Political Probity: Has It Any Takers In BJP?

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE prime minister has unmistakably indicated what kind of a ‘great’ statesmen he is. Facing a volley of queries from newsmen on the issue of D P Yadav’s entry into BJP, he said on February 23 (Hindustan Times, February 24): “The party does look into the background of individuals to ascertain if there were any criminal cases against him (them!) before induction into the party.” According to the same issue of the paper, he had also said, “It is difficult to ascertain the antecedents of everyone.” Thus, the BJP claims to ascertain every individual’s antecedents and also laments that it is difficult to ascertain every individual’s antecedents! 

On her part, Mrs Sushma Swaraj, who is known more for her hyperbole than for her political calibre, did not want to lag behind. She had said the “party’s principles are never influenced by the induction of a particular individual.”

This was the height of Machiavellianism, to say the least. Or let’s say of Chanakya Neeti, so as not to hurt their ‘nationalistic’ sentiments.  

OPEN-ENDED HYPOCRISY

THESE statements, issued before widespread condemnation forced the BJP to cancel Yadav’s membership on February 24, did bring out the predicament in which the party has landed itself by its open-ended hypocrisy. While it has been shouting from rooftop that it is a party with a difference, a party of principles, one which believes that politics should be based on morality, the reality is that its acts have always been at a wide variance with its precepts. If Goswami Tulsidas sarcastically said many are adept in sermonising to others, perhaps he did not realise that he was talking of the BJP and its leaders!

A case in point is the sermon given by both Vajpayee and Advani to the UP chief minister over his unwise decision for half-day leave in schools on every Friday. Both the PM and DPM told Mulayam Singh that India is not a theocratic state and there is no place for religion based politics here. There is no doubt that what they said was true; the only problem was that they were behaving like the devil who was fond of quoting the scripture. Is it not a fact that the BJP has played precisely religion based politics for long decades?

The D P Yadav episode, too, ably illustrated their penchant for hypocrisy and deceit. On Saturday, February 21, this notorious mafioso from western Uttar Pradesh was inducted into the BJP, at a function at the party headquarters in New Delhi, in full glare of TV cameras. Moreover, at that time, both BJP president Venkaiah Naidu and general secretary Pramod Mahajan were fondly basking in the dubious glory of this illicit liquor baron. And exactly at the same time, D P Yadav’s son, Vikas Yadav, was distributing among the press persons handbills that gave out vital information about the senior Yadav --- the same “facts” the BJP stalwarts were themselves “proudly” presenting about their latest catch. They, for example, told that D P Yadav has already read Jawaharlal Nahru’s Glimpses of World History, Premchand’s Godan and Rabindranath Tagore’s Geetanjali. Oh yes, he has also read the Speeches of Baba Saheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar. The message was clear: one who has read such immortal works, how could he be immoral! (See The Asian Age, February 22, for juicy details.)

Next day, on February 22, Pramod Mahajan even announced the BJP’s open-door policy --- that all those who have money and fame are welcome to the BJP (Navbharat Times, February 23).

As for Vikas Yadav, he is no less ‘illustrious’ than his father. At this young age, he is already involved in two murder cases --- those of Ms Jessica Lal and Nitish Katara. His future in the world of crime indeed appears bright!

That the episode generated a lot of public outrage and media criticism was natural. On February 24, The India Express editorially commented: “D P Yadav’s enrolment in the BJP, self-proclaimed party with a difference, comes at a time when those with a far more sullied record than its own are making attempts to clean up…... In the end, it is these intangibles of a healthy political culture that are at stake when a political party opens its doors to someone like D P Yadav.”

LEGITIMACY TO CRIMINALS

THAT the BJP has now expelled its newly enrolled pupil must, however, not lead one to believe that the party’s political Shishu Niketan has closed down. The fact is that this school had many many pupils of this kind in the past and still has many in its precincts.

Take the case of the dubious exploits of Kalyan Singh who recently rejoined the BJP after having spent, courtesy Vajpayee, a few years in wilderness. When he formed his second ministry in Uttar Pradesh in the second half of 1997, he got notoriety not only for having engineered defections in the BSP, Congress and some smaller parties and not only for having formed the first jumbo-size ministry (roughly eight dozen) in independent India. A far bigger cause of his notoriety was that he made every Tom, Dick and Harry a minister in return for his support, and those who now got ensconced in ministerial gaddis included a number of dreaded criminals. One of them was “Raja Bhaiya” whom Ms Mayawati put behind bars under POTA when he became a threat to her regime.

It is now well known that Kalyan Singh’s feat in 1997 did two things at the same time. First, it gave legitimacy to notorious criminals by making them ministers, so much so that these worthies now began to receive salutes from the same police officers who were, not very long ago, trying to apprehend them and put them behind bars. Secondly, this development heightened the aspirations of many other criminals no end; now they too began to hope that once they win an assembly seat by using their muscle power, it won’t take them long to get a ministerial gaddi. In a celebrated real-life story, a young man of UP took to crime simply because he wanted to amass two crore rupees in order to eventually enter the assembly and thus to further augment his wealth and influence.

This was how criminalisation of politics proceeded apace in the state --- courtesy the BJP and its preachers of morality.       

Moreover, in those days, the Kalyan Singh government of UP was spending an astronomical sum on the lavish life styles of its ministers, including the said criminals, in the name of security. But security from whom? From the police or from these criminals’ rivals? Or from both? And so much money was being thrown down the drain when developmental works had come to a standstill in the state.

