The Hindu : Ayodhya: U.P. badly needs a Govt.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 07, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Ayodhya: U.P. badly needs a Govt.

By Inder Malhotra

For the country, it is a time of sorrow. For the BJP, the core of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it is one of shame. At first, the party suffered a devastating defeat in the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. And now it has lost all moral right to govern Gujarat, the only major State it now rules with a comfortable majority.

The Gujarat Government's, especially its Chief Minister, Narendra Modi's palpable communal bias and concomitant dereliction of duty during the recent march of savagery would forever be a blot on it. Or should we, borrowing the words of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, call it ``kalank"? Shahnawaz Husain is one of the two Muslims in the Vajpayee Council of Ministers and the only Muslim to be elected to the 13th Lok Sabha on a BJP ticket. His subdued criticism of Mr. Modi is, therefore, more damning than all the obloquy the Opposition parties have poured on the Gujarat Chief Minister.

An ironic twist to the situation is that the initiative seems to be passing from the hands of Mr. Vajpayee, a man of decent instincts and liberal predilections, to the hotheads within the Sangh Parivar. Witness the impunity with which leaders of the retrograde Vishwa Hindu Parishad can defy the Prime Minister, with the RSS stalwarts acting as some kind of bridge between the two. Indeed, the bitter truth is that there is an unbreakable link between the death dance across Gujarat and the naked dance of bigotry in Ayodhya.

Any mitigation of the crisis at Ayodhya arising from the VHP's threat to start building the Ram temple on March 15 that the last-minute intervention of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam can bring about would, of course, be most welcome. But those who have watched the VHP's performance so far must wonder whether any faith can be put in its word.

It is in this context that the issue of Ministry-making in U.P., in the wake of the hopelessly fractured verdict of the poll, assumes urgency. At present the State has, in the person of Rajnath Singh of the BJP, only a caretaker Chief Minister. This is clearly an unsatisfactory arrangement, especially at an extremely delicate moment.

At first, Mr. Rajnath loftily declared that, respecting the people's verdict, his party would sit in the Opposition.

He was totally opposed to a coalition with the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, who, according to the BJP, had ``betrayed'' it twice. But later, he changed his mind and offered to form a Government if the BSP promised him ``unconditional support''.

Not only was this an inexplicable volte-face, but also a strange flight away from realism. It is Ms. Mayawati — whose party has made tremendous strides, while the BJP's fortunes have plummeted — who is in a position to demand unconditional support from the BJP. Her credo is summed up by the exuberant chant of her followers, ``U.P. ki majboori hai: Mayawati zaroori hai (It's U.P.'s compulsion that Mayawati is a must)".

At the same time, both the BJP (with 88 MLAs in a House of 403) and the BSP (with 98 seats) have written to the Governor, Vishnu Kant Shastri, that they would not support a Government headed by the Samajwadi Party leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav. As the ``supremo'' of the single largest party (143 seats), he demands that the ``mandate being in his favour'', he should be called upon to form the Government. This the Governor is apparently disinclined to do until Mr. Yadav produces letters of support to indicate that he might be able to muster a majority.

Since the Union Agriculture Minister, Ajit Singh, who commands 14 votes in the U.P. Assembly, has also refused to support an SP Government, Mr. Yadav's case is clearly weak. And it will remain so even if the 22-member-strong Congress, still playing hard to get, eventually swings its support behind him. His realisation of this is best underscored by his lament that there is a ``conspiracy'' to impose President's rule in U.P. But he is by no means friendless.

The People's Front in New Delhi, that once used to call itself National Front, has lent powerful support to Mr. Yadav's position that he would demonstrate his majority ``only on the floor of the legislature, not in the Governor's drawing room".

However, the difficulty with this assertion is that it comes only from those who had criticised the then President, Shankar Dayal Sharma, in May 1996 when he appointed Mr. Vajpayee Prime Minister for the first time and the Vajpayee Government Mark-I had lasted precisely 13 days.

All those who had then applauded Mr. Sharma are now denouncing the very concept of the single largest party being given the first chance to form the Government. But then, this is what parliamentary democracy with Indian characteristics is all about.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

The conviction of Arundhati Roy

A receding peace plan?

The guilty men of Ahmedabad

Solutions missing

Ayodhya: U.P. badly needs a Govt.

The Indo-Pak. standoff