Congress(I) political monopoly continues as Opposition parties fail to stand united

Like a punch-drunk prize-fighter, reeling and bleeding, the country's battered and bruised Opposition parties limped into the political arena last fortnight as the campaign warmed up for the crucial by-elections to seven parliamentary and 23 Assembly seats slated for June 14.It was more a parody of a fight than the real thing. Over the months, pitted against the Congress(I) juggernaut, most of the non-Communist Opposition has been shattered into an incoherent kaleidoscope of fragments.Even as the last date for withdrawal passed last fortnight, 89 opposition candidates from 14 different parties were already in the fray, in effect working hard to do no better than parcel out the substantial anti-Congress(I) sentiment into ineffective bits. "With such enemies as we have," said an ebullient Congress(I) pollster, "who needs allies."As though an atomised opposition wasn't enough to guarantee the ruling party a cakewalk, at least one supposedly national opposition party, the Congress(U), found itself suddenly gripped by a strong bout of defection fever.I had been pleading against having unity with the Congress(I). Mrs Gandhi wanted Congressmen to bow down to her.31 March 1979It is homecoming for me.23 May 1981Y.B. Chavan In an ignominous display of power lust, such one-time political heavyweights as Maharashtra's Yashwantrao Balwantrao Chavan, Bihar's Bali Ram Bhagat, West Bengal's Siddhartha Shankar Ray, and Uttar Pradesh's Krishan Chand Pant joined a growing line of political turncoats knocking at the Congress(I) portcullis.Confusion: Even as their erstwhile colleagues in the field made a mad scramble to enter the ruling party's seemingly impregnable fortress, other opposition stalwarts were adding to the confusion by stepping out in new directions. Two months ago Chandrajit Yadav, who in three years has transited as many political parties, set up the brand-new Loktantrik Lok Dal after breaking away from Charan Singh.In so doing, he joined the august ranks of the irrepressible Raj Narain, who in January revived the Socialist Party, also parting company with his mentor Singh, and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, who decided to go his own way with a brand new grouping called the Democratic Socialist Front, finally breaking his unconsummated seven-month marriage with the Congress(I).On the other side of the political spectrum, Sripad Amrit Dange, the country's oldest surviving active communist, was expelled from the Communist Party of India (CPI). Adding confusion to the country's already divided leftists, Dange and his supporters formed the brand-new All India Communist Party.Shorn of much of their political respectability, still licking their wounds 18 months after the last national election, and unable to sense their future direction, most of the country's opposition politicians were clearly demonstrating that they had forgotten the prophetic words of Jayaprakash Narayan who warned them: "If you don't hang together, you will all hang separately."Mrs Gandhi and Mr (Sanjay) Gandhi stand exposed before the nation.11 July 1979We must accept the position that it is Mrs Gandhi's Congress which is the real Congress.13 January 1980Devaraj Urs If there were lessons for unity to-be learned during the fateful Janata interregnum, which lasted an all-too-brief 33 months, those lessons had long ago been left behind in the acrimonious quarrels which engulfed these parties in mid-1979, and two years later have laid most of them waste.As Inder Malhotra of the Times Of India wrote last fortnight, "The crowning irony of the situation is that the relations among the principal opposition parties, particularly the BJP, the Janata, and the Lok Dal are even worse than they were before."Creating Rifts: As expected the only one person who has made political capital from this is Mrs Gandhi. While Congress(U) politicians have been trying to gain maximum leverage by coming forward as a team, Mrs Gandhi outwitted them by sowing the seeds of confusion and dissension among them.She has done this by apparently opening the doors of her party selectively, baiting aspirants without actually welcoming anybody with open arms, alternately blowing hot and cold. Said a senior Congress(I) leader: "By creating rifts amongst the opposition camps, she has shown her mastery of manipulative politics."I shall never, never join the Congress(I) led by Mrs Gandhi, and I shall remain in the Indian National Congress.16 May 1980I want to join the Congress (I).29 April 1981Siddhartha Shankar RayNowhere is this more evident than in the apparent rift between Congress(U) president Devaraj Urs and Chavan. Urs hasn't condemned Chavan's defection; he has for all practical purposes only questioned Chavan's attempted back-door entry, jumping the long queue ahead of him. "Personally, I feel that Mrs Gandhi is trying for a psychological advantage before the coming by-elections and she has timed it well," Urs said. "Chavan is only playing the piper in this game."Obviously, Chavan hasn't learned