DIVIDED WE STAND

2 DIVIDED WE STAND
DIVIDED WE STAND
India in a Time of Coalitions

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Shankar Raghuraman
Copyright © Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Shankar Raghuraman, 2007

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-
copying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 2007 by

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Published by Vivek Mehra for Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in
10/13 pt Stempel Garamond by Star Compugraphics Private Limited, Delhi
and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guha Thakurta, Paranjoy.

Divided we stand: India in a time of coalitions/Paranjoy Guha Thakurta,
Shankar Raghuraman.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Political parties—India. 2. India—Politics and government—1977–
I. Raghuraman, Shankar. II. Title.
JQ298.A1G84 324.254—dc22 2008 2007036647

ISBN: 978-0-7619-3663-3 (Hb) 978-81-7829-829-0 (India-Hb)

The Sage Team: Rekha Natarajan, Meena Chakravorty and Rajib Chatterjee
 Praise for the Book
A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand

‘… a book that will be indispensable for specialist and lay persons

alike. Where the book really succeeds is in evolving a framework
that organizes complex events in a simple pattern.… The reader is left
wanting more, especially about the interest groups and lobbies that
are so crucial to the making of economic policy’.
—Mahesh Rangarajan, Seminar

‘… a well-written and well-researched book on contemporary Indian

politics…. Specially useful is the graphic mapping of the last three
general elections.’
—Jawed Naqvi, Business World

‘This is a book written by political scientists working with theory, gut

feeling and journalistic experience applied to empirical data.
Timely, informative, well argued in easy-flow journalese.’
—Monojit Majumdar, The Hindustan Times

‘… it is one of the most intellectually stimulating books of our times,

will rarely be challenged by anybody … informative, factually accurate,
politically sophisticated, intellectually challenging and richly
stimulating in its wisdom, its logic, its structure and even in its
tentative conclusions, which are arrived at with due humility and
not a little self-examination. It spares none as none should be spared,
which is what gives to it credibility even if it invites anger and derision
from those criticized. What it does is to tell the truth—and isn’t that
what history is all about?’
—M.V. Kamath, Free Press Journal
6 DIVIDED WE STAND

‘The 400 page book is packed with information and analysis about
the current political scenario.
Serious work, yet not stodgy or pompous.’
—Ravi Shanker Kapoor, The Financial Express

‘While the book’s preoccupation is with the workability of coalitions

as a governing arrangement, the authors have given a rather compre-
hensive account of the political developments in the last five years, as
seen through the performance of various political parties’.
—Harish Khare, The Hindu

‘Published at the completion of the first non-Congress coalition

government that has lasted its full term, and at the beginning of yet
another experiment, this book is a pioneering project in the analysis
of coalition politics in India’.
—Ajit Kumar Jha, India Today

‘The strength of the book lies in its enormous empirical data, which are
very useful to understand the rise and consolidation of the coalition
experiment in India. It is a readily available reference book for those
seeking to lay hands on the nature and dynamics of coalition in a society
torn by divides of religion, region and caste. The authors therefore
deserve to be complimented for having set the ball rolling in a field
that is empirically rich but theoretically developing.’
—Bidyut Chakraborty, The Book Review

‘… this book arrived at certain inferences about the future course of

Indian politics, that stand up rather well to subsequent events’.
—Sukumar Muralidharan, Biblio

‘The book scores brownie points with its in-depth analyses of

coalition politics and brings to readers information and analyses in
a lucid manner’.
—Santanu Nandan Sharma, The Economic Times
 Contents

List of Abbreviations 8
Preface 13
Acknowledgements 33

1. Introduction: India in a Time of Coalitions 39

2. UPA Government: Peaceless Coexistence 72
3. Indian National Congress: Alive,
but Not Quite Kicking 106
4. Bharatiya Janata Party: Coping with a Power Cut 156
5. Hindi Heartland: Asserting Caste Identities 240
6. Regional Parties: Increasingly Influential 300
7. Left Parties: Barking and Biting 389
8. Friends in Need: Pages from the Past 420
9. Friends in Deed: Governance and Stability 447
10. Economic Policies: Pulls and Pressures 460
11. Looking Ahead 508

Index 514
About the Authors 525
 List of Abbreviations

AASU All Assam Students’ Union

ABCD Akhil Bharatiya Congress Dal
ADB Asian Development Bank
AGP Asom Gana Parishad
AIADMK All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
AITUC All India Trade Union Congress
AJGAR Ahirs (Yadavs), Jats, Gujjars and Rajputs
APM Administered Pricing Mechanism
AUDF Assam United Democratic Front
BALCO Bharat Aluminium Company
BAMCEF All India Backward and Minority Communities
Employees’ Federation
BCCI Board of Control for Cricket in India
BHEL Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited
BJD Biju Janata Dal
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BJS Bharatiya Jana Sangh
BKU Bharatiya Kisan Union
BLD Bharatiya Lok Dal
BMS Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh
BNP Bangladesh National Party
BPCC Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee
BPCL Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd
BPPF(H) Bodoland People’s Progressive Front
(Hargrama faction)
BSP Bahujan Samaj Party
CFAR Centre for Advocacy and Research
 List of Abbreviations 9

CFD Congress for Democracy

CPI (M) Communist Party of India (Marxist)
CPI Communist Party of India
DMDK Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam
DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
DS-4 Dalit Soshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti
EPF Employees’ Provident Fund
EPFO Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation
EVR E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FICCI Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce
and Industry
FIIs Foreign Institutional Investors
FIR First Information Report
HPCL Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd
HVC Himachal Vikas Congress
HVP Haryana Vikas Party
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICHR Indian Council of Historical Research
ICSSR Indian Council for Social Sciences Research
IMDTA Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act
IMF International Monetary Fund
INC Indian National Congress
INLD Indian National Lok Dal
INTACH Indian National Trust for Art and
Cultural Heritage
IOC Indian Oil Corporation
IOU Index of Opposition Unity
IPCL Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited
IRDA Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority
ISI Inter-Services Intelligence
IUML Indian Union Muslim League
JD (U) Janata Dal (United)
JD Janata Dal
JKD Jan Kranti Dal
10 DIVIDED WE STAND

JMM Jharkhand Mukti Morcha

JVM Jharkhand Vikas Morcha
KMPP Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party
LDF Left Democratic Front
LJP Lok Janshakti Party
LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
MBCs Most Backward Castes
MCC Maoist Communist Centre
MCOCA Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act
MDMK Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
MISA Maintenance of Internal Security Act
MNS Maharashtra Navnirman Sena
MPCC Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee
NAC National Advisory Council
NALCO National Aluminium Company .
NC National Conference
NCERT National Council for Educational Research &
Training
NCMP National Common Minimum Programme
NCP Nationalist Congress Party
NDA National Democratic Alliance
NREGA National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
NTPC National Thermal Power Corporation
OBCs Other Backward Classes
OGL Open General Licence
OSD Officer on Special Duty
PDP People’s Democratic Party
PDS Public Distribution System
PEPSU Patiala and East Punjab States Union
PIL Public Interest Litigation
PMK Pattali Makkal Katchi
PMO Prime Minister’s Office
POCA Prevention of Crime Act
POTA Prevention of Terrorism Act
POTO Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance
 List of Abbreviations 11

PSP Praja Socialist Party

PSU Public Sector Undertaking
PT Puthizha Tamizhagam
PWG People’s War Group
PWP Peasants and Workers’ Party
RBI Reserve Bank of India
RJD Rashtriya Janata Dal
RJP Rashtriya Janata Party
RKP Rashtriya Kranti Party
RLD Rashtriya Lok Dal
RPI Republican Party of India
RSP Revolutionary Socialist Party
RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
RTI Right to Information
SAD Shiromani Akali Dal
SEBI Securities and Exchange Board of India
SEZ Special Economic Zone
SGPC Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee
SIL Special Import Licence
SIMI Students’ Islamic Movement of India
SJM Swadeshi Jagaran Manch
SOG Special Operations Group
SP Samajwadi Party
TADA Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act
TANSI Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation
TDP Telugu Desam Party
TINA There Is No Alternative
TMC Tamil Maanila Congress
TRC Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress
TRIPS Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights
TRS Telengana Rashtra Samithi
TUJS Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti
UF United Front
UGC University Grants Commission
ULFA United Liberation Front of Asom
12 DIVIDED WE STAND

UPA United Progessive Alliance

VAT Value Added Tax
VHP Vishwa Hindu Parishad
VKA Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram
VSNL Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited
 Preface

In March 2004, when SAGE published our first book A Time of

Coalitions: Divided We Stand, the political atmosphere in India was
charged. The 14th general elections were scheduled for April-May
that year and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) appeared to be riding the crest of a wave
of national euphoria; at least, that is what was being said by most of
the media, opinion pollsters and political analysts. The outcome of
the elections was being treated almost as a foregone conclusion. The
debate was centred more around how comfortable the majority of the
NDA would be rather than whether or not it would obtain a majority
of seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha or lower house of the Indian
Parliament. Those who disagreed with such a prognosis, including
the authors of this publication, were treated with a fair amount
of disdain by the political pundits of the day.
When the outcome of the elections became known on May 13,
2004, quite a few were taken aback at the sharp fall in the number of
seats won by the BJP—from 182 to 138. The supporters of the Indian
National Congress were also (pleasantly) surprised that the number of
members of Parliament ( MPs) owing allegiance to the party had risen
from 114 to 145. Many Congress sympathisers were not expecting
that the party would become the single largest party in the Lok Sabha
for the first time since 1991—the BJP commanded the support of the
largest number of MPs after the general elections held in 1996,1998
and 1999.
The formation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition
government in New Delhi led by the Congress marked a continuation
of the phase of coalition governments. If anything, it was an
accentuation of the splintering of votes that has characterised India’s
polity after 1984. For the first time in 2004, a general election was
14 DIVIDED WE STAND

contested by two major coalitions—one led by the BJP and the other
by the Congress—but neither was able to come even close to obtaining
a majority in the Lok Sabha. The Congress-led UPA ultimately had
to seek the support of the 61 MPs belonging to the left parties, the
largest of which was the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to form
the government.
Another statistic from the 2004 Lok Sabha elections shows just
how misplaced was the theory about India moving towards a bipolar
polity. The two largest political parties between themselves managed
to win only 283 seats, just 11 more than the half-way mark in the Lok
Sabha. The combined tally of the two largest parties has never been
lower. For us, this was particularly gratifying. Towards the end of
the final chapter of our book that was published in March 2004, we
had stated:

As for the much talked about bipolarity of the Indian polity…it is

more wishful thinking than actual fact. Here’s a thought that might
have seemed shocking till not very long ago, but can by no means be
ruled out any longer. We could in the near future, perhaps as early
as the 14th general elections in 2004, have a Lok Sabha in which
the BJP and the Congress put together cannot muster a majority.
This may or may not happen, but it does not seem impossible as
it once would have.

In the concluding paragraph of the chapter on the Congress party,

we had written:

Given the absence of a coherent ideology, either political or economic,

can the Congress regain its past glory and form a government on
its own? That is a rather remote possibility. Can the party then
head a coalition that would replace the NDA after the 14th general
elections? That is a possibility that cannot entirely be ruled out.

We wrote these lines with a certain degree of circumspection, given

the fact that this reading of the situation was almost completely at
variance with the conventional political wisdom prevailing in the
first four months of 2004. In fact, our publisher, Tejeshwar Singh,
suggested that since we had spent nearly six years writing the book,
we might wait for a few more months for the outcome of the 2004
 Preface 15

Lok Sabha elections before we finalised the book. Many friends and
well-wishers also pointed out that it was rather foolhardy of us to be
attempting to anticipate the outcome of the elections so close to the
event itself. If we were proved wrong, they argued, our book would
languish in the godowns of the publisher.
We were well aware of the risk, but decided to take it, largely
because we felt that if our assessment turned out to be more or less
correct—as it should if our hypothesis was right—it would support
our argument more forcefully than any post-facto analysis. Our
publisher, despite not sharing our conviction about the likelihood of
the NDA being voted out of power, backed us to the hilt, for which
we remain extremely grateful to him.
In the three and a half years since the book was published, there have
been several important political developments that have strengthened
the hypothesis that the process of fragmentation of the Indian polity is
far from over. This period has also seen a growing acceptance of
coalitions—even by the Congress—as the ‘natural’ form of govern-
ments in India, at least in the foreseeable future. When we wrote our
first book, the main debate was whether or not coalitions are here to
stay. Today, this debate has been settled to a great extent. But other
questions have emerged—whether coalitions are a necessary ‘evil’
or they are better than single party governments. If coalitions are
inevitable, is there a way to ensure better governance?

Diversity in Unity
Till the turn of the 21st century, conventional wisdom in India had it
that coalition governments were an aberration, a brief and temporary
phase that would soon give way to single-party governments led
either by the BJP or the Congress. Over the term of the third Union
government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee, which came to power in
October 1999, most political participants grudgingly came to accept
that this phase of coalition governments might be less shortlived than
they had initially anticipated. Yet, they often sought to underplay the
significance of this development by arguing that the polity remains
essentially bipolar.
16 DIVIDED WE STAND

To claim that the BJP and the Congress represent two poles of the
Indian polity would be too simplistic a view of the complex reality.
Indeed, it can even be forcefully argued that Indian politics is
becoming less, and not more, bipolar. There are strong indications
that the process of fragmentation of the polity is far from over.
While at the all-India level there may appear to be only two fronts
or political formations of any significance, this picture of a uniformly
bipolar polity disappears the moment we examine what’s happening
in the states. There are states in which the BJP and the Congress are
the only major political players, but these states—Himachal Pradesh,
Uttarakhand (carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000), Rajasthan, Gujarat,
Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh (earlier a part of Madhya Pradesh)
and the National Capital Territory of Delhi—between them account
for less than one-fifth of the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha.
Looked at differently, in only six out of 28 states and in the country’s
national capital is the electoral battle between the two largest political
parties in India. Then there are states where either the Congress or
the BJP is one of the major political players, but the other is minor
or insignificant. Such states include Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where
the Congress is at best a marginal player, and Kerala, Andhra Pradesh
and the north-east excluding Assam, where the BJP is no more than a
fringe participant. Finally, there are states like Tamil Nadu and West
Bengal where neither the BJP nor the Congress can claim to be one
of the poles of the polity.
The elections to the state assemblies of Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi in December 2003 provided
evidence that the so-called bipolarity of Indian politics is being
threatened even in states that have traditionally witnessed straight
electoral battles between the BJP and the Congress.
Even at the national level, the hypothesis of an increasingly bipolar
polity is scarcely borne out by facts. The Congress and the BJP put
together did increase their combined tally in the 543-member Lok
Sabha by barely 22 seats between the May 1996 and February 1998
general elections. However, in the 1999 elections, the combined tally
of the BJP and the Congress came down to below the level in 1996.
In fact, the combined strength of 296 Lok Sabha MPs for the BJP
and the Congress was the lowest since the BJP came into existence
 Preface 17

in 1980. The trend continued after the 2004 general elections and as
mentioned, the Congress and the BJP together obtained 283 seats in
the Lok Sabha, just 11 above the half-way mark.
If at all one can talk in terms of two poles in Indian politics, it would
have to be in terms of the pole of sectarian politics on the one hand, and
inclusive politics on the other. The BJP, the caste-based parties and the
regional parties, all base themselves on a sectarian appeal, though this
would certainly not be acknowledged officially. The Congress and the
left, on the other hand, seek to make a genuinely pan-Indian appeal.
In the contest between these two types of political mobilisation, the
initial years of the coalition era conveyed the impression that sectarian
forces would have the upper hand over political forces that tried to
appeal across the social spectrum. The defeat of the NDA government
in the April–May 2004 elections and the improved performance of
the Congress and the left, however, suggests that this contest is not
yet over.
Those who believe that the Indian polity is becoming bipolar
overlook the fact that coalition politics can create compulsions for the
larger party to woo the smaller ones and not the other way round. To
cite an extreme example, in a Parliament with, say, 100 seats, assume
there are three political parties. Party A has 49 seats; Party B has a
similar number while Party C has only two seats. In such a situation,
Party C could be the most powerful party because its decision to align
itself with either Party A or Party B would determine who comes
to power.
The very description of two large parties as poles suggests that
they are the ones that call the shots, which is not necessarily the case
in India. This hypothetical example may seem absurd, but something
quite close to it actually took place in Indian politics more than once.
In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has on
three different occasions formed the government in the state with the
support of the BJP after having opposed the party during the election
campaign. On the first two occasions, the BSP held the upper hand
despite the fact that the BJP was by far the larger of the two parties in
the Uttar Pradesh assembly. This was possible because the BJP’s stake
in keeping the rival Samajwadi Party (SP) out of power was greater
than that of the BSP.
18 DIVIDED WE STAND

In Himachal Pradesh, events came as close to our hypothetical

example as possible. In the state assembly elections in February 1998,
the BJP won 31 of the 68 seats in the assembly, the Congress 31 seats,
while the Himachal Vikas Congress (HVC headed by former Union
Communications Minister Sukh Ram who was expelled from the
Congress after corruption charges were filed against him following
the recovery of large sums of unaccounted money from his residences)
won five seats. There was one independent candidate who won while
elections were not held in one constituency. After the elections, the
BJP had to align with Sukh Ram’s HVC though the two parties had
opposed each other. In the state government, the BJP had to make
Sukh Ram the second most important minister and provide a Rajya
Sabha seat to his son. The point is simple—BJP needed the HVC
more than the latter needed it in order to form the government in
Himachal Pradesh. (And it is indeed a quirk of Indian politics that
the same Sukh Ram who had made it to the Guiness Book of World
Records for the wrong reasons was accepted back into the folds of
the Congress. This was nearly eight years after he had been expelled
after the Central Bureau of Investigation found a sum of more than
Rs 3.6 crore—or Rs 36 million—from his residences).
Another instance of the ‘tail wagging the dog’ syndrome in Indian
politics was highlighted in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India that
used to be part of Bihar before 2000. After the NDA government
in the state headed by Arjun Munda of the BJP fell without seeking
to test its majority on the floor of the 82-member state assembly on
September 15, 2006, an independent legislator Madhu Koda became
Chief Minister by cobbling together a tenuous majority with the
support of UPA constituents like the Congress, the Jharkhand Mukti
Morcha (JMM), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the All India
Forward Bloc. Koda also received the support of the Communist Party
of India (Marxist-Leninist), the newly formed Jharkhand Vikas
Morcha (JVM) led by former BJP Chief Minister Babulal Marandi and
former Deputy Chief Minister Stephen Marandi, though CPI(ML)
later parted ways with the coalition. Like Sukh Ram in Himachal
Pradesh, Koda was able to arm-twist larger political parties because
the number of legislators owing allegiance to the UPA and the NDA
 Preface 19

were so evenly balanced. All governments in Jharkhand since the

state was formed have barely survived with razor-thin majorities in
the assembly, including the first two that were headed by BJP chief
ministers Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda.
A common fallacy that is related to the conviction that India’s
polity is essentially bipolar and contributes to it is the notion that the
decline of the Congress and the rise of the BJP bear almost a one-to-one
correspondence. Put differently, the rise of the BJP is seen as a process
of the party occupying the space vacated by the Congress. Though
this view is very widely held, the reality is far more complicated.
It is true that the period that witnessed the fastest growth of
the BJP as an electoral force—from two seats in the 8th Lok Sabha
elected in 1984 to 182 seats by the 12th Lok Sabha elected in 1998—
coincided with the most rapidly declining phase of the Congress,
from 404 seats in 1984 to 112 seats in the 13th Lok Sabha elected in
1999. That is perhaps why the two phenomena are seen as completely
correlated with each other. However, what such a view misses is the
fact that in areas where the Congress has been almost completely
marginalised, it has been displaced not so much by the BJP as by
smaller regional parties.
To take the most obvious case first, the marginalisation of the
Congress in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh (accounting for 80 out
of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha) has not led to the BJP becoming
a party with unquestioned dominance in the state. On the contrary,
the party is today reduced to third position in Uttar Pradesh, way
behind the BSP and the Samajwadi Party. Even at its peak in the mid-
1990s, the BJP in UP never managed to get close to 40 per cent of the
popular vote, though it was at that stage the single biggest party in
the state assembly.
The story in neighbouring Bihar has not been very different.
Here again, the Congress has been reduced to a marginal presence
over the last decade-and-a-half, but its decline has not led to the BJP
becoming the dominant party. Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata
Dal (RJD) or its forerunner the Janata Dal (JD) were the main agents
of the erosion of the Congress party’s vote banks. The Janata Dal
(United)—formed by breakaway groups of the erstwhile JD coming
20 DIVIDED WE STAND

together—has a strength in Bihar that is equal to if not more than the

BJP in terms of its political influence.
Could Uttar Pradesh and Bihar represent an exception to the rule
that the BJP grows to fill the vacuum created by a shrinking Congress?
Not quite. In states like Orissa, Assam and Karnataka, for instance,
the BJP has grown rapidly, more often than not by consolidating the
anti-Congress political forces. It is another matter that other anti-
Congress groups—like the JD(U) in Karnataka, the Biju Janata Dal
(BJD) in Orissa and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in Assam have
at some stage decided that rather than compete with the BJP for the
opposition space, they could gain by aligning with the party.
Also, if we look back to the period before the decline of the
Congress accelerated, namely, between the late 1960s and the mid-
1980s, there were already signs of the party losing ground gradually
but quite consistently to regional parties. The most obvious example
would be Tamil Nadu, where the Congress today has little choice
but to align with one or the other of the two main Dravidian parties
in the state—the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All
India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). But Tamil
Nadu is not the only example. Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra,
traditional strongholds of the Congress, witnessed similar trends even
if the process did not lead to the complete marginalisation of the
Congress. In Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) rose
from almost nowhere to become a powerful challenge to the Congress
in the mid-1980s and has remained the main contender for power with
the Congress. Similarly, in Maharashtra it was the rise of the Shiv Sena
rather than the BJP, which first raised questions about just how firm
the Congress’ grip on power in the state was.
Therefore, our main assertions so far are:

• The process of fragmentation of the Indian polity is not over

but continuing.
• The polity is not becoming bipolar with smaller parties,
including regional parties and caste-based parties, having no
choice but to become appendages of either the BJP or the
Congress either before or after elections.
• The decline of the Congress has not automatically resulted in
the rise of the BJP—in other words, the political tussle between
 Preface 21

the two largest political parties in India has not been a ‘zero sum
game’ in which the losses of one inevitably result in the other
gaining by filling a so-called political vacuum.
• Coalition politics is maturing. Political parties are becoming
increasingly adept at managing contradictions and are now
even able to co-exist at the Union level with their major rivals
in the states. The electorate too seems to better understand the
compulsions of coalition politics that lead to alliances appearing
contradictory or even illogical.

The new era of coalition politics does not necessarily signify a

nightmarish scenario for India. As the polity of the world’s largest
democracy evolves and as institutions of governance mature,
political instability would reflect the internal dynamics of a highly
heterogeneous and deeply divided nation-state. Coalitions, in spite
of their ideological contradictions, are perhaps better equipped to
deal with the tensions of such a divided society than single party
governments that have a tendency to centralise and homogenise.
It might help here to examine the factors that have led to the
fragmentation of India’s polity and why these same factors work
towards further fragmentation. Several political scientists have
analysed the phenomenon of ‘identity politics’. Sudipto Kaviraj has
some interesting insights to offer on this question (Contemporary
Crisis of the Nation-State? edited by John Dunn, Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 1995). His contention is that the benefits of the Nehruvian
model of economic development remained confined to a section
consisting of the ‘bourgeoisie, high managerial elites, state bureaucracy
and agrarian magnates’ and this fostered resentment in the vast
majority of the population. It is this resentment, he suggests, that has
been tapped by various political groups leading to the fragmentation
of the polity. Kaviraj also argues that the resentment against the elite
extends to a rejection of all that the elite stood for, including the notion
of the Indian identity over-riding sub-national identities.
He writes:

Since this elite speaks the language of national integration and

unity, the latter [movements of the non-elite] speak the negative
language of localism, regional autonomy, small-scale nationalism, in
22 DIVIDED WE STAND

dystopias of ethnicity—small xenophobic, homogeneous, political

communities. This does violence to the political imagination of the
Indian nation-state, which emphasised diversity as a great asset
and enjoined principles of tolerance as the special gift of Indian
civilisation…. The world of political possibilities in India seems
to be simplifying into the frightening choice before most of the
modern world’s political communities: to try to craft imperfect
democratic rules by which increasingly mixed groups of people can
carry on together an unheroic everyday existence, or the illusion
of a permanent and homogeneous, unmixed single nation, a single
collective self without any trace of a defiling otherness.

Kaviraj’s point is well taken. The fragmentation of India’s polity is

undoubtedly an outcome of the feeling among very large sections of
the population that they had been left out of the development process.
What is interesting, however, is that this resentment hasn’t always
manifested itself through parties and groups that claim to be speaking
for the excluded sections of society. The TDP, for instance, appeals
to the Telugu identity across Andhra Pradesh. Clearly, it is not the
case that all Telugus have been left out of the development process.
Similarly, nobody can seriously argue that the Shiv Sena’s appeal to a
Maharashtrian identity arises from the feeling that all of Maharashtra
has been denied the benefits of economic growth. Obviously, it has
been possible for parties like the TDP and the Shiv Sena to use the
resentment of specific sections of the Telugu and Marathi speaking
population and channelise it along lines of their choosing.
Yet, there is something that the TDP and the Shiv Sena have in
common with caste-based parties like the SP in Uttar Pradesh or the
RJD in Bihar. In each of these cases, the revolt of the underprivileged
has been led by the most dominant of the intermediate castes—the
Khammas in Andhra Pradesh, the Marathas in Maharashtra and
the Yadavs in UP and Bihar. This is actually not very surprising.
After all, even the ability to lead a revolt against the prevailing elite
must presume some minimal access to the institutions of power and
to resources of a sufficient magnitude. Such access and resources
would be available only to the upper most layers of the relatively
underprivileged. These were indeed among the few sections outside the
 Preface 23

traditional elite that had not entirely been left out of the development
process. As Kaviraj points out, ‘the only rural group which secured
benefits out of the development process were the large farmers whose
compliance was bought by heavy subsidies, absence of income tax and
slow cooptation into governmental power.’
The Dalit Movement might at first seem an exception to the rule,
since dalits (or those at the very bottom of the caste hierarchy) have
little or no control over land anywhere in the country. However, what
is noteworthy is that even in this instance, the leadership has come
from among the well-off sections of the dalits.
In this context, the fragmentation of India’s polity can be seen as the
result of various sections deciding that an informal coalition like
the Congress had failed to serve their interests. But what explains
the tendency for coalitions to persist? It could well be the case that these
sections perceive themselves as having gained from a process of explicit
coalitions in which groups ostensibly speak for them. It is pointless, in
this context, to debate whether Yadavs as a whole have actually gained
because of the SP or the RJD, whether dalits are better off since the
BSP was formed or whether Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have
performed better after the formation of the TDP and the Shiv Sena.
What matters is the popular perception among the relevant sections
that their interests are being taken care of better than in the past.
The BSP’s success in UP, India’s most populous state, is perhaps the
best illustration of the point. The party’s success in consolidating the
dalit vote was such that by the time the assembly elections took place
in April–May 2007, it was able to use that ‘core’ to build a coalition
of social forces that included substantial sections of the brahmins,
banias, muslims and even some ‘other backward classes’ (OBCs). This
combination was not new. Its composition was a throwback to the
early years of Congress rule in northern India. What was different,
however, was that it was now the dalits who were at the helm of the
coalition rather than the brahmins.
Political scientist Arend Lijphart in his article, ‘The Puzzle of Indian
Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation’ (American Political
Science Review, June 1996), had contended that India largely conforms
to what he described as ‘consociationalism’ in a deeply divided society.
24 DIVIDED WE STAND

He set out four parameters denoting consociationalism. These were:

(a) a grand coalition government that includes representatives of all
major linguistic and religious groups; (b) cultural autonomy for these
groups; (c) proportionality in political representation and civil service
appointments; and (d) a minority veto with regard to vital minority
rights and autonomy. When Lijphart wrote this, it was true that the
four characteristics were by and large present in the government of
the day and had been present in all past Union governments in India
as well.
However, after 1998, when the National Democratic Alliance
(NDA) government came to power, the government in New Delhi no
longer met some of the parameters of consociationalism. Notably, the
almost total exclusion of the Muslim community from the government
was rather evident, despite the presence of a single Muslim Union
Minister in the two NDA governments that came to power in 1998
and 1999. It is noteworthy that the 24 political parties comprising the
NDA, the largest being the BJP, were unable to find more than one
Muslim to hold a ministerial position in a country where roughly one
out of seven individuals is a Muslim.
India is by no means unique among democratic nations in having
coalition governments. In France, which has a system of proportional
representation, and in Germany, which has a combination of propor-
tional representation and constituency or seat-based direct elections,
coalition governments have been more of a rule than an exception
after the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945. In both these
countries, coalition governments have not usually brought about
political instability.
For instance, there is in Germany a legal provision that an incumbent
government cannot be voted out of power in between general elections
without simultaneously voting in an alternative government. In
recent years, for obvious reasons, many have suggested that India
could adopt a similar system to avoid frequent elections that are
expensive to conduct. Those opposed to this suggestion have argued
that even if political instability results in frequent elections having to
be conducted, this is a ‘small price’ to pay to ensure the existence of a
vibrant and dynamic democratic polity. These arguments and counter-
arguments came to the fore in discussions on Indian politics for the
 Preface 25

simple reason that from May 1996 to October 1999, the country for
the first time witnessed three general elections in quick succession.
If the experience of countries like Germany and France shows that
coalitions and instability do not necessarily go together, Japan and
Italy are proof of the fact that even unstable coalition governments
do not automatically result in declining economic progress. Japan has
had a series of coalition governments since 1976, when the Liberal
Democratic Party lost its monopoly on power for the first time after
the Second World War. That certainly did not prevent Japan from
marching swiftly ahead of most of the world to become arguably the
strongest economy in the world after the US, till the slowdown of the
1990s robbed it of some of the sheen. The Italian experience is even
more remarkable. In the 50 years after the World War ended, Italy
had an equal number of governments. Thus, governments in Italy
lasted a year on an average. Yet, Italy today is among the five most
industrialised countries in the world. This, if nothing else, should
make us wary about drawing any facile conclusions about the effects
of political instability on the economy.
The last three years have thrown up enough experience to help
us search for answers to the questions: whether coalitions in India
fare better than single party governments, and if so, will they lead to
better governance. The relationship between the UPA and the left
has been particularly instructive, especially for the manner in which
it has impacted economic policies. Few would have predicted that
a thoroughly demoralised BJP would virtually abdicate its role as
the main opposition party to the left. This was most dramatically
illustrated in the showdown between the Congress and the left on the
nuclear agreement between India and the United States. While the BJP,
like the left, was opposing the deal, there was no doubt that in popular
perception it was essentially a stand-off between the UPA and its allies
in the left on whom the survival of the government depended.
Till the middle of August 2007 when Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh gave his speech on the 60th anniversary of India’s Independence,
there was hardly any indication of an impending political crisis. A
week later, the speculation was entirely on when the next general
elections would be held—that the government would not complete
its five-year term was taken as a foregone conclusion.
26 DIVIDED WE STAND

These developments, as well as the power struggle within the BJP,

the contradictions within the Congress and the left on a host of other
issues, the bizarre manner in which Pratibha Patil emerged out of near
oblivion to become India’s first woman President, the unexpected
victory of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh, all provide
enough material for us to revisit the central thesis of our earlier book.

