congress, which cannot focus on caste or religion, is finished in these states. The BJP only makes a significant impact when there�s strong Hindu issue (such as Ayodhya) to campaign on. All in all, as the chaotic caste and communal politics of the cow-belt demonstrate, India has been the loser. Its two most popular states have missed the bus as the country has moved into the new century. Could it have been any different? The Bihar results show us that all the old Janata-types are still calling the shots. Could they ever come together, pool their caste bases and work for the good of their states rather than for personal ambition? If they could, then we would stop seeing everything through the prism of Congress versus BJP. Perhaps ideology could play some role in cow-belt politics again. Sadly, I don�t think it�s ever going to happen. The Janata dream is dead. V P Singh killed it off with a single knife-blow to its heart. And UP and Bihar will pay the price. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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