his lesson from others who saw themselves as pipers, notably Bahuguna who in the buildup to the Lok Sabha elections last year was wooed by no less than Mrs Gandhi herself and Sanjay - only to be cast aside like a soiled rag after Mrs Gandhi swept back to power.Nor has he obviously learned from the long line of aspirants that are already in the Congress(I) or still standing in line: such men as Karan Singh, Brahmananda Reddy, Veerendra Patil, Vasantdada Patil, Swaran Singh, Dinesh Singh, P. Ramachandran and Mohan Lal Sukhadia, who having sworn allegiance for the umpteenth time to Mrs Gandhi and her party, are cooling their heels - and, possibly, their new found ardour for the Congress(I).Eroding Credibility: Mrs Gandhi's strategy is clear. While accepting defectors, to her party, she has gone strictly by one principle: how much confusion and destruction will that defection cause in the ranks of the Opposition. "She knows that they need her, that she has the charisma and gets the votes, not they," says a political analyst. "She doesn't need them for the Congress(I)."The Congress cannot face the present challenges if it remains in the pocket of one individual.9 January 1978It will be good to join the Congress(I).1 December 1979Brahmananda Reddy The defections of the Rays, Chavans, Pants and Reddys aren't likely to add one iota to the ruling party's electoral standing. But they are likely to erode the credibility of the middle-of-the-road opposition which battles for the same vote as the Congress(I).Says Satya Narain Jaitya, a 31-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of the Lok Sabha. "By encouraging periodic defections Mrs Gandhi is telling people that the opposition parties can be made and unmade by her."The Indira factor in opposition politics has, in fact, produced two widely divergent effects. On the one hand are parties like the Janata, Congress(U), Democratic Socialist Front, and the Loktantrik Lok Dal, dominated by apostates from Mrs Gandhi's ranks.Seething with discontent as personal feuds, jealousies and irreconcilable power struggles keep their leaders at each other's throats, they are standard bearers of a new Congress culture. As M.M. Sankhdar, political scientist at Delhi University argues: "Only the parties formed and floated by former Congressmen are plagued with internal squabbles."While this may be a product of the four splits engineered by Mrs Gandhi in her party, it has spawned the unique phenomenon of Congressmen parting company with her for short-term gain - only to go scurrying back in her moments of ascendancy as they are now doing.While none of the stalwarts who she hacked off in the momentous 1969 split actually trundled back to her, several of those who left her in the divisions of 1977, 1978 and 1979 soon swallowed their pride and returned to the leader. Among them were Bahuguna, former Orissa chief minister Nandini Satpathy and one-time Kamataka chief minister Veerendra Patil of 1977 vintage, former foreign minister Swaran Singh, Communications Minister C.M. Stephen, former home minister Brahmananda Reddy and former Rajasthan chief minister Mohan Lal Sukhadia who were cast aside in 1978, and Vasantdada Patil of the 1979 division.Says Pant, a gregarious former Union energy minister, by way of explanation: "Congressmen should come together because ideologically there is nothing which separates them. All of us have a history of Congress culture and philosophy behind us. And the manner in which Congress(U) has been functioning certainly forces one to doubt whether it can play any role in national affairs."The other result of the Opposition's collision with the Congress(I) has been to strengthen the resolve of parties like the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the BJP, both cadre-based parties, to consolidate their influence and expand into new areas. Even so, they too sutler from the one malaise which like some terminal disease seems to debilitate the national Opposition: like the Congress-spawned political parties, they too find it virtually impossible to work with other parties.Raj Narain addresses a Lok Dal meeting as Charan Singh listens; Banarsi Das (top) and Chandrajit Yadav: Family ruleThough the Congress(I) won power dramatically in the 1980 election, it polled 42.56 per cent of the votes, no different from the 42.38 per cent that the Janata, Congress(U), Lok Dal, CPI-M and CPI together pulled in.Perhaps it is the wasted opportunities represented by these figures that prompts BJP President Atal Behari Vajpayee to say: "It is a strange paradox that while the people are disillusioned with Mrs Gandhi, the leaders (of the Opposition parties) are making a bee-line to join her."For those who are running back to the Congress(I) it is evidently no paradox. "It is a homecoming for me," asserted Chavan, who resigned from Congress(U) on May 26, "I was feeling suffocated in the party and am feeling quite free now."For a man whose unabashed opportunism took him unhesitatingly into the ill-fated Charan Singh regime less than two years ago, the remarks made strange reading compared