Introduction: India in a Time of Coalitions

Chapter 1 briefly outlines why the Indian polity fragmented. It
seeks to examine the political and social processes that led to the
decline of the Congress and the rise of the BJP and regional parties,
including caste-based parties. The new phase of coalition politics in
the country is contextualised in this chapter and arguments are
presented to support the contention that coalitions have had a positive
influence on the working of the country’s democratic polity. This
introductory chapter explains why coalitions are not an aberration
or a temporary phenomenon.

UPA Government: Peaceless Coexistence

Chapter 2 looks at how the Manmohan Singh government has sought
to manage contradictions within the centre-left UPA coalition and
coexisted with the left on whose ‘outside’ support the government
is dependent for its very survival in power. An interesting aspect of
the working of the UPA coalition is that for the first time in India,
parties which perceive each other as principal political adversaries
in provinces or states (like Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal) came
together at the Union or federal level. This coexistence—to keep
out their common enemy, the BJP—has hardly been a smooth
affair. Ideological contradictions between the Congress and the
Communists, for instance, led to major tensions in the formulation
and implementation of economic and foreign policies. These tensions
are likely to exacerbate as the 15th general elections approach
(scheduled for April 2009 but expected much earlier).
 Preface 27

Indian National Congress:

Alive but Not Quite Kicking
Chapter 3 examines how the Congress has managed to lead a
government in New Delhi without any major improvement in its
electoral performance because it appears to be coming to terms with
the reality of coalition politics. The party seems to have slowly accepted
that no single party can dominate India’s polity in the immediate
future. The chapter documents the dramatic decline of the Congress
and its marginalisation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It looks at how
the large-scale desertion of the minorities (Muslims and Sikhs) and
other sections like the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in many
parts of the country robbed the party of the ‘umbrella’ character it
once had on account of its leadership of the independence movement.
This chapter goes on to examine the Congress party’s attempts to woo
back these sections under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and whether
such attempts are succeeding or are likely to do so.
How far can the Congress revive its political fortunes? Can a party
that has just a little more than one-fourth of the seats in the Lok Sabha
continue to boast that it remains the only truly national party? Can
the Congress afford to ignore the fact that it has over the years lost
important regional leaders? Will the dearth of leaders with a mass base
within the Congress further centralise power in the hands of the ‘high
command’, which has become a euphemism for one person—Party
President Sonia Gandhi? What could this mean for the prospects of
a revival of the Congress?

Bharatiya Janata Party:

Coping with a Power Cut
Chapter 4 looks at the rise of the BJP from the time when it was
virtually wiped out of Parliament in 1984 and its precipitous decline
since the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. The party not only provided India
its first truly non-Congress Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee,
but also the first non-Congress Prime Minister to have remained in
28 DIVIDED WE STAND

office for more than five years. The chapter documents the manner in
which the BJP periodically toned up or subdued its Hindutva rhetoric
to come to power and retain it. It also looks at how the BJP found
it difficult to reconcile itself to the fact that it had lost power. The
party found itself in the throes of internal power struggles and in the
process abdicated its role as the main opposition party.
The chapter attempts to answer the question: Which of the two
faces of the BJP that have been seen in recent years—the hardline
Hindutva face or the moderate, accommodative face—is likely to
emerge as the party’s real face over time?
The chapter also looks at the ‘Congressisation’ of the BJP, at how
a party that once prided itself on its discipline is today as faction-
ridden and corrupt as any other and has lost whatever claims it had to
being ‘a party with a difference’. Also examined is the rise and fall of
the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, a state that is of crucial significance for the
party in its search for power on its own at the centre. Of particular
interest is the social combination that the BJP had seemingly forged
successfully in the state and the reasons for this combination now
apparently coming apart.

Hindi Heartland: Asserting Caste Identities

Chapter 5 deals with the fragmentation of the polity along caste lines
in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The social churning that most
of southern India witnessed over a long period starting about half a
century ago is now in evidence in the north in a more violent form.
The backward sections of the population, which have for some time
now exercised economic clout in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, are clear
that this influence has to be translated into political power as well. This
attempt has succeeded to a great extent in the two states. However,
with the dalits also starting to assert themselves more vigorously
and with fissures developing within the ranks of the other backward
sections, the caste arithmetic in the country is not easy to decipher
or interpret—even if class and caste tend to overlap in many parts of
the country.
 Preface 29

Regional Parties: Increasingly Influential

Chapter 6 examines the rise of regional parties and looks into the
question of how well established these parties are and how long
their alliances are likely to last. Such political parties would include
the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
in Tamil Nadu, the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, the National
Conference in Jammu & Kashmir, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist
Congress Party in Maharashtra, the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa and
the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. Regional parties have often
been portrayed—particularly by supporters of the Congress and the
BJP—as parties with narrow, partisan interests that are incapable of
transcending the confines of their state or region. The interests of the
country as a whole, it has been argued, cannot be safe in their hands.
This chapter shows why this is a coloured view of regional parties.
It illustrates situations in which the regional parties have shown that
they are capable of looking at issues from a wider perspective.

Left Parties: Barking and Biting

Chapter 7 describes the changing tactics of the left in parliamentary
politics and the differences that have cropped up between them. While
the Communist Party of India (CPI) became a part of the Union
government for the first time in May 1996, the largest among the left
parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) remained wary of
becoming part of an ideologically disparate United Front coalition. It
had shunned the opportunity of even leading the Union government
when the party’s central committee voted against the party joining
the United Front government thereby depriving the then West Bengal
Chief Minister Jyoti Basu of a chance of becoming the Prime Minister.
After the 2004 elections, for the first time the CPI(M) supported a
Congress-led government in New Delhi. The chapter looks at how
the left has been a key factor in shaping anti-BJP political formations
and changing its once-adversarial relationship with the Congress.
The culimination of this process led to 61 MPs belonging to four
30 DIVIDED WE STAND

left parties and their supporters extending crucial ‘outside’ support

to the Congress-led UPA coalition. Since the UPA is in a minority
in the Lok Sabha, the Manmohan Singh government has no choice
but to solicit the support of the left to remain in power. For the left,
this unusual situation has meant that it has had to, on the one hand,
influence government policies and, on the other, compete with the
BJP and the NDA for the opposition political space. The chapter also
examines the feasibility of a non-Congress, non-BJP ‘third front’
which the left believes can be built one day.

Friends in Need: Pages from the Past

Chapter 8 deals with the question of whether coalitions can provide
stable Union governments. It analyses coalitions in the past, in New
Delhi and in various states, to see whether there are any credible
guarantees for the longevity of coalitions. In New Delhi, the first
non-Congress coalition government came to power in March 1977.
Since then, there have been 10 coalition governments at the centre.
Why did the first eight of these not survive a full term? Why was it
relatively easier to forge stable coalitions in states than at the level of
the Union government until recently?
In explaining the instability of coalitions in New Delhi, various
reasons have been cited. It has been argued that coalitions have been
unstable because they were forged after elections rather than before
them. Another popular argument is that coalitions can last only if
there is one dominant party leading a pack of relatively insignificant
partners. Do these theories stand the test of facts? Not quite, as this
chapter reveals.

Friends in Deed: Governance and Stability

To what extent have political coalitions in India led to better
governance? This is not an easy question to answer. Good governance
has to be first defined and would include various considerations
such as a lower incidence of corruption, greater transparency and
accountability of bureaucrats and politicians, greater federalism, better
 Preface 31

distribution of the benefits of economic growth among the weaker

sections and empowerment of those social sections which are less
privileged in the country’s caste-based society.
Chapter 9 focuses on some of these issues. Have coalition gov-
ernments reduced the incidence of corruption in India? Some would
argue that the fragmentation of the polity and the existence of
coalition governments have brought about a slow and gradual process
of cleansing in the economy and society. Others would contend
that the incidence of scams and scandals would continue to rise as
politicians, bureaucrats and those in business scramble to make a
fast buck in a system in which the honest are penalised, and a few
have vast discretionary powers. The other issue is whether coalition
governments have brought about a greater degree of federalism (or
decentralisation) in India’s polity. The answer to this question, we
show, is an unequivocal ‘yes’.

Economic Policies: Pulls and Pressures

Chapter 10 is on the economy. Is it true that coalition governments
have slowed down or changed the course of economic policy making?
We argue that it is not. At the same time economic decisions have
certainly reflected the pulls and pressures of coalition politics. This
chapter also shows how the notion that there is a consensus on the
economic reforms programme within and across political parties is
quite misleading. Very often the dissensions within parties—whether
it be the BJP or the Congress—are as sharp as those between them.
The chapter deals with whether the shifts in the polity and those in
the economy are working in tandem or pulling in different directions.
It examines how the left has helped shape the economic policies of
the UPA government and indirectly bolstered the influence of the
left-leaning faction within the Congress.

Looking Ahead
The concluding chapter, Chapter 11, attempts to look ahead. The
future of Indian politics has never been easy to predict at the best of
times, more so now than ever before. The behaviour of more than
32 DIVIDED WE STAND

700 million voters—over half of whom actually cast their votes—has

become increasingly difficult to anticipate. If the view that ideologies
are getting more and more blurred is accepted, the political matrix
would get exceedingly complex and unpredictable. How well can
a country with 23 officially-recognised languages, whose people
practice over half-a-dozen major religions (though over 80 per cent
of the Indian population is Hindu) and divide themselves along every
conceivable line—be it language, religion, class, caste, region or race—
not merely survive but also prosper as a nation-state? Read on.
 Acknowledgements

Anybody who has followed Indian politics over these last few years
even cursorily would be aware of how rapidly the polity has been
changing—and continues to change—and would, therefore, we hope be
able to understand the need to debate about this ever changing polity.
We are especially thankful to our publishers, SAGE Publications,
who agreed to bring this book out at rather short notice.
We are grateful to Aditya Sinha, Arindam Sengupta, Hari Vasudevan,
S. Jaipal Reddy, Kumaresh Chakravarti, Mahesh Rangarajan, Pradip
Kumar (‘P.K.’) Dutta, Prakash Patra, Sudipto Chatterjee, Swapan
Dasgupta and Rahul Razdan for their comments on an earlier draft of
the book. Their willingness to plough through a manuscript that was
almost twice the size of the current book and their insightful comments
have been of tremendous help to us in sharpening the focus of
the book. Whatever shortcomings that remain on this count are
despite their suggestions and for which we are entirely responsible.
Research support was provided by A. Srinivas, Urmi A. Goswami,
and R. Sowmya Sri. Rahul Pandey generously helped us in preparing
this book.
We wish to record our gratitude to our wives—Jaya and Aditi—who
have had to put up with frequent disruptions in their normal routine
to let us work. We hope that our children—Aranya, Trina, Triveni
and Purnajyoti—will also one day agree that the time we denied them
was not wasted and that the result of that effort will remain relevant
till they are old enough to understand what we have written.
The late Pranab Guha Thakurta, who unfortunately did not live
to read his son’s book, encouraged us to persevere, as did Krishna
Guha Thakurta, K. Raghuraman and T.S. Kamalam. As parents, their
anxiety to see the task completed and their constant queries on when
the book would be published helped us to keep going. Thanks are
34 DIVIDED WE STAND

due to Santwana Nigam and Rajendra Nath, who often had to adjust
their schedules to take care of their grandchildren to enable us to
work on the book.
Our thanks are also due to many friends, colleagues and well-
wishers but for whose encouragement we might have despaired of
ever finishing the book.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Shankar Raghuraman
 1996 LOK SABHA ELECTIONS

J&K Punjab UP Bihar

INC 04 SAD 08 BJP 52 JD 22
JD 01 BSP 03 SP 16 BJP 18
BJP 01 INC 02 BSP 06 SAP 06
Total 06 Total 13 INC 05 Left 03
Others 05 INC 02
IND 01 Others 02
HP Total 85 IND 01
INC 04 Total 54
Total 04

Haryana
BJP 04
WB
HVP 03
Rajasthan Left 33
INC 02
INC 12 INC 09
IND 01
BJP 12 Total 10 Total 42
Othres 01
Total 25

Gujarat
BPJ 16
INC 10
Total 26
North-East
INC 10
Orissa AGP 05
Maharashtra INC 16 Left 03
BPJ 18 JD 04 BJP 01
INC 15 Others 01 Others 02
SHS 15 Total 21 IND 04
Total 48 Total 25

AP MP
UTs & Goa INC 22 BJP 27
INC 07 TDP 16 INC 08
BJP 06 Left 03 Others 04
Others 02 Others 01 IND 01
Total 15 Total 42 Total 40

All India
BJP 161 TDP 16
Karnataka Kerala INC 140 SHS 15
JD 16 Left 08 TN JD 46 CPI 12
BJP 06 INC 07 TMC 20 CPM 32 BSP 11
INC 05 Others 04 DMK 17 TMC 20 Others 47
Others 01 IND 01 Left 02 SP 17 IND 09
Total 28 Total 20 Total 39 DMK 17 Total 543
 1998 LOK SABHA ELECTIONS

J&K Punjab UP Bihar

INC 03 SAD 08 BJP 57 BJP 20
JD 02 BSP 03 SP 20 RJD 17
BJP 01 Others 01 BSP 04 SAP 10
Total 06 IND 01 Others 03 INC 05
Total 13 IND 01 Others 02
Total 85 Total 54
HP
BJP 03
INC 01
Total 04
Haryana WB
HLD(R) 04 Left 33
INC 03 INC 07
Rajasthan
BJP 01 BJP 01
INC 18
Others 02 IND 01
BJP 05
Total 10 Total 42
Othres 01
IND 01
Total 25

Gujarat
BPJ 19
INC 07
Total 26
North-East
INC 13
Orissa Left 03
Maharashtra BJD 09 BJP 01
INC 33 BJP 07 Others 06
SHS 06 INC 05 IND 02
BPJ 04 Total 21 Total 25
Others 05
Total 48

AP
UTs & Goa INC 22 MP
BJP 09 TDP 12 BJP 30
INC 05 BJP 04 INC 10
Others 02 Left 02 Total 40
Total 15 Others 02
Total 42
TN
AIADMK 18 All India
Karnataka DMK 05 TMC 182 RJD 12
BJP 13 Kerala BJP 03 INC 141 TDP 12
JD 09 Left 09 Left 01 CPM 32 Others 93
INC 03 INC 08 Others 11 SP 20 IND 06
Others 03 Others 03 IND 01 AIADMK 18 Total 543
Total 28 Total 20 Total 39 RJD 17
 1999 LOK SABHA ELECTIONS

J&K Punjab UP Bihar

NC 04 INC 08 BJP 29 BJP 23
BJP 02 SAD 02 SP 26 JD(U) 18
Total 06 BJP 01 BSP 14 RJD 07
Left 01 INC 10 INC 04
Others 01 Others 05 Left 01
Total 13 IND 01 IND 01
HP Total 85 Total 54
BJP 03
HVC 01
Total 04 WB
Haryana
Left 29
BJP 05
TC 08
INLD 05
INC 03
Rajasthan Total 10 BJP 02
BJP 16 Total 42
INC 09
Total 25

Gujarat
BJP 20
INC 06
Total 26

North-East
INC 14
Maharashtra Orissa BJP 02
SHS 15 BJD 10 Left 02
BJP 13 BJP 09 Others 05
INC 10 INC 02 IND 02
NCP 06 Total 21 Total 25
Others 03
IND 01
Total 48
AP MP
TDP 29 BJP 29
BJP 07 INC 11
UTs & Goa INC 05 Total 40
BJP 10 Others 01
INC 04 Total 42
IND 01
Total 15
TN All India
DMK 12 BJP 182 BSP 14
AIADMK 10 INC 114 DMK 12
Karnataka Kerala BJP 04 CPM 33 AIADMK 10
INC 18 INC 08 INC 02 TDP 29 BJD 10
BJP 07 Left 08 Left 01 SP 26 Others 71
JD(U) 03 Others 04 Others 10 JD(U) 21 IND 06
Total 28 Total 20 Total 39 SHS 15 Total 543
 2004 LOK SABHA ELECTIONS

J&K Punjab Uttaranchal UP Bihar

INC 02 SAD 08 BJP 03 SP 35 RJD 22
NC 02 BJP 03 INC 01 BSP 19 JD(U) 06
PDP 01 INC 02 SP 01 BJP 10 BJP 05
IND 01 Total 13 Total 05 INC 9 LJSP 04
Total 06 Others 06 INC 03
IND 01 Total 40
Total 80
HP
BJP 03
BJP 01
Total 04 Haryana WB
INC 09 Left 35
BJP 01 INC 06
Rajasthan Total 10 AITC 01
BJP 21 Total 42
INC 04
Total 25

Gujarat
BJP 14
INC 12
Total 26

MP
North-East
BJP 25
INC 11
INC 04
Orissa BJP 04
Total 29 BJD 11 Left 02
BJP 07 Others 06
INC 02 IND 02
Maharashtra
INC 13 JMM 01 Total 25
BJP 13 Total 21
SHS 12
NCP 09 Jharkhand
Others 01 AP
INC 06
Total 48 INC 29
JMM 04
TRS 05 Chhattisgarh RJD 02
TDP 05 BJP 10 BJP 01
UTs & Goa Left 02 INC 01 CPI 01
INC 10 Others 01
Total 11 Total 14
BJP 02 Total 42
Others 03
Total 15 All India
TN
DMK 16 INC 145 SHS 12
Karnataka Kerala NC 10 BJP 138 BJD 11
BJP 18 Left 18 PMK 05 CPM 43 CPI 10
INC 08 UDF 01 MDMK 04 SP 36 NCP 09
JD(s) 02 Others 01 Left 4 RJD 24 Others 75
Total 28 Total 20 Total 39 BSP 19 IND 5
DMK 16 Total 543
 Chapter 1
Introduction:
India in a Time of Coalitions

In March 2003, Atal Behari Vajpayee became the first person who had
never belonged to the Congress party to remain Prime Minister of
India for five successive years. In fact, the Vajpayee government that
came to power in October 1999 would almost certainly have lasted its
full five-year term till October 2004, except for the fact that it voluntarily
sought early elections, not because it could not continue in power. As
we complete writing this book, the first Congress-led coalition at
the level of the Union government had completed three and a
half years in office but looked unlikely to complete its full term.
The differences between the UPA and the left were evident from
the very inception of the government and at times threatened to
reach breaking point. But few could have imagined that the standoff
between the Congress and left would be over a foreign policy issue,
specifically, the nuclear agreement between the governments of India
and the United States of America. In the middle of August 2007,
when Manmohan Singh addressed the country on the occasion of the
60th anniversary of Independence outlining a slew of initiatives on
education, health-care and agriculture, the differences between the left
and the Congress had not reached a flashpoint. An interview by the
Prime Minister virtually daring the left to withdraw support to his
government precipitated a political crisis that took everyone unawares.
The crisis seemed certain to result in the fall of the UPA government
before it completed its full five-year term.
Does this mean that India has returned to an era of unstable
coalition governments in New Delhi and that Vajpayee’s government
between October 1999 and May 2004 was an aberration of sorts? At
one stage it had appeared that the citizens of India would have to
exercise their franchise every few years, that P.V. Narasimha Rao
was destined to be the last Prime Minister to have completed his
40 DIVIDED WE STAND

full term in office. The reasons for such a prognosis were obvious.
Five successive general elections, starting with the one held in 1989,
had failed to yield a single party majority in the Lok Sabha. The last
three of these elections were held within a span of less than three-
and-a-half years, unprecedented in Indian history. The Narasimha
Rao government was the only one among the seven governments
in New Delhi that preceded Vajpayee’s government of 1999 to have
lasted the course. Even Rao’s government was in a minority when it
came to power in June 1991 and ultimately secured a majority only
through defections.
The initial years of the Vajpayee government strengthened the
apprehension that it too would prove to be an unstable coalition
although the BJP-led NDA had the support of over 300 of the 543
members in the 13th Lok Sabha. Halfway through the government’s
five-year term, the ruling NDA was looking extremely shaky and
threatening to collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions.
It seemed that the BJP would find it difficult to manage the conflict
between what its own core support base—including the Sangh Parivar—
wanted and what was acceptable to its nearly two dozen allies. A string
of electoral defeats in various states, the massacre of thousands of
Muslims in the Gujarat riots that started in March 2002 and the
heightening of tensions over the Ayodhya dispute (see chapter on
BJP for details), all appeared to put enormous strain on the stability
of the NDA and its government.
However, when push came to shove, it became apparent that
remaining in power was more important to the BJP’s allies than
maintaining ideological purity on the issue of secularism or politically
correct postures. Whatever little doubts may have remained about the
longevity of the NDA government were set at rest when two former
foes—the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)
and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)—became friends. Interestingly, it
was in April 1999 that the AIADMK headed by Jayalalithaa withdrew
support to the NDA government, which lost a vote of confidence in
Parliament by a single vote in the 543-member Lok Sabha (more on
that later). The government would have survived had the two BSP
MPs voted in its favour and not abstained.
 Introduction 41

Irony of ironies. By May 2002, the BJP had decided to support BSP’s
Mayawati to run a coalition government in Uttar Pradesh, India’s
largest state (though the arrangement broke up after 15 months). The
victory of the BJP in the December 2003 elections to the assemblies
of three states in northern and central India—Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—further strengthened the party and the
NDA while weakening the Congress. The voters’ verdict in the three
states was evidently beyond the best expectations of the BJP and its
partners in the NDA. Although the Congress was able to return to
power in the national capital territory of Delhi, the party was terribly
demoralised by its electoral losses.
The results of the December 2003 assembly elections clearly had
an impact on the attitude of Congress leaders towards coalitions.
Many sections in the party started questioning the strategy of the
Congress fighting elections on its own. While the Congress seemed
more willing than before to strike alliances with other ‘secular’ parties,
the big question of whether Sonia Gandhi would remain a contender
for the post of Prime Minister remained unresolved. Significantly,
on December 26, 2003, she said the Congress would not ‘impose’ its
leadership on the secular alliance that would fight the NDA in the
next Lok Sabha elections. She added that the Prime Minister would
be ‘chosen by the people’ implying that the choice of who would
be the candidate for the post would be decided only after the outcome
of the elections was known. Sonia Gandhi’s supporters claimed she
was the glue that was keeping the Congress together. Her opponents,
on the other hand, argued that it was not merely her foreign origin
but her political inexperience as well that was checking a revival of
the Congress party under her leadership. The outcome of the 14th
general elections helped clinch the argument.
The 2004 Lok Sabha elections did not result in a dramatic increase
in the number of seats won by the Congress. With 145 MPs, it still
had just a little over one-fourth the strength of the House. These
elections were nevertheless an important milestone in the evolution
of the Congress party and of coalition politics in India. For the first
time, the Congress had embraced the mantra of pre-election alliances
across the length and breadth of the country. The BJP, which had
42 DIVIDED WE STAND

won the 1999 Lok Sabha elections with a similar strategy, had been
beaten at its own game.
The Congress had tied up with regional parties in three of the
four southern states as well as in Bihar, Maharashtra and Jammu &
Kashmir. Interestingly, the left parties were also components of
most of these alliances. This was despite the fact that in Kerala, West
Bengal and Tripura, the Congress and the left were contesting the
same elections as principal adversaries. The alliances in Tamil Nadu
and Bihar were particularly significant. In Tamil Nadu, the Congress
and left were part of an alliance in which every other constituent had
been a part of the NDA government till just a little before the polls.
Similarly, in Bihar, Ram Vilas Paswan, who had been a minister in the
Vajpayee cabinet, was now part of the alliance led by Lalu Prasad’s
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) along with the Congress. These two
alliances were to prove crucial in the outcome of the Lok Sabha
elections, with the UPA making a clean sweep of Tamil Nadu and
trouncing the NDA in Bihar.
In short, the 2004 elections proved that winning elections in India
hinged more on which side had sewn up the better coalition rather than
on the popularity of the leaders of the national political parties. Even
after the outcome of the elections was known, opinion polls indicated
that Vajpayee in his individual capacity remained more popular than
Sonia Gandhi. The Congress had finished on the winning side not
because it had more charismatic leaders or a better organisation, but
because it had stitched up a stronger alliance than the BJP.
The elections also made it obvious that the hype generated by the
NDA’s ‘India Shining’ campaign had not had the desired impact on
large sections of the electorate. On the contrary, the campaign may
have actually been counter-productive for the incumbents.
A series of state assembly elections after the UPA came to power
have demonstrated that the Congress would be wrong to assume that
2004 was a turning point in its electoral fortunes and that it was only
a matter of time before the party regained its pre-eminent position in
the Indian polity. Between February 2005 and May 2007, the Congress
and its allies in the UPA lost one election after the other in states like
Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Kerala, Punjab, Uttarakhand and
Uttar Pradesh. Tamil Nadu, in which the coalition led by the DMK
won, and Assam were two notable exceptions.
 Introduction 43

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) elections, the last in this series, also
disproved the notion that the pendulum was swinging back in favour of
the BJP and the NDA. Despite a strong anti-incumbency wave against
the Samajwadi Party-led government in the state, the BJP suffered a
massive setback, winning just 50 seats in the 403-member assembly,
against the 88 it had won in 2002.
The BSP’s victory—the first time since 1991 that a single party had
obtained a majority in the UP assembly—showed once again how India’s
two largest parties, the Congress and the BJP, were getting reduced to
the margin in the country’s most populous state. Ironically, the results
of the UP elections on May 11 came just the day after the then President
of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had said, ‘Many challenges need to be
responded to: the emergence of multi-party coalitions as a regular
form of government, that needs to rapidly evolve as a stable two-party
system’. Kalam was addressing Parliament on the occasion of the 150th
anniversary of India’s First War of Independence.
Also ironically, the clearest indication that India’s polity is far from
moving towards a bipolar situation came in the elections to decide
who would be India’s President when Kalam’s term ended in July.
Given the numbers in the electoral college that elects the President—
members of both houses of Parliament and the state assemblies—it
was clear that if the UPA and the left could reach a consensus on a
candidate, the elections would be little more than a formality. What
followed, however, was more than a little farcical.
The left laid down certain ground rules by declaring that while it
was up to the Congress to select a candidate, it should put up a political
person with secular credentials and the ability to comprehend the
nuances of constitutional provisions. The names of several prominent
Congressmen—Home Minister Shivraj Patil, External Affairs Minister
Pranab Mukherjee, former Union Minister Karan Singh, Power
Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Human Resources Development
Minister Arjun Singh—started doing the rounds. If media reports are
to be believed, the left vetoed Patil and Karan Singh’s candidatures,
because it was not entirely convinced about their commitment to
secular values. Shinde and Arjun Singh apparently were ultimately not
put up by the Congress for the left’s consideration. Mukherjee was
ruled out because he was considered indispensable to the government—
he headed dozens of ‘groups of ministers’ responsible for key
policy decisions.
44 DIVIDED WE STAND

The candidate eventually chosen by the Congress and endorsed by

the left was, to put it mildly, a dark horse—Pratibha Patil, politician
from Maharashtra who was then Governor of Rajasthan. While it was
evident that Patil was selected because India had never had a woman
as President, she was largely an unknown entity, despite having served
as a minister in various governments in Maharashtra.
The BJP-led NDA felt its candidate, Vice-President Bhairon Singh
Shekhawat, might just be able to scrape through if all non-UPA,
non-left parties voted in his favour and some UPA legislators cross-
voted. To enable this to happen, Shekhawat was projected as an
‘independent’ candidate supported by the NDA. Given the fact
that Shekhawat has been a BJP leader for over five decades and the
announcement about him contesting was made by the BJP, this was
in keeping with the farcical nature of the entire exercise.
The BJP’s gameplan came unstuck when a new coalition was
formed weeks before the Presidential election by several regional
parties. Dubbed the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA),
the coalition included the Samajwadi Party (SP) led by Mulayam Singh
Yadav, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)
led by J Jayalalithaa, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) led by N
Chandrababu Naidu, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) led by Om
Prakash Chautala, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) led by Brindaban
Goswami, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK)
led by Vaiko, the Vikas Manch of Babulal Marandi and the Kerala
Congress (Mani) led by P C Thomas. The UNPA suggested that
Kalam be given a second term.
The UNPA’s stand was a little embarrassing for the BJP, which
found itself having to reject the candidature of a person it had
supported five years earlier. The NDA, however, decided to use it to
its advantage by announcing that Shekhawat would withdraw his
candidature provided there was an all-party consensus on re-electing
Kalam. The party obviously knew this was unlikely to happen, but it saw
two advantages in taking such a stance. First, Kalam was clearly
a popular and non-controversial President among much of the
population. Second, they hoped that if Kalam’s candidature fell
through, the UNPA could be persuaded to go along with the NDA
in supporting Shekhawat.
 Introduction 45

