The Hindu : The choice of Kalam

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 19, 2002

Opinion

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The choice of Kalam

By V. Krishna Ananth

It is sad that those waging at least a symbolic battle against the BJP's majoritarianism did not oppose militarism — another critical aspect of the Sangh Parivar's agenda — and its symbol, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, for President.

THE POLITICAL establishment, barring the Left parties (whose idea of fighting the threat posed by the right wing by roping in the Congress has taken a beating once again), is now finding ways to prove its patriotism as defined by the communal-fascist coalition headed by the BJP and aided so well by India's own soldier of the social-democratic tradition, George Fernandes. There is no disputing that Mr. Fernandes, who was once seen by Petra Kelly and Olaf Palme as their pointman not just in India but across Asia, has turned out to be the drumbeater of the right wing to the point that he puts even the committed disciples of the Fuehrer and Il Duce (and their variants in India belonging to the Golwalkar tradition) to shame.

This, however, is not new. Mr. Fernandes seemed to have decided against looking back long ago and after he showed up at Pokhran in May 1998 (with clenched fists) there was nothing surprising about his willingness to be counted with those who now want to celebrate a brand of nationalism that is sought to be served by nominating one of the main brains behind India's weaponisation programmes for the post of President. Mr. Fernandes had, after all, showed no compunctions about being seen with the communal-fascists in between these two occasions — May 11, 1998, and June 11, 2002 — and the worst of those instances was when he held a brief for the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi.

The more significant aspect in this context is the way in which those parties in the Opposition that do not belong to the Left have behaved in the aftermath of the NDA announcing its nominee for the President's post. In their enthusiasm to be seen as patriots and to establish their own credentials among the articulate middle classes, the secular lot among the political class too are willing to play ball with the communal Right. They, after all, cannot afford to be seen as throwing a spanner in the works of the "nation-building-process" the Sangh Parivar is seriously engaged in. They did so even in May 1998; Mulayam Singh Yadav went to town claiming that Pokhran-II was about to happen when he was Defence Minister while Laloo Prasad Yadav made it clear that there was no space for party politics when it came to the nation's security. They all agreed to define Indian nationalism by the same paradigm as the right wing. This was reflected in the Congress' enthusiasm to establish its love for Dr. Kalam. This, after all, is what one could make out from S. Jaipal Reddy's refrain that Dr. Kalam was put in-charge of India's missile development programme by the Congress. It is another matter that Mr. Reddy was unaware, when he made the statement, about the candidature of the legendary Lakshmi Sahgal; she and her comrades in the Indian National Army were defended (against charges of treason levelled by the colonial Government in 1946) by the luminaries of the Indian National Congress in the INA trials. For those in the Congress unaware of this part of history, Jawaharlal Nehru himself wore the gown (along with Bhulabhai Desai and several others) to defend the INA soldiers.

Sonia Gandhi and others in the Congress will now be voting against someone who was described by Rajiv Gandhi's grandfather as a patriot and a soldier who fought for India's freedom. Here is one more instance of the Congress, in its post-Independence phase, displaying a reluctance to internalise into its agenda the nationalist ethos constructed in the course of the freedom movement and represented by the Indian National Congress.

All these aspects have become relevant now not because Dr. Kalam's candidature is undesirable on the grounds that he is a novice in the political arena. It is another matter that the articulate middle classes, full of contempt for men (and women) belonging to the political class, are now celebrating the choice of someone who is not a politician. The problem here is that Dr. Kalam was chosen by the RSS (proposed by the BJP and endorsed by its allies) because he was the most prominent face within the establishment that carried out Pokhran-II. Dr. Kalam symbolised India's nuclear weaponisation adventure thanks to the visuals in the media after May 11, 1998, and all that accompanied the agenda including the rhetoric about "it's time to teach Pakistan a lesson".

The Sangh Parivar must have found Dr. Kalam eminently qualified for the highest political office in the land for another reason; he has been so enthusiastic about expressing his emotional attachment to the Hindi-Hindu-Hindustani tradition and had endeared himself so much to sants representing the Vedic tradition. In other words, a "nationalist" in the cultural sense of the term who had no problems accepting India as not just his fatherland (pitr bhoomi) but also as his holy land (punya bhoomi). What more could the Sangh Parivar have asked for?

It is for these reasons that the Congress as well as the others in the Opposition such as the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal could have established their commitment to resist the right wing in the ideological sense of the term (and not just restrict the battle to Assembly and Parliament elections) by putting up a candidate against the NDA's choice. Here was an opportunity, after the Pokhran adventure, to address the concerns of the majority of the Indian people rather than the middle classes and the brand of patriotism they indulge in their clubs, kitty parties and whenever they get a chance to participate in television discussions apart from the Internet; that India as a nation must do everything to teach Pakistan a lesson (but these men and women do everything to ensure that their own children do not even go anywhere close to joining the armed forces) even if that means "using the nuclear option".

The Congress and others across the political spectrum (including those groups innocent of ideology who have been shuttling between the communal NDA and the different secular formations in the past decade) did nothing to stand up and be counted against the nuclear adventure. Pokhran-II, after all, was one instance when one critical aspect of the Sangh Parivar agenda — militarism — was revealed.

Anyone with some idea about the BJP's ideological moorings will agree that militarism and majoritarianism are the two cardinal points on which the party's ideology rests. And in this sense, the nuclear adventure was as bad as the systematic violence against the minority community in Gujarat.

It is sad that those waging at least a symbolic battle (it is a fact that the battle was never substantive and was restricted to statements in the media and speeches in Parliament) against the BJP's majoritarianism did not oppose militarism — another critical aspect of the Sangh Parivar's agenda — and its symbol, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, for President.

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