with his earlier determination to stick with the Congress(U) "till the last."At a Kolhapur meeting last fortnight Chavan gamely admitted having changed his mind. "True, I had said so," Chavan told Congress(U) workers, "but should one jump into a deep valley if it came along one's way?"Localised Influence: Closer to the truth is the fact that the Congress(U) had lost much of the meaning it earlier had. After the last elections, it was left with only 25 MPs and a little over 150 MLAs in the country, concentrated mainly in states like Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka.Now, with the loyalty of its leaders in doubt, the very existence of the party is in question. There are some like Unnikrishnan and A.K. Antony of Kerala and Babu Jagjivan Ram who will try and keep the flag flying - not because of their convictions but because they are not easily acceptable to the ruling party. Says Banka Behari Dass, general secretary of the Congress(U) rather grandly: "Those who want to fight will remain united and show Chavan and other such persons that opportunistic politics is to be eschewed to preserve democracy in the country."The 1980 convention of the Janata Party: A mixed bag of left overs abandoned by Dinesh Singh (top) and P. RamachandranSuch sentiments can not, however, cloak the fact that like the Congress(U), the other centrist opposition parties are also limited in their appeal. The Janata Party, a shadow of its former self when it ruled India for 28 months, is a mixed bag of left-overs from the 1969 Congress split, the Jan Sangh and the Socialists.To their credit, Janata leaders like party president Chandrashekhar, Morarji Desai, Madhu Dandavate and N.G. Goray have been able to hold their party members together - with the exception of Dinesh Singh. But they are moved more by a tenacious memory of the party's brief ascendancy than any separate political ideology.The party remains largely confined to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and some pockets of Uttar Pradesh, having lost its nation-wide cover in the frenzy of desertions and splits that overtook it in mid-1979.The party, which had some political clout left in Karnataka, is frittering away its assets in pursuit of spoils. Chief Minister Gundu Rao chose H.D. Deva Gowda, leader of the Janata Party in the Assembly and a representative of the powerful Vokkaliga caste group, to represent the state at a sugarcane growers conference in Mexico, ignoring the claims of two national award winning farmers. Gowda is expected to come back as a staunch supporter of the Chief Minister.The Lok Dal, similarly, is virtually unknown outside Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Haryana. The party which ruled the country briefly for a few months is now regarded as the personal constituency of Charan Singh in spite of the presence of firebrands such as George Fernandes, Madhu Limaye and Karpoori Thakur, and even landed leaders like Devi Lal of Haryana and Kumbha Ram Arya of Rajasthan.In fact, the wrecking of the Lok Dal was caused by personality clashes involving Charan Singh, Raj Narain, Devi Lal, Chandrajit Yadav and Banarasi Das. Charan Singh was accused of fostering a 'family rule' over the party.Yet, all of those who left the Lok Dal took refuge behind anti-Singh ideological postures, opposing his controversial ideology of the urban-rural divide and his caste politics. "Charan Singh had been eroding the secular image of the party," said Das when he left the Lok Dal earlier this year.Squabbling Leaders: Yadav's breakaway group, which has diminished the Lok Dal's appeal to the backward castes, is limited to eastern Uttar Pradesh, while Raj Narain ploughs his lonely furrow in a handful of districts in the same state. Vajpagee and BJP workers courting arrest (left), Advani (top) and Jethmalani: Expanding slowlyBahuguna's new party may be able to rope in MPs from as far afield as Kerala and West Bengal, but basically his following is confined to the hill districts of Uttar Pradesh and some sections of the country's Muslim population whose cause he champions.With such limited appeal, it is hardly surprising that most opposition parties spend their time at loggerheads with one another instead of squarely facing the Congress(I) challenge. The phenomenon is not restricted to one or two parties, it afflicts the entire polity. Charges and counter charges come easily to the lips of men frustrated by the lack of political headway.Alleges Sat Pal Mallick, all-India secretary of the Lok Dal: "The BJP is indirectly supporting the Congress(I) in the parliamentary elections." Adds Yadav: "The BJP is a communal organisation and hence any political group which has the BJP's support will not survive." Retorts Jagdish Prasad Mathur, a BJP member of the Rajya Sabha, "How can we join hands with people who change their colour every day?"Some of the squabbling is over the control of party funds and organisation. For example, the differences between Urs and Jagjivan Ram were born of jealousy and competition for the party's top job which Ram wants from Urs. Both of