Lessons to draw from tamasha that gripped the nation

Keki Daruwalla

The Maharashtra crisis has been resolved in a manner that has gone against political intrigues of the lowest kind. That democratic forces have won is a matter of great satisfaction to people at large. That BJP as a political party, and Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, as a constitutional entity, have lost face is something they deserved. They fell into the pit of their own digging. But it must be said that the politico-constitutional narrative of our post-Independence history could have done without this tamasha. 

It is surprising that a seasoned party like the BJP swallowed whatever Ajit Pawar told them. Everyone knew his record and the corruption cases against him when he was in charge of the Irrigation portfolio. (What incidentally has happened to the anti-corruption plank of the BJP?) And no one could forget Ajit Pawar’s bon mot about what was expected of him, pissing in the reservoirs to replenish the water? Yet the lust for office prompted Delhi and Fadnavis to take recourse to this last straw, which blew away in the Sharad Pawar gale. Incidentally, Ajit is still in the party and will be a thorn in the side of the polity in Mumbai. In similar circumstances in any other country, he would have been expelled from the party.

What lessons do we draw from these events? What nostrums and ideological planks have fallen by the wayside? Firstly, the idea that parties espousing similar ideologies walk hand in hand, till death do them part, needs to be re-examined. To the casual observer, the BJP and Shiv Sena were almost mirror images of each other, one ensconced in Maharashtra, the other spread all over the country. They fell out over fishes and loaves of office. The BJP had reason on its side, they had almost twice the seats the Sena had won. But real politic has nothing much to do with either ethics or logic.  Time will tell how far the parties go their separate ways.

It needs to be remembered that Shiv Sena considers the BJP as an interloper, which has snatched away the Sena constituents. It also feels that without the backing of its workers, the BJP would not have won so many seats.

Secondly, the idea or slogan of nationalism has taken a bad hit. The BJP tried to tell us that they held proprietary rights over nationalism. Some of it was faked, you need slogans to sway the masses, and nothing like nationalism to do the trick, as the Nazis found out in the 1930s in Germany. Both Sena and BJP have owned their own brands of this extra love for the nation. The Shiv Sena has been practising their Maharashtrian brand, meaning bullying non-Maharashtrians. That will be difficult now in a three-way coalition. The Gujarati brand, espoused by the current BJP, has been influenced by both the Savakarite philosophy of Hindutva, taken from Maharashtra, nuggets from the Gujarat riots of 2002, and a blend of the two. Lately, they have added surgical strikes and Balakot. The tactics have worked. The General Election may have been won on the bedrock of Hindutva and aggressive nationalism, but regional forces come to the fore in state political calculations. In Uttar Pradesh, the Jan Sangh ethos of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan was stymied through caste-based mobilisation by Mayawati and Mulayam Singh. That trend buckled under the Modi wave, coupled with covert attacks against secularism. Political battles between adversaries, dressed in an ideological veneer, seem to be the future.

Has the leadership recognised that on the Constitution Day, 18 parties boycotted the joint parliamentary sitting to commemorate the Constitution, and congregated at Ambedkar’s statue to shout against what was happening in Mumbai? The Congress, Shiv Sena, Trinamool Congress, DMK, SP, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Indian Union Muslim League all shouted against the machinations of the BJP in Maharashtra. The entire spectrum of political opinion seemed to be against the BJP. The party needs to take heed.

The third major point to emerge is that the Supreme Court is the only watchdog of the Constitution. Both the executive and the legislative branches have failed miserably. The BJP’s record as regards this has been dismal — starting from Uttarakhand, Goa, Karnataka and now Maharashtra. Governors have sided with the party unashamedly. Sometimes this is as blatant as Goa, with the leader of the BJP, with just 13 MLAs out of 40, being asked to form the government. Will the Supreme Court hold a scrutiny on the role of Governor Koshyari this time? The executive seems to be asking the judiciary to appropriate more and more space in the polity and governance of the country. 

Details about the President being woken up at 4 am to revoke President’s rule have leaked out. In lighter vein: what could have been the conversation between His Excellency and the man who serves him tea on the fateful morning?

The President’s rule airlifts at five.
The Butler’s in a fix.
Sir, shall I serve the morning tea?
‘No, the swearing-in’s at six!’‘
So Uddhavji will soon be here?’
‘No! Ajit and Fadnavis!’