As part of its gameplan, the BJP launched an aggressive campaign

about Patil being ill-suited to hold the country’s highest constitutional
post. Patil herself did not help matters by making indiscreet and
controversial statements. One statement related to women having
to wearing a veil to guard themselves against Mughal invaders, a
fact historians disputed. Patil was also reported as saying that she
had talked with ‘spirits’ of those no longer alive. With the help of
information that had been disseminated by local journalists from
Jalgaon in Maharashtra, Patil’s home town, the BJP mounted a well-
orchestrated campaign against her. Her husband was allegedly
involved in a conspiracy to murder a political opponent and this
opponent’s widow was produced before the media. It was further
alleged that Patil had helped set up a cooperative bank that had run
up large losses because her family members, among others, had
defaulted on repaying loans that had been disbursed to them. (Many
such cooperative banks in the state had run up similar losses.) It was
also claimed that Patil had abused her position as a minister in the state
government and as an influential politician to help her relatives and
cronies set up factories and educational institutions. The campaign
against Patil strained the BJPs relations with its oldest and staunchest
ally, the Shiv Sena—the Sena supported Patil because she is from
Maharashtra. The BJP campaign against Patil—articulated largely
by former Union Minister Arun Shourie, former adviser to Prime
Minister Vajpayee, Sudheendra Kulkarni, and the party’s sympathizers
in the media (such as Chandan Mitra, MP and editor of The Pioneer
newspaper)—was helped by the fact that Patil steadfastly refused to
respond to the allegations that were leveled against her. The Congress
in turn, as well as publications such as Outlook magazine, turned
the spotlight on Shekhawat and highlighted old allegations against
him to the effect that his actions were not above board when he was
a policeman in Rajasthan.
Eventually, Patil was elected with a substantial majority indicating
that whatever cross-voting that took place had actually been in her
favour. Soon after the Presidential elections got over, it became time for
elections to the post of Vice President who also serves as the Chairperson
of the Rajya Sabha or the upper house of Parliament. This time
round, the candidate of the Congress and the left was agreed upon
expeditiously without any bargaining. It appeared that the left wanted
46 DIVIDED WE STAND

Abdul Hamid Ansari, a career diplomat who had served as India’s

ambassador to various West Asian countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates, besides Afghanistan. He is reportedly
not exactly pro-American in his political inclinations and is close
to left leaders like Prakash Karat, general secretary of the CPI(M).
That the candidates for Vice President put up by the NDA, Najma
Heptullah, former Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha, and by
the UNPA, Rasheed Masood, a former Union minister, never really
stood much of a chance against Ansari became evident when the results
of the election were announced. As with the Presidential elections,
during the Vice Presidential elections as well, the UNPA refused to
go along with either the NDA or the UPA.
In August 2007, differences over the India-US nuclear agreement
between the Congress-led UPA and the left precipitated a political
crisis. Manmohan Singh, supported by Sonia Gandhi, had made the
successful conclusion of the agreement an important prestige issue
for the government—they argued that the agreement would end
the ‘nuclear apartheid’ imposed on India by the US after the Indira
Gandhi government conducted nuclear tests in 1974, leading to an
easy flow of fuel (uranium) and dual-use technologies (or technologies
that had both civilian and military applications) from all 45 member
countries of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). The Prime Minister
also argued that the agreement would help India attain ‘energy
security’ although this line of argument appeared disingenous
to many since nuclear power comprised 2–3 per cent of the total
energy consumed in the country and the most optimistic projections
suggest that this share could go up to about seven per cent by 2020.
Whereas the deal was criticized by many scientists who were part
of India’s nuclear establishment in the past on the ground that it could
compromise the country’s sovereignty, what proved to be a major
point of contention—especially for the left—was the enactment of the
Henry Hyde Act in the US in December 2006. One of the ‘enabling’
or ‘recommendatory’ provisions of the American law stated that India
would have to follow US foreign policy—including that country’s
opposition to Iran’s nuclear programme. For the left, the nuclear
agreement was part of a larger strategic engagement with the
‘imperialist’ US administration led by President George W Bush.
While the left had been opposing the deal and demanding that
it shoud not be ‘operationalised’, what apparently triggered off the
 Introduction 47

crisis was an interview given by the Prime Minister to Manini

Chatterjee of the Kolkata-based newspaper, The Telegraph (August
11, 2007). In that interview, Manmohan said that he had told the left
the deal could not be renegotiated and went on to add, ‘I told them
to do whatever they want to do, if they want to withdraw support, so
be it….’. It was widely seen as a case of the Prime Minister cocking a
snook at the left and ‘calling its bluff’.
Exactly a week later, on August 18, the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M)
passed a resolution asking the government to halt the deal, failing
which there would be ‘serious consequences for the government and
the country’. In a press conference later that day CPI(M) General
Secretary Prakash Karat made matters even more clear—no further
steps should be taken on the deal till the issue had been ‘fully debated’
and all the implications of the deal and the Hyde Act examined. He
stopped short of actually announcing that his party would withdraw
support to the UPA government, but the message was unambiguous —
the government would have to choose between the deal and its own
survival. On August 20, the left parties had a joint meeting to reiterate
the same position.
They also made it clear that though the BJP had also opposed
the deal, they would have no association with a party they saw as
communal as well as one that was not committed to an anti-imperialist
foreign policy. Several components of the UNPA, particularly the SP,
were also strongly critical of the nuclear deal.
The Congress could draw some consolation from the fact
that all its allies in the UPA stood by the government. The UPA
government set up an informal committee with leaders of the left to
examine the implications of the Hyde Act, a move that was perceived
as an attempt to ‘buy time’. The UPA government set upon ‘informal’
Committee with leaders of the left to examine the implications of the
Hyde Act, a move that was perceived as an attempt to ‘buy time’.
Despite this, at the time of writing, in mid-September 2007, it seemed
almost certain that the Manmohan Singh government would not
complete its full term of five years, scheduled to end in May 2009.

∗∗∗

In 1999, after the second Vajpayee-led government, which came to

power in March 1998 and fell on April 17, 1999, the NDA (by then
48 DIVIDED WE STAND

a pre-election alliance, unlike in 1998) secured a majority (299 seats)

on its own. After the election results were announced, other MPs
extended support to the government, taking the NDA’s strength in the
543-member Lok Sabha to over 305. This meant that no single ally or
constituent of the NDA had the numbers to reduce the government
to a minority. Even withdrawal of support by the largest supporter or
partner of the BJP-led alliance, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), with
29 MPs, would have left the government with the support of around
275 members, a little more than the majority mark of 272.
Over the next two years, the NDA acquired new partners while
some of its constituents—like the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal
and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) in Tamil Nadu—deserted the
alliance for a while, only to return to its fold after faring poorly in
state elections. Despite the pulls and pressures of coalition politics, the
constituents of the NDA by and large remained faithful to Vajpayee’s
government. If anything, the government faced stronger opposition
to its policies from within the BJP and its ideological parent, the
avowedly pro-Hindu RSS and its Parivar, than from the other partners
in the alliance.
The NDA government’s stability may have seemed inexplicable
given the sheer number of coalition partners that had to be kept
together, the number varying between 18 and 24 parties, and the fact
that there was little ideological affinity among its constituents. The
history of Indian politics also suggested that the longevity of alliances
was uncertain, even when these were formed before elections. Most
of the existing allies of the BJP were its political opponents almost
till the day before they joined the NDA and had labelled the party
Hindu chauvinist, if not downright ‘communal’ or ‘fascist’. One of the
former Ministers in Vajpayee’s government formed in October 1999,
Ram Vilas Paswan, had voted against the motion of confidence in
April 1999 before he joined the government (though he left the NDA
three years later). Despite ideological contradictions, however, the
lust for power and opposition to the Congress—born of political
compulsions in different states—proved strong cementing forces
binding the NDA.
The performance of constituents of the NDA in elections to state
assemblies in May 2001 was uniformly poor, while the Congress, the
leading Opposition party, put up a reasonably good show. As a result,
the NDA and the Congress were ruling more or less the same number
 Introduction 49

of states after these elections. One of the reasons cited for this poor
performance of the BJP and its allies was a certain disillusionment
among the electorate. It appeared that there was little to differentiate
between the BJP and the Congress. The BJP had, at one stage, claimed
that it was a ‘party with a difference’, that its supporters were less
corrupt than politicians belonging to the Congress, that its cadres were
more disciplined and less prone to factionalism, and that it believed in
inner-party democracy unlike its political opponents. Within barely
three years of being in power, many of these myths about the BJP
had been shattered.
There were no discernible signs of a let-up in the incidence of
corruption, internal bickering among contending groups within the
party was rife and above all, the BJP’s ‘high command’—a revealing
term once used only by the Congress to refer to the party president—
was prone to replacing chief ministers in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and
Uttaranchal (now Uttarakhand) at the proverbial drop of a hat without
even going through the pretence of consultations among members of
legislative assemblies. There was one important difference, however,
between the two largest political parties in the country. Whereas the
Congress took many decades in power to acquire its image of being
a slothful, corrupt and decadent party, the BJP had achieved this
dubious distinction in the span of just a few years.
The BJP’s allies could read the writing on the wall even before
elections to Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttaranchal and Manipur took
place in February 2002. While their unease grew, however, there was
little they could immediately do about it, with the Congress preferring
to bide its time rather than precipitate a political crisis. The BJP’s
allies were not the only ones to sense a decline in the NDA’s popular
support. Sections within the Sangh Parivar responded to the threat by
seeking to appropriate some of the ‘Opposition space’ by criticising the
government for its economic policies as well as its foreign policy.
If the BJP’s allies were worried about the NDA’s popular support
prior to the state assembly elections of February 2002, the results of
these elections confirmed their worst suspicions. The BJP and its allies
lost in all four states that went to the polls and the Congress ended
up forming a government in three of them. Prior to the polls, the
BJP and its partners had held power in three of these states, while
the fourth—Manipur—was under President’s rule.
50 DIVIDED WE STAND

In Uttar Pradesh, politically India’s most significant state, the BJP

put up its worst showing in over a decade, finishing third behind the
SP and the BSP. The BJP-led alliance as a whole was only a handful of
seats ahead of the BSP and well behind the SP. Considering that this
was the state from which one out of every three BJP MPs in the Lok
Sabha originated in the 1998 elections and that the party had cornered
the single largest chunk of Parliamentary seats from Uttar Pradesh
even in the 1999 elections (29 out of 85 seats in the undivided state), the
outcome of the February 2002 assembly elections was a really serious
setback to the BJP and, by extension, to the NDA. (Five years later,
in 2007, the situation was to get even worse for the BJP in UP, but
more on that in a later chapter.)
In Uttaranchal, the BJP was sitting pretty before the elections, with
three-fourths of the legislators belonging to the party. But the 2002
assembly elections, the first in the state’s history, saw the Congress
gaining a majority and forming the government. In Punjab too, the
Congress was a comfortable winner with the ruling Akali Dal–BJP
alliance getting just over one-third of the seats in the 117-member
assembly. What was significant was that the BJP fared much worse
than the Akali Dal, winning just three of the 23 seats it contested.
Manipur, with a history of political instability, was arguably the
state where the NDA’s stakes were the lowest. None of the alliance
partners had any history of electoral support in the state and it was
only through a series of defections that first the Samata Party and then
the BJP had managed to form governments in the state which lasted for
very brief periods before continuing instability led to central rule being
imposed on the state. If the elections to the Manipur assembly were
significant in any sense in the national political scene, the significance
lay in how the Congress would perform. The Congress finished
as the single largest party and though it won only 20 of the 60 seats in
the assembly, it managed to cobble together a coalition that formed
the government in Manipur.
What the two rounds of state assembly elections in May 2001
and February 2002 had done to the electoral map of India was quite
dramatic. Prior to May 2001, the NDA was in power in as many as 16
out of the 30 assemblies in the country (including the ones at Delhi
and Pondicherry which are not full-fledged states) while the Congress
 Introduction 51

ruled in only nine assemblies. After February 2002, the situation had
altered radically: the Congress was in power (or was sharing power)
in 16 states while the NDA’s tally had shrunk to only seven. Of these
seven assemblies, the largest—and the only state assembly in which the
BJP commanded a majority on its own—was Gujarat, which sends 26
MPs to the Lok Sabha. In four out of these seven state assemblies, the
party was not a part of the government. (The December 2003 assembly
elections saw the political map of India changing again, this time to the
advantage of the BJP, with the party wresting from the Congress the
three states of, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh).
Soon after the results of the February 2002 assembly elections
became known, Hindu-Muslim riots rocked Gujarat. Despite L.K.
Advani’s claim that Narendra Modi had acted with alacrity and
contained the violence ‘within 72 hours’, the NDA government’s
opponents argued that the Modi administration had been deliberately
negligent in containing the violence, if not actively colluding with
those who sought ‘revenge’ against Muslims. Media reports of the riots
indicated clearly that the state government had chosen to turn a
blind eye to the ‘retaliatory’ acts of violence. It was not just the BJP’s
political opponents who attacked the Modi administration’s role in
the riots, some of the party’s allies in the NDA were sharply critical
of the Gujarat government in general and, more specifically, Modi’s
reported claim that the communal riots in different parts of the state
were a ‘reaction’ to the ‘action’ against the kar sevaks at Godhra. (Modi
was to subsequently deny that he had implicitly justified the violence
by suggesting that Hindus had ‘reacted’ to the Godhra incident.)
The rift between the BJP and some of its alliance partners in the
NDA—often described by the media as ‘secular’—as well as the
fissures between the so-called hawks and doves within the Sangh
Parivar were further widened in early March over the Ayodhya issue.
Over and above the fact that the political temperature had risen on
account of the Gujarat violence and the Ayodhya episode, two other
incidents precipitated heated exchanges in Parliament. The first was
a resolution by the RSS to the effect that the safety of the minorities
in India depended on the goodwill of the majority. This statement
was flayed by some of the NDA constituents on the ground that it
was not just patronising towards the Muslims but also displayed the
52 DIVIDED WE STAND

majoritarian or ‘fascist’ mindset of the Sangh Parivar. The second

incident took place in Bhubaneshwar. A group owing allegiance to
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and RSS ransacked a number of
rooms in the Orissa assembly apparently on the ground that particular
legislators had made statements that were termed ‘offensive’ by the
VHP. This incident caused a fair amount of embarrassment to the
Union government not merely because the state government in Orissa
was controlled by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in alliance with the BJP,
but also on account of the fact that the mob had raised slogans in
favour of Vajpayee. While the VHP later apologised for the incident,
Orissa Chief Minister and BJD leader Naveen Patnaik claimed his
political opponents had engineered the incident to discredit him and
his government.
The series of apparently unconnected but dramatic developments
in February–March 2002 made the NDA government appear more
fragile and prone to internal strife than it had been at any stage since
it came to power in October 1999. But, as already mentioned, this
appearance was deceptive. In fact, the period February–March 2002
was, in retrospect, a kind of watershed in the NDA’s evolution. It was
from this period onwards that it became amply clear that the BJP’s
allies in the coalition had lost much of their ability to influence the
agenda of the government, or at least of the BJP.
The declining clout of the BJP’s allies and the increasing confidence
of the BJP were starkly evident a year later. The Ayodhya issue came
to the fore again in February 2003, with the government adopting a
stance that was more favourable to the VHP’s position than it had
ever done in the past. Yet, there was no protest from the allies, unlike
a year earlier.
The results of the December 2003 assembly elections further
strengthened the position of the BJP within the NDA. The BJP’s
victory in three out of four states that went to the polls was a significant
departure from the trend since 1998. In the five years between
November 1998 and December 2003, the BJP had won assembly
elections only in the small state of Goa (that too, with a razor-thin
majority) besides, of course, Gujarat. That the party was able to defeat
the Congress in three states in the Hindi heartland (Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh) was a major morale booster in the run-up
 Introduction 53

to the 14th general elections. However, the BJP’s resounding victory

over the Congress was not the only significant aspect of the December
2003 assembly elections in these three states. While these states are
characterised by polities that are essentially bipolar, the combined
vote share of the BJP and the Congress was a little over 74 per cent in
Madhya Pradesh, a significant drop of 3.2 per cent from the combined
vote share in the 1998 assembly elections. Thus, one in every four voters
in Madhya Pradesh did not vote for either the BJP or the Congress
and this share is increasing, not decreasing. The picture in Rajasthan
was even clearer. The BJP and Congress between them mopped up a
little over 74 per cent of the votes cast in 2003, a 5.3 per cent decline
from their combined tally in 1998. Similarly, in Chhattisgarh, the
BJP and Congress put together lost 5.4 per cent of their combined
share of votes between the 1998 and 2003 assembly elections.

∗∗∗

The 13th general elections, held in September–October 1999, marked a

watershed in the contemporary political history of India. For the first
time since 1984, a pre-electoral alliance was able to win a majority of
seats in the Lok Sabha. Further, two clear trends that had persisted
for a decade and a half were either arrested or reversed. For the first
time since 1984, the BJP was unable to add to its tally of seats. In
fact, it lost around two percentage points of its share of the popular
vote—roughly equal to 8 per cent of the total votes cast in favour of
the party in the February 1998 elections. Though this decline in the
vote share of the BJP was popularly attributed to the party having
contested nearly 50 seats less in 1999 (339 against 388 in the 1998
elections), this was only partly true. Even a comparison of the vote
share of the BJP in the 331 seats that it contested in both the 1998 and
1999 elections indicated a slight fall (of the order of 0.8–0.9 percentage
points) in its support base.
The second trend that was arrested was the fall in the share of
votes obtained by the Congress. The party’s vote share had gone
up by nearly 3 per cent between 1998 and 1999 though it lost nearly
30 seats in the Lok Sabha thanks to the ‘first-past-the-post’ principle.
The support of the Congress was evidently spread relatively thinly
54 DIVIDED WE STAND

across the country whereas the BJP’s support base was concentrated in
particular geographical regions, enabling the party to win more seats
in the Lok Sabha even with a lower share of the popular vote. The net
result of these two trends was that the expected polarisation between
the BJP and the Congress did not take place (more on this later).
The 1999 general elections had also seen the most concerted attempt
ever in Indian politics to project the electoral battle as some sort of
a presidential referendum, with the BJP harping on a comparison
between Atal Behari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi. Another issue raised
at this juncture was Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. Some argue that
this fact became a ‘campaign issue’ only after three senior Congress
leaders broke away from the parent party after demanding that
Sonia Gandhi make it clear that she would not be a Prime Ministerial
aspirant. The leaders, who went on to form the Nationalist Congress
Party (NCP), were Sharad Pawar, former Chief Minister of
Maharashtra, Union Defence Minister in the Narasimha Rao Cabinet,
and leader of the Opposition in the 12th Lok Sabha; P.A. Sangma,
former Speaker of the Lok Sabha; and Tariq Anwar, a long-standing
Lok Sabha MP from Katihar in Bihar. Their contention, in a letter
circulated among members of the Congress Working Committee, was
that no person of non-Indian origin should be entitled to hold the
posts of President, Vice President or Prime Minister of the country.
This dovetailed very well with the BJP’s strategy for the impending
13th general elections, in which the party made it clear it would raise
Sonia’s Italian origin as a major issue. Ironically, by 2004, Sangma had
parted ways with Pawar whose party had by then formed an alliance
with the Congress in Maharashtra.
As it turned out, the NCP did not make much of an electoral impact,
except in Pawar’s home state of Maharashtra, though Sangma too won
from his constituency in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya. In
Maharashtra, the NCP managed to win six of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha
seats, but severely damaged the Congress by splitting its traditional
support base across the state. The NCP then went on to form an
uneasy alliance with the Congress to form the state government in
India’s most industrialised province in western India.
Another significant event that took place when Vajpayee’s
government was reduced to a ‘caretaker’ one in April 1999 was the
 Introduction 55

infiltration of hundreds of people who crossed the Line of Control

(LoC) between India and Pakistan in the Kargil area. The Indian
defence forces responded by launching air and ground strikes. The
success in driving back infiltrators from Indian territory in the
Kargil area in Jammu & Kashmir along the LoC in the middle of
1999 was also sought to be projected as a ‘victory’ of the Vajpayee
government and was exploited for electoral mileage. The results
and analyses based on post-poll surveys by the New Delhi-based
research institution, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
(CSDS), among others, suggested that Kargil did not have such a
major impact on the electorate. The CSDS survey indicated that
almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of the respondents questioned
were aware of the skirmishes along the LoC but a mere 15 per cent
acknowledged that the Kargil episode had influenced their voting.
The same survey incidentally indicated that less than half (46 per cent)
of the respondents were aware of the nuclear tests conducted by the
Vajpayee government in May 1998.
The 13th general elections were the first after the 3rd general
elections in 1962 in which polling was spread in five phases over a
period of one month. A number of political analysts and psephologists
claimed that the impact of Kargil had waned over this period, and that
the throwing out of infiltrators to the Pakistan side of the LoC had a
greater impact on the electorate in the first three phases of polling in
September 1999. Much of this analysis was based on studying the gains
and losses in terms of Lok Sabha seats over the five phases of polling.
If, however, one studies the data on vote shares, the hypothesis that
there was a ‘Kargil effect’ in the early phase of polling, which waned
as the elections progressed, cannot be sustained.
The data revealed that the vote share of the BJP and its allies did
not show an improvement over the 1998 figures (if one takes into
account the new alliances) even in the early phases of polling. This
means that the Vajpayee government’s claims of having won a ‘victory’
at Kargil did not add votes to the kitty of the NDA. The ‘Kargil
effect’ must, therefore, be seen as a myth. After all, if there was a
Kargil effect in favour of the BJP and its allies in the early stages of
the elections, it should have resulted in more voters voting for them
than the number which did in the 1998 elections. This simply did not
56 DIVIDED WE STAND

happen. A more plausible hypothesis is that the incidents in Kargil

did help the BJP and its allies to stem, and reverse, what till early 1999
seemed like an upsurge in the fortunes of the Congress. Even so, the
impact of Kargil seems at best to have prevented loss of seats for the
NDA relative to the 1998 position, not added seats. The BJP certainly
did not lose support on account of Kargil—but the extent to which
the party gained remains debatable.
That the NDA won more seats in 1999 than in the 1998 elections
was thanks entirely to the electoral arithmetic in different states. In
particular, the split in the traditional Congress base in Maharashtra
and the addition of the votes of new allies of the BJP like the TDP
in Andhra Pradesh and the Janata Dal (United) (JD[U]) in Bihar
drastically changed electoral equations in these states. These three
states between them accounted for 144 seats in the Lok Sabha and
the NDA gained almost 50 seats in these states compared to the 1998
elections. Of these, 37 seats were gained in Maharashtra and Andhra
Pradesh alone. The fact that both these states had completed polling
by the third phase explains the huge gains made by the NDA in the
initial phases of polling, rather than any so-called Kargil effect. It
must be emphasised that the BJP–Shiv Sena (the BJP’s oldest ally
in the NDA) alliance lost a substantial chunk of its vote share in
Maharashtra, but gained seats thanks to the split in the Congress on
the eve of elections. Similarly, in Andhra Pradesh, the BJP and the
TDP put together could not improve on their vote share between 1998
and 1999, while the Congress did—but not enough to counteract the
consolidation of votes on the other side.
There is another, more obvious, explanation to counter the
hypothesis of the Kargil effect. Evidence of this came in the form
of the divergent results in different states that went to the polls in
the initial part of the elections, in the first three weeks of September
1999. If Kargil did indeed boost the prospects of the NDA, why did
the alliance sweep Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi (winning
all 21 seats in these states) while, at the same time, being very nearly
wiped out in neighbouring Punjab (winning just 3 of the 13 seats in
the state) which borders Pakistan? Why did the BJP and its allies win
36 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh, but only 10 of the
28 seats in Karnataka, where they had won 16 seats in the previous
 Introduction 57

elections in 1998? The explanation is rather mundane and, as stated

earlier, has more to do with electoral arithmetic—the division of
opposition votes or an addition of a new ally to the BJP’s camp. In
addition, there were strong anti-incumbency sentiments in states like
Punjab and Karnataka, where the local governments were perceived
to be less than responsive to popular aspirations.
The 1999 elections also disproved the hypothesis of ‘voter apathy’
due to frequent elections. The 60 per cent voter turnout in 1999 was
a little lower than the 62 per cent recorded in the 1998 elections, but
higher than the 58 per cent recorded in 1996. Even if many of the 700
million plus voters in India are poor and illiterate and should have
good reason for being disillusioned with democratic institutions
of governance, the fact is that they exercise their franchise in much
higher proportion than do the educated and economically better-off
urban middle-class. The South Delhi constituency (regarded as having
one of the most educated and prosperous electorates), for instance,
recorded only a 42 per cent voter turnout. (This was the constituency
from which former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, considered
the architect of economic reforms in the Narasimha Rao government,
lost by roughly 30,000 votes to the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra.)
A related phenomenon, which might explain the continuing
enthusiasm for voting, is the strong anti-incumbency trend witnessed
in the last four general elections. On each occasion, between 40 per
cent and 50 per cent of incumbent MPs were rejected, either by their
own parties or by the voters. Thus, each of the last four Lok Sabhas
has seen around 250 new faces in a House comprising 543 members.
Considering that the first three of these elections were held within a
span of just three-and-a-half years from 1996 to 1999, this is a telling
indicator of the way the electorate punishes politicians perceived to
be ‘non-performing’. Anti-incumbency sentiments operate at both the
central and state levels. As a result, it is not uncommon for a party’s
MPs to pay the price for the failure of their state government to deliver
on its promises. The number of constituencies retained by political
parties in the three elections held between 1996 and 1999 barely
exceeded half the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha: the exact figures were
264 in 1996, 263 in 1998, and 283 in 1999. Though it may seem unfair
that an individual MP should be punished by the electorate for no
58 DIVIDED WE STAND

fault of his, the flip side is that good work by the party’s government
too pays off for the incumbent MP. This underlines the fact that while
individuals do matter, the policies and performance of parties are more
important in a Parliamentary democracy.
In the 1999 elections, there were strong anti-incumbency sentiments
among voters in a number of states. These sentiments worked against the
BJP-led NDA in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The same sentiments worked against the Congress in Orissa and
Rajasthan and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in Assam. However,
many state governments defied this trend. Among such states
were the left-ruled states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, the
Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh, the TDP-ruled Andhra Pradesh and
the DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu. However, in the May 2001 assembly
elections, anti-incumbency sentiments were strong in Tamil Nadu,
Kerala and Assam, while West Bengal’s voters continued to swim
against the tide—helped by the CPI(M) led Left Front replacing
the octogenarian Jyoti Basu with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (who is
25 years younger) as Chief Minister, despite the fact that Basu holds
the distinction of having been India’s longest-serving Chief Minister
in a state (between 1977 and 2001).
The importance of anti-incumbency sentiments is best illustrated
by the BJP’s performance in undivided Uttar Pradesh which then had
almost one-sixth of the total seats in the Lok Sabha (85 out of 543).
In the 1998 elections, the BJP on its own had won 57 of the state’s
85 seats and with its allies had won 60 seats. In 1999, however, the
party could barely win 29 seats on its own and a total of 32 seats with
its allies. While most political pundits and opinion polls or exit polls
had predicted some reverses for the BJP in UP, the magnitude and
scale of the party’s losses, in a four-cornered contest in most parts of
the state, came as a surprise even to them.
The surprising nature of the UP results in the 1999 Lok Sabha
elections was attributed by many, including psephologists, to ‘tactical
voting’ by those opposed to the BJP (a thinly-veiled reference to the
Muslims in particular). However, the data does not bear out such a
hypothesis. If indeed tactical voting was resorted to in larger measure,
the voting patterns should have shown less of a division in the non-BJP
votes in constituencies than it did in the past. On the contrary, what
 Introduction 59

the data revealed was a significant increase in the division of votes

in most constituencies. To be precise, the index of opposition unity
(IOU), a statistical tool used by psephologists to measure the division
of opposition votes, had increased vis-à-vis 1998 in 57 of the state’s 85
Lok Sabha constituencies. The increased division of votes was thanks
largely to the fact that the Congress, which had been reduced to no
seats and just 6 per cent of the vote in 1998, increased its vote share by
8 percentage points to 14 per cent and won 10 seats while two more
seats were won by its ally, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) lead by Ajit
Singh. (The RLD subsequently ditched the Congress for the BJP in
2001 and Ajit Singh, son of former Prime Minister Charan Singh,
became Union Agriculture Minister in the Vajpayee government. Ajit
Singh again parted ways with the BJP in 2002.)
The real reason for the BJP’s debacle in Uttar Pradesh was an
extremely strong anti-incumbency wave against the party. The BJP,
which had won 36.5 per cent of the votes in the state in the 1998
elections, got only 27.6 per cent in 1999, a drop of about 9 per cent. This
was by far the largest swing of votes away from an incumbent state
government anywhere in the country in the 1999 elections. However,
as we shall elaborate later, this swing away from the BJP was not
uniform across all sections of UP society. There were clear indications
of a marked disenchantment among the upper castes, who had
in the 1990s been ardent supporters of the BJP. The result of this
disenchantment was that Kalyan Singh, the man the BJP had projected
through the 1990s as its most popular mass leader in the state and
the automatic choice for Chief Minister, had to step down a month
after the results of the October–November 1999 Lok Sabha elections
were known and yield place to Ram Prakash Gupta, a man who was
Deputy Chief Minister two decades earlier in 1977, but had since
then been consigned to political oblivion. Despite the so-called
dynamism displayed by Gupta’s successor Rajnath Singh and his
concerted efforts to woo the ‘most backward classes’, the BJP was
unable to recover lost ground in the May 2002 assembly elections—
as already mentioned, the party ended up third in the elections, after
the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. Out of the 403 seats
in the UP assembly, in the February 2002 elections the BJP obtained
88 seats, the BSP 98 and the SP 143.
60 DIVIDED WE STAND

While on the subject of anti-incumbency, it is worth pointing out

that the viewpoint widely spread by the media and political analysts
about the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar doing very poorly in
the Lok Sabha elections in 1999 because of resentment against its state
government’s non-performance was simply not true. Election data
reveals that the RJD and its major ally in the state, the Congress, both
increased their share of the popular vote. Yet, the alliance (which also
included the CPI[M]) could win just 12 (RJD: 7, Congress: 4 and
CPI[M]: 1) out of the state’s 54 Lok Sabha seats. This was, as in Andhra
Pradesh, electoral arithmetic at work rather than anti-incumbency
sentiments. While the Janata Dal had contested against the BJP–Samata
Party alliance and the Congress–RJD alliance in 1998, it had joined
the NDA in the 1999 elections. Since the Janata Dal had secured
9 per cent of the popular vote in the 1998 elections, this addition was
always likely to be electorally significant, if the party’s supporters were
willing to accept such an alliance. As it turned out, the majority was
comfortable with this arrangement. Thus, the addition of 6 per cent
to the NDA’s kitty of votes was enough to add 10 seats to its tally
in Bihar.
Yet, it was true that by any yardstick of performance, the RJD
government in Bihar could not be said to have ‘performed’ if one
looks at the economic indicators of one of India’s poorest states. All
of this suggests that the anti-incumbency factor too cannot be seen
merely as a consequence of ‘lack of performance’ by state governments,
as perceived by middle-class analysts or sections of the media. It is a
rather more complex mix of developmental issues and of community
identity and izzat (honour or pride).
The RJD was ultimately defeated in Bihar in the assembly elections
of October 2005, but it took a reworking of the electoral arithmetic
for that to happen. The end game began with the assembly elections
held in February 2005. The coalition of the RJD, Congress, Ram Vilas
Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), the left and NCP, which had
proved a formidable alliance in the Lok Sabha polls, fell apart when it
came to the state assembly elections. The LJP declared that defeating
Lalu Prasad was the most important goal for Bihar. It was joined by
the CPI, which is the most important constituent of the left in Bihar.
 Introduction 61

The CPI(M) stayed with RJD, but the Congress adopted a peculiar
position. It tied up with the LJP for about one-third of the seats in
the assembly while maintaining its ties with the RJD for the rest. This
peculiar strategy didn’t help the Congress, but it certainly worked to
the advantage of the NDA in the state, led by Nitish Kumar of the
Janata Dal (United).
The election results threw up an assembly in which nobody had
the numbers to form the next government. The RJD remained the
single largest party, but with 75 seats in the 243-member assembly
it was nowhere near a majority. Even with the 14 seats won by its
allies—the Congress, NCP and CPI(M)—it was left 33 seats short of
a majority. The NDA had only just a few more seats, with the
JD(U)’s 55 seats and the BJP’s 37 adding up to just 92 seats. The key
to government formation clearly lay with the LJP, which had won
29 seats, and with the 17 independents. The LJP insisted that it could
neither support Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi as Chief Minister, nor align
with the ‘communal’ NDA. Paswan was faced with a real dilemma.
His job as a Union Minister in New Delhi obviously made it difficult
for him to align with the NDA. On the other hand, the bulk of his
MLAs belonged to the Bhumihar caste which was extremely hostile
to Lalu and any attempt on his part to mend fences with the RJD
would have resulted in a rebellion among his legislators. He, therefore,
continued to sit on the fence.
The stalemate continued for weeks before Governor Buta Singh
(a former Congress Union minister) recommended President’s rule
in the state on the grounds that he was convinced no government
could be formed without ‘horse-trading’. Coming close on the heels
of media reports that Nitish Kumar had finally mustered the numbers
required and was about to approach the Governor to stake a claim to
form the government, Buta’s move was seen as a blatantly partisan
attempt at preventing the NDA from forming the government. The
assembly was dissolved. Even as the Supreme Court was hearing
a petition challenging the dissolution, the Election Commission
announced that assembly elections would be held in October. On
the eve of the elections, the court issued an interim order that said
Buta Singh’s decision was wrong, but refrained from doing anything
to stop the elections.
62 DIVIDED WE STAND

The UPA once again failed to stay together and this time the
NDA was able to make the most of it. Analysts also believed that the
alliance had successfully managed to woo the most backward castes
(MBCs) away from the RJD’s fold. The NDA gained a comfortable
majority on its own, with the JD(U) winning 88 seats and the BJP
55 for a combined tally of 143 seats. It was not just the RJD that
suffered, its seats being cut to 54, but also the LJP, whose sitting on
the fence after the earlier elections seemed to have gone down badly
with the electorate. Paswan’s party could win just 10 seats in October.
The man who had set out to be king-maker in Bihar had been reduced
to a marginal player by the voters.
Nitish Kumar was sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar for the
second time on November 24, 2005. (In 2000, Nitish had been sworn
in as Chief Minister but had to resign in a week after he realised the
NDA did not have a majority in the state assembly—see his profile
later in the book.) The Supreme Court subsequently minced no words
in criticising former Governor Buta Singh’s recommendation to
dissolve the state assembly in March 2005. Buta Singh resigned his post
in January 2006. West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi took
over temporarily before Republican Party of India leader R. S. Gavai
was sworn in as the Governor of Bihar on June 22, 2006.