them shunted between New Delhi and the various state capitals to lobby for and defend their precarious perches in power against campaigns by the rival factions.Says a disgusted member of the Congress(U): "It is a sad reflection on the party that instead of taking up the people's cause, they are fighting for the presidentship of a party which is in the process of folding itself up."Damaging Presence: Since the politics of the personality cult is not strong enough to sustain the Opposition, cracks have inevitably appeared in these parties. Bruised egos of few leaders notwithstanding, even the erosion of mass appeal and loss of popularity have not been able to force leaders like Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram to have a fresh look at their relevance to the Indian political scene.CPI-M leaders at the Jullundur Congress: Concentrating on the northAsked about his chances of retiring from active politics. Ram retorted: "Why should I retire? Has anybody's father or grandfather given me a post so that I must seek retirement? We didn't ask old people like Nehru and Gandhi to retire from politics because of the age factor."In some opposition circles, these antics have aroused unconcealed hostility. Says BJP Vice-President Ram Jethmalani: "Chavan, Jagjivan Ram and Charan Singh are inconsequential in the current politics, but their presence on the Indian political scene is hurting." Clearly, nobody is being hurt more than the opposition parties themselves.Of the half dozen national opposition parties only the BJP and CPI-M have so far shown themselves to be free from internal squabbling. Although lop leaders of both the parties have strong differences on the question of making alliances at the national level, these differences have remained confined to the party forums.There are strong indications that both of them are trying hard to expand their geographical influence. For example, the BJP is going west and south while the CPI-M, following up a 1978 plenum decision, is concentrating on the northern belt. Says Vajpayee: "'We are not in a hurry to forge an alliance. Our major concern at the moment is strengthening the organisation at the grass roots level."Poles apart as they are, the CPI-M and the BJP have frequently clashed, some times - as in Kerala - violently, in their quest for new political pastures. While the BJP has won pockets of influence in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Assam, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, the CPI-M has sought to cement the Left with overtures to the CPI and other less formal political groupings whom it has absorbed into its state government coalitions. Though the CPI and CPI-M together have the biggest opposition group in Parliament, these efforts have yet to yield concrete results.In spite of these gains, the opposition parties wield little clout in national politics. Says a senior social scientist of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. "None of the opposition parties including the leftist has the support of all the sections of the society like workers, Harijans and minorities."The brute fact is that unlike the Congress(I), with its traditional umbrella-like approach and total identification with its one leader, Mrs Gandhi, the opposition parties have failed to evolve nation-wide organisation.AICP'S Dange (top) and CPI'S KrishnanThe country's political forces, which focussed themselves sharply in the 1977 elections, were again scattered with the break up of the Janata regime and the crushing blow dealt to the non-Communist national Opposition in last year's elections.If there is any hope for opposition politics, it must surely lie in the polarisation, again, of political forces. But the prospects seem remote. Indeed, there is yet little agreement even what the polarisation should be about.Mrs Gandhi and her autocratic style of politics has failed to sustain opposition unity. So has ideology. "We welcome the polarisation of unscrupulous and scrupulous elements," says Jethmalani, only half in jest.With the opposition parties apparently satisfied with their tiny slices of the cake, there's little likelihood for the time being of their forging an alliance or merging into one political party again. Indeed, some leaders like Jagjivan Ram question the need for a single party, maintaining that a coalition of many parties can be just as successful in projecting a national alternative. Chandrashekhar believes that the "immediate task for us is not to evolve a national alternative to the ruling party but to establish a national opposition to resist the re-emergence of the dictatorial tendencies."No Coordination: Unfortunately, even on the question of opposition unity, all of them do not hold identical views. Some of the political groups like the CPI, the Lok Dal, and the Congress(U) are not prepared to join an opposition front which includes the BJP, SaysYadav: "Only a left-of-centre political party is suitable for the country. The BJP, because of its communal and capitalist character, cannot form the basis of this regrouping."An attempt