India This Week

The Affairs of the NCP; Chiranjeevi with Congress; DMK’s Dam Problems; Hiding Behind Basu to Defy Karat; and the Vande Mataram controversy

On 10 June when the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) celebrated its tenth anniversary, a belligerent Maharashtra unit chief RR Patil had castigated the Congress for suggesting a merger between the two parties. Four months down the line with a mere 62 seats in its kitty in the recently concluded Assembly polls, Patil remains silent on the issue though the idea has found many supporters within his party.

Senior Congress leaders  too feel a merger is on the cards. “It will happen and must happen,” said Manikrao Thakre, president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee.

A decade after Sharad Pawar walked out of the Congress over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin issue and established the NCP, he remains a confused man. He continues to be tied to his former party, coalition after coalition. And he is known to have come back into the Congress fold after breaking away in the past as well. Nine years after he broke away from the Congress in 1978 to set up a government with the Janata Party in Maharashtra, he returned to the Congress in 1987.

Over the past decade, the NCP has lost ground to the Congress and Pawar’s famed charisma has failed to deliver electoral results. The 12 MPs in 2004 have dwindles to eight in 2009. And a tally of 71 MLAs in 2004 has  fallen to 62 now.

And though in the past Pawar has managed to allay fears about his failing health, NCP workers are now more and more worried about what lies ahead. Moreover, with the exception of him and Praful Patel , no other NCP leader has a national presence.

The succession struggle in Pawar’s backyard is also likely to cost the NCP dear. Like any doting father, Pawar has chosen daughter Supriya Sule as his political heir. And thwarted nephew Ajit Pawar from becoming Deputy Chief Minister, though 52 MLAs had proposed his name.

So though the NCP has adopted a tough stance in portfolio sharing talks in Maharashtra, Congressmen know he will ultimately concede to their demands as he won’t risk being out of power.

In a development that could radically transform Andhra Pradesh politics in these times of succession crisis after YSR’s untimely death,  Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) has struck an electoral alliance with the ruling Congress for the forthcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls. The PRP, which contested the May Assembly election on its own steam and won 18 seats, has been largely seen as a party that split opposition votes and helped the YSR-led Congress to a second term.

For the Congress, the alliance will be a twin advantage —the hope of a stellar show in the civic polls thanks to the actor’s popularity, as well as keeping supporters of YSR’s son, Jagan Mohan Reddy, at bay. Just last week, a woman minister resigned from Chief Minister K Rosaiah’s cabinet, protesting the High Command’s attempt to keep Jagan from taking charge.

The DMK government in Tamil Nadu has decided to cancel its plan of organising a protest in Madurai this week against Union Minister Jairam Ramesh for his alleged partiality to Kerala.  Ramesh turned into an enemy of the DMK recently when his ministry permitted Kerala to conduct a survey for a new dam in place of the weak Mullaperiyar Dam, from where Tamil Nadu draws water to irrigate its southern districts as per an agreement executed by the British.   Jayalalithaa’s attempts to win over the farmers who depend on the Mullaperiyar have added to Karunanidhi’s worries. But coalition compulsions and the recent CBI raids on DMK minister A Raja over the spectrum scam have forced him to drop the protest.  It wasn’t long ago when coalition compulsions put the DMK in a similarly awkward position over Sri Lankan Tamils. Ah well, such is coalition politics.

The Congress’ rejection of veteran Marxist Jyoti Basu’s plea for a Left-Congress alliance against Trinamool was expected. But why are significant sections of the CPM leadership shirking their responsibility by using the former Chief Minister to clean up the mess created by the party in West Bengal, as well as the rest of the country? The brave face put on by Politburo members Sitaram Yechuri and Brinda Karat defending Basu’s controversial proposal notwithstanding, even party insiders are aware that Jyoti Babu’s hand of friendship at the height of enmity between the CPM and the Congress was not expected to yield any results. And yet the veteran Marxist came out with his unexpected statement, appealing to Congress voters to support the Left candidates in the 7 November bypolls and accusing the Trinamool Congress of unleashing violence along with Maoists.

“We gave unconditional support to Congress to counter communalism and save the country. Now, when the state is facing a severe crisis, I would ask Congress supporters to back Left Front candidates for peace, order and development,” the statement said.

West Bengal Congress chief Pradip Bhattacharya’s rebuttal was equally quick and obvious. “The CPM’s political bankruptcy has become so acute that they had to utilise a respectable leader like Jyoti Basu to make such a statement.” It is one thing for the majority of CPM leaders in West Bengal to want the Congress-Left alliance as the only way to prevent an imminent collapse in the state, and it is another to resort to the Amar Singh brand of political gimmickry to achieve that objective. The statement, if anything, only reflects a desperation on the part of the Alimuddin Street bosses, who, afraid to push this line in the politburo against CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat’s rabid anti-Congressism, are using the name of the 97-year-old former CM and Marxist icon to state what they want to. There could have been a better —and, certainly, more honest—way to initiate the process or to challenge Karat’s anti-Congress line. No one, for example, has stopped the Alimuddin Street bosses from passing such a resolution in the CPM state committee and then forcing it on to the Politburo. A debate so generated would open up the question of a Congress-Left pact, as well as rid the party of many of its contradictions.  The support, whether of voters or parties, cannot be gained by begging.

The Maulana Mahmood Madani faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH) has done itself no favours at its recent national conference. Even as Home Minister P Chidamabaram in his address to the conference lauded the resolution passed last year by the JUH against terrorism, the conference itself began with a call for all Muslim women to wear the burkha and went on to pass a resolution against the singing of Vande Mataram. The resolutions gain more weight from the fact that the meet was held at Deoband at the Darul Uloom seminary campus.

Notwithstanding the ‘nationalist’ credentials of the organisation—its long history began with the Khilafat movement in 1919 and it strongly opposed Partition and the creation of Pakistan—the resolutions will only provide fodder for critics within and outside the community. The JUH has always been marked with the deep conservatism of the Deoband school, and while this is reflected in the resolutions, they are also a pointer to events unfolding within the JUH.  Since the death of its president Maulana Asad Madni in 2007, his brother Maulana Arshad Madani and son Maulana Mahmood Madani have been warring for the post, leading to a split in the JUH. The resolutions then have to be seen as measures to consolidate the conservative flock that comprises the JUH. The danger is that this can easily lead to an escalation where each faction assumes more and more conservative positions. It’s a path rife with danger and can do little to help the community. Already, it is clear that the conference’s call for implementing the Sachar Committee report will be lost in the ensuing din.

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