A new syntax of reconciliation

By Harish Khare

IF MR. ATAL BEHARI VAJPAYEE still has the stamina and inclination to peruse a hard-bound book, he may well find the time during his current vacation to read through Godfrey Hodgson's recently- published The Gentleman From New York, an intellectual biography of Mr. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who retires in two weeks time after 24 years in the United States Senate. Not because Mr. Moynihan is one of the great friends of India in Washington; though that is a reason enough. But because the biography is the tale of a remarkable quest for partisanship in a deeply divided democracy. ``Baptised a Catholic and born a Democrat,'' Mr. Moynihan went to work for a Republican President, that too as partisan as Mr. Richard Nixon.

In recent weeks both India and the U.S. have witnessed the demands partisan divisions can make on otherwise honourable men and women. Partisanship, it seemed, became the ruling passion with men and women, to the exclusion of considerations of the state and society. Yet at the end of the day an Al Gore summons up extraordinary magnanimity of spirit to declare, in his concession speech, that ``while we yet hold and do not yield our opposing beliefs, there is a higher duty than the one we owe to political party.''

In particular, Mr. Vajpayee may want to understand what it takes to demand - and get - support, acclaim and loyalty from those who do not necessarily wear similar political badges of ideological affinity. He needs to understand this because of late a whining note has crept in in his utterances: how come while he played by the rules of the game all these ``40 years'' in the Opposition, the others are not returning the compliment now that it is his turn to occupy that coveted corner office in the South Block. He comes close to suggesting as if everybody owes it to him to run the store, irrespective of the damaged merchandise he retails.

On the last day of the winter session of Parliament, the Prime Minister even went to the extent of accusing the Leader of the Opposition of breaking tradition for pointing out how utterly insincere the Government was in its stewardship of affairs in the Lok Sabha. Not to be left behind, Mr. L. K. Advani keeps complaining that the Congress would not cooperate with the Government in bringing this or that State under President's Rule; and, on his part, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, on behalf of the Congress, retorts that the party has always cooperated in getting important economic legislation passed. In the Rajya Sabha, Mr. Vajpayee pretended to be pained that one of the women members had even suggested that she could no longer think of him as her Prime Minister.

Unless corrected, this tone of lamentation will prove unhelpful, especially if Mr. Vajpayee wants to achieve a breakthrough in Kashmir. It is possible that he mistakenly believes that governing this vast country is a game of friendly contest between the two leading parties, each occupying alternately the prime ministerial crease. Neither the complexity and unpredictability of problems nor the bad manners of the past allow this kind of gentlemanly approach. To be fair, despite the fact that he has become Prime Minister at an age when most men simply run out of steam and ideas, Mr. Vajpayee does seem to give the impression of wanting to break the mould in Kashmir and in matters of economy. If the Prime Minister hopes to undo the damage caused by the old orthodoxy, he will need to garner support beyond the limited mandate of his NDA coalition and create areas of a new national convergence.

Charity, as they say, begins at home. Before asking for support and loyalty, Mr. Vajpayee will need to understand the limits of the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar crowd. Reading the Moynihan biography can be of help. After he left the Nixon White House, Mr. Moynihan wrote to the President: ``What struck me more, and alarmed me most, about the almost always decent men who came to Washington with you, or in your train, was how little they knew of government, and especially of the standards of personal behaviour required of men in power.''

This is particularly relevant because this whole month Mr. Vajpayee insisted that he had not changed, as his critics allege. In other words, the Prime Minister finds himself trapped in a web of past associations from which neither his friends nor his foes would allow him to escape. The Prime Minister cannot allow the ``mask'' tautology to become the rub.

The central task before him is to ensure that the lunatic fringe does not overwhelm his agenda, and for this it is necessary that the lunatic fringe be treated as just that. This can be done only by understanding clearly and unsentimentally that the Sangh Parivar does not represent the Hindu majority, leave alone the national sentiment. There is no need for Mr. Vajpayee to feel himself obligated not to annoy the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, as its loudmouths endorse the Shiv Sena's obnoxious call for ``disenfranchisement'' of Muslims. An unambiguous statement of disassociation with such outlandish views would have helped Mr. Vajpayee acquire the strength to seek the cooperation and support of the other side of the political divide. For too long the Vajpayee-Advani leadership has proceeded on the assumption that the ``venerable sadhus and sants'' represent some kind of nobility of purpose or thinking; the twosome is welcome to have all the respect and reverence for the Jhandewalan priesthood, but by now it must be well aware of the irrelevance of the old mantras.

In case no one has told the Prime Minister, he should know that it is the same VHP crowd in Ahmedabad which, at the time of the Amarnath carnage, was chanting naa naar hai, naa nari hai, ye tho Atal Behari hai'' (he is neither a man nor a woman, he is Atal Behari). No Prime Minister, however ``Hinduite'' a soul he possesses, can allow himself to be distracted by this antediluvian crowd.

Nor should the Prime Minister worry about being accused of betraying ``the cause''. The rites of accusation are performed only by the self-styled custodians of the purity of ``movement''. Mr. Vajpayee has already paid his debts to these elegant Uriah Heeps. He has attended all anniversary dinners, Doordarshan slots have been given to friendly journalists, some have been accommodated in the Rajya sabha, others have even been elevated Ministers of State and institutional finances have been arranged for fledgling newspapers; still, there are other unexhausted devices -an invitation for an official launch at the Hyderabad House or a Padma award come this Republic Day - to silence the saffron voices. Time has come to move beyond this tiny, unoriginal and unexciting crowd.

It is not a case for jettisoning old loyalties of friends and fellow-travellers, but merely an argument to live up to the realities of responsibility of office. It is a plea for reclaiming control over the direction of the nation's discourse of dreams, dilemmas and deprivations. The polity has to be rescued from vulgar partisanship and hyperventilated demagoguery. For example, for all the overheated rhetoric during the recent Ayodhya debate, no one even bothered to insist that the legal case be heard on a day-to-day basis. Excesses and abuses inflicted in the name of secularism and against ``pseudo- secularism'' have run their course.

Now it is imperative that the Prime Minister propose a morally defensible agenda, an agenda that is premised on a nobility of collective purpose. The old grammar of antagonism has to give way to a new syntax of cooperation and reconciliation.

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