to form a six-party front comprising the Congress(U), CPI-M, Lok Dal, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Forward Bloc was made last September when the farmers' agitation erupted in Maharashtra and some parts of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.Mrs Gandhi and Bahuguna at Rajghat in 1979: A shortlived togethernessBut this effort proved short-lived as the leaders of the front soon fell to fighting amongst themselves. A coordination committee which was formed to review the functioning of the front never met again after its first meeting in New Delhi.Some feeble attempts were made during the last few months to forge some sort of political alliances through dinner diplomacy. Over a dozen dinner meetings were hosted by the various group leaders in which leaders like L.K. Advani, Fernandes, Biju Patnaik, Ravindra Varma, Chandrashekhar, Vajpayee and Madhu Limaye were present. But the decisions and the understandings hammered out during the deliberations lasted fewer days than the dishes served at these culinary summits. "The sweet dishes could not erase the bitterness of the past," said one frequent participant.Polarisation: The failure of the Opposition raises fundamental questions for which there are no easy answers. Will the national non-Communist opposition parties grow increasingly redundant? Will the plethora of opposition groupings survive? Or will two or three national parties with recognisable ideologies and a clutch of regional parties serving individual states eventually replace the present multiplicity of factions?Interestingly, some party theoreticians are coming round to the view - recently propounded by Sharad Pawar - that as the parties spawned by the Congress culture retreat back into the Congress(I) fold, politics may well polarise around the centrist Congress(I), the Communists and the right wing BJP, with splinter groups and regional parties scattered in between. On either side of the political spectrum, the Communists and the BJP are uncompromising, CPI secretary N.K. Krishnan was not just mouthing a well-worn slogan when he said, "We stand for the unity of the Left and democratic forces." He was stating a position on which both the CPI and CPI-M and their allies are firm.Added Krishnan, "The slogan of all opposition parties' unity is not only unprincipled, it is also impracticable and would amount to cheating the people." Speaking for the BJP, Advani, the party's soft-spoken general secretary, says flatly: "Our party is not eager to enter into any electoral alliances."Doubtful Unity: But there are a few in the opposition parties who are optimistic about the strong and viable single or group of opposition parties that may ultimately emerge on the national scene. Says Surendra Mohan, Janata Party general secretary: "A new grouping of various political parties may emerge which will ultimately lead to formation of a new party. Each opposition party has regained its credibility in its respective areas of influence."Mohan, however, is not sure of the combination which is likely to be the national alternative. But leaders like Yadav are specific about the political coalitions. Says he, "The Kerala type experiment can also be tried at the national level." He refers to the combination of the Congress(U), CPI, CPI-M and other regional groups.In fact the only combinations which have, at least at the state level, been able to stem the Indira wave are the leftists or the local parties, alone or in coalition. Indeed, this has led some leaders to apprehend that if no opposition party attains national status, politics may descend to proliferation and consolidation of the regional parties like the Kerala Congress, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in the south, the Akalis and National Conference in the north and some parties based on ethnic affinities in the north-east, all of which are crucial to the areas they represent.The alternative is continued political monopoly for the Congress(I), a situation which has been all too familiar for the country in the past. And because absolute power corrupts absolutely, that isn't a prospect to be relished. Yet, unless the opposition parties are able to put their act together, that is precisely what may happen.True, historically, there has never been a strong opposition in the country. But the rag bag that passes for the national Opposition at present can surely do better than falling apart when they were united, and standing up against each other when they are divided.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Feb 24, 2014 12:50 IST--- ENDS ---

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Congress(I) political monopoly continues as Opposition parties fail to stand united

Like a punch-drunk prize-fighter, reeling and bleeding, the country's battered and bruised opposition parties limped into the political arena as the campaign warmed up for the crucial by-elections to seven parliamentary and 23 Assembly seats. It was more a parody of a fight than the real thing.

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