People's Democracy

THE BJP-led NDA has brought the country face to face with a piquant situation. It first tried to make everybody believe that it was all for a consensus about who the next occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan should be. But then, on one fine day, it went back on its word and announced the name of Dr A P J Abdul Kalam for the post. The election for the post has to take place next month.

There is nothing new in it. During the last four-odd years, the BJP-led NDA has adopted the same abhorrent tactic more than once, e g on the question of terrorism, of constitution review, of WTO negotiations, and the like. But every time it was apparent that its talk of a consensus was nothing more than a smokescreen to keep the BJP’s real motives camouflaged. However, sadly but in fact not quite surprisingly, even the NDA partners and allies had to fall in line every time. In the latest instance too, for example, what to talk of NDA partners, even the TDP had to accept Dr Kalam’s candidature after having pushed Shri Krishan Kant’s name for weeks together.

This way BJP leaders have once again indicated to their NDA and outside allies that, come what may, it is the BJP that will call the shot.

No word is enough to underline the gravity of this latest move of the BJP. The fact is that the presidential polls had never before assumed so crucial significance as they have today. In the last four years, the BJP-led government has failed on every front and brought the nation to the brink of a precipice. Its ruinous economic policies, dictated by the IMF-World Bank-WTO trio, have heaped unprecedented misery and burdens on the toiling millions while giving hefty concessions to the indigenous and foreign rich, apparently in a quid pro quo every time. This has created all-round discontent against the BJP-led regime that reflected in the party’s defeat in more than 20 assembly polls in the last four years.

At the same time, unlike any ruling party or combination in the past, the BJP-led regime has posed an unprecedented threat to our national unity. The spate of attacks on the miniscule Christians in this period and now the Gujarat carnage that is continuing even 15 weeks after it began under the state government’s patronage, do present a chilling picture of the state of our national unity and communal harmony. From its Jan Sangh days, it has been known that the party stands dead against federalism and the concept of linguistic states as also against secularism and our pluralistic ethos and culture. But these very things --- federalism and secularism --- are the two pillars of India’s unity, and therefore any attack on these is an attack on the very unity of India. The last four years have witnessed attacks on these very pillars, by those very people who assumed office after taking an oath in the name of Indian constitution that describes secularism and federalism as its basic frameworks.

This period also saw a fundamental transformation of our foreign policy. Till a few years ago we had been following a foreign policy that was the consensual policy of the whole country and was based on non-alignment, support to liberation struggles and opposition to imperialism, struggle for preservation of world peace and total nuclear disarmament, etc. But the BJP-led regime has one by one destroyed all these pillars of our foreign policy that stood us in good stead and allowed India to play a leading role in international politics, particularly in the non-aligned movement. The role India played during the Suez crisis, for Indonesia’s independence, against imperialist interventions in Vietnam, Congo and other countries, against the hated Apartheid regime in South Africa and for Namibia’s liberation are only a few instances in this regard. But the Vajpayee regime has gone back on all these things. It has withdrawn recognition from the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and refused to come to the support of hapless Palestinians who are fighting for a homeland and are facing the most brutal Zionist attacks.

This too has been quite well known since the Jan Sangh days of the party that has always been the most shameless pro-imperialist party in India. That the Vajpayee regime can go to any lowly depths in order to appease the US imperialists is clear from many of its acts during the last four years. But not to talk of earlier things, the latest such act has been the order issued to the Indian warships patrolling the northern Arabian Sea to go back to their bases. It is not that the Vajpayee regime realised the futility of a war or the prospect of mutual destruction in a war; in that case such an order would have been a most welcome thing. The fact is that these warships were ordered to go back under the US pressure after the Armitage and Rumsfield visits to the subcontinent.

As for corruption scandals under this "party of principles," the less said the better. The BJP’s plank of "political morality" stands exposed as never before. It has not only engineered defections from other parties and purchased legislators by droves; it has even been a safe harbour for many criminal elements in various states. It was not for nothing that the BJP was the most vocal opponent of the Supreme Court directive to the Election Commission to verify the criminal antecedents or otherwise of candidates before giving them permission to contest an election.

