The BJP - hoist with its own petard

For years the BJP has practised a ruthless kind of opportunistic politics... If no one is now listening to its disclaimers on the Tehelka tapes, the party has only itself to blame. NEENA VYAS reports.

FOR SEVERAL years, the Bharatiya Janata Party has been practising a kind of ruthless opportunistic politics - its Ram, Ram politics went hand-in-hand with the `aya Ram gaya Ram' politics of defections and corruption made infamous by Haryana.

``We practise what we preach'' was its proud slogan, but with complete cynicism the party went about doing exactly the opposite of what it preached even as it worked overtime to build its image as a disciplined, upright and, above all, a nationalist political force with an exclusive monopoly on patriotism and `dharma'.

The Tehelka scandal was in fact waiting to happen. Except that in the general atmosphere in which Cabinet berths were being auctioned, MLAs were being bought, MPs were being induced and bureaucrats softened, the entire polity had become insensitive to the goings-on.

The BJP could continue to claim the high moral ground in public life, and, to help it along, the Bofors scam, the urea scam, the JMM MPs' bribery scandal and a host of other skeletons in the Congress(I) cupboard could always be dusted and put on display. The BJP hoped to shine by comparison, and it did.

When the Harshad Mehta scandal relating to the stock exchange burst into the open, the BJP was very much in action behind the scenes. Party leaders seemed to know what affidavit Mr. Mehta had filed and what he would be doing next even before that was made public. No one cared to question the BJP's links with big bull, for the focus was entirely on the accusation that Mr. Mehta had carried a suitcase full of currency notes to the then Prime Minister's residence. The Congress(I) ``suitcase'' became a prominent election campaign friend of the BJP.

At the time of the JMM bribery scandal, it was Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as Leader of the Opposition, who held a joint press conference with Mr. Shailendra Mahto, who admitted in his presence that he had taken money from the Congress(I). The focus was again on the then Prime Minister, Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao. No one cared to ask what Mr. Vajpayee, the fine parliamentarian, was doing by making a hero out of a man who had publicly confessed to having sold his vote in Parliament for some money. Not a word of condemnation for Mr. Mahto, who soon joined the BJP and was later rewarded with a ticket for his wife.

The Ayodhya story has another side to it - corruption. Mr. D.B. Rai, who was the Senior Superintendent of Police at Faizabad, played the role assigned to him by the then Kalyan Singh Government. The CRPF was not deployed, Mr. Rai allowed the `kar sevaks' to enter the Babri Masjid complex, and the job of razing the Masjid to the ground was completed. He resigned his job soon afterwards, and, sure enough, was ``accommodated'' by the BJP, given a ticket, and became a party MP. Money may not have changed hands, but was it not corruption to induce a police officer with a passport to Parliament? Yet another Ayodhya `hero', Mr. K.M.Pandey, who delivered the famous open-the-Babri- Masjid-locks judgment, became a BJP MP.

In 1996, during the 13-day Vajpayee rule, when the BJP was desperately looking for allies and support, senior party leaders were openly inviting MPs from other parties to come and join and take Cabinet berths of their choice. ``MPs will queue outside, we are in a position to offer ministerships,'' boasted party leaders, now Ministers. But no one took up the offer, or perhaps not enough inducement was given, and the Government ended its innings in 13 days.

It was around 1998-1999 that Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. L.K. Advani jointly issued an open appeal to Congress(I) MPs to break away from their party and come and join the BJP. Was that morality? But yet, the party continued to stand on a high moral pedestal. In fact, even after Tehelka the party continued to claim that Mr. Bangaru Laxman had resigned as party president ``in the highest traditions of morality''and in Bihar a party leader pompously claimed ``we continue to stand on a high moral pedestal''.

By 1998, in its desperate search for power, the party was ready to dump its Hindutva ``ideology'' into the dustbin. It was not the allies who bargained away their agenda, but the BJP which agreed to put its own programme on the back-burner. It had become clear that clinging to power was the first and only ``principle'' that the party stood for. It had attacked liberalisation as the Opposition, it embraced globalisation as the ruling party. The bills it blocked in Parliament as the Opposition, it adopted as its own when in Government. And yet it stood firm on a high moral pedestal.

Even while it had the AIADMK as its ally, in a most cynical fashion the BJP had begun cultivating the DMK. In Haryana, it dropped Mr. Bansi Lal to befriend Mr. Om Prakash Chautala of Meham mayhem fame. In Himachal Pradesh, it had no qualms making peace and common cause with Mr. Sukh Ram against whom the party had agitated and held up Parliament for days if not weeks. And yet, the party continued to occupy the high moral ground.

In Uttar Pradesh, the party successfully patched together a Government with bits of broken pieces from other parties, but in Bihar, more recently, it failed. But in both cases it claimed it was acting in defence of democracy and morality. Words had lost their meaning, morality and opportunism became synonymous, at least in the BJP's dictionary.

In fact, the entire system had got so thoroughly corrupted that when Tehelka happened, one wondered why it had not happened earlier. There is hardly anyone in the country who has not had a personal brush with corruption - money has to be given to get a municipal sweeper's job or a ``lucrative'' police posting. Government transfers have become a regular business. Want a ration card, a passport or a driving licence? Money is the key. Even to get an income tax refund a ``commission'' has to be paid. In the villages, registering land, getting loans from banks, receiving money orders, getting caste certificates, everything costs money.

Who can believe that big defence contracts, or for that matter any big Government contract, can be had without greasing the palms of politicians and bureaucrats?

Ironically, the party which wanted people to trust Mr. Harshad Mehta and Mr. Mahto, would today like the people to distrust the Tehelka journalists. ``It is a political conspiracy, we want to know who is behind it, who is financing it,'' party leaders have been shouting; senior Ministers are reading out the list of Congress(I) scams. If no one is listening, the BJP has only itself to blame.

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