∗∗∗

After the 11th general elections in May 1996, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s
government had lasted barely 13 days. This was followed by the
formation of a United Front comprising over a dozen political parties
that ran the government with tenuous support from the Congress for
a year-and-a-half under two Prime Ministers, H.D. Deve Gowda and
I.K. Gujral. The slender majority of the next Vajpayee government that
came to power after the February–March 1998 elections was despite
the truly spectacular rise of the BJP’s strength in Parliament over
the previous decade and a half. In the last decisive general elections
held in India, in 1984, the BJP had won only two of the 543 seats in
the Lok Sabha. The Congress, which had at that time run the Union
government for all but six years since 1947, when India became
politically independent, held as many as 404 seats in the Lok Sabha
 Introduction 63

after the 1984 elections. The party, for the first and only time, had a
two-thirds majority in Parliament following the elections that were
conducted after the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi in October that year. The elections saw her son Rajiv Gandhi
succeeding her with a thumping majority in Parliament, the likes
of which was never enjoyed by Indira Gandhi herself or her father
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India.
Since 1984, the BJP has gained the most from the decline of the
Congress. But that is only the beginning of the story. The rest of it is
about the mushrooming of myriad political formations, which, in
turn, has resulted in six coalition governments since May 1996. For
the first time, the chair of the Prime Minister of India was occupied by
no less than four individuals in the span of less than a year, between
May 1996 and April 1997.
Has India entered a new phase of coalition politics? Yes, it has. Is
the country ultimately moving towards a two-party system or is it
moving towards a multi-party system in which two dominant parties
provide poles for the rest to cluster around? As already stated, we do
not think so. In our view, the process of fragmentation of the polity
is not yet over. This, in turn, could throw up unexpected possibilities
and political realignments, including the formation of new
political parties.
To what extent has the BJP succeeded in shedding its image of being
a right-wing Hindu nationalist party dominated by the upper-caste
sections of north India? To some extent, it undoubtedly has, and in
fact went out of its way to shed it. Will the Congress, set up in 1885, be
able to revive and re-occupy the centrist political space as an umbrella
organisation representing the interests of all sections of the world’s
most heterogeneous society, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi?
We are not so sure. Has the so-called ‘third force’, an amorphous
combination of the left and largely regional parties, become irrelevant
after just 18 months in power or will this section continue to play
a pivotal role in shaping the country’s politics? The answer is that
smaller parties would be playing an even more important role in
shaping the country’s polity, whether or not they come together as
a united front.
64 DIVIDED WE STAND

Virtually everybody has now come to accept the new reality of

Indian politics, namely that the era of single party rule is over, at least
in the foreseeable future. In fact, it can convincingly be argued that it
was the Congress’ failure to recognise this reality that led to the party
steadily losing seats in Parliament. After the 13th general elections,
the Congress found itself with just 112 seats in the Lok Sabha, by far
the lowest ever, despite increasing its vote share significantly. The
results of the 1999 elections and the 2004 elections clearly suggest that
the polity is far from becoming bipolar. The two largest parties—the
BJP and the Congress—between themselves accounted for just over
half the seats and less than half the votes polled. In other words, close
to half the votes and seats went to roughly three dozen other political
parties of varying sizes. Clearly, despite assertions to the contrary by
both the BJP and the Congress, the political space for a ‘third front’ does
continue to exist, however amorphous such a grouping might be.
Any government in a polity as badly fractured as India’s has been
after the last four general elections—held in May 1996, February
1998, September–October 1999 and April–May 2004—would almost
inevitably not be very stable. On its own, the Congress, the single
largest party in the 14th Lok Sabha, had barely one-fourth of the total
number of seats. In the 13th Lok Sabha, the then single largest party,
the BJP, had on its own barely a third of the total number of seats. In
1998, 1999 and 2004, the party leading the ruling coalition has been
forced to depend on those willing to categorise it merely as a ‘lesser
enemy’ in order to ensure the survival of its government.
After May 2004, the UPA had no option but to form a government
supported from outside by the left. For the Communists, the Congress
may be an adversary—especially in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura —
but in the context of national politics, it is a ‘lesser evil’ than the
‘communal’ BJP.
One of the biggest surprises of the post-election scenario in March
1998 was the support given to the Vajpayee government by the TDP
headed by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu who,
till that stage, was the convenor of the United Front. Naidu played
a tantalising game of hide and seek with his erstwhile allies, insisting
that the TDP would remain ‘equidistant’ from the Congress and the
 Introduction 65

BJP. The first indication of what equidistance meant to the TDP

was the surprise election of its nominee, G.M.C. Balayogi, as the
Speaker of the Lok Sabha with the support of the BJP and its allies.
The drama reached its culmination with Naidu announcing just hours
before the actual vote of confidence in the House that his party would
be voting in favour of the Vajpayee government.
Also surprising was the decision of the National Conference (NC),
a party that was then ruling the northern-most state of Jammu &
Kashmir—India’s only Muslim-majority state—to abstain in the vote
of confidence sought by Vajpayee in March 1998. The decision of
the NC, led by Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, surprised many since
the BJP has long been perceived as inimical to Muslim interests and
also because the party in its election manifesto had argued in favour of
abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution (which confers special
status on the state of Jammu & Kashmir in terms of autonomy from
the central government). Abdullah justified his decision on the ground
that the state could ill afford to have an antagonistic relationship with
whoever was in power in New Delhi. While the TDP subsequently
had to part ways with the United Front (UF), the NC curiously never
formally withdrew from the Front. It is another matter that the Front
itself later ceased to exist without any formal process of dissolution
ever taking place. After being a part of the NDA for more than four
years, the NC left the alliance in 2003 after it failed to form the
government in Jammu & Kashmir.
What were the consequences of the fractured mandate and the
unexpected shifts in allegiances after the 12th general elections held in
February–March 1998? One was that the Vajpayee government had
18 parties supporting it at that time, including half a dozen parties
with just one MP each. Yet, the government’s survival of its first vote
of confidence was thanks almost entirely to the TDP’s last-minute
decision to support the BJP-led government. The fact that the TDP
insisted its support to the Vajpayee government was issue-based and
not unconditional underlined the fragility of the government.
Vajpayee himself had felt that the mushrooming of regional
parties—the 13th Lok Sabha had 38 political parties recognised by the
Election Commission of India, the 12th Lok Sabha had representatives
66 DIVIDED WE STAND

of 42 political parties while there were 26 parties in the 11th Lok

Sabha—together with the arguably disproportionate clout these
parties enjoy in a situation in which Parliament is ‘hung’, represents
a phase that Indian politics could not have avoided but is also one
which could not last for long. This was what the then Prime Minister
had asserted in his reply to the discussion on the motion of confidence
moved by him in the Lok Sabha in March 1998. Vajpayee saw the
fragmentation as an aberration in a polity that is gradually moving
towards a more stable polarisation (a formulation that the BJP has
since been careful not to emphasise).
This analysis was to a large extent a reflection of the outcome of the
February 1998 polls in which the 13-party United Front, which ran the
two previous governments for 18 months with grudging and uneasy
support from the Congress, suffered a debacle. The UF’s strength in
the Lok Sabha had been reduced from close to 180 seats to less than
100 after the elections. Subsequent desertion from its ranks left it with
less than 85 Lok Sabha MPs in March 1998. This convinced the votaries
of the two-party theory that they were correct in writing off the ‘third
force’ as a spent force in national politics. As they saw it, the smaller
parties would either fade away or be forced to align themselves with
one or the other of the two strong poles of Indian politics, the BJP
and the Congress. Many shared this view. They suggested that there
were distinct signs of the polity becoming bipolar, the BJP providing
one pole and the Congress the other.
However, the outcome of the 13th general elections held in
September–October 1999 indicated that this trend towards bipolarity
was still not taking place and the ‘third force’ was far from becoming
irrelevant. Significantly, the BJP too had subtly changed its assertions
on the issue. Unlike the Congress, it had come to terms with the fact
that prospects of it growing further on its own steam were dim in
the immediate future. Hence, even leaders like L.K. Advani (who
went on to become Deputy Prime Minister), perceived as ideological
hardliners, conceded that the BJP’s continuation in power would
depend on its ability to tie up alliances with several regional partners.
(The 14th Lok Sabha constituted in May 2004 had 38 political parties
recognised by the Election Commission.)
 Introduction 67

Though the United Front itself became defunct, regional parties

as a category have not lost out. On the contrary, these formations
have come to hold the levers of power in the Union government. In
terms of numbers, the Congress and the BJP put together increased their
tally in the 543-member Lok Sabha by less than 30 seats between the
May 1996 and February 1998 general elections. Following the 1999
elections, the combined tally of the BJP and the Congress in fact came
down to roughly the same level as it was after the 1996 elections.
There are, therefore, many who argue that a third space will continue
to exist in Indian politics, even if the parties that occupy this space
keep changing.
The phenomenon of political parties extending ‘outside’ support
to coalition governments is considered to be a reason why such
governments have been unstable—in fact, four out of the last seven
governments in New Delhi since 1989 were brought down on account
of withdrawal of support by various parties (especially the Congress
and the BJP) that supported governments without participating in
them. The exceptions were the Narasimha Rao government, which
completed its full term of five years (June 1991 to May 1996) despite
starting out as a minority government, and the Vajpayee governments
of 1996 and 1998–99. Narasimha Rao had to face charges in court
for having allegedly bribed MPs to win a vote of confidence in July
1993. India’s premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI), framed the charges. A lower court convicted
Rao and one of his Ministers, Buta Singh, but the Delhi High Court
acquitted them on appeal.
The other factor that arguably influences the stability of a coalition
government is whether the alliance came into being before or after
the elections. On the face of it, pre-poll alliances are likely to be
more stable than post-poll ones. Yet, the BJP-led coalition found
itself unable to muster a majority in the 12th Lok Sabha without the
assistance of post-poll allies. As the BJP-led government realised
within days of securing power, even pre-poll allies could prove to
be troublesome partners—a case in point being AIADMK—and
J. Jayalalithaa brazenly arm-twisted the Vajpayee government to
accept her demands on more than one occasion. Eventually, she and
68 DIVIDED WE STAND

her party went on to successfully destabilise the government, thus

triggering off the process leading to the 13th general elections. The
experience of the recent past lends weight to the contention that the
only reasonable guarantee of the stability and longevity of a coalition
government is ideological compatibility among partners. The Left
Front government in West Bengal and the BJP–Shiv Sena alliance in
Maharashtra are two such examples.
The United Front government under Deve Gowda was the first
Union government in India that was formed following a post-poll
alliance cobbled together in May 1996 and after a Common Minimum
Programme (CMP) had been thrashed out. The earlier coalitions
at the centre—the Janata Party government in 1977–78 headed by
Morarji Desai and the Janata Dal government in 1989–90 headed by
V.P. Singh—were formed on the basis of pre-poll alliances.
After the May 1996 elections, for the first time the Congress was not
the single largest party in the Lok Sabha. Of course, the Janata Party
in 1977 had more seats in the House than the Congress, but the party
came into being after various constituents of a pre-poll alliance merged
after the elections. In the results of the 1977 elections, therefore, the
Congress did emerge as the single largest party. In 1996, in fact, the
Congress became weaker than it ever was in Parliament, with barely
140 MPs in the Lok Sabha against nearly 200 MPs owing allegiance
to the BJP and its allies. The BJP emerged as the single largest party
in the lower House despite getting just over one-fifth of the popular
vote, while the Congress got just under 30 per cent of the votes. But
Vajpayee’s first government lasted only between the 16th and the
28th of May 1996.
This was followed by the formation of the 13-party United Front
coalition which was supported from ‘outside’ by both the Congress
and the CPI(M), the second and third largest parties in the Lok
Sabha. Unlike the Congress, the CPI(M) joined the Front (but not
the government). While erstwhile political opponents came together
to keep the BJP out of power, also for the first time, representatives
of regional parties as well as nearly a dozen chief ministers of various
Indian states started playing a more active role in the functioning of
the central government.
 Introduction 69

The change from a situation in which a single party (the Congress)

dominated the government to one of multi-party configurations
has been accompanied by other significant changes in the working
of India’s polity. One such change has been the growing role of
Constitutional institutions from the President to state Governors and
the Election Commission. Yet, the instability of central governments
has periodically resulted in an active debate on the need for fundamental
alterations to the Westminster Parliamentary form of government itself.
Arguments have been made in favour of and against different forms
of government—an American-style presidential system or a French
type of combination of the presidential and parliamentary systems.
The 1999 Lok Sabha elections and to a lesser extent the 2004
elections were sought to be projected as a ‘presidential’ election, one
that pitted Vajpayee against Sonia Gandhi. But, it would be simplistic
to perceive the elections in this manner. Personalities, separated from
the political parties they represent or the issues and ideologies they
stand for, have always influenced the Indian electorate to a lesser
or greater degree. However, it can be contended that given India’s
tremendous diversities, the socially and regionally heterogeneous
peoples of the country have to evolve their own system that could
perhaps uniquely combine the systems existing in other countries.
The questions remain:

• Is India moving towards a two-party system or into an extended

phase of coalition politics?
• If indeed coalition governments are here to stay, just how
relevant are the experiences of coalitions in various states
since 1957?
• Are there lessons to be drawn from these state-level experiences
over four decades that are relevant at the all-India level?
• Is there reason to believe that coalitions at the centre are
intrinsically more unstable than similar formations in states?
• Will the endeavour to ensure stability of governments lead to
a further blurring of ideological distinctions within and among
political parties?
70 DIVIDED WE STAND

The answer to these questions will have an important bearing not

only on the future of individual parties or the composition of future
governments, but also on the very nature of Indian politics.
As far as the economy is concerned, there has been a subtle,
but distinct, change in the debate on the merits of liberalisation,
which was significantly accelerated by the minority government of
P.V. Narasimha Rao, which came to power in May 1991 after Rajiv
Gandhi’s assassination. At present, sections of the Congress and the
BJP want the Indian economy to integrate with the rest of the world
at a faster pace. There is undoubtedly a consensus on the need for and
virtues of de-bureaucratisation cutting across all political formations.
However, the left and sections of the BJP, the Congress and other
political parties have their own different notions about the nature of
economic reforms required.
While it has been argued that its tenure in office compelled the BJP
to move away from its image of being a right-wing party and to adopt
a less sectarian form of politics, there is the counter argument that the
Vajpayee government conferred a certain legitimacy to communal
(anti-Muslim) politics that was not so far available to it. Either way,
Indian politics changed fundamentally.
It is also worth examining how realignments of social forces are
likely to influence the course of the country’s politics. The growing
confidence of the dalits, together with the consolidation of their
influence in some of the country’s largest states behind parties
representing their interests, is one such phenomenon. The emergence
of ‘other backward classes’ as a political force to reckon with is another.

• Does bickering among coalition partners lead to greater

transparency and more accountability, which, in turn, reduces
the incidence of corruption in public life?
• Or, does it result in greater cynicism among politicians, since
today’s accusers could become tomorrow’s allies?
• Will the participants in governments with short tenures tend
to adopt an approach of ‘making hay while the sun shines’?
• Or will the fear of their actions being scrutinised by successor
regimes act as a check on the propensity of politicians in power
to earn a fast buck?
 Introduction 71

Even though a number of politicians facing charges of corruption

have been re-elected (for, among other things, being seen to be fulfilling
the aspirations of the electorate), corruption remains an important
political and economic issue in India. Sections of the media and the
judiciary have become more active in highlighting as well as following
up instances of corruption involving persons holding positions of
power. The manner in which Narasimha Rao’s minority government
won a vote of confidence in Parliament in July 1993 and became a
majority government by ‘allegedly’ bribing MPs to defect was itself
the subject of a protracted legal battle, as mentioned earlier.
The recent history of India has thrown up a number of crucial
questions, the answers to which are not very clear.

• What impact would the process of economic liberalisation have

on the functioning of the polity and on the development of a
country which entered the 21st century with the world’s largest
population of the poor and the illiterate?
• Will the political changes that have taken place lead to a
greater integration of minorities and tribals within the national
mainstream?
• Will future governments be better able to reflect the aspirations
of different regional and ethnic groups?
• Will the redrawing of the internal political map of India be
more than a cartographic exercise and heighten fissiparous
tendencies?
• And, will the aggravation of contradictions in the world’s
second-most populated country and arguably the most
heterogeneous nation-state bring about its disintegration, as
some have claimed from time to time?

These questions are obviously too complex to be answered by

specialists in any one discipline. In fact, it would be futile to pretend
that any definitive answers can be provided at all. All that can be
attempted is to present as many aspects of the totality as possible and
provide pointers to some of the linkages. In this respect, the generalist
approach of the journalist may perhaps make up in width and reach
for what it might lose in terms of theoretical academic rigour.
 Chapter 2
UPA Government:
Peaceless Coexistence

The Election Commission of India announced the schedule for

the 14th Lok Sabha elections on February 29, 2004, elections that
would become a watershed in Indian politics. Though the five-
year term of the 13th Lok Sabha was to expire in October 2004,
the NDA government decided to bring forward the elections by
roughly five months. The decision was, at that time, considered by
some as a political ‘master-stroke’ that would enable the NDA to
return to power by catching the Congress off guard. Fresh from
electoral victories in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh
that were ruled by the Congress, the NDA leadership believed the
electorate would be willing to give the incumbent government led by
Vajpayee another term in office.
As already stated, the December 2003 assembly elections proved to
be a disaster for the Congress—it lost power in three states, Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, while retaining Delhi. Out of
power in New Delhi since 1996, the Congress seemed to be facing
an uphill task in getting back on to the road to power.
Opinion polls seemed to suggest that the BJP’s decision to hold
early elections was a smart move. In its ‘mood of the nation’ opinion
poll held in January 2004, India Today magazine estimated that
the NDA was likely to sweep the 2004 elections with 330–340
seats against the 304 seats won in 1999. The poll projected a washout
for the Congress and its allies, estimating that the alliance would win
105–115 seats, down at least 30 seats from its previous tally. While
a few political analysts were sceptical about the accuracy of these
polls, in the NDA and the BJP camps the mood was upbeat—or
even euphoric.
It was at this juncture—around the time our first book was
published in March 2004—that the Vajpayee government started
 UPA Government 73

what would become perhaps the largest and most controversial public
relations exercise in the history of independent India conducted by
a Union government: the ‘India Shining’/‘Bharat Uday’ campaign.
Deputy Prime Minister L.K.Advani, on February 8, 2004, gave an
insight into how the oft-used phrase ‘feel-good factor’ was coined by
the NDA: I had seen an advertisement of Raymond Suitings where
people who touch the suit fabric ask the person wearing it, ‘How do
you feel?’ To which he replies, ‘I feel good’. The advertisement further
says, ‘If it feels like heaven, it must be Raymonds’ (Press Trust of India
report from Ahmedabad, as quoted in rediff.com).
‘We cannot compare the situation with heaven, but we can
certainly use ‘feel good’ as a catch phrase to show the work done by
the NDA under the leadership of Vajpayee in the past five years,’
Advani told a gathering in Ahmedabad while inaugurating a health
camp. On the same day, T.S. Krishnamurthy took over as Chief
Election Commissioner and in his first press conference said that
advertisements lauding the government’s achievements were not in
keeping with the spirit of the model code of conduct for elections.
‘Since we have not announced the poll schedule, we have no powers to
intervene but taxpayers’ money should not be wasted in publicising the
achievements of governments,’ he said in a thinly-veiled reference to
the ‘India Shining’ campaign.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India was to later (May
2005) criticise the government for spending Rs 63.23 crore on this
campaign without parliamentary approval. The CAG pointed out
that the Ministry of Finance had ‘diverted’ this money from funds
that had been sanctioned for ‘cooperation with other countries’. The
Finance Ministry curiously justified the expenditure claiming the
‘India Shining’ campaign was meant to support an ‘overall, general
and imaginative promotion of India, its trade and foster technical and
economic cooperation and intellectual progress with other countries’
and hence did not require separate parliamentary approval. Jaswant
Singh, who was Finance Minister at the time of the campaign, went a
step further saying that the CAG had got its facts wrong and the NDA
government had in fact made a Rs 100 crore ‘grant’ for this publicity
campaign. The central point is that the ‘India Shining’ campaign, far
from helping the BJP and the NDA, may have indirectly contributed
74 DIVIDED WE STAND

to the electoral defeat of the coalition. It can be argued that those

sections of the population which did not believe that their economic
condition had improved, were actually angered by the government
spending public funds to tell them they should be ‘feeling good’—this
was reluctantly conceded by supporters of the BJP and the NDA after
the outcome of the elections was known in May 2004.
Returning to the run-up to the 14th general elections, perhaps for
the first time in the history of independent India, the Congress faced
a resource crunch. Unlike in countries like the US where campaign
contributions are reasonably transparent, the manner in which election
campaigns are funded in India is secretive despite the regulations
that have been laid down by the Election Commission. The amounts
that candidates and parties spend on elections are more often than not
several times higher than the legal limits specified by the EC thanks
to generous contributions from ‘friends’ and ‘well-wishers’ of those
standing for elections, many of who are wealthy businesspersons.
The Congress is said to have approached some two-dozen leading
industrialists for financial support but reportedly met with lukewarm
responses from them. The Congress having been out of power for
nearly eight years, most businesspersons, like many within the
Congress itself, were not expecting the party to be in a position to
form the next government in the country. Hence, the coffers of the
Congress were depleted. ‘All I can say is (that) we are not flush with
funds—a political party of the size of the Congress needs lots of
money to fight elections,’ Congress treasurer Moti Lal Vora pointed
out in an interview to rediff.com on March 24, 2004.
Ironically, a shortage of resources did not turn out to be such a
liability for the Congress. The party’s leaders were compelled to adopt
campaign strategies that entailed direct contact with the electorate
that, on hindsight, turned out to be more effective. The BJP, on the
other hand, was flush with funds. It launched what was easily the most
technology-savvy election campaign in India’s history. A recorded
appeal from Vajpayee went out automatically to people directly
on their mobile phones; BJP leaders were touring the country in
helicopters and fancy vehicles, boasting that they had achieved more in
the last five years than the Congress had in 45 years of ruling India.
On March 2, 2004 the BJP announced that Advani would undertake
what was called the Bharat Uday Yatra. The yatra was to start the
 UPA Government 75

BJP’s election campaign for the Lok Sabha elections from Kanyakumari,
the southern tip of India’s mainland, and its first phase was to end in
Amritsar, in the north. The second phase of the yatra was to start from
Porbandar in Gujarat and culminate in Puri in Orissa. In all, Advani
would travel nearly 8,000 km by the time the yatra ended in April.
In 1999, it (an earlier yatra) was for continuity. Now it is for political
stability, for continuity and over and above all for performance.
Incumbency, generally speaking, is always regarded (as) a liability.
In our case incumbency is not a liability. Incumbency is, in fact, the
Vajpayee-led NDA government’s biggest asset, Advani bragged at
a press conference.
Even in the early days of the yatra, media reports indicated that the
‘India Shining’ campaign was not generating the kind of enthusiasm that
the BJP had hoped for. With temperatures touching 40 degrees celsius
and drought affecting many parts of the country, it seemed that
Advani had chosen the wrong time to tell the electorate that India
was doing very well under the NDA.
The fact that he was travelling in an air-conditioned, souped-up
Toyota complete with portable toilet and a mini-crane that would lift
him above the vehicle to address people, did not help. If anything, it
seemed to underline the gulf between ordinary voters and political
leaders. Travelling at speeds close to 60–80 kmph, Advani may have
failed to notice the disenchantment.
The Congress campaign presented an effective contrast. When
the NDA was tom-tomming the ‘feel good factor’, the Congress
riposte was: ‘Hum ko kya mila?’ (What have we got?), indicating that
while the NDA had brought prosperity to a small section of society,
the common man had gained very little from the so-called economic
boom. The party’s slogan, ‘Congress ka haath garib ke saath’ (The
hand of the Congress is with the poor), in which garib (poor) was
later replaced with aam aadmi (common man) was a return to tried
and tested rhetoric.
Despite the lukewarm response to Advani’s yatra, in the initial
days of the campaign, the momentum seemed to be with the NDA.
The BJP would frequently announce the names of celebrities—from
film stars to political bigwigs—who were joining the party and
campaigning for it. Such individuals included Maneka Gandhi’s
76 DIVIDED WE STAND

son Varun Gandhi, former Union Minister from the Congress and
political bigwig from Madhya Pradesh Vidya Charan Shukla, Rajya
Sabha Deputy Chairperson Najma Heptullah, senior Congress leader
Digvijay Singh’s brother Lakshman Singh, former Union Minister
Arif Mohammed Khan, besides film personalities like Hema Malini,
Manoj Kumar, Yukta Mookhey, Sudha Chandran, Suresh Oberoi,
Jeetendra, Poonam Dhillion, singers like Bhupen Hazarika and
Kumar Sanu, among others. The Congress too had its share of film
personalities such as Govinda, Zeenat Aman, Celina Jaitley, Om
Puri, Asrani, Namrata Shirodkar and Sharad Kapoor, beside former
cricketer Bishen Singh Bedi.
While the BJP was evidently happy with prominent personalities
choosing to campaign for the party, the Congress was tying up
electoral alliances—a lesson it had learnt from the BJP that won more
seats in 1999 with a relatively lower vote share because it had tied
up with different coalition partners at local levels before elections.
The BJP had perhaps forgotten this important lesson that shaped the
arithmetic of the Lok Sabha or, more plausibly, become complacent
by under-estimating the strengths of its political opponents. Thus,
while the Congress was gaining new allies, the BJP was losing partners
(or even getting rid of them).
The first bit of bad news for the NDA came from Haryana where
the BJP had an uncomfortable relationship with the ruling Indian
National Lok Dal, headed by Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala.
Whereas Chautala himself had a rapport with the BJP leadership,
many supporters of his party were far from comfortable with the
alliance. The BJP’s local functionaries rightly felt there were strong
anti-incumbency sentiments against the Chautala government and,
hence, welcomed a parting of ways with the INLD that formally took
place in February 2004. What this meant was that the NDA would
now not be sure of retaining the ten Lok Sabha seats from Haryana.
In Tamil Nadu, all the constituents of the NDA barring the BJP,
left the alliance. Led by the DMK, they tied up with the Congress.
In Bihar and in Jharkhand, after a long period, all the major political
parties who were not a part of the NDA came together—such parties
included the Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (led by Lalu Prasad
Yadav), the Lok Janshakti Party (led by Ram Vilas Paswan), the
 UPA Government 77

Nationalist Congress Party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)

and the two Communist parties. In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress
had not only forged an alliance with the left, it had tied up with
the Telengana Rashtra Samithi (although the left and the TRS were
competing against each other).
These developments were to become not just crucial but decisive
in the subsequent formation of the Union government by the UPA
in May 2004, for the UPA made a clean sweep of Haryana and
Tamil Nadu and won handsomely in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and
Jharkhand. All these states (accounting for 145 Lok Sabha seats)
had been politically dominated by the NDA after the 1999 elections.
Even at the time when these alliances were being forged, a few political
observers pointed to their significance. However, the mainstream
media—in particular, the influential English media—were gung-ho
about the prospects of the NDA returning to power.
According to an opinion poll conducted for New Delhi Televison
(NDTV) and Indian Express newspaper by A.C. Nielsen, the NDA
was poised to bag 287–307 seats against the Congress-led alliance’s
143–163 seats. The survey, claimed to be the largest-ever opinion poll,
covered a sample of 45,000 people in 207 constituencies, 80 per cent
of them in rural areas. While the poll rightly predicted that the BJP-
AIADMK alliance was in trouble in Tamil Nadu, it was unable to
record the strong anti-incumbency sentiments prevailing in Andhra
Pradesh and the reduction in the levels of communal polarisation in
Gujarat. All the opinion polls indicated that the NDA was heading
for a majority and failed to anticipate the gains that would be made
by the Congress as well as other constituents of the UPA.
A study by a non-government organisation in late 2004 highlighted
and quantified the extent of the bias that some of India’s leading
television news channels had betrayed in the run-up to the elections,
confirming what many had perceived. The study conducted by
the New Delhi-based Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR)
showed that in terms of TV coverage of high-profile campaigners,
the clear leader was Advani (19 per cent) who beat even Vajpayee
(17 per cent), with Congress President Sonia Gandhi lagging far
behind (5 per cent) followed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad
and Mayawati (each with 3 per cent). These six individuals accounted
78 DIVIDED WE STAND

for half the time given to campaign stories. Advani’s Uday Yatra
from Kanyakumari to Kashmir hogged a phenomenal 478 minutes
of television coverage, according to the study. The study pointed out
how while both Advani and Sonia had campaigned in Gujarat, issues
relating to the 2002 communal riots in the state were ‘ignored as an
election issue by them—and the media’.
The two largest parties, the BJP and the Congress, accounted for
76 per cent of the total coverage, though they together polled less than
half the total votes in the elections. In contrast, the left parties together
got only one per cent of the total coverage though they emerged
stronger than ever before with 61 MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha. As
for the parties based in south India, the study said they were literally
‘out of the picture’ as far as the so-called national television channels
were concerned.
Despite a sympathetic media, one particular episode tarnished
the image of the incumbent regime. On April 12, at a BJP rally in
Lucknow, where Vajpayee was contesting, a stampede broke out
killing at least 21 women, while party leader Lalji Tandon was
distributing sarees to poor women as part of his birthday celebration.
The shocking incident compelled Vajpayee to admit in an interview to
NDTV on April 15 that the entire country was not shining. ‘There are
several aspects of India. While some aspects are shining, there are also
some dark aspects. We got a shock. So just seeing the shining part will
not work. We have to see the other aspects too’, he conceded.
This realisation had dawned a little too late as the results of the
election were to prove. The media, however, continued to see the
NDA as a comfortable frontrunner. At the end of the last of the four
phases of polling, on May 10, exit polls were still projecting the NDA
as the largest pre-poll alliance, the number of seats ranging between
248 (NDTV) and 270 (Sahara Samay). Unlike in the run-up to the
elections, the NDA was not being seen as likely to win a majority of
the seats, but it still was tipped to be far ahead of the Congress-led
alliance. According to the exit polls, the UPA would get close to 180
seats while others, including the left, SP and BSP, were expected to
get close to 102 seats.