It is in this situation that the BJP is seeking to have a man of its own in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Though our constitution does not give the president much leeway in our parliamentary system of governance, there were a couple of instances when the regime’s actions compelled the president to speak out his mind. On one occasion, he had even to put aside the speech prepared by the government for his address to the nation on the Independence Day eve, and had to address the people directly. India had perhaps not seen any such episode. The outgoing president Dr K R Narayanan, a scientist and a diplomat rolled into one, has been vocal on some other issues also, like saffronisation of education. His message of greetings to the last session of the Indian History Congress was a testimony to his heartfelt concern for a secular, scientific education system, for our very future as a civilised nation.

The BJP’s sense of unease with such a person in Rashtrapati Bhavan was more than evident when the prime minister met Dr Narayanan and bluntly told him that the NDA was not in favour of giving him a second term. If the NDA or the BJP did not like Dr Narayanan’s face, it could well have announced its candidate before Vajpayee met the president ostensibly to discuss the state of Indo-Pak relations. Nobody had forbidden them to do so. But what Vajpayee did on the day, in the name of the convention of not giving any president a second term, was a direct affront to the country’s first citizen. It was a breach of even the minimal sense of etiquette, apart from being the game of dissuading the president from re-contesting.

By now it is also clear that Vajpayee’s repeated plea for a consensus was not meant for any serious discussion with the opposition but only a move to hoodwink the people. After Vajpayee had virtually insulted the president, some other names began to make rounds. One of them was that of Shri Krishan Kant, vice president, and there was indeed a serious effort to evolve a consensus on this name, more so because Kant’s name was being pushed forward by the Telugu Desam Party that is propping up the NDA government from outside. At one time it appeared as if Shri Kant was really going to be our next president. But all of a sudden, giving yet another glimpse of its duplicity, the BJP proposed the name of Maharashtra governor Shri P C Alexander.

It was clear that of all the names doing the round, Dr Naryanan was the best possible candidate, had a high stature as a scholar and statesman, and had an impeccable record as president. Hence there emerged a measure of opposition unity on his name; even the Samajwadi Party came around to ditto the proposal to put him up as a candidate though it did not see eye to eye with the Congress.

But it was this opposition unity that was not to the liking of NDA parties. Now, in yet another acrobatic exercise, Vajpayee dumped the P C Alexander aside, to announce the candidature of Dr Abdul Kalam.

There is no doubt that Dr Kalam is a renowned scientist and science-administrator, and nobody doubts his calibre in his field. He has indeed done much for India, and the country too has given him recognition in due measure. But the president’s post is such that if a person is not familiar with the intricacies of Indian politics, she/he cannot do justice to the job. This is particularly true today when our political system is highly fragmented and most diverse parties are ruling various parts of the country. It is therefore necessary that the person occupying the top constitutional office must be able to thoroughly grasp and quickly but correctly respond to the developments from time to time.

That the BJP had an ulterior motive in announcing Dr Kalam’s name is evident from the very argument given in his support --- that he belongs to a minority community. But who can forget that it is the same BJP whose government in Gujarat presided over the worst ever massacre of minorities in independent India? The BJP’s argument of Dr Kalam belonging to a minority community is even worse than the case of the devil quoting the scripture. Will the BJP tell how old its new-found love for the minorities is?

Be that as it may, the BJP game has succeeded as the Samajwadi Party has switched over its support from Dr Narayanan to Dr Kalam. This way Vajpayee’s manoeuvre has indeed created a dent in opposition unity and particularly the Lok Morcha. Yet before gloating over it, the NDA’s parties must remember that a formation like the Lok Morcha, that is the embryonic form of a third alternative, is not dependent on this or that particular party. As the political resolution of the CPI(M)’s 17th congress said, parties may come or go but the need of a third force is the requirement of today. The Lok Morcha too will be reconstituted soon.

It is in this situation that, without meaning any affront to Dr Kalam, the Left has decided that the BJP-led NDA must not be allowed to walk away with the president post. It may take a day or two to announce who will be the person to give a contest to the NDA nominee, but the BJP cannot go unchallenged on this issue. The picture will be clear after the working committee meeting of the Congress, the main opposition party in parliament, lets its opinion known to the country. But the Left parties do expect that all those who cherish secular and democratic values will indeed come together to join this contest on the serious political question of who will be our next president.