Dilli’s gang of four

I have nothing against culture and animal welfare minister Maneka Gandhi personally. Her performance is as good or bad as any other minister’s in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. But I cannot support her appointment as convenor-member of the Jayaprakash Narayan Birth Centenary Committee. This is a slur on JP’s memory. His finest hour was when he defied the emergency and Indira Gandhi’s autocratic rule. Maneka was part and parcel of the set-up her late husband Sanjay Gandhi ran extra-constitutionally during the emergency when dissent was smothered, democratic values were destroyed, and one lakh people were detained without trial.

The ruling BJP, known as Jana Sangh in JP’s lifetime was part of the struggle against Indira’s authoritarian regime at that time. But this alone cannot entitle the party to monopolise the committee. Some JP associates with much better credentials from the socialist movement and the Bhoodan Yatra are still alive. After all, it is public money which is being spent on the celebrations, not the BJP’s funds.

It is no secret that the BJP always puts its own men in strategic positions. You name a committee or the board of a public sector undertaking or of a bank, you will find Sangh parivar followers crowding it. Some of the best institutions have been saffronised. Even Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, a liberal otherwise, feels so indebted to the parivar for his position that he goes out of his way to include someone from it in a delegation going abroad. The latest obsession is to appoint the RSS pracharaks.

The position of a pracharak is important because he works like an evangelist to spread the message of Hindu fundamentalism far and wide. There was a time when the RSS itself was particular about not allowing any pracharak to join the government. Now it is making hay while the sun is shining. Many pracharaks have become ministers in the BJP-run states and at the Centre. The RSS has been able to have its own men in the different layers of administration. It is a similar type of infiltration which took place when the erstwhile Jana Sangh was part of the Janata Party, ruling at the Centre from 1977 to 1979. People then pushed into the media occupy important positions today.

Narendra Modi is a fulltime RSS pracharak, who has been inducted into the BJP. With the blessings of the RSS, he has been made chief minister of Gujarat, the state where the party has lost a series of by-elections. What all this really boils down to is that even the make-believe difference between the RSS and the BJP has disappeared. Modi is smooth, agreeable and polite. He wears Hindutva on his sleeve. He will stop at nothing to win the state polls early next year.

The strategy to polarise society works in UP too. Although chief minister Rajnath Singh is a liberal version of Modi but he depends largely on the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal to deliver the votes. It is not surprising to see the two organisations busy reviving the issue of building of the Ram temple on the site where the Babri masjid once stood. The BJP seems to believe that a division on sectarian lines will help the party.

It is no coincidence that the RSS celebrates its 75th anniversary when the BJP-led coalition at the centre has been ruling for three years.

The Prime Minister’s Office has announced the revival of a special cell to deal with the mandir-masjid problem. Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao too had a special cell but did little to stop the demolition of the mosque. A special cell may, in fact, lull Vajpayee into complacency. He or someone on his behalf should be talking to Muslim leaders if the solution of the masjid is to come about by February, as the PM once said.

In fact, the government is an enigma within an enigma. Its functioning is too secretive. The entire policy making and its execution is esoteric, confined to four persons — the PM, Home Minister, Foreign Minister and Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra. The cabinet is seldom in the picture. Even senior ministers come to know of important decisions from the media. A few coalition partners have expressed their unhappiness but the complaint has gone unheeded because the BJP does not believe in transparency.

The PM himself promised to correct the government’s way of functioning after the fiasco at Agra where Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf stole the show. The government is totally at sea when it comes to communication. It should learn from the US. Witness the president, secretary of state and defence secretary addressing a daily press conference or briefing the media to keep the nation informed. Our PM still shies away from holding a press conference. The foreign minister has different standards for Indians and for those in the West. While abroad, he is all the time seeking the media. But in New Delhi, he wonders whether he should meet the press.

Home Minister L.K. Advani rarely talks to the media. His ministry has dossiers on all terrorist organisations based in Pakistan. In fact, there is an ironclad case against each of them. Washington and London have been provided the relevant information. What about providing them to us, the Indian people? Terrorists’ camps across the border, their ways of operation and sources of income — all these are not defence secrets. The much promised white paper on the ISI is still to be released. Why is the government wary of taking people into confidence — something basic in a democracy?

In fact, the government should have by this time convened a special session of parliament to discuss terrorism. I wrote to the PM requesting him to do so but in vain. The theatre of war has moved very close to us. People need guidance, they need focus. Parliament can provide that. The government will also get an opportunity to explain why India went all out to help America and its allies from day one. Please clear the confusion in people’s minds.

Vajpayee has had a meeting with opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. Presumably, it was in connection with the operation in Afghanistan. But I wonder if the meeting had something to do with the postponement of the special meeting of the National Development Council at Bangalore. Sonia Gandhi is said to have forced Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna to defer the meeting because she is against ‘‘growing a cosy relationship between the BJP and the Congress-ruled states.’’ If true, this is a wrong perception.

The meeting would have given the chief ministers and central ministers a chance to discuss how to go about tackling terrorism, still flowing in from across the border. The parties would have also sorted out their differences over the war. It is a pity that they are so engrossed in petty politics that they refuse to rise above it even at difficult times.

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