∗∗∗
 UPA Government 79

The results of the Andhra Pradesh assembly elections, announced

on May 11—two days before the counting for the Lok Sabha polls
were to be held—proved to be a curtain-raiser. The ruling TDP-BJP
alliance was able to win only 49 of the 294 seats in the state while the
Congress and its allies managed 226 seats, a little more than three-
fourths of the strength of the House. The verdict could not have been
more decisive. The NDA could do little more than hope that Andhra
Pradesh’s voters would have voted differently in the Lok Sabha polls.
Despite the hope, NDA leaders started looking for potential new
allies in case the alliance fell short of the half-way mark. According
to media reports, the NDA had started sending out feelers to the SP
and BSP in UP, some of the smaller parties in Tamil Nadu and the
NCP in Maharashtra. Clearly, the BJP and the NDA still believed that
they would finish ahead of the UPA and be invited by the President
to form the next government.
Counting started at 8:00 am on May 13, 2004. Television cameras
showed the late BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan on a treadmill
in his home, exuding confidence. The question, the pictures seemed
to suggest, was not who would form the government, but how many
seats short of the magical 272 the NDA would get. It was a different
Mahajan who appeared in TV studios that afternoon. As the results
poured in, it was clear that Andhra Pradesh was not an aberration.
The NDA’s worst nightmare had come true. The Congress led alliance
won 217 seats (37 more than what the exit polls had suggested on an
average) while the BJP-led NDA won 185 seats, 73 less than the average
number of seats projected by the polls. The ‘others’ got a total of 137 seats,
which included 61 seats to the Left Front and 39 seats to the Samajwadi
Party and its ally RLD, besides four independent members.
The results of the Lok Sabha elections came as a shock to everyone
in the BJP and the NDA. The results indicated that while the BJP had
suffered a net loss of 42 seats, in terms of vote share there had been a
negative swing of 1.6 per cent against the party, despite it contesting
25 seats more than what it had in 1999. The performance of the
BJP’s allies in the NDA was way below what they had achieved in
the previous elections. A telling response came from party general
secretary Pramod Mahajan who acknowledged that the Congress
had beaten them at their own game. He admitted that the Congress
80 DIVIDED WE STAND

managed its coalition better than the BJP and that this was one of
the most important factors that influenced the electoral outcome.
‘I think they (the Congress) exactly followed the same strategy (as
that) of the BJP to consolidate the (UPA) coalition and give scope to
the regional parties,’ Mahajan said.
There was much more to the defeat of the NDA than the Congress’
strategy of forging alliances. Large sections of the electorate were
clearly unhappy with the quality of governance provided by the
incumbent MPs. Less than half or only 261 of the 543 MPs in
the Lok Sabha were able to retain their seats. While the Congress
managed to increase its tally from 114 to 145 seats in the Lok Sabha, it
was able to retain only 49 (or just over 40 per cent) of the seats it had
won in the September–October 1999 elections. The party increased
its tally because it won 96 additional seats. The BJP, on the other
hand, was able to retain 90 of the 182 seats it had won in the 1999
Lok Sabha elections—a slightly higher retention rate in comparison
to the Congress.
While the Congress and its allies did form the Union government
with the help of the four left parties, the verdict of the 2004 Lok Sabha
elections was not as clear as it may appear to some. The Congress
suffered a negative swing of about 1.77 per cent in the vote share—
this was mainly on account of the fact that the party contested
36 seats less than what it had done in 1999 in order to accommodate its
coalition partners. The combined vote share of the two alliances (the
one led by the BJP and the other by the Congress) remained virtually
unchanged, but the realignment of the affiliation of parties meant
that while the NDA’s vote share dropped by over 4 per cent from
40.74 per cent in 1999 to 36.41 per cent in 2004, the Congress-led
alliance gained an almost equal proportion, its vote share rising from
31.89 per cent to 35.86 per cent.
Large sections within the Congress were slowly but surely learning
the rules of the coalition game. If the BJP-led National Democratic
Alliance had, at one stage, as many as 24 constituents not to mention
the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supporting the coalition from
outside, the UPA comprised no less than 14 relatively large and small
political parties excluding the Congress. These were the Rashtriya
Janata Dal (RJD), the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the
 UPA Government 81

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Pattali Makal Katchi (PMK),

the Telengana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha
(JMM), the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), the Marumalarchi Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul
Muslimeen, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the Indian Union
Muslim League, the Republican Party of India (Athawale), the
Republican Party of India (Gavai) and the Kerala Congress (Joseph).
(The alliance remained intact till August 2006 when the TRS left the
UPA because it felt the government had failed to honour its promise
that it would examine the possibility of forming a separate state of
Telengana. Therafter, in March 2007, the MDMK also quit the UPA,
ostensibly because it was unhappy with the government’s inability
to enforce implementation of an order by the Cauvery River Waters
Tribunal on sharing of waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.)
For almost a week after the results of the 14th general elections
became known on May 13, 2004, it seemed inevitable that Sonia
Gandhi would succeed Vajpayee as Prime Minister of India. Though
the BJP was obviously not happy with such a denouement, most
party supporters realised they had no choice but to accept a person
of ‘foreign origin’ as the next head of the Indian government. Senior
BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, threatened that she would shave her head
if Sonia were to be sworn in as Prime Minister. But that was not to be.
Swaraj’s locks remained on her head. On May 19, Sonia announced
that she would ‘sacrifice’ the most important political position in
India. She said she would remain as head of the Congress party
while ‘nominating’ the soft-spoken, economist-technocrat, former
Finance Minister Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of India.
(See profiles of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh towards the end
of the following chapter on the Congress party.)
In hindsight, Sonia’s decision not to become Prime Minister was a
politically astute move. On the one hand, she took the wind out of the
sails of a major plank of the opposition campaign against her, namely,
that a person of foreign origin should not hold the topmost political
position in the country. On the other, observers reckoned that given
Manmohan Singh’s relative naivety in the world of Indian politics—he
became the first Indian Prime Minister to have never won a Lok Sabha
election—she would be the ‘real power behind the throne’ while not
82 DIVIDED WE STAND

formally holding the position of Prime Minister. What was decided

was that Sonia would not only head the Congress party and the
UPA but would also act as the chairperson of a newly-created body
called the National Advisory Council (NAC) that would monitor the
implementation of a National Common Minimum Programme to be
worked out among the constituents of the UPA and the left parties
which were providing crucial ‘outside’ support to the government.
The NAC, it was decided, would consist of ‘eminent’ representatives
of civil society (and not include politicians or bureaucrats, apart from
Sonia). The BJP described the move as an attempt to confer ‘extra-
constitutional authority’ on Sonia Gandhi.
If the looming shadow of Sonia put a question mark on the extent
to which Manmohan Singh would be able to wield authority in an
independent manner, the composition of his government when it
was formed in late May 2004 only underscored the point that his
room for manoeuvre would be limited. The Council of Ministers
included several from smaller parties with barely a handful of
MPs in the Lok Sabha. More importantly, some of them had serious
criminal charges pending against them, notable among these being
Mohammad Taslimuddin, M.A. Fatmi, Jai Prakash Yadav and Lalu
Prasad of the RJD as well as Shibu Soren of the JMM. The NDA
promptly accused Manmohan Singh and the UPA of plunging new
depths in Indian politics by making ‘tainted’ people ministers in
the Union government. The UPA retorted that the NDA too had
ministers like Advani and M.M. Joshi who had been chargesheeted
in criminal cases.
The issue gradually died down, but it remained alive in the courts
because of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the Supreme
Court seeking the removal of ‘tainted ministers’. In November 2006,
Shibu Soren ultimately had to step down after he was convicted for the
murder of his former secretary and sentenced to a life term in jail, the
first time any politician in India had received such a sentence. Soren
was said to have murdered his secretary, Shashi Nath Jha, because the
latter was demanding a share in the money allegedly paid to Soren
and other JMM MPs for voting in favour of the P.V. Narasimha Rao
government in July 1993. He was released from jail after being acquitted
by a higher court in August 2007.

∗∗∗
 UPA Government 83

By the time Manmohan Singh was sworn in as Prime Minister on May

22, 2004, negotiations had begun in earnest among the constituents of the
UPA as well as the left parties supporting it on putting together a ‘National
Common Minimum Programme’ (NCMP). The document, released
on May 29, was by and large a statement of intent containing sentences
that were unexceptionable to everybody in the country. There were,
however, a number of significant inclusions on economic policy issues
and other issues to set apart the left-of-centre policies of the Congress-
led UPA from those that had been followed by the NDA.
Even before the NCMP was finalised, four days after the election
results became known and five days before Manmohan Singh was
sworn in as the new Prime Minister, Indian stock market indices
collapsed by 6 per cent on May 17, one of the sharpest falls ever in a
single day. The crash occurred after spokespersons of the communist
parties—A.B. Bardhan of the CPI and Sitaram Yechuri of the
CPI(M)—sharply criticised the NDA government’s policies of
privatisation and disinvestment and stated that the Ministry of
Disinvestment should be wound up. In an unusual move, former
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh and Manmohan Singh came together
to assure investors in stock exchanges that their money was safe. Both
warned speculators against seeking to gain from a situation where one
government was on its way out but the new government was not in
place. The markets rebounded the following day, recovering much of
the losses they had incurred on ‘Black Monday’. As it subsequently
transpired, after the new government was formed, the Ministry of
Disinvestment was indeed wound up and made a department under
the Ministry of Finance.
To return to the National Common Minimum Programme, the
document included a statement to the effect that the government
would not be ‘generally’ privatising profit-making Public Sector
Undertakings (PSUs). It was stated that privatisations would take
place on a consultative and case-by-case basis that should increase
competitiveness and not decrease it. The NCMP said there would
be no support for privatisation that led to emergence of any
monopoly—an apparent reference to the takeover of the erstwhile
public sector Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL) by
the Reliance group during the NDA government.
84 DIVIDED WE STAND

Talking of the need for economic reforms with a human face, the
NCMP added that no decisions would be taken on the Employees’
Provident Fund (EPF) without consultations with and the approval
of the EPF Organisations’ board of trustees.This was a demand of
the left trade unions that were peeved that the Union government
would reduce the interest rate on EPF deposits against the wishes
of labour union representatives on the EPFO board. The NCMP
talked of the need to strengthen PSUs, especially those manufacturing
pharmaceuticals, and the public distribution system for foodgrain.
The NCMP also laid considerable emphasis on improving the
conditions of farmers and rural development. Significantly, it talked
of the ‘immediate’ enactment of a National Employment Guarantee
Programme and called for the imposition of an ‘education cess’ on
all central taxes—both of which became reality (unlike some of the
general statements of intent in the NCMP document). The NCMP
also mentioned the need for an affirmative action plan to induct
those belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in
private enterprises.
In a reference to the manner in which the BJP had packed centrally-
funded research institutions with nominees who were politically
sympathetic to the party, the NCMP stated that ‘academic excellence
and professional competence’ would be the only criteria governing
appointments to institutions like the Indian Council of Historical
Research ( ICHR) , the Indian Council for Social Sciences Research
(ICSSR) , the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the National
Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) . There was
also a statement in the NCMP on formulating a ‘model law’ to check
communal violence.
The NCMP further stated that the Right to Information (RTI) Act
would be made more progressive, participatory and meaningful. The
National Development Council—a body that brings together chief
ministers of all states in the country and important functionaries in the
Union government—would be made a ‘more meaningful instrument
of cooperative federalism’. The document added that the Inter-State
Council would be activated.
Besides the left, the NCMP also sought to keep in mind the
sectional interests of the smaller constituents of the UPA. Thus, to
 UPA Government 85

keep the TRS happy, the NCMP stated that the government would
‘consider the demand for the formation of’ a separate state of
Telengana out of Andhra Pradesh ‘at an appropriate time after due
consultations and consensus’. For the RJD and the LJP, the NCMP
stated that the economic package announced for Bihar after its division
in 2000 would be implemented expeditiously. Among other things,
the NCMP talked about the need to repeal POTA or the Prevention
of Terrorism Act. Whereas the BJP had called for doing away with
Article 370 of the Constitution of India (that provides a great deal
of autonomy and a special status to the state of Jammu & Kashmir)
and its allies in the NDA kept silent on the issue, the UPA’s NCMP
categorically stated that the Constitutional provision would be
respected in ‘letter and spirit’.

∗∗∗

There was considerable confusion and chaos in the BJP-led NDA

government on the thrust and tenor of particular economic policy
issues, including the efficacy of privatisation, the role of foreign
capital and the need to amend labour laws (to name only three). Part
of the chaos was a result of deep-rooted ideological differences among
the disparate constituents of the NDA while some of it was a direct
consequence of the compulsions of coalition politics.
This story was repeated in the UPA government. Consider, for
instance, the tussle between the communists and the Congress on
the desirability of increasing the sectoral caps on Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) in insurance, civil aviation and telecommunications
that was mooted by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram in
his proposals for the Union budget for 2004–05, the first budget of
the UPA government presented on July 8, 2004. The left remained
unconvinced by the logic put forward by Chidambaram for raising
the sectoral FDI caps. The Finance Minister said that if 51 per cent
foreign investment was allowed in airports it should also be allowed
in civil aviation—the left argued that majority foreign holdings should
not be allowed in either case. Chidambaram said foreign investors
already held 74 per cent in certain private telecom companies—
that is, through foreign institutional investors and complex
86 DIVIDED WE STAND

cross-holdings—and that his proposal would merely impart trans-

parency to the situation prevailing.
The most contentious issue in this context was the proposal to
hike the FDI cap in the insurance sector. The Finance Minister argued
that there was little to differentiate between a cap of 26 per cent and
one of 49 per cent for insurance companies, except that a higher cap
would attract more foreign investment. The left said it would not
support any legislative amendment to this effect. Curiously, so did the BJP
and its opposition to the move was articulated by none other than
Vajpayee himself. This was a clear instance of opposition for the sake
of opposition, for such a step may have been proposed by a BJP-led
NDA government had it remained in power. As for the left, it has
never been convinced of the need to have private investment—leave
alone foreign investment—in insurance companies in the first place.
Ultimately, Chidambaram had his way on the proposal to hike the
FDI ceiling in telecom, but had to yield to the left in the area of
insurance and airports.
The pulls and pressures of coalition politics on economic decision-
making were also evident on the issue of increasing the prices of
petroleum products. Whereas the United Front government had
dilly-dallied and agonised for months on end over such a decision
in 1997, the Vajpayee government too had succumbed to pressure
from NDA constituents not to hike the prices of petroleum products
between March 1998 and April 1999. Eventually, just before the BJP-
led NDA coalition came to power for the second time in October
1999—exactly a day after the last round of polling—the then caretaker
government of Vajpayee hiked the politically-sensitive price of diesel
by a whopping 40 per cent.
The story was repeated all over again in 2004. During the first six
months of the year, oil refining and marketing companies had not
increased domestic prices of petrol and diesel although world crude
oil prices had shot through the roof—by over 30 per cent in this
period. The NDA government evidently did not want oil companies
to increase the prices of petroleum products in view of the impending
general elections. It was left to the UPA government to perform
this politically unpopular chore and the prices of transportation
fuels—petrol and diesel—went up on two occasions in July and
August. Not surprisingly, the left expressed its unhappiness. Since
 UPA Government 87

then, there have been a number of other occasions on which prices of

petroleum products have become a bone of contention between the
UPA government and its left allies. Typically, the left has succeeded
in postponing impending hikes or moderating the extent of the rise
in prices, though it has not succeeded in preventing them altogether.
It has also had limited success in convincing the government that it
should reduce the taxes imposed on petroleum products rather than
allow oil companies to increase retail prices.
Those who perceive Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram as
gung-ho liberalisers, individuals who are overly enamoured of not
just the virtues of free enterprise capitalism but also its relevance
for the Indian economy, may be exaggerating. Yet, both are not
exactly flaming-red communists. Compulsions of coalition politics,
however, have transformed them into left-of-centre social democrats
in practice. Both have not only had to coexist with Marxists; they
have had to necessarily attack the economic policies pursued by the
NDA government, even if some of these policies were ideologically
compatible with their way of thinking. Manmohan, the person who
had initiated the process of disinvestment of shares of PSUs in the
early 1990s, has had to justify the UPA government’s decision not
to privatise profit-making PSUs. He has talked about the need to
create job opportunities for those belonging to the scheduled castes
and scheduled tribes with captains of private corporate bodies. He has
repeatedly asserted that the communists are ‘patriots’. Chidambaram
too, like his Prime Minister, has had to change. He described the left
as his ‘conscience keepers’.
This does not in any way mean that the left has always had its
way with the UPA government. In fact, one of the key economic
functionaries of the government, Deputy Chairman of the Planning
Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia who is a close confidante
of the Prime Minister, is among those perceived as the most ardent
proponents of liberalisation in India. Ahluwalia antagonised the left
when he decided to include representatives of multilateral financing
agencies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as well as multinational
firms such as McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group in various
consultative groups constituted for the mid-term appraisal of the
Tenth Five Year Plan (April 2002–March 2007).
88 DIVIDED WE STAND

Ahluwalia was working with the IMF before he moved into Yojana
Bhavan at Manmohan Singh’s request. He has been closely associated
with the World Bank from the late1960s. He should have been aware
that mere mention of consultations with the Bank or the Fund,
particularly coming from him, would be akin to waving a proverbial
red rag before a raging bull as far as the left was concerned. What he
may not have expected was that his actions would unite the left with
its arch political opponents in the BJP, the RSS and NDA convenor
George Fernandes.
All the left economists in the consultative groups put in their
papers protesting against the decision to include representatives of
international bodies in these groups. Ahluwalia tried to justify his
action. In a letter written to the left (The Hindu, September 11, 2004),
he claimed that the consultative groups would not be ‘committees
of outsiders’, that there was ‘enormous expertise’ outside the Indian
government and that it was necessary for the Planning Commission to
make itself aware of the views of these experts instead of relying on one
set of bureaucrats commenting on the views of another group of civil
servants. He added that the members of the consultative groups would
include experts from different walks of life, including representatives
of the trade unions supported by the communist parties.
Ahluwalia stated:

Representatives of the World Bank and the ADB have been included
in four of these groups that deal with areas in which these agencies
are actively involved in supporting the Central government or
state government projects … By including individuals from outside
the government in the consultative groups, we are not in any way
handing over to them critical decision making involved in the
mid-term appraisal on policies and policy corrections that need
to be introduced to achieve the objectives laid out in the National
Common Minimum Programme.

He added, ‘… we recognise fully that the individuals whom we

hear have their own agendas, but I would like to assure you that
we will subject the views expressed in our consultative process to
careful professional scrutiny’. Moreover, he stated that the multilateral
institutions ‘in any case interact regularly with Central and state
government agencies and this has in the past also included the
Planning Commission’.
 UPA Government 89

The left was far from convinced by these arguments. They pointed
out that borrowing money from a multilateral funding agency is one
thing; seeking its advice on policy matters is a different kettle of fish
altogether. As A.B. Bardhan, general secretary of the CPI, asked, ‘… one
can certainly informally consult and interact with as many experts as
one wishes … (but) why institutionalise the process by including repre-
sentatives of such foreign institutions in regularly constituted panels?’
Eventually Ahluwalia had to retreat and the consultative groups
were simply wound up. This meant there were no representatives of
international bodies, but it also meant that the left lost its representatives on
the consultative groups of the Planning Commission. Despite the
controversy, Ahluwalia remained one of the most influential people in
terms of formulating the economic policies of the UPA government.
Another issue on which the left locked horns with the UPA
government related to disinvestment of shares in Bharat Heavy
Electricals Limited (BHEL), an efficient government-owned company
manufacturing power equipment. The government proposed that a
mere 10 per cent of the company’s shares be divested, which would still
leave the government in control of over 51 per cent of the company’s
shares because it held 67.72 per cent of BHEL shares. The proposed 10
per cent divestment would be different from BHEL issuing new shares
to the public. What was done in the case of the National Thermal
Power Corporation (NTPC) in October 2004 was a combination of
divestment of government equity together with issuance of new shares.
While this move was also not approved by the left, its opposition
was muted.
North Block argued that small investors would gain by investing
in BHEL shares as they did when they invested in shares of NTPC,
Maruti Udyog and the Oil & Natural Gas Corporation. But the left
did not buy this argument. The communists claimed that divestment
would be the ‘first step’ towards privatising BHEL. Critics of the
left argued that if the Left Front government in West Bengal had no
problems privatising PSUs in the state, including Kolkata’s Great
Eastern Hotel, the Marxists should not be speaking with a forked
tongue in Delhi.
Quite unlike many Indian PSUs characterised by sloth, inefficiency
and corruption, BHEL is not just highly profitable; it is able to compete
90 DIVIDED WE STAND

effectively with global giants like ABB and Siemens in manufacturing

power equipment. The NCMP stated that the government would
retain managerial control over the navaratna (‘nine jewels’) PSUs while
allowing them to raise funds from the capital market. The Congress
party’s election manifesto had stated that privatisation would be
done in a selective manner and divestment would not be resorted to
merely to raise revenue but to increase competition and consumer
welfare. The position of the left was supported by a section within the
Congress, which included individuals such as the then Petroleum &
Natural Gas Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar who describes himself as
a Nehruvian socialist. This section pointed out that BHEL’s equity
is being sought to be divested merely to raise revenue, not to enhance
competition or for the welfare of consumers.
One section in the UPA wanted to call’ ‘the bluff of the left’. This
group argued that the Communists had no choice but to support the
UPA government and that the rhetoric of the left was prompted by
the impending assembly elections in West Bengal and Kerala that were
scheduled for April–May 2006. The communists, however, argued
there was nothing to distinguish between the economic policies of the
BJP and those of the Congress. Eventually, the government decided
not to divest BHEL’s shares.
The dispute between the left and the Congress did not have any
impact on the smooth functioning of the government. Both the
communists and the members of the Congress hated the BJP more
than they hated one another while the BJP was in a state of disarray.
The Congress, especially Sonia Gandhi, realised that it could not push
the Marxists beyond a point simply because the UPA government
would lose its majority in the Lok Sabha without the support of the
61 left MPs. While the shadow boxing between the Congress and
the left continued, the issue of divestment kept coming up again and
again. What finally stopped the disinvestment programme was not
just the opposition of the left but when a constituent of the UPA, the
DMK, joined the left in vehemently opposing the disinvestment of
shares in Neyveli Lignite Corporation, a Tamil Nadu-based PSU.
Disinvestment was not the only contentious issue between the
UPA and the left. There were a whole host of economic issues on
which there were serious differences—whether FDI should be
 UPA Government 91

allowed in retail trade or not; the policy on special economic zones;

pension reforms; the interest rate on EPF deposits; patent laws; the
list went on (see chapter on economic policy). Recognising that many
of these disputes could not be settled once and for all, the UPA and
the left agreed to form a co-ordination committee that could act as a
mechanism for evolving at least a temporary consensus whenever one
such issue came to the fore. The mechanism seemed to be working
reasonably well, till the friction over the proposed disinvestment in
BHEL saw the left leaders announcing that they would boycott all
further meetings of the co-ordination committee, since their opinion
was in any case not being respected.
It took four months before the co-ordination committee was
revived in late-October 2005, despite the fact that the proposal to
divest BHEL shares was dropped by the Ministry of Finance. In one
area, the left, the Congress—at least, a large section of the party—and
the rest of the UPA came together, which was on the expeditious
enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG)
Act to implement what is described as the world’s biggest and most
ambitious social security scheme to provide work to millions of
unemployed individuals living in rural areas. There was considerable
resistance from within the UPA government to implement the NREG
programme that aims at providing guaranteed employment for 100
days a year to one able-bodied member of each and every rural
household who volunteers to do unskilled manual labour. There was a
view in the government, including in the Ministry of Finance, that the
programme would be too expensive, ineffective in alleviating poverty
in rural areas and would lead to large-scale corruption and wastage
of public funds. It was, therefore, suggested that the programme be
confined to only 150 (out of the 600-odd) districts in the country
and that too only for those belonging to families living below the
poverty line.
This view was vehemently opposed not just by the left but also by
key members of the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by
Sonia Gandhi—including social activist Aruna Roy and economist
Jean Dreze. The left and these NAC members saw this as a dilution
of the promises contained in the NCMP. The government had to
eventually concede to the views of the NAC members—the NREG
92 DIVIDED WE STAND

programme was not confined to those living below the poverty line
and was initially implemented in 200 districts and would be extended
to the entire country over time. Dreze resigned from the NAC on this
issue and so did Roy later because she was unhappy with the way the
government was ‘diluting’ the Right to Information Act, among other
issues. The coverage of the NREG was increased to 330 districts (or
more than half the country’s geographical area) in the Union budget
presented by Chidambaram in February 2007.
Sonia Gandhi was perceived to have played a critical role in
persuading those in the government who were sceptical about the
efficacy of the NREG programme. Sonia has had to play this role—
namely, that of an arbitrator between the left and a government led
by the party she headed—on a number of occasions. For instance,
she wrote a letter (quoted in The Times of India, February 6, 2007)
to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (her nominee) urging the
government to inquire into the possible impact of allowing 100 per
cent foreign investment in retail trade—a proposal that was being
mooted by Industry & Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, reportedly
with the support of Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram (Sonia’s letter
was leaked to the media). Her comments on the need to ensure that
prime farmland was not acquired for setting up industrial concerns, at
a conclave of Congress chief ministers in Nainital, also contributed to
the government in general (and Nath in particular) shifting its policies
on the establishment of special economic zones (SEZs) .
In all these instances, Sonia—and not Manmohan—was seen to be
the more left-of-centre, politically mature and accommodative leader
of the two. This image has arguably served the Congress well. While
the presence of Manmohan and Chidambaram in the government
assures the proponents of neo-liberal economic reforms that the UPA
is not hostile to their concerns, Sonia ensures that the Congress also has
a socialist image for some people. At a plenary session in Hyderabad
in January 2006, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Das
Munshi described the Congress as ‘India’s greatest left party’. He
was followed by a junior party functionary M.I. Shahnawaz, who
described Sonia Gandhi as an ‘extreme left leader.’
The NAC helped Sonia project this image, but in March 2006
she quit the council and resigned as MP in the wake of the ‘office
of profit’ controversy. The controversy broke out after a junior
 UPA Government 93

Congress functionary from Uttar Pradesh moved the Election

Commission seeking to disqualify Jaya Bachchan, a Rajya Sabha MP
from the Samajwadi Party, for holding an ‘office of profit’, namely
as chairperson of the UP Film Development Corporation. The law
in India prevents legislators from holding any other government or
quasi-government position for which a remuneration is payable.
The EC recommended her disqualification to the President of India,
who acted upon it on March 16, 2006. This snowballed into a major
controversy. Each party came out with its own list of MPs belonging
to rival parties who they claimed were holding offices of profit.
Among the many dozens of MPs cutting across political lines who
faced the sudden threat of disqualification were Sonia (as chairperson
of NAC) and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.
Sonia’s resignation from the Lok Sabha—like her earlier ‘sacrifice’
of the Prime Minister’s post—saw the Congress seeking to turn the
tables on the opposition and occupying the high moral ground. She
was eventually re-elected from Rae Bareilly with an impressive margin
of victory. Her exit from the office-of-profit controversy also made it
easier for the political class to close ranks and enact suitable legislation
to ensure that dozens of positions held by MPs of all hues in central
and state government bodies were excluded from being treated as
offices of profit.
Some other MPs were not so lucky. They were caught on hidden
cameras accepting bribes for raising questions in Parliament and were
expelled by committees of the two Houses of Parliament. Their appeal
against the expulsion briefly threatened to become a point of friction
between the judiciary and the legislature, but such an eventuality was
avoided after the Supreme Court upheld Parliament’s decision.