Needless to say, this development at the same time extremely accentuated the sense of fear among the common masses. If the breakers of law were now being protected by law, who was there to listen to the common man’s woes! So much so that Raja Bhaiya, the Kunda criminal, even had the guts to feed a man to his crocodiles, simply because this unfortunate fellow had deposed against the former.

And now, those who are striving their utmost to secure the release of this “terror of Kunda” include some BJP leaders and particularly Rajnath Singh, its Thakur stalwart in the state, a former UP chief minister and now a union minister.  

THE BJP’S COMPULSIONS

THIS is indeed the real-life meaning of the promises the BJP-drafted NDA manifesto made to the people of the country five years ago. As we know, the document promised to rid the people of bhay (fear), bhookh (hunger) and bhrastachar (corruption), and in these columns we have already seen how they have rid (!) the people of hunger and corruption. And now we see what ways they have adopted to rid the people of the curse of fear!

This is not to say that other bourgeois landlord parties have not been harbouring criminals in order to utilise their muscle power. All of them have been doing so --- to one extent or another. But the most crucial difference between other bourgeois landlord parties and the BJP is that the latter has been doing all this in the name of principles and political morality. One may well recall that Kalyan Singh, then the BJP’s mascot in Uttar Pradesh, was putting the criminals in ministerial gaddis precisely at a time when the Vohra committee report and recommendations on criminalisation of politics, as leaked out in media, were being hotly debated through the length and breadth of the country. Nay, then the BJP itself was over-enthusiastically railing against the ongoing criminalisation of politics. Not that it was doing anything wrong or that it had no right to do so. But when a thief cries “thief, thief, thief,” then it becomes an altogether different proposition and the people feel compelled to think as to what to do with such a thief.

To further compound their list of hypocrisies, the BJP leaders soon began to even claim that they are like the Ganga water that purifies everything. (Perhaps the poor chaps had forgotten how much polluted these days the Ganga is.) Yet another simile they were fond of giving was that of a sea --- a river becomes the sea once it falls into the sea. But, then, who had any doubt regarding their mastery over verbal jugglery!

Just as in case of corruption, the BJP’s hypocrisy stands fully exposed on the issue of criminalisation of politics as well. In fact, from Brij Bhushan Singh in eastern UP to D P Yadav in western UP, there have been a number of the crime world’s worthies whom the BJP has been utilising or sought to utilise for winning elections. For brevity sake, here we will not go into the details of how many such worthies the BJP’s luminaries have enlisted in other states.

The party’s compulsions are understandable. At a time when the people were fed up with the politics of their rulers, the BJP projected itself as “a party with a difference.” With the help of the bourgeois and imperialist controlled media that have their own axe to grind, the BJP made the people believe that once it came to power, it would bring a sea change in the life of the people. The promise was that nobody would go to bed with an empty stomach, no caste or communal carnage would take place, corruption would be eliminated from public life, none will remain uneducated or unemployed, and what not. In short, just like Hitler had promised everything to every German in 1933, the BJP too tried to lure the masses with the dreams of an earthly heaven.

But today these very promises stand mercilessly broken, and the people tragically find themselves deceived by a bunch of thugs.

WRITING ON THE WALL IS CLEAR

NOT surprisingly, the writing on the wall is as clear as it never was, and the BJP too has read it well.

And it is this unenviable predicament, in which the BJP has landed itself, which is forcing it to adopt all foul means under the sun to avoid their rout in the coming elections. The D P Yadav episode highlights this very thing. According to Hindustan Times, “He is (was) seen as the BJP’s best bet to counter the muscle power of Samajwadi Party and others in some western UP pockets.” (In 1998, Yadav was indeed a BJP candidate against the Samjwadi Party.) But this may be only a partial explanation. For, these “others” include the Rashtriya Lok Dal of Ajit Singh that has a good deal of influence in the Jat dominated areas. Not very long ago, this party was a partner in the NDA and in the last elections the BJP had succeeded in securing some seats in western UP with the help of this party. But now that Ajit Singh has kick the BJP, the latter’s worries are understandable, for it had already lost a large number of constituencies in the eastern and central UP.

And mind it, Ajit Singh’s is not the only party to have kicked the NDA bandwagon. Apart from him, the National Conference (Jammu & Kashmir), Himachal Vikas Party (Himachal Pradesh), Haryana Vikas Party and Indian National Lok Dal (Haryana), Lok Janshakti Party (mainly Bihar), DMK, PMK and MDMK (all Tamil Nadu), MGP (Goa) and a few others have already dissociated from the BJP one by one. At the same time, some of the BJP’s allies like the BJD (Orissa), Samata Party and JD(U) (mainly Bihar) and TMC (West Bengal) have already suffered splits or are in the throes of internal dissension. The AGP of Assam has already announced that it would contest on its own; last time it contested in alliance with the BJP and could not get a single seat.     

It is in such a situation that the main ruling party of today is seeking to utilise every possible means --- from the temple issue to the likes of D P Yadav --- in order to cross the electoral check post. In this, they are behaving like smugglers who try all means to cross the border check posts. It is another matter that the crores of the country’s guards are now well aware of the dirty tricks which political smugglers adopt, and are also determined to haul them in one single net.