∗∗∗

The phrase ‘compulsions of coalition politics’ usually signifies the

pressures that are exerted on the largest party in the coalition by its
smaller allies or supporting parties. However, this is only one aspect
of the compulsions that characterise politics in an era of coalitions.
Another, perhaps equally important, aspect of the compulsions of
coalition politics is the manner in which the leading party in the
94 DIVIDED WE STAND

coalition has to accommodate sectional interests (from within the party

and outside it) in an attempt to widen its support base. An example of
this aspect may be found in the way in which the Congress aggressively
sought to project itself as a champion of the interests of OBCs (other
backward classes) by reserving seats for them in higher educational
institutions that receive financial support from the government. In
fact, there was a move to reserve seats for OBC candidates even in
higher educational institutions that were not aided by the government
that did not materialise.
Though there were enough supporters of the Congress (as well
as the BJP) that were ideologically opposed to this move, they
were clearly in a minority. For the record, the entire political class
supported the UPA government’s position on reservation of seats for
candidates belonging to OBCs in government-aided higher
educational institutions. The contrast from the situation in 1990 when
the V.P. Singh government implemented the Mandal Commission’s
recommendations by reserving 27 per cent of government jobs for OBCs
was stark—at that time, the Congress and the BJP had opposed the
decision, ostensibly not because the parties were per se opposed to job
reservation for OBCs, but, they said, because they were unhappy about
the ‘manner’ in which the decision had been implemented ‘in haste’.
The UPA took much of the wind out of the sails of those agitating
against the OBC quota in higher educational institutions by assuring
them that the quota would not eat into the number of seats available
for ‘general’ candidates—those who do not qualify for reservation of
any sort. The government promised that the number of seats in higher
educational institutions would be increased so that the OBC quota
could be accommodated without affecting the others. In effect, this
meant that the number of seats would have to go up by as much as 54
per cent in one jump—a fact that prompted many critics to ask why
the seats had not been increased for so many years if it was possible
to make such a sizeable addition at one go. The February 2007 Union
budget imposed a one per cent cess on all central taxes to fund the
proposed increase in seats in colleges and technical institutes. This was
in addition to the two per cent education cess that had been imposed
in 2004 to fund investment in primary and secondary education.
 UPA Government 95

On the issue of reserving jobs for those belonging to the Scheduled

Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in private enterprises, the political
class was deeply divided. Even within the Congress, there were
differences of opinion. Whereas Meira Kumar, Minister for Social
Justice & Empowerment—daughter of the late Jagjivan Ram, India’s
first dalit Union minister—favoured an element of compulsion to
ensure that entrepreneurs employed individuals belonging to the SCs
and the STs, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (among others in the
Congress) was more inclined to ‘persuade’ industrialists to employ
people from disadvantaged sections of Indian society. (The 2001
census indicated that the number of those belonging to the SCs and
STs would be in the region of 250 million, or roughly one-fourth of
India’s population that year.)
Speaking to corporate captains at the annual conference of the
Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi on April 18, 2006,
Prime Minister Singh said, ‘I urge you to give more attention to
questions of social and economic discrimination and deprivation,
to the educational and health status of our people, to employment
generation, to social security and to the employment of women and
the minorities.’ He did not mention mandatory reservation of jobs
for those belonging to the SCs and the STs in companies that are
privately owned and controlled.
The fact that the private sector has been providing more employment
opportunities than government corporations in recent years is
an important reason why there has been demand for job reservation
in private corporate entities. A group of ministers headed by Union
Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar stated that job reservation in the
private sector would be possible only by introducing new legislation
after amending the country’s Constitution. But the government
demurred on introducing a bill in Parliament mandating job
reservation in private corporate bodies.
The UPA government also set up a panel headed by Justice
Rajinder Sachar, a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court,
to study the social, educational and economic status of Muslims
in India. The report submitted by the panel in November 2006
revealed that the Muslims were among the most economically,
socially and educationally deprived communities in the country.
96 DIVIDED WE STAND

In fact, in some aspects and some states—including left-ruled West

Bengal—they were worse off than even the SCs and STs. Soon after
the report was submitted, the Prime Minister told a meeting of the
NDC that Muslims should have ‘first charge’ on the resources of
the government. This statement predictably aroused the ire of the
BJP, which accused Manmohan Singh and his party of ‘minority
appeasing’, a charge that has been levelled by the Sangh parivar against
the Congress and the left for as long as the ideological fraternity has
existed. Even before Manmohan Singh’s statement before the NDC
meeting of chief ministers, the BJP had been extremely critical of
the Sachar Committee’s attempts at ascertaining the number and the
proportion of Muslims in the Indian defence services.

∗∗∗

One of the first tasks that evidently preoccupied the newly-installed

UPA government was to replace governors and lieutenant governors
nominated by the NDA, most of whom were elderly leaders of
the BJP, with individuals who were aligned to the Congress. This
‘unpleasant’ task was one of the first responsibilities of Union Minister
for Home Affairs Shivraj Patil. Between June and December 2004, as
many as 19 states or Union territories (UTs) saw their governors or
lieutenant governors (LGs) being replaced one after the other. The
UPA government—and the Congress leadership—were in such a
hurry to replace these constitutional functionaries that in eight
states/UTs, the incumbent governor/LG was replaced by a person
who held charge for a few days or a few weeks while the name of the
replacement was finalised.
In June 2004, in Delhi, LG Vijai Kapoor was replaced by B.L. Joshi.
In the same month, in Kerala, Governor T.N. Chaturvedi (a former
BJP MP and Governor of Karnataka who was holding additional
charge after the death of Sikander Bakht) was replaced by R.L. Bhatia
(a former Congress Minister of State for External Affairs). In Madhya
Pradesh, K.L. Seth was replaced by Balram Jakhar (a former Congress
Union Minister and Speaker of the Lok Sabha).
The following month, in July, five Governors/LGs were changed.
In Goa, Kidar Nath Sahni (a senior BJP leader) was asked to leave and,
 UPA Government 97

curiously, another NDA nominee Mohammed Fazal (former Member,

Planning Commission who was then Governor of Maharashtra) was
asked to hold additional charge for 15 days before he was replaced by
S.C. Jamir (former Congress Chief Minister of Nagaland). In Gujarat,
Kailashpati Mishra (a senior BJP leader) was replaced by Jakhar for 22
days before another former Congress Union Minister Nawal Kishore
Sharma took over charge. In Haryana, the incumbent governor Babu
Parmanand was first replaced by a NDA nominated governor from
neighbouring Punjab, O.P. Verma for only five days before A.R.
Kidwai replaced him. In the UT of Pondicherry, N.N. Jha (a former
diplomat nominated by the BJP) was replaced by M.M. Lakhera for
12 days before Mukut Mithi (former Congress Chief Minister of
Arunachal Pradesh) took over charge. Perhaps the most significant
replacement of a governor took place in Uttar Pradesh where Vishnu
Kant Shastri (an old BJP hand) was replaced by Sudarshan Agarwal
(Governor of neighbouring Uttaranchal) for six days before he, in
turn, was replaced by T. Rajeshwar (a former senior police officer
who used to head the Intelligence Bureau).
In August, only one governor was replaced; in Manipur, Arvind
Dave was replaced by S.S. Sidhu (both former bureaucrats). For
inexplicable reasons, nothing happened on this front over the next
couple of months. In November, the UPA government seemed to be
making up for lost time by replacing governors in six states.
What happened in Tamil Nadu was rather interesting. The then
Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa was keen that the incumbent governor
of the state, P.S. Ramamohan Rao, not be replaced by the Union
government. So when Shivraj Patil called her up to tell her that the
governor would be changed, she promptly gave the media a verbatim
account of her conversation with the Union Home Minister. Her
political opponents claimed that she had secretly recorded her phone
conversation with Patil, which would have been both ‘illegal’ and
‘improper’. Jayalalithaa, on the other hand, claimed that she had a
remarkable memory and hence was able to recall virtually each and
every word of her conversation with Patil. The issue at stake was
that Patil was merely ‘informing’ her of the impending change in
governors rather than ‘consulting’ her—or even seeking her prior
approval—as convention demanded. On October 28, Patil informed
98 DIVIDED WE STAND

her that Ramamohan Rao would be replaced by then Andhra Pradesh

Governor Surjit Singh Barnala who was, ironically, a former Chief
Minister of Punjab belonging to the Shiromani Akali Dal, one of the
BJP’s most faithful allies in the NDA.
The DMK, Jayalalithaa’s principal political opponent in Tamil
Nadu, was clearly comfortable with Barnala with whom the party had
a long and cordial relationship. In early-1991, when Chandra Shekhar
was Prime Minister of India, the Union government dismissed the
DMK government in Tamil Nadu headed by M. Karunanidhi using
Article 356 of the Constitution—action under this provision is
normally taken after a state governor submits a report recommending
imposition of President’s rule on the ground that there has been a
breakdown in the constitutional order. Jayalalithaa and her AIADMK
had been actively pressing for dismissal of the Karunanidhi
government and imposition of President’s rule. Barnala, who was then
the governor of Tamil Nadu, refused to submit the kind of report that
New Delhi wanted and instead chose to resign on ‘moral grounds’.
It is not surprising then that the DMK had a soft corner for Barnala.
This relationship was further cemented when DMK and the SAD
were both part of the United Front governments headed by H.D.
Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral and thereafter, in the NDA government
under Vajpayee in 1999. In fact, it is believed that Barnala played a
key role in persuading DMK to join NDA after AIADMK parted
ways with the BJP-led alliance.
Returning to the dismissal of governors by the UPA government
in November 2004, governors were placed in five other states
namely, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Punjab and Rajasthan. In
Andhra Pradesh, Barnala was replaced by former Congress Chief
Minister of Maharashtra Sushil Kumar Shinde. In Bihar, Rama Jois
was replaced for four days by Ved Marwah (a former senior police
officer who was then governor of neighbouring Jharkhand) before
Buta Singh (a former Congress Union Minister) took over. In Orissa,
M.M. Rajendran was replaced by another former Congress Union
Minister Rameshwar Thakur. In Punjab, O.P. Verma was replaced by
A.R. Kidwai for 13 days before General S.F. Rodrigues took charge.
In Rajasthan, Madan Lal Khurana (former BJP Chief Minister of
Delhi) was replaced by T. Rajeshwar (then Governor of UP) for a
week before Pratibha Patil took over.
 UPA Government 99

Four more governors were to be replaced in December 2004. In

Arunachal Pradesh, former bureaucrat V.C. Pande was replaced by
a former diplomat S.K. Singh. In Jharkhand, Ved Marwah was
replaced by Congress loyalist Syed Sibtey Razi and in Maharashtra,
Mohammad Fazal was replaced by former Congress Chief Minister
of Karnataka S.M. Krishna. In West Bengal, former BJP MP and
industrialist Viren J. Shan was replaced by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a
former diplomat and the youngest grandson of the Mahatma.
The BJP was predictably upset with the ‘undignified’ manner
in which the UPA government removed these constitutional
functionaries. Advani claimed that the NDA had waited for the terms
of governors or LGs to be over before nominating their replacements.
As subsequent events proved, the decision to replace NDA/BJP-
nominated governors with individuals who were obviously
‘sympathetic’ to the Congress and the UPA, turned out to be
significant. The governors of Goa, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
were to be embroiled in controversies over the next few years and
were accused of acting in a blatantly partisan manner.
In late-January 2005, the 32-month-old BJP led government in
Goa headed by Manohar Parrikar faced a crisis. The government
had a wafer-thin majority in the state assembly: 21 out of the 40
seats. Three BJP MLAs switched allegiances to become ‘independent’
legislators and withdrew support to the government. Governor Jamir
instructed Parrikar to prove his majority on the floor of the assembly
immediately and asked the Speaker to convene a special session for
this purpose. The incumbent government could obtain the support of
only 18 MLAs whereas 6 MLAs voted against the confidence motion.
Even as the assembly session was in progress discussing the confidence
vote, a group of Congress legislators and former BJP MLAs were at
Raj Bhavan meeting Governor Jamir. The Speaker had disqualified the
former BJP MLAs under the Anti-Defection Act and the Congress
had walked out of the assembly in protest. These Congress MLAs
were now trying to persuade Jamir that the manner in which the BJP
was trying to ‘engineer’ a majority in the assembly amounted to a
breakdown of the constitutional order and he should hence dismiss
the Parrikar government.
100 DIVIDED WE STAND

Even as the BJP MLAs came out of the assembly session claiming
they had won the vote of confidence, a messenger from Raj Bhawan
handed over a message to Parrikar telling him his government had
been dismissed. Pratapsingh Rane of the Congress was sworn in as
Chief Minister at midnight on the same day and given 32 days to prove
his majority. Fillipe Rodrigues, one of the dissident BJP MLAs who
became ‘independent’ was made Deputy Chief Minister. The BJP,
not surprisingly, cried foul and accused Jamir of having turned the
Raj Bhawan into the local Congress headquarters. Neutral observers
also conceded that the governor’s role in the entire episode had been
far from neutral.
A couple of months later, in March 2005, gubernatorial incumbents
were to come under a cloud again, this time in Jharkhand and
neighbouring Bihar. In both states, assembly elections had been
held simultaneously and had thrown up hung assemblies with no
pre-election alliance having a clear majority. In Jharkhand, the
BJP-led NDA was just short of a majority and it seemed obvious
that the governor would invite the leader of the BJP to form the
next state government. In a controversial move, Governor Syed
Sibtey Razi decided that the UPA led by the JMM’s Shibu Soren
was better placed to obtain a majority in the house and invited him
to form the government. Soren remained Chief Minister for just 10
days from March 2 to March 12, before he lost a vote of confidence
in the assembly. Faced with no choice, Razi was forced to invite
former BJP chief minister Arjun Munda to once again head
the Jharkhand government.
The BJP’s tenure at the helm in Jharkhand ultimately proved to
be shortlived too. In September 2006, about 18 months after Munda
was sworn in as Chief Minister, his government fell as a group of
independents and MLAs belonging to smaller parties withdrew
support. The hectic negotiations that followed ended up in a rather
unusual compromise. Madhu Koda, an independent MLA, became
Chief Minister with the support of the entire UPA.
The controversies surrounding the actions of former Governor
of Bihar, Buta Singh and UP Governor T. Rajeshwar have been
detailed in Chapter 5 of the book. The key point to note is that despite
the presence of a number of regional parties in the UPA coalition,
 UPA Government 101

the Congress did not shy away from first appointing sympathetic
governors in states and then, using their discretionary power to install
‘friendly’ state governments or destabilise ‘unfriendly’ ones.
Cynics might point out that the one state in which the Congress
lost power through a change in political alliances after the UPA came
to the power in New Delhi was Karnataka—one of the few in which
the NDA appointed governor had not been replaced by a UPA
nominee. On February 3, 2006, H.D. Kumaraswamy, younger son of
former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, was sworn in as the 18th
Chief Minister of Karnataka and B.S. Yediyurappa of the BJP was
sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister. Weeks before he was sworn in,
Karnataka politics had been in a state of turmoil after Kumaraswamy
led almost all the MLAs of the Janata Dal (Secular) out of the ruling
coalition with the Congress headed by Dharam Singh (who had
become Chief Minister of the state in May 2004).
Deve Gowda publicly ‘disowned’ his son and claimed that he was
not supporting his son’s decision to tie up with the BJP to destabilise
the Dharam Singh led coalition government of the Congress and the
JD(S). He even claimed that it was saddest day of his life and
the darkest moment of his political career to see his son allying with
a non-secular party like the BJP. At the same time, he blamed the
Congress for compelling Kumaraswamy to leave the Congress-led
coalition by not treating the JD(S) with the respect it deserved.
The former Prime Minister’s protestations were regarded by most
as insincere and hypocritical. Months later, the cynics were to be
proved right when Deve Gowda made peace with his son. Whether
this was because blood is thicker than water or because power is more
seductive than ideology is a matter of conjecture.

∗∗∗

Apart from a wide range of economic policies, another major bone

of contention between the UPA government and its left allies was
Indo-US relations. While the UPA government saw the new-found
bonhomie between India and the US as one of its major foreign policy
successes, the left viewed the same development as a violation of the
NCMP and a deviation from the country’s traditionally non-aligned
102 DIVIDED WE STAND

foreign policy. Two issues, in particular, became sticking points.

The first was a civilian nuclear agreement signed between American
President George Bush and Manmohan Singh in July 2005, under
which the US would lift long-standing sanctions against India’s
nuclear establishment and facilitate transfer of technology and fuel
for nuclear power plants. The sanctions had been imposed in 1974
after India conducted nuclear tests for the first time.
The UPA and Manmohan insisted that the deal would not
compromise India’s national sovereignty and would help the country
meet its growing power needs. The left maintained that the agreement
did compromise India’s sovereignty and strategic interests. It was
supported in this view not only by many eminent scientists and
administrators who had earlier held top positions in the country’s
nuclear establishment, but also by the BJP. All of them pointed out
that the UPA was being less than honest in claiming that the deal
would be some kind of panacea for ensuring India’s energy security.
Nuclear power, they pointed out, constituted less than three per cent
of the total electricity generated in India in 2006 and even the most
optimistic projections did not envisage this proportion exceeding
10 per cent over the next couple of decades.
The other issue that rankled with the left in particular was
India’s decision to vote against Iran in the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) at a time when the Bush administration was
exerting considerable pressure on Iran to stop developing its nuclear
facilities. The left saw this as further evidence of the Manmohan Singh
government’s willingness to be co-opted into playing a supportive role
to US global interests. On both issues, despite the vehement protests
of the left and even veiled threats that the support of the left to the
UPA should not be taken for granted, the government ultimately
had its way.
The left was not the only political force uncomfortable with
what it saw as an overly cosy relationship between New Delhi and
Washington DC. Even within the Congress, there were sections that
favoured a more arm’s length relationship with the US. Though these
leaders never publicly expressed their reservations on the direction
foreign policy was taking, they were widely perceived to be out of tune
 UPA Government 103

with the prevailing official mood. Among them was the then Minister
for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Mani Shankar Aiyar, a former diplomat
and self-confessed Nehruvian socialist. His ardent advocacy of the
expeditious completion of a gas pipeline from Iran to India through
Pakistan did not exactly endear him to the Bush administration, which
was at the time very hostile to Iran. When Aiyar was replaced by
Murli Deora—who had once been invited for dinner in the White
House—some saw the ‘hidden hand’ of the US at work.
Whereas Aiyar continued holding the ministerial portfolios of
Panchayati Raj, Youth & Sports Affairs and was also asked to take
over charge of the Ministry for Development of North Eastern Region,
former External Affairs Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh was not so
fortunate. In August 2006, he and his son along with their associates
were named in the report of the Paul Volcker Committee set up by
the United Nations Secretary General to inquire into the food-for-oil
scandal involving the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. The report
alleged that Natwar Singh, his family members and their associates
had cornered lucrative contracts from the Iraq government. The UPA
government set up two inquiry committees that quickly upheld the
findings of the Volcker panel. Natwar Singh and his son Jagat Singh,
a member of the legislative assembly of Rajasthan, were both expelled
from the Congress in September. After his expulsion, Natwar Singh
became a bitter critic of the Manmohan Singh government’s pro-US
foreign policy. He went on to join the Samajwadi Party in the run-up
to the elections in UP.

∗∗∗

For the better part of the first three years of the UPA government,
the going appeared rather smooth. It seemed that while there
were predictable tensions on economic and foreign policy issues,
in particular between the Congress and the left, these had not
been allowed to get out of hand. More importantly, the main
opposition party, the BJP, seemed to have completely abdicated
the opposition political space to the left, ‘too busy fighting a war
against itself’ as one senior BJP leader privately acknowledged to the
authors.
104 DIVIDED WE STAND

The electoral setbacks in Bihar and Jharkhand may have subdued

the euphoria within the UPA, but the Congress remained confident
that its fortunes were looking up and those of the BJP were on the
decline. Elections to the state assemblies of Punjab and Uttarakhand
in February 2007 dramatically changed the mood. Both had been
Congress-ruled states and the party lost in both. In Punjab, the
number of seats held by the Congress came down from 62 in 2002 to 44
in the 117-member assembly and in Uttarakhand from 36 to 21 in a
70-member assembly. In both states, the major gainer was the BJP,
which increased its tally of seats from 3 to 19 in Punjab and from 19
to 34 in Uttarakhand.
While anti-incumbency feelings in both states may have been
fuelled by several factors, one major reason common to them was
clearly the sharp rise in prices of essential commodities, in particular
food items. Whereas till August 2006, inflation in India had largely
been driven by high prices of petroleum products, in the following
months the rise in prices was mainly a consequence of a spurt in the
prices of pulses, wheat, onions, edible oils, milk, fruits and vegetables.
Politicians in India are well aware that when inflation is driven
by surging prices of food items, it quickly translates into popular
resentment against the government.
Analysing the results of the assembly elections, Sonia conceded
that the failure of the government to control prices had cost the party
dear in Punjab and Uttarakhand. It was not just the Left and the
BJP that were attacking the so-called neo-liberal policies favoured
by Manmohan and Chidambaram. Sections of Congressmen were
unhappy that despite claims of working for the aam aadmi and reviving
the garibi hatao slogan used by Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s, the
government was increasingly being perceived as not sufficiently
sensitive to the concerns of the poor and the underprivileged. It was
also becoming clear to Congressmen that complacency regarding
the apparently sorry state of the BJP could prove costly. Mere talk
of how the Indian economy was growing at nine per cent plus each
year—one of the fastest in the world—would not be enough to retain
power either.
The impact of this apprehension was evident in the Union budget
for 2007–08 presented by Chidambaram on February 28, 2007. The
 UPA Government 105

Harvard-educated lawyer with a reputation for being market-friendly

was no longer waxing eloquent about economic reforms. Rather, the
thrust of his budget speech was on what needed to be done to make
growth more ‘inclusive’. The Budget surprised most people by being
more left-of-centre than expected, with the Finance Minister’s speech
repeatedly emphasising rural development, health care, education,
agriculture and irrigation.
At the time of writing in September 2007, one section of the Congress
seemed to be wary of repeating the mistake the NDA had made with
its ‘India Shining’ campaign. There was also a view within the party
that the UPA government should ‘publicise’ its pro-poor programmes
and policies more effectively.Whether that will lead to sufficient action
on the ground or will merely lead to a leftward tilt in rhetoric could
well determine how well the Congress fares when the 15th general
elections take place.
 Chapter 3
Indian National Congress:
Alive, but Not Quite Kicking

India’s oldest and largest political party, the Indian National

Congress (INC), is far from being the dominant party that it was for
the better part of the first half of a century of independent India’s
existence. True, the Congress is not merely the single largest party in
Parliament with 145 (out of 543) members when the 14th Lok Sabha
was constituted in May 2004. At the end of 2006, the party was in
power—alone or in coalition with others—in 15 of the country’s 30
assemblies. In two other assembles (Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand),
the Congress is supporting the ruling coalition but not participating
in the state governments. By way of contrast, the BJP was ruling in
only four states on its own (Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
and Chhattisgarh), and was part of the ruling coalition in two others
(Bihar and Karnataka) and its ally, the Biju Janata Dal, was ruling
in Orissa.
These statistics might seem to suggest that the Congress is not
doing all that badly. What they do not reveal is the fact that the party
is extremely weak in at least four states and that between them account
for over 200 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. These states include the
largest state in the country, Uttar Pradesh (80 Lok Sabha seats), besides
West Bengal (42 seats), Bihar (40 seats) and Tamil Nadu (39 seats).
Die-hard supporters of the Congress insist that it is the ‘natural
party of governance’ in India. This phrase was used by Sonia Gandhi
at the Guwahati conclave of Congress chief ministers in April 2002.
Yet, even in a best-case scenario for the party, it is difficult to see the
Congress winning more than 35 seats in general elections from the
four states mentioned. What that means is that the Congress would
have to win at least 240 seats from the remaining 341 in 24 states and
seven Union Territories to win a majority in the Lok Sabha, certainly
 Indian National Congress 107

a tall order if not impossible. It would seem, therefore, that the

best the Congress can hope for is to lead a coalition government in
New Delhi.
Yet, until as late as December 2003 the party appeared strangely
reluctant to concede that the country had entered an era of coalition
politics in which single party governments were ruled out in the
foreseeable future. This presented an interesting contrast with the BJP.
Like the Congress, the BJP till 1998 saw coalitions as an aberration
of sorts and insisted that they were a temporary phenomenon. The
polity, the BJP then maintained, was inevitably becoming bipolar,
with the Congress and the BJP representing two poles. Subsequently,
following the 1998 and 1999 general elections, which threw up hung
Parliaments, the BJP modified its earlier position and accepted that
coalitions were here to stay at least for some time. The Congress, on
the other hand, continued to staunchly assert that it was capable of
governing India on its own. However, in the run-up to the 14th gen-
eral elections, the Congress changed its position and acknowledged
that it would have to forge alliances in several states if it was to make
a serious bid for power in New Delhi. In other words, many within
the Congress tacitly accepted that the new era of coaltition politics
may not be short-lived.
Ironically, the Congress was less rigid about governing India on
its own at a point when its dominance in the country’s polity was
unchallenged. The very first elected Union government formed
in independent India included not only people from outside the
Congress or any other political party—like the eminent scientist C.H.
Bhabha, Dr. John Mathai and C.D. Deshmukh—but even members
of Opposition parties like B.R. Ambedkar of the Republican Party
of India and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
Of course, it was the fact that the Congress had an overwhelming
majority in the Lok Sabha and was under no threat from any other
party that allowed Jawaharlal Nehru to show such magnanimity
towards his political opponents. Conversely, it is the fact that the
Congress is today fighting for its political survival that makes it very
difficult for the party to cede any ground to other parties, except when
it is compelled to do so.
108 DIVIDED WE STAND

In June 2003, the Congress party convened a conclave (vichar

manthan shivir or, literally, a meeting to churn ideas) at Shimla, the
capital of Himachal Pradesh where the party had just been returned to
power. During the conclave, the party diluted its position somewhat
on forming coalitions to oppose the BJP–led NDA. Unlike the
similar session held five years earlier in September 1998 at Pachmarhi,
Madhya Pradesh, this time round the Congress did not expressly state
that coalition governments were an aberration in Indian politics, and
that the party should fight on its own under most circumstances and
seek allies only when absolutely necessary and in states where the
party was especially weak. At Shimla, however, the Congress seemed
to be coming to terms with the fact that its weakness in states like Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu would not be a passing
phase and that given the reality on the ground, the party would have
to be more open to the idea of a broad anti-BJP coalition.
The Congress President—like all Congress presidents in the
past—has been surrounded by sycophants and they ensured that
the message coming through from Shimla was that the Congress
would not be averse to tying up with ‘secular’ parties provided the
partners accepted Sonia Gandhi’s candidature as Prime Minister. This
predictably aroused the ire of parties like the Samajwadi Party and, of
course, the Nationalist Congress Party whose very existence had been
founded on the premise that a person of foreign origin should not
aspire to hold the highest political position in the country. (Ironically,
the NCP subsequently split on the issue of extending support to the
Congress headed by Sonia Gandhi with former Lok Sabha Speaker
Purno A Sangma, parting ways with Sharad Pawar who went on to
become Agriculture Minister in the UPA government.) These parties
pointed out that it was premature on the part of the Congress to decide
who would lead a coalition even before such a coalition came into
existence. While Mulayam Singh Yadav had been ‘soft’ on the issue
of Sonia’s foreign origin and so also was a section within the NCP,
Sharad Pawar and others were of the view that the Congress should
not adopt a ‘big brotherly’ attitude even before an anti-NDA front
was formed. The left had, in any case, contended that Sonia’s foreign
origin was a non-issue, particularly after the Supreme Court had
categorically rejected a petition challenging her Indian citizenship.
 Indian National Congress 109

After the shock of the results of the December 2003 state assembly
elections, the Congress party seemed to have realised that it would
need allies if it were to put up a serious challenge to the NDA in the
14th Lok Sabha elections, which seemed likely to be held ahead of
schedule. In late December 2003, after Sonia Gandhi addressed a
public rally at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, she told journalists that the
Congress would not impose its leadership on the secular alliance
that it was trying to forge. This was interpreted as a signal from
the Congress to parties like the NCP and the SP to join a broad anti-
NDA alliance without the apprehension that they would necessarily
have to accept Sonia as the leader of the alliance and hence a prime
ministerial candidate. The decision on who should become Prime
Minister, Sonia said, would be left to the people. The day after her
statement to the media, however, Congress spokesperson S. Jaipal
Reddy and other party leaders bent over backwards to clarify Sonia’s
remarks, insisting that she remained the leader of the Congress and,
therefore, the party’s candidate for the post of Prime Minister. Not
surprisingly, neither the NCP nor the SP were particularly enthused
by the ‘clarification’. The Congress’ position on coalitions remained
as nebulous as ever.
Whatever may have been the formal position of the Congress party
on coalitions or on the issue of building a ‘secular’ alliance of parties
opposed to the BJP and the NDA in the run-up to the 14th general
elections, the reality on the ground was far more complex. Barely a
week after the confabulation of top leaders of the Congress party at
Shimla in July 2003, the party’s MP from Malda, West Bengal, the late
A. B. A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury decided to tie up with the BJP to
control the board of the Malda zila parishad (or district council). The
parishad had been controlled by the ruling Left Front in the state for 15
years. In 2003, out of the 33 members in the council, the Congress had
wrested 15, the Left Front had 16 while the BJP and the Trinamool had
one member each. Ghani Khan Chowdhury successfully wooed the
BJP councillor to support the Congress-led alliance, at a time when
the two largest political parties in the country were bitterly opposed
to one another in every other part of the country.
Incidentally, Ghani Khan Chowdhury had been elected on the
Congress ticket no less than seven times in a row since 1980, that
110 DIVIDED WE STAND

too, from a constituency in a state that has been a bastion of the

communist parties and where the Left Front has been in power
continuously since 1977. When he was asked why he had allied with
the BJP to control the Malda zila parishad, he stated categorically,
‘[To] hell with party policies. To me people come first. By capturing
the board, the Congress will bring relief to the people oppressed under
the CPI(M). That’s my first priority,’ he told the Indian Express on
July 14, 2003.

Performing on the Periphery

In recent years, the electoral performance of the Congress has hardly
been consistent. The outcome of the 1998 and 1999 general elections
were the worst in the history of the party before a moderate revival
in the 2004 elections. Yet, the party had put up a creditable show
in the assembly elections, not just those held after 1999, but even in
those held between the two general elections when the NDA was in
power in New Delhi. This is because the electoral performance of
the Congress has in most cases merely mirrored the rise and fall of
the NDA’s popularity. In other words, the Congress has done little
on its own to win over new sections of the electorate, but has been
content to cash in on anti-incumbency sentiments.
When the Vajpayee government fell in April 1999 and mid-term
elections to the Lok Sabha became inevitable, the Congress saw itself
as a serious contender for power. Six months later, when the election
results were in, it had to face the bitter reality. The party had the lowest
number of seats ever in the Lok Sabha. The anticipated ‘magic’ of the
Nehru–Gandhi family name clearly had not done the trick despite
the leadership of Sonia Gandhi. Yet, the results of the 13th general
elections were far from an unmitigated disaster for the Congress.
For the first time since the 1984 elections, the party had increased its
share of the popular vote by nearly 3 per cent between the 1998 and
the 1999 general elections. Interestingly, comparing the performance
of the party in the 1999 and the 2004 elections, the vote share of the
Congress actually came down marginally from 28.3 per cent to 26.5 per
cent—largely because the party contested fewer seats—although the
 Indian National Congress 111

number of seats it won went up from 114 to 145, thanks to the first-
past-the-post system.
What explains the dramatic decline of the Congress in the span
of a decade-and-a-half since 1984 and its sluggishness in adapting to
the changing political scenario? One important factor was its
unwillingness to recognise that India has entered an era of coalition
politics, in which no single party can expect to govern the country
on its own. Related to this is the failure to accept that the Congress
can no longer claim to be ‘a coalition within a party’. While the party
acknowledges that some sections of the population have deserted its
ranks in recent years, it does not seem to realise that this is part of a
pattern and not just stray unrelated phenomena.
Congress supporters argue that it lost the support of these sections
due to specific circumstances: for instance, the Muslims deserted the
party because they held it responsible for the demolition of the Babri
Masjid in December 1992 and the Sikhs because of the anti-Sikh riots of
November 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. These
are at best elements of a larger trend; the Congress has been losing its
coalition character because it has failed to live up to the aspirations
of those very sections of the country that constituted its ‘traditional’
support base. Instead of crumbs, these sections have tasted power and
become empowered through their association with regional as well as
caste-based political parties. For the Congress, what is worse is that
the party seems to be unsure about the strategies it should pursue to
win back its traditional supporters among the religious minorities
as well as intermediate and backward castes. Within the party, there
are many who still believe that coalition governments have been and
remain aberrations; that single-party rule is superior. This view, the
Congress’ opponents believe, is born out of arrogance and is also
responsible for the decline of the party.
Why did the Congress find it so difficult to read the writing on
the wall? Why do influential sections in the party still believe it has
an almost divine right to rule and that any other political formation
is doomed to be shortlived and ineffective? A crucial reason is the
‘ivory tower’ nature of the Congress leadership. Many of the party’s
leaders have led and continue to lead cloistered lives in the capital’s
spacious bungalows, their political survival dependent on loyalty to
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the party president instead of their popularity among the electorate.

It is hardly a secret that many of those who are at the helm of the
party’s affairs are individuals who would find it tough to win an
election from any part of the country. During the post-independence
period, especially the period when Jawaharlal Nehru served as Prime
Minister, the Congress truly represented a federation of state units
and its state leaders commanded considerable clout in influencing the
central leadership.
Many analysts see the roots of the decline of the Congress in the
party’s highly centralised structure that was imposed by Indira Gandhi
and was continued by all subsequent party presidents, particularly
Rajiv Gandhi and now Sonia Gandhi. Under what circumstances
can the Congress hope to regain its lost glory? Anti-incumbency
sentiments against the Vajpayee government worked in its favour.
But this alone was insufficient. One view within the Congress is that
the party should no longer hesitate to strike alliances with regional
political parties even if it means the Congress accepts that it is a junior
partner in these states. But there are many within the party opposed
to this line of thinking; this section clearly believes it is worth waiting
for the time when voters would return to the Congress because of
the non-performance of incumbent governments. If the latter view
prevails, the lost glory of the Congress may never be regained, that
paradise would be lost forever. Marking time does not always work.
In the fluid world of Indian politics, stagnation almost inevitably leads
to decline. The results of the 14th Lok Sabha elections may convey
an impression that the fortunes of the Congress have substantially
revived. However, it seems unlikely that the Congress would be able
to form the Union government on its own in the foreseeable future.

A Single Party Coalition

The Congress is India’s grand old political party, it was set up in
December 1885 and was at the forefront of the struggle against the
British. It represented a coalition of various sections of the country
that had fought for independence from colonial rule. The Congress
has ruled India by forming the Union government for all but
roughly 12 years between August 1947 and May 2004. During this
 Indian National Congress 113

period of four and a half decades of Congress rule, a member of the

Nehru–Gandhi family has headed the government for all but six
years (when Lal Bahadur Shastri and P.V. Narasimha Rao served as
Prime Ministers).
Till 1984, when the influence of the Congress reached a peak in
terms of seats in the Lok Sabha, the party had its share of ups and
downs, particularly when it suffered major setbacks in the fourth
general elections in 1967 and the sixth general elections 10 years later.
During this period, however, the Congress managed to, by and large,
maintain its ‘umbrella’ character and no major social groups could be
said to have become hostile or completely alienated from the party. In
fact, the Congress could rightfully claim that it was the only political
party that not only represented all sections of the population but
also had a base in virtually every single village across the length and
breadth of the country. The Congress could also rightly contend that
it was unique among political parties in India, in that it afforded an
opportunity for all sections to put forward their claims and points
of view even if these conflicted often with one another. The party
believed in a consensus-building approach and, in that sense, acted
like a coalition. Academics like Rajni Kothari have analysed this
phenomenon at great length and pointed out that this was in fact
the strength of the party and a legacy of its leading role in the anti-
colonial struggle.
The fact is that the Congress is the only major Indian political party
that still believes it can single-handedly rule a diverse country. The
party believes it has been able to internalise this diversity and thus, at
best, needs a few minor ‘regional’ partners to come along with it. It is
worth noting that even when Congress governments in the past have
required the support of other parties (the ones led by Indira Gandhi
in the late 1960s and by Narasimha Rao in the early 1990s), the party
had preferred not to form coalition governments, that is, until the
UPA was formed in 2004.
Congress spokespersons have forwarded another reason for the
party not forging too many alliances with regional partners. The
logic is disarmingly simple, in many states, the Congress is either
ruling or is the principal opposition party where a regional party is
in power. The argument is that if one looks at the list of allies of the
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BJP, almost all of these alliance partners are from states where the BJP
itself is relatively weak and has never been in power. For example,
Andhra Pradesh where the TDP rules, Punjab where the Akalis were
in power, Tamil Nadu where the DMK or AIADMK is the ruling
party, Orissa where the Biju Janata Dal is the main opponent of the
Congress, Karnataka, West Bengal, Bihar and so on. In other words,
it is the relative weakness of the BJP in these states that does not
threaten the regional parties and hence, makes the formation of alliances
easier. The argument of the Congress thus runs something like this,
if the Congress is perceived as a threat to its regional ally, where
is the question of forming a coalition? While there is considerable
weight in this argument, it still begs a critical question. Why has
the Congress not been successful in forging an alliance in one state
where it is weak (specifically, Uttar Pradesh) and been a reluctant
ally in another (Bihar)?
In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is vying with the Samajwadi Party
and the Bahujan Samaj Party for specific political constituencies: with
the SP for the support of the Muslims and with the BSP for the votes of
lower castes (dalits). Clearly, the Congress is left without any option
in Uttar Pradesh, because neither the SP nor the BSP wants to help
revive the Congress because it would almost inevitably imply erosion
in their respective areas of support.
Unlike in Uttar Pradesh, in Bihar it was the Congress that was
reluctant to tie-up with the RJD and not the other way round. This
would seem inexplicable given the fact that the Congress and the RJD in
Bihar—before Jharkhand was carved out of the state on November 15,
2000—had fairly distinct areas of influence, geographically as well as
among social sections (castes). In the southern, mineral-rich part of
the undivided state, which has a significant population of tribals, the
Congress was the dominant partner in the Congress–RJD alliance,
while the reverse was true for the central and northern regions of
Bihar. As far as caste equations were concerned, the RJD had the
support of an overwhelming majority of Muslims and Yadavs, but
had very little support from the upper castes while the Congress did.
This was remarkably similar to the pattern of the rival BJP–Janata Dal
(United) alliance’s support base. The BJP commanded the support of
the upper castes in Bihar while the JD(U), which at that time included
the Samata Party, appealed to sections of the intermediate and the
 Indian National Congress 115

lower castes. Again, the JD(U) was the stronger of the two allies
in northern and central Bihar, while the BJP was by far the bigger
political force in southern Bihar, now Jharkhand.
If the BJP and the JD(U) could effectively forge an alliance in Bihar,
what prevented the Congress from doing the same with the RJD till
2004? The situation in Bihar was a clear illustration of the refusal
of the Congress to accept the reality on the ground: that coalition
politics had become the order of the day and in coalitions, the smaller
partner often has to accept its position as a junior ally and be more
accommodating (or less cussed).

A Democratic Party?
The Congress boasts that it is the ‘largest democratic party in the
world’. The epithet ‘democratic’ may once have described the grand
old party of the Indian freedom movement quite accurately, but many
would now question the validity of such an adjective to describe the
Congress. The reality is that, barring a period of a little less than six
years between May 1991 and January 1998 and Lal Bahadur Shastri’s
short-lived term as Prime Minister between 1964 and 1966. The Congress
has been seen more as a party that has willingly submitted itself to
dynastic rule by the Nehru–Gandhi clan ever since Indira Gandhi
acquired unquestioned control over the party by splitting it in 1969.
The assumption of the reins of the party by Sonia Gandhi from 1998
and the events that have followed have only further buttressed this
view of the Congress.
If the party has surrendered its moral right to be called democratic,
it still retains the status of being the largest party in the world, with
the exception of the Chinese Communist Party. The Congress also,
till the last Lok Sabha elections held in 2004, had obtained a larger
share of the popular vote in India than any other party. However,
the vote share of the party has more or less steadily declined since its
peak performance in the 1984 general elections when it won just over
48 per cent of the popular vote, the highest it had ever achieved. Never
before, not even in the first general elections held in 1952, had the
party managed such a high share of the votes polled. From that peak,
the decline has been steady, indeed even precipitous at times. In each
of the four general elections that followed, in 1989, 1991, 1996 and
116 DIVIDED WE STAND

1998, there was erosion to the point where the Congress could win
only 25.8 per cent (just over one in four) of the valid votes polled in
the February 1998 Lok Sabha elections.
In the 1989 elections, which Rajiv Gandhi faced after a roller-
coaster ride on the popularity charts during his tenure as Prime
Minister, the Congress’ share of the popular vote had already been
drastically reduced to 39.5 per cent, a decline of almost 9 per cent
from the 1984 peak. Only once before, in 1977, had the party got
less than 40 per cent of the popular vote. The loss in the number of
Lok Sabha seats was even more damaging. The party won just 197
seats, less than half the number it had won in 1984 (404 on its own
and 415 with its allies). In the 1991 elections, the situation should
have been ideal for the Congress to make a comeback. As in 1980,
the elections were being fought at a time when a puppet government
supported by the Congress had been brought down after it had
replaced another non-Congress government. The non-Congress
government, like the previous one in 1977–79, had collapsed because
of internal squabbles. This should have given the Congress the ideal
platform to recapture power.
As it happened, the Congress did come back to power after the
1991 elections, but not with a majority of its own. The party won just
232 seats and had to depend on allies (and later defections) to form
the government and then survive for five years. Even this figure of
232, most analysts agree, was thanks largely to the sympathy wave
generated by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi halfway through the
elections. Most pollsters who have analysed the results of the two
phases of polling, one held before the assassination and the other after
it, believe that the Congress tally would not have been significantly
higher than the 197 seats it got in 1989, but for this tragic event. In
any case, there were alarm bells ringing for the Congress, which had
seen its share of the vote dip even further, despite increasing its tally
of seats. The 39.5 per cent of votes that it secured in 1989 had slipped
further to 36.5 per cent in 1991. This trend continued in 1996, with
the vote share coming down further to 28.8 per cent, and the number
of seats coming down to 140. As we have noted earlier, there was to
be a further decline in 1998 (to 25.8 per cent of the vote), before the
trend got reversed in 1999. The reversal in the trend proved to be
 Indian National Congress 117

temporary with Congress obtaining 26.5 per cent of the vote in 2004
against 28.3 per cent in 1999.
What should be worrying for the Congress is that at the current
level of its vote share, the BJP is close on its heels. The Congress had
already, in the 1996 elections, ceded its position as the single largest
party in terms of the number of Lok Sabha constituencies won, to the
BJP. However, it was still comfortably ahead in terms of the share of
the popular vote, with almost 29 per cent to the BJP’s 20 per cent. The
results of the 1998 elections suggested that the Congress was, for the
first time, in serious danger of losing its pride of place even in terms
of the share of the popular vote, the gap being narrowed down to just
0.2 per cent. Though the gap had widened to just over 4 per cent in
2004, it is still too close for comfort for the Congress.
The slump from a position of seeming invincibility in 1984 to a
party in danger of being relegated to second place in the Indian polity
in 1998 took less than a decade and a half. In retrospect, it must be said
that much of the blame for this state of affairs rested squarely on the
shoulders of the Congress leadership. At a time when major changes
were taking place in Indian society and politics, particularly in the
northern Indian states, or the Hindi heartland as it is often referred to
(see chapter 5), the Congress was unable either to intervene actively
to influence the course of these changes or even to react adequately to
them to ensure its survival. The result was that in India’s two most
populous states, undivided Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which at that
time between them accounted for 139 of the 543 Lok Sabha MPs,
that is more than one in every four, the Congress was reduced to a
virtual non-entity by 1998.
In the 1998 elections, the Congress drew a blank in Uttar Pradesh
and its share of the vote in that state was down to single digit figures.
In the 1999 elections, the Congress staged a recovery in the state,
increasing its share of the votes from 6 per cent to 14 per cent and
winning 11 Lok Sabha seats where it had none in 1998. In 2004,
the Congress won 9 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh with a vote
share of 12 per cent. It seems ironical to recall that during the first three
decades after independence (1947–77), all the Indian Prime Ministers
(barring Gulzari Lal Nanda), who were from the Congress, were
elected from Uttar Pradesh. Of the Prime Ministers who followed
118 DIVIDED WE STAND

Morarji Desai, Charan Singh was elected from Baghpat in the state.
Whereas Indira Gandhi was re-elected from Medak (Andhra Pradesh)
in 1980, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar were all
elected from constituencies in Uttar Pradesh.
The importance of Uttar Pradesh in Indian politics is not merely on
account of the fact that nearly one out of every five Indians live in the
state and account for 80 out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. Only
thrice in independent India has a party formed or led a government
in New Delhi without having won the single largest chunk of the
Lok Sabha seats in the state. (Uttar Pradesh had 85 Lok Sabha seats
till October 2000 when Uttaranchal/Uttarakhand was carved out
of it.) These were during the Congress regime of Narasimha Rao
(1991–96), the following United Front government under two Prime
Ministers (Deve Gowda and Gujral) that lasted 18 months and the
UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh formed in May 2004.
On all these occasions the ruling party or front did not have a majority
in the Lok Sabha.
In Bihar, arguably one of the most economically backward states
in the country, the Congress has been reduced to a marginal political
force. The figures of the number of Lok Sabha seats won by the
Congress in the state (which sent 54 MPs to the Lok Sabha before its
division in 2000) tell their own story: 48 in 1984, four in 1989, one in
1991, two in 1996, four in 1998, five in 1999 and three in 2004. The
failure of the Congress to revive in Bihar in the 12th, 13th and 14th
general elections was despite the party striking an alliance with the
then ruling party in the state, the RJD headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The Congress continues an uneasy love–hate relationship with the
RJD and the party’s leaders in Bihar have often protested against the
foisting of an alliance by the high command.
The decline of the Congress party since 1984, particularly in the
Hindi-speaking heartland of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, cannot be
understood merely in terms of numbers. The fall of the party has been
precipitated by specific communities and social groups deserting its
fold almost en masse. Indira Gandhi’s assassination led to the biggest-
ever electoral victory of the party under Rajiv Gandhi. Ironically,
however, this was also the first election that witnessed almost the
entire Sikh community turning hostile to the Congress after the
November 1984 anti-Sikh riots that were concentrated largely around
 Indian National Congress 119

the national capital. By the time the 1991 elections were completed,
after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in May the same year, large sections
of the backward castes of northern India (especially Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar) had also become alienated from the Congress. In any case,
this section that is loosely referred to as the OBCs had never been
particularly loyal to the Congress. After the December 6, 1992
demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya when P.V. Narasimha Rao
was Prime Minister, the Muslims—large sections of that community
had by then already started doubting the ability and willingness of the
Congress to protect and promote their interests—started withdrawing
their support to the Congress. In states like UP, the Muslims switched
their allegiance to parties like the Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam
Singh Yadav.
There are other groups, like the scheduled castes and tribes in many
parts of the country, which have moved away from the Congress not
because of any strong dislike for the party, but because of two broad
factors. On the one hand, there is a growing disillusionment with the
Congress and a belief that the party has ‘used’ them as vote banks
without sincerely addressing their concerns and aspirations. This
feeling is perhaps best epitomised in the slogan that the Bahujan Samaj
Party used to telling effect in wooing the scheduled castes in Uttar
Pradesh—‘vote hamara, raj tumhara, nahin chalega’ (‘our vote and
your rule, this cannot go on’). On the other hand, alternate platforms
have emerged which arguably provide the dalits superior options.
This is a sort of vicious circle. For instance, the very fact that Muslims
and Yadavs in Bihar had left the Congress and got together under the
Janata Dal in 1989 meant that the Congress was no longer seen as a
viable political force by the dalits, who saw the Janata Dal as a better
prospect. This, in turn, meant that the upper castes in Bihar—as in
Uttar Pradesh—who had by and large stayed with the Congress till
that stage, had to look for a more viable alternative to counter the
consolidation of the lower castes. They turned to the BJP in these
states. Thus, the Congress became the victim of a chain reaction of
group desertions in these two most populous states of India.
After the May 1996 elections, the fact that the Congress had
perceptibly lost support in the north also meant that social groups in
other parts of the country had to re-examine their options. This was
an important reason for the party ceding ground to the BJP in various
120 DIVIDED WE STAND

parts of the country. For example, it was arguably the feeble state
of the Congress at the national level that emboldened the maverick
Mamata Banerjee to break away from the parent Congress in West
Bengal, float the Trinamool Congress and fight the 1998 elections in
alliance with the BJP. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu and Orissa, where
the BJP had never had a significant political base, there were regional
parties willing to ally with it, because of the perception that it was
the BJP and not the Congress that was more likely to form the
government in New Delhi. The BJP also found allies in the north-
east, another area which had been outside its sphere of influence.
The decision of the National Conference of Jammu & Kashmir not
to oppose the formation of a BJP government was also dictated by
similar pragmatism (some would call it opportunism) rather than any
fondness for the BJP’s policies.
Yet, it is precisely this feature of its decline—the chain reaction—
that makes the Congress believe it can engineer a dramatic revival.
The party believes that the process can be reversed just as easily. The
argument is that since many of those groups which deserted the party
over the last 15 years have done so not out of animosity, but due to
pragmatic considerations, they would not hesitate to return to the
Congress fold if the party shows signs of recovering lost ground. For
example, the Congress believes that if it can win back the Muslims in
Uttar Pradesh, it would be better placed to woo the upper castes and the
dalits too. However, the results of the February 2002 assembly elections,
the April–May 2004 Lok Sabha elections in the state and the April–May
2007 assembly elections indicate that most Muslims are either with
the SP or the BSP and have not returned to the fold of the Congress,
except in specific constituencies where individual Congress leaders
are better placed to defeat the BJP than either the SP or the BSP.
The fact that the Congress believes the SP and the BSP in UP have
vote bases that could easily be brought back to the party’s fold
has often dictated its tactics. For instance, in early 2003, when the
Mayawati government was threatened by dissidence from among
the BJP and some independent MLAs, the SP was keen to hasten
the government’s demise by staking a credible claim to forming the
government. For this, the SP, which had 143 MLAs in the 403–member
assembly, clearly needed the support of the 25 MLAs belonging to the
Congress and others belonging to smaller political parties, besides any
 Indian National Congress 121

dissidents who could be persuaded to switch sides. The SP tried to

convince the Congress that if the party were to publicly announce its
support to an SP–led government, other groups and dissident MLAs
would be quick to jump on to what would appear to be the winning
bandwagon. The Congress, however, kept saying that it would extend
support to the SP only if the latter could convince the party that it
would be able to garner a majority. With the standoff remaining
unresolved, the ruling coalition had been given enough breathing
space not only to keep its flock together, but ultimately, to even break
the Congress party in the UP assembly. Of the 25 MLAs belonging
to the Congress, eight left the party’s fold to form a separate group,
which joined the ruling coalition.
The official explanation given by the Congress for dithering on
that occasion was that the party did not wish to destabilise elected
governments and would rather wait for such governments to collapse
under the weight of their internal contradictions. Many political
observers saw this as camouflage. The real reason, they insisted,
was that the Congress wanted to get back at the SP for not having
supported Sonia Gandhi’s candidature for Prime Ministership in April
1999, when the second Vajpayee government lost a vote of confidence.
There could well be some merit to this argument. However, hard-
nosed political calculations also seemed to have been a factor in the
Congress’ reluctance to back the SP in its bid for power in UP. As
already mentioned, there is a considerable overlap in the potential
support bases of the two parties. Hence, it is not particularly surprising
that the Congress has no desire to strengthen the SP’s position in the
state any further. The state government in UP formed by the SP in
May 2002 was supported by the Congress from the ‘outside’ while
the SP supported the UPA government in New Delhi also from the
‘outside’ till the run-up to the 2007 assembly elections in UP. Despite
this apparently mutually beneficial association, leaders of the two
hardly spared an opportunity to criticize each other simply because
the two remain bitter rivals in UP’s political battlefield.

After the Glorious Days

The decline of the Congress as the ‘natural party of governance’ in
India took place over a long period of time, as already seen—from
122 DIVIDED WE STAND

the heady days of ‘garibi hatao’ (‘remove poverty’) and the formation
of Bangladesh, to the Emergency which brought an end to the
glorious days.
The assassination of Indira Gandhi was followed first by the
Congress’ most spectacular electoral victory ever in the December
1984 general elections and then a period of steady decline right till the
1996 elections. After these elections, what was particularly worrying
for the Congress was its dismal performance in three of the country’s
most populous states from the crucial Hindi heartland—Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh—and in two other states which
had long been regarded as secure bastions of the party in parliamentary
polls—Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Between them, these five
states account for 266—or almost half—of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.
The combined score of the Congress in these five states in the 1996
elections was only 30 seats. But if the decline in the party’s Hindi
heartland had been apparent for some time, what came as a rude
shock was its performance in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. These
two states had always elected an overwhelming majority of MPs from
the Congress and its allies, not breaking that pattern even in the most
disastrous elections for the Congress till that stage, the 1977 elections.
In 1996, the Congress drew a complete blank in Tamil Nadu and won
just 15 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra.
Predictably, the man seen as responsible for this debacle was the
one who was then party President and Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha
Rao. Party supporters who had till that stage eulogised Rao as the man
who, by ushering in a bold package of economic reforms, had placed
the Indian economy on a new high growth path, suddenly started
finding inadequacies in their leader that they had carefully overlooked
till that time. After being unexpectedly catapulted to the Prime
Minister’s post as a ‘compromise’ choice between powerful rivals
in the aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in May 1991, Rao
had kept the party in power for five years despite starting out with a
minority government, which remained in a minority for a considerable
part of the tenure of the government. This had earned him the loyalty
of his colleagues in the Congress and grudging admiration for his
policy of ‘masterly inactivity’ in times of crisis.
 Indian National Congress 123

With his hold over power gone, Rao was now put under the
microscope for all his faults. What was thus far seen as masterly
inactivity was now held up as the inability to respond to situations.
Party activists argued that the Rao government’s failure to prevent the
demolition of the Babri masjid in December 1992 and the apparently
callous attitude of Rao himself during the event had finally driven
the Muslims away from the party’s fold and contributed in no small
measure to its debacle. It was also pointed out that Rao’s insistence
on forging an electoral alliance with the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu had
proved disastrous on two counts. For one, it had forced most party
supporters in Tamil Nadu, who had vehemently opposed the tie-up,
to quit the party and form the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC).
To add insult to injury, while the Congress–AIADMK alliance
failed to win a single seat from Tamil Nadu, the polls had vindicated the
TMC’s decision to align with the DMK and the CPI instead. This three-
party alliance won all of the 39 Lok Sabha seats in the state. It was also
pointed out that the Rao government’s image of being one of the most
corrupt in India’s history badly dented the party’s electoral prospects.
A final addition to this litany of complaints against Rao was that he
lacked the charisma that had been the hallmark of Congress leaders
of the past, notably of those from the Nehru–Gandhi family. Rao,
the party seemed to be suggesting now, was not a vote winner and
while he may have proved adept at retaining power, he could not be
expected to win an election for the Congress. Those familiar with the
internal politics of the Congress would suggest that despite the poor
showing at the hustings, Rao might have been spared these barbs if
he had somehow been able to get the party a share in power. As it
turned out, that was not to be.
On December 23, 2004, Rao passed away at the age of 83. In the
last years of his life, he had written a long book called The Insider—a
publication that can be described as a ‘fictionalised autobiography’.
In an interview with one of the authors of this book, the erudite
Rao himself was hard pressed to name another book that could be
described in such a manner, implying that what he wrote was indeed
unique. He also wrote another book justifying his role as Prime
Minister during the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6,
1992. In the last months of his life, he appeared rather lonely. He
124 DIVIDED WE STAND

had been marginalised and isolated by the Congress leadership. In

a phone conversation, he explained his dilemma; he could not speak
out against the Congress as he was always a Congressman and would
remain one till his death.
Rao will be remembered not only for the policies of economic
liberalisation that were ushered in from the middle of 1991 onwards
during the period he was Prime Minister under the then Finance
Minister Manmohan Singh, policies that were to remove the shackles
of the infamous licence-control raj on Indian industry. The first
Prime Minister from the south of India will unfortunately also be
remembered for the wrong reasons—as a person who tried to make
a virtue out of inaction, and who was utterly cynical when it came to
using money to bribe MPs so that his government could shed its
‘minority’ tag and become a ‘majority’ government before a no-
confidence motion in the Lok Sabha in July 1993. While he was
Prime Minister of India, Rao was also accused of receiving a bribe
from a disgraced stock-broker Harshad Mehta, a charge that was
never established.

Out of Power
The 1996 elections had delivered a hung verdict in which the BJP
and its allies had by far the largest block of seats, but were still more
than 70 seats shy of the halfway mark of 272. The Congress and its
allies had just about 150 seats, while the National Front and other
regional parties shared close to 190 seats. Since well over 100 of these
190 seats were shared between the Janata Dal, the left, the TDP of
Andhra Pradesh and the AGP of Assam, and none of these parties
was prepared to support the Congress, this led to a peculiar situation
for Rao. As leader of the second-biggest party in the Lok Sabha, he
had to agree to extend support to the United Front (formed after
the elections and consisting of 13 parties including those in the
erstwhile National Front, the left and most of the regional parties).
The alternative would have been either to let the BJP form the
government or to precipitate another round of elections immediately,
both of which were considered worse options for the Congress. For
the Congress, the BJP represented the long-term threat, the party that
was growing at an alarming pace and seemed on the verge of replacing
 Indian National Congress 125

it as the premier party in India. The United Front, on the other hand,
was seen as a motley group, which would most probably collapse
under the weight of its own internal contradictions and was, therefore,
unlikely to pose a challenge to Congress supremacy in the foreseeable
future, a perception that subsequent events partially bore out.
Despite the fact that supporting the UF seemed to be the only course
open to the Congress under the circumstances, Rao took enough
time to decide upon it for the BJP to be invited to form the government
by President Shankar Dayal Sharma before he had written to Sharma
informing him of the Congress’ decision to support the UF’s claim
to form the government. However, the BJP’s stint in power proved
really shortlived, with the party and its allies holding office for less
than a fortnight before being forced to resign as it became clear that
they would lose the mandatory vote of confidence. Thus, the Congress
ultimately ended up supporting the UF government headed by
H.D. Deve Gowda, former Chief Minister of Karnataka, who emerged
as the unlikely consensus choice for the post of Prime Minister from
among the 13 parties in the UF, that is, after former Prime Minister
V.P. Singh and Jyoti Basu, Chief Minister of West Bengal and leader
of the CPI(M), both turned down offers to head the government.
Basu’s party decided he should not become Prime Minister.
The Congress extended support to the Deve Gowda government
without participating in it. Within the party there were two points
of view. One school of thought held that it would be best for the
party not to be directly associated with a government that was likely
to be seen as a squabbling ineffective bunch, while another felt that
the Congress must extract the price for its support in the form of a
share in power. As it turned out, the decision was in a sense taken out
of the party’s hands, since most constituents of the UF had made it
amply clear that not only were they unwilling to support a Congress
government, they were equally against sharing power with the
Congress, even if it were a minor partner. Congress support was thus
strictly from ‘outside’, no different from the kind of support it had
extended in the past to the Charan Singh government in 1979 or the
Chandra Shekhar government in 1990–91.
The UF was expected to have its share of internal wrangles and it
did. However, the differences within the Front never quite reached
flashpoint. For the Congress, therefore, which had banked on the
126 DIVIDED WE STAND

coalition collapsing on its own to get a second chance at grabbing

power, the wait was proving to be a test of its patience. It was a matter
of time before the party would have to take the initiative to change the
power equations in New Delhi. Developments within the Congress
helped precipitate such an initiative. This came after the chargesheeting
of Rao in the JMM bribery case (detailed later in the book) and of
his son in the infamous ‘urea scam’. The two chargesheets provided
just the ideal excuse that dissidents within the party had been waiting
for. Sitaram Kesri, who had for long been treasurer of the Congress,
deposed Rao as the President of the party and immediately started
issuing statements that revealed that the Congress was not prepared
to play second fiddle to the UF any longer.
Among the many statements that Kesri issued over a few months in
late 1997 and early 1998 was one in which he ‘warned’ the government
that his party’s support could not be taken for granted. Kesri’s new
aggressive posture was widely interpreted in political circles and
among analysts as an attempt to get the Congress a share in power.
The UF, however, was unwilling to respond to these threats in the
manner in which the Congress President expected it to. Finally, after
it became clear that the Congress would once again have to take the
next step, Kesri sent a formal letter to the President announcing that
his party had withdrawn its support to the government. Since that
effectively meant that the Deve Gowda government was reduced to
a minority in the Lok Sabha, the President directed it to seek a vote
of confidence.
Even at this stage, it seemed that Kesri thought the UF would be
willing to share power with the Congress rather than face a complete
loss of power and the prospect of fresh elections. The second best
scenario being viewed by the Congress was one in which the UF
would break apart and large sections of it would then be either willing
to join a Congress-led government or support one from the outside.
So transparent were Kesri’s motives that even the Times of London
editorially dubbed him an ‘old man in a hurry’, a sobriquet that Deve
Gowda repeatedly referred to in his last speech in Parliament as
Prime Minister. As events unfolded, neither of these wishes of Kesri
was fulfilled. Despite severe pressure from first-time MPs, who were
horrified at the prospect of their tenure in the Lok Sabha proving
 Indian National Congress 127

even more shortlived than they had anticipated, the UF refused to

succumb to the Congress’ tactics. Deve Gowda retained the support
of the entire UF in the vote of confidence.
But, the situation changed after he was voted out, as was inevitable.
Though the UF still refused to consider sharing power with the
Congress, the choice was now between forming a government under
a new leader acceptable to the Congress, or facing elections. The UF
settled for a change at the top and thus gave Kesri a face-saver. Kesri
immediately declared that the Congress would have no problems
in supporting a UF government led by anybody other than Deve
Gowda. In fact Kesri insisted rather unconvincingly that he had at
no stage objected to the UF per se. His objection, he maintained, was
restricted to Deve Gowda himself, ostensibly because the former
Prime Minister had not given the Congress the respect it deserved as
the single largest party supporting the government and had also failed
to provide adequate leadership to the fight against communalism.
Kesri’s explanation may have fooled nobody, but what mattered
was that another Congress-supported UF government was in office.
Inder Kumar Gujral thus became Prime Minister, but Kesri’s toying
with the UF was not done yet. Within a year of Gujral becoming
Prime Minister, the interim report of a commission of inquiry into
the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi provided the Congress President
another opportunity to turn the screws on the UF. The Congress
by this time was clearly restless, out of power and willing to try any
trick in the book to get it. The commission, headed by a retired judge,
Milap Chand Jain, indicted the DMK government that was in office
in Tamil Nadu in 1991, for having failed to protect Rajiv Gandhi
despite intelligence reports indicating a threat to his life. The interim
report was characterised by sweeping indictments that earned the
wrath of not just the DMK and the UF but also of the media. Yet, the
Congress found it extremely useful, because it provided the fig leaf
that the party was searching for to camouflage its blackmail of the UF.
Kesri jumped at the opportunity and demanded that the UF should
dissociate itself from the DMK, failing which the Congress would
withdraw support to the government. The ostensible argument was
that the Congress could not possibly support a government in which
one of the partners was being held responsible for contributing,
128 DIVIDED WE STAND

even if only through negligence, to the assassination of a former

Congress president.
Once again, the Congress’ calculations seemed to be that whatever
position the UF took it would work to the benefit of the Congress.
If it refused to expel the DMK from the Front, the Congress could
pull down the government and then hope to be given a chance to
form the next one. If such a chance were given, the Congress was
sure that it would be able to muster up enough support from within
the UF itself to form the government and win the vote of confidence
in the Lok Sabha. If, on the other hand, the UF succumbed to
Congress blackmail, the party would gain further ascendancy in the
coalitional arrangement.
As it turned out, the Congress had once again miscalculated and
underestimated the cohesion within the Front. While there were a
few murmurs to the effect that the DMK should withdraw from the
government of its own accord and thereby make things easier for
the other UF partners, these were quickly squashed. The TDP and the
left were prominent among those that insisted that the Front should
not succumb to pressure tactics. The government rejected the Jain
Commission’s interim report and the UF declared that the DMK
would stay, as part of the Front and of the government. As soon as
the Congress withdrew support, as it was forced to, on November 28,
1997, the Union Cabinet met and decided to resign without seeking a
fresh vote of confidence. More importantly, the Cabinet also decided
to recommend fresh elections, a recommendation K.R. Narayanan,
who was now President, immediately accepted. The Congress move
had misfired once again and the party was to face an election for which
it was clearly less well prepared than its main rival, the BJP.
Most Congressmen were aware that Sitaram Kesri would, if
anything, be even less effective than Narasimha Rao at attracting
voters. While Rao had a long experience of electoral politics, having
been Chief Minister of his home state of Andhra Pradesh, Minister
in several Union governments and finally Prime Minister, Kesri had
for most of his career remained an organisational man. His rare forays
into electoral politics had been embarrassing. Clearly, he could not
be the face the party presented to the electorate, particularly when
the BJP and its allies were basing much of their electoral strategy on
 Indian National Congress 129

the undoubted popularity of their Prime Ministerial candidate, Atal

Behari Vajpayee. Yet, Kesri himself could not afford to let any of
the other leaders within the Congress emerge as the man to lead the
party’s election campaign. Given the history of the Congress since
Indira Gandhi, it was clear that the individual who would electorally
lead the party would ultimately also call the shots organisationally,
especially if the party performed well.

Back to the Family

Given Kesri’s dilemma and the unwillingness of rival leaders to let
each other gain an edge in the organisational stakes, it was hardly
surprising that the Congress turned once again to a member of the
Nehru–Gandhi family to bail it out of a crisis of its own making.
The fact that Sonia Gandhi was born an Italian may have seemed to
rule her out of contention for party leadership to many outside the
party. Yet, within the Congress, it appeared the most obvious course.
Why was this so? New York-based Shashi Tharoor, who used to work
with the United Nations, asks this question and then goes on to offer
an interesting explanation in his book (India: From Midnight to the
Millenium, Penguin Books India 1997), ‘What, then is this mystique
made of, that it can make an Indian ruler out of an Italian whose only
patrimony is matrimony’, is the question Tharoor asks. He says the
real strength of the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty lies in its members being
perceived as truly national figures.

Displaced Kashmiris to begin with, the Nehrus’ family tree sports

Parsi, Sikh and now Italian branches, and its roots are universally
seen as uncontaminated by the communal and sectarian prejudices
of the Hindi-speaking ‘cow belt’. Nehru himself was an avowed
agnostic, as was his daughter until she discovered the electoral
advantages of public piety. All four generations of Nehrus in
public life remained secular in outlook and conduct. Their appeal
transcended caste, region and religion, something impossible to say
of any other leading Indian politician.

Sonia Gandhi, who had first been offered the leadership of the party
immediately after the assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, in
1991, had steadfastly stuck to her stance that while she remained a well-
wisher of the Congress and was willing to intervene to settle internal
130 DIVIDED WE STAND

disputes, she had no desire to participate in active politics. For reasons

best known to her, she shifted her position and in early 1998, with
just over a month to go for the general elections, she agreed to take
over as President of the Congress, ostensibly because the party was
facing an electoral and organisational crisis from which she could help
it emerge. Sonia Gandhi still insisted that she would not contest the
elections, but became the main campaigner for the party.
Her entry into the thick of the election campaign undoubtedly
galvanised the party organisation that till that stage had seemed
distinctly uninspired. It also meant that the focus of the campaign
became increasingly personality-oriented, with both the major
parties—the Congress and the BJP—projecting individuals rather than
issues. The BJP, which conveyed the impression of being rattled by
Sonia Gandhi’s entry into the fray, chose to pick on her Italian origins
and portray it as the bankruptcy of the Congress that it could not
throw up an ‘Indian’ leader and had to depend on someone of foreign
origin to rescue it. The Congress countered by pointing out that Sonia
Gandhi had married into a family that had not only provided India
three Prime Ministers, but had sacrificed two of them—Indira Gandhi
and Rajiv Gandhi—to ‘protect national integrity’.
The results of the 1998 general elections, when they became
known, became the subject of much debate on exactly how much
of an impact Sonia Gandhi had on the Congress performance. Her
detractors pointed out that the party had won just as many seats
in the 1998 elections as it had in the 1996 elections (140) and, therefore,
the claimed impact was more hype than reality. Her supporters, on
the other hand, argued that but for her intervention the Congress
would definitely have lost further ground in the 1998 elections since
it was seen as the party which had forced a mid-term election on the
people, and it was only because of Sonia Gandhi that the Congress
had managed to hang on to its tally in the Lok Sabha.
Sonia Gandhi herself had some interesting things to say on the
issue. In her first speech as Congress President to the session of the
All India Congress Committee (AICC) on April 6, 1998, she said:

I have come to this office at a critical point in the history of [the]

party. Our numbers in Parliament have dwindled. Our support base
among the electorate has been seriously eroded. Some segments
of the voters—including our tribals, dalits and minorities—have
 Indian National Congress 131

drifted from us. We are in danger of losing our central place in the
polity of our country as the natural party of governance.

In the same speech, she also quoted extensively from the hard-hitting
introspective speech made at the centenary session of the Congress
in 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi. In that speech, she reminded the AICC,
Rajiv Gandhi had said: ‘What has become of our great organisation?
Instead of a party that fired the imagination of the massesthroughout
the length and breadth of India, we have shrunk, losing touch with
the masses.’ Sonia Gandhi reiterated her husband’s assertion that the
only way in which the Congress could once again fire the imagination
of the people was by ‘a politics of service to the poor’.
She also reminded the AICC that Rajiv Gandhi had, in the same
speech, made some incisive remarks on the de-ideologisation of the
party:

The ideology of the Congress has acquired the status of an heirloom,

to be polished and brought out on special occasions. It must
be a living force to animate the Congress workers in their day-to-
day activity. Our ideology of nationalism, secularism, democracy
and socialism is the only relevant ideology for our great country.

And, said Sonia Gandhi:

the instrument for carrying the Congress policies to the people

had, of course, to be the humble Congress worker. But the genuine
Congress worker remains unheeded and unrecognised. He is not
only the last to be heard but also the least heard. I see it as my
primary task as Congress President to restore to the Congress the
vision of the Congress centenary—power to the people through the
panchayats; and power to the Congress worker through democracy
within the party.

This last remark of Sonia Gandhi seems particularly ironic in the

context of all that followed, as we shall elaborate later.
In the same speech, Sonia Gandhi also cautioned her party against
seeing her entry as some kind of a magic wand that would overnight
revive the Congress. She said:

I am no saviour, as some of you might want to believe. We must

be realistic in our expectations. The revival of our party is going to
132 DIVIDED WE STAND

be a long drawn process, involving sincere hard work, from each

and every one of us…. It was our party which lowered the voting
age to 18 from 21; yet, as the average Indian voter gets younger
and more educated, it is our party which has suffered reverses.
To this large and influential segment of the electorate, some of
their disenchantment with us arises from our party being seen
as soft on corruption and criminalisation. The impression has gained
ground among them that we want to cling to power or achieve
it at any cost.

This was a surprisingly candid observation at that time, but Sonia

Gandhi’s practice as Congress President and as the Chairperson of
the Congress Parliamentary Party (to which post she was elected
soon after the elections despite not being a member of either house
of Parliament) has hardly shown any departure from the party’s
desire to ‘cling to power or achieve it at any cost’.
Immediately after the 1998 election results were announced, the
Congress believed it had an outside chance of forming the government,
since the leading left party, the CPI(M), had declared that it would be
prepared to support a Congress government to keep the BJP out of
power. However, such hopes were soon dashed as it became clear that
most other constituents of the UF would not be prepared to support
the Congress. In fact, the Front ultimately disintegrated rather rapidly
on the question of support to the Congress. The TDP’s Chandrababu
Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, objected to the CPI(M)’s
position saying that it was the Front as a whole (of which he was the
convenor) to take a decision. The CPI(M), by taking such a unilateral
stand, he felt, had forced other Front constituents to also chalk out
their individual strategies. While Naidu at this stage was still talking
in terms of maintaining ‘equidistance’ from the BJP and the Congress,
it soon became apparent that he considered the Congress the bigger
enemy. As the CPI(M) and others called him a traitor and worse,
Naidu switched his allegiance to the BJP. He argued that there was
no way he could support the Congress that, among other things, had
pulled down two successive UF governments.
Vajpayee agreed to G.M.C. Balayogi (MP, TDP), becoming the
Speaker of the Lok Sabha after days of high drama, as a quid pro
quo for the TDP’s support. It was not just the TDP, but by that
 Indian National Congress 133

time a number of smaller parties including the INLD and the

Sikkim Democratic Front had announced that they would support
a government headed by Vajpayee while the National Conference
decided to abstain from the voting. What was amply clear by then
was that the Congress could under no circumstances form the
government. Sonia Gandhi went to President K.R. Narayanan and
said the Congress would henceforth play a constructive role as an
Opposition party.
For much of the first year of the Vajpayee government, the Congress
repeatedly emphasised that it would do nothing to destabilise or pull
down the Vajpayee government, but would fulfil its ‘constitutional
responsibility’ as the single largest Opposition party if and when the
government fell. Throughout this period, other parties opposed to
the BJP, like the CPI(M) and the Samajwadi Party, kept urging the
Congress to take the initiative to ‘rescue the country from the misrule
of the BJP’, but Sonia Gandhi remained adamant. The Congress, she
said, would not make the first move. This seeming reluctance to pull
down the government was seen as the right strategy for the party till
the November 1998 assembly elections in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh and Mizoram.

The Pachmarhi Session

At the Congress’ ‘brainstorming session’ in September 1998 in
Pachmarhi, Sonia’s comments were revealing of the Congress strategy
at the time. In her opening remarks, she said:

In less than two hundred days, the BJP led coalition has proved its
inability to govern India. There is no evidence of firm and decisive
direction in any branch of its activities. The economy is stagnant,
inflation is on the rise. Investor and business confidence is at an all
time low. Foreign policy is in a shambles. The coalition in Delhi
is at war with itself. Internal contradictions are being exposed day
by day. The BJP and its allies are speaking with different voices on
vital national and international issues…. Our stand of not rushing
into bringing this government down has been appreciated all round.
I once again wish to make it clear that as and when the need arises
our party will fulfil its constitutional obligations without hesitation
134 DIVIDED WE STAND

and provide stability and purpose. We have never opposed for the
sake of opposition. We have highlighted the failures and follies of
the government. We will continue to do so.

In her speech at the conclusion of the Pachmarhi session, Sonia Gandhi

reflected the mood of the Congress, which seemed to believe it was
on a major upswing. She said:

Friends, there has been much talk about the Congress’s attitude
towards a coalition government. The fact that we are going through
a coalitional phase at national level polities reflects in many ways
the decline of the Congress. This is a passing phase and we will
come back again with full force and on our own steam. But in the
interim, coalitions may well be needed…. In the last few months, I
get the feeling that the country, fed up with over two years of non-
governance, is waiting to give us another chance. I get the feeling
that more and more people who moved away from us are once
again coming around to the point of view that only the Congress
has the experience, the expertise, the energy and the enthusiasm
to provide an effective government that will revive the stagnant
economy, arrest the price rise, get new investments flowing once
again and improve our standing in the world. We should, however,
not be complacent. But we must recognise that the tide seems
to be turning.

At the same time, the Pachmarhi session also recognised that there
were several major weaknesses in the Congress organisation that
needed urgent attention. Sonia Gandhi had pointed to these as well
in her opening remarks:

The question we must ask ourselves is whether we have, in any way,

diluted our commitment to the fight against communal forces. It
would perhaps be tempting to say we have not. However, there is
a general perception that we have at times compromised with our
basic commitment to the secular ideal that forms the bedrock of
our society. During our deliberations we must all apply our minds
to this vitally important question. Second, we must acknowledge
that we have not successfully accommodated the aspirations of
a whole new generation of dalits, adivasis and backward people
particularly in the northern parts of the country. Could this be
one of the reasons for our decline in states like Uttar Pradesh
 Indian National Congress 135

and Bihar? Regrettably, we have not paid enough attention to

the growth of such sentiments and feelings and consequently have
had to pay a heavy price. It is not enough to make promises. The
Congress Party must ensure to this section of our people full and
equal representation. Great damage has been done to national-level
politics itself on account of our decline in north India particularly.
Electoral reverses are inevitable and are, in themselves, not cause
for worry. What is disturbing is the loss of our social base, of the
social coalition that supports us and looks up to us.

An interesting feature of the discussions at Pachmarhi was that the

Congress chose to identify organisations like the Samajwadi Party,
the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the Bahujan Samaj Party as ‘casteist’
and as parties that would have to be fought if the Congress’ fortunes
were to revive in northern India. This was to have a major impact later
when the Congress unsuccessfully tried to form a government after
the collapse of the Vajpayee government in April 1999.

So Near, Yet So Far

Events proved that the Congress gameplan for the November 1998
elections to four state assemblies was well conceived. In fact, the
party’s showing in these elections exceeded even its own expectations.
The Congress won three-fourths of the seats in Rajasthan, two-
thirds in Delhi and got a comfortable majority in Madhya Pradesh,
where most pollsters had predicted a BJP victory. The result was
seen largely as a reflection of popular disenchantment with the
Vajpayee government’s abysmal mismanagement of onion supplies.
A 15 per cent drop in the output of this essential vegetable had sent
its prices soaring in September–October to as much as 10 times the
normal price. This was, in a sense, a repetition of history. Earlier, in
1980, Indira Gandhi had also used the rise in onion prices during the
Janata Party’s tenure to devastating effect in the election campaign to
return to power.
The Congress itself saw the November assembly election results
as a sign that the time was ripe for it to start sending out signals
that it might not be averse to forming an alternate government in
New Delhi. The signals were quite enthusiastically picked up by the
136 DIVIDED WE STAND

AIADMK, which had been an uncomfortable ally of the BJP

throughout the tenure of the Vajpayee government. J. Jayalalithaa,
through her emissary Subramaniam Swamy, arranged a meeting with
Sonia Gandhi at a ‘tea party’ given by Dr. Swamy in March 1999. The
maverick Dr. Swamy himself referred to it as the most talked-about tea
party after the Boston Tea Party. The reasons were obvious. Nobody
was fooled by the apparent casualness of the meeting and it was clear
that a serious challenge was being mounted against the Vajpayee
government. Jayalalithaa meanwhile kept up the pressure on Vajpayee
through a series of demands that she knew would not be conceded.
Among them was the demand for the reinstatement of sacked naval
chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat and the ‘transfer’ of Defence Minister
George Fernandes to some other position. The Congress too was
pressing for a parliamentary discussion on the Bhagwat episode, as
was most of the Opposition.
The chain of events that began with the ‘tea party’ culminated in
Jayalalithaa withdrawing the support of her 18 MPs to the Vajpayee
government on April 14, 1999. The President, K.R. Narayanan, on
the same day asked Vajpayee to seek a vote of confidence on the floor
of the Lok Sabha. While Narayanan himself did not indicate the time
within which this would have to be done, the BJP decided that the
vote of confidence would be moved the very next day in Parliament.
Party insiders say this was done because the BJP felt it would give
the Opposition no time to arrive at a consensus on the contours
of the alternate government. Confusion on this score, the BJP felt,
would force many of the smaller parties to play safe by voting for a
government that already existed rather than risk dissolution of the Lok
Sabha if the Vajpayee government fell and no alternate government
could be formed.
The BJP’s calculations proved incorrect, but only just. After a two-day
discussion on the vote of confidence, in which one session lasted through
the night, it was still not clear which way the numbers would stack
up. In fact, even after the votes had been cast, at noon on April 17,
the MPs themselves were still not sure whether the government had
survived or lost. It was only after the results of the electronic count were
modified through physical checks that it became clear that the Vajpayee
government had lost the vote of confidence by a single vote.
 Indian National Congress 137

With the Vajpayee government reduced to a ‘caretaker’ status,

attempts began to form an alternative government. The CPI(M)
and the CPI had already made it clear that in their opinion the
only party that could form such a government was the Congress
and that all other secular parties should lend the Congress support
in doing so. Two other left parties, the All India Forward Bloc
and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, maintained that their MPs
would not support a government led by the Congress or one of which
the Congress was a part. Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi
Party made similar statements. He also made an attempt to drum
up support for a government led by Jyoti Basu, but these were
nipped in the bud by the CPI(M) itself refusing to consider such a
proposal. Despite these hurdles, Congress and left leaders felt the
differences would ultimately be ironed out.
This misplaced confidence provoked Sonia Gandhi to meet
the President and claim that she had the support of 272 MPs. The
Congress had also made it clear that it would not be part of a coalition
government. Soon, Sonia Gandhi realised that instead of the claimed
272 MPs, just about 233 MPs would go along with a Congress
government. There was once again an attempt to bring about a
consensus on a government led by Basu. The CPI(M), seeing that the
choice was between accepting this and facing an election or perhaps
even giving the BJP a second chance to form a government, indicated
that it might be willing to accept such an arrangement if the Congress
were prepared to do so. However, the Congress made it clear that it
was in no mood to succumb to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s ‘blackmail’.
That brought to an end the Opposition’s attempts to cobble together
a government. Though sections of the BJP did tentatively suggest
that it should once again be called upon to form a government, the
Cabinet ultimately decided to go along with the President’s view that
the only solution to the impasse was to dissolve the Lok Sabha and
call for fresh elections.
Sonia Gandhi later justified the Congress’ position in the following
words at a meeting with chiefs of the party’s state units on May 6:

As we had promised all along, as soon as the government fell, we

prepared to take upon ourselves our Constitutional responsibilities.
The parties of the secular Opposition wanted us to take up the
138 DIVIDED WE STAND

leadership of an alternative government. Differences among different

parties of the Opposition quickly made it clear that a stable, viable
coalition government could not be put together. Only a minority
Congress government, supported from the outside by the other
secular parties, could give the country the assurance of a stable
government. This was well understood by almost all members of
the secular Opposition.
If such an alternative minority Congress government did not
come about, much to the disappointment of the left and the Third
Front, as also the country at large, the blame lies squarely at the door
of a small, regional party, which placed its narrow interests above the
larger interest of the secular future of the country. We were not
prepared to succumb to political blackmail. Bending at the knee
is a BJP habit. It is entirely appropriate that the Samajwadi Party
has found its destiny in the arms of the communal forces of this
country. The clandestine contacts between leaders of the SP and
the BJP have ruthlessly revealed the nexus between them, a nexus
which has led us to the present situation. These nefarious links, now
exposed, must be rejected through the ballot box by defeating both
the BJP and its secret partner.

The Foreign Hand?

Within a fortnight of the fall of the Vajpayee government, several
dramatic developments occurred within the Congress. As already
mentioned, Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar, broke
away after demanding that Sonia Gandhi make it clear she would not
be a Prime Ministerial aspirant. Their contention, in a letter circulated
among members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), was
that no person of non-Indian origin should be entitled to hold the
posts of President, Vice President or Prime Minister of the country.
It became clear that the BJP would raise Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origin
as a major issue.
Sonia Gandhi took the issue as a personal affront to her and
dramatically submitted her resignation from the post of party President
after walking out of the meeting of the Congress Working Committee
where it was being discussed. In her letter of resignation, she said:

Though born in a foreign land, I chose India as my country. I

am Indian, and I will remain so till my last breath. India is my
 Indian National Congress 139

motherland, dearer to me than my own life.… I came into the

service of the party not for a position of power but because the
Party faced a challenge to its very existence, and I could not stand
idly by. I do not intend to do so now…. I will continue to serve the
Party as a loyal and active member to the best of my ability.

What followed was high drama. It began with all the Congress
Chief Ministers submitting their resignations to Sonia Gandhi saying
they had no desire to continue in her absence. Leaders of various state
units also sent in their resignations. Even the CWC, barring the three
‘offending’ members, submitted letters of resignation en masse to
Sonia Gandhi. Congress workers in various parts of the country
threatened to immolate themselves unless Sonia Gandhi withdrew her
resignation. The three leaders who had raised the issue were dubbed
traitors and their effigies burnt.
After this farcical show of loyalty had lasted for over a week, the
CWC met once again and expelled Pawar, Sangma and Anwar from
the party. Sonia Gandhi still maintained that she would not withdraw
her resignation. However, that this was merely a posture became clear
when a special session of the AICC was organised a few days later at
the Talkatora Stadium. Sonia Gandhi returned triumphantly to preside
over this session. In her emotional speech on the occasion, she said:

The very people who had come to me with folded hands to plead
that I emerge from my seclusion to save the Congress began
questioning my patriotism. They sought to sow seeds of suspicion
about me in the minds of my fellow countrymen and women. And
they did this in concert with those very forces whom I had entered
the political arena to combat.

Apart from the issue of her foreign origin, the stick that has been
repeatedly used by her opponents to beat her is the Bofors scandal.
The scandal erupted during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister.
The Swedish armaments manufacturer Bofors was allegedly awarded
a major contract to supply howitzers (field guns) to the Indian
army after it paid bribes to various influential individuals who were
reportedly close to Rajiv Gandhi. Thirteen years after the contract
was awarded and a decade after the Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI), filed a first information report (FIR), charges were framed
140 DIVIDED WE STAND

against a number of accused persons, including former bureaucrats

and businessmen, among whom was the Italian Ottavio Quattrocchi,
reportedly a close friend of the Gandhi family, in particular Sonia
Gandhi. The CBI chargesheet also named Rajiv Gandhi as an accused,
though he obviously could not be legally proceeded against, simply
because he was no longer alive.
The manner in which the Congress headed by Sonia Gandhi
reacted to the development is significant. The party not only
blocked Parliamentary proceedings demanding the removal of Rajiv
Gandhi’s name from the chargesheet, but it mobilised a large rally
of its supporters in the Capital in late November 1999 to back up its
demand. The fact that the Congress chose to focus on this issue to
attack the Vajpayee government spoke volumes for the absence of
issues with a wider political appeal in the Congress gameplan.
The ‘Q’ issue cropped up again in January 2006 when the CBI told
a London court that it had no objections to removing a ‘freeze’ on
Quattrocchi’s assets in two British banks. There was a hue and cry in
Parliament with Opposition leader L.K. Advani alleging that the UPA
government and Union Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj had put
pressure on the CBI to change its position since it had been arguing
for a long time that the money in Quattrocchi’s accounts should
remain frozen till criminal charges are established against the Italian.
By the time, the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to ensure that no
money was withdrawn till it clarified why it had changed its position,
Quattrocchi had already cleared the sum of around US$ 4 million from
his bank accounts. Sonia Gandhi kept mum right through this episode
while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed that the CBI had acted
in an independent manner while denying government pressure on the
country’s premier police investigating agency. On February 6, 2007,
Quattrocchi was detained in Argentina on the basis of an Interpol ‘red
corner’ notice. The CBI was again criticised for making a lacklustre
attempt to get him extradited and a judge asked it to pay for the Italian’s
legal expenses after throwing out its case. The Indian government
chose not to appeal against this judgement and ‘Q’ returned to Milan
six months later.
Another source of embarrassment for Sonia Gandhi was the charge
made by Subramaniam Swamy that precious Indian antiques had been
smuggled out of the country and were being sold at a shop in Italy
owned by Sonia’s sister. Swamy also referred to allegations in a book
 Indian National Congress 141

by a Russian author that Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi had
received payments from the KGB before the Soviet Union broke up.
The Vajpayee government referred these allegations to the CBI, which
instituted cases which are pending in court. While these allegations
have not become a major political issue, they are raised from time to
time by the political opponents of the Congress, especially the BJP.

Congress in No Hurry
During the tenure of the third Vajpayee government, the Congress at
no stage made an attempt to destabilise it, nor did it appear restless out
of power. This was a marked change from previous occasions when
the Congress was not in power in New Delhi. What explained this
willingness on the part of the Congress to rest content as an Opposition
party? The BJP and its allies had lost almost every state assembly
election held after the general elections of September–October 1999
and before the Gujarat assembly elections held in December 2002,
while the Congress had won many of these elections. The NDA’s
only successes came in the assembly elections in Haryana and Orissa,
which were held in February 2000, within four months of the general
elections. Since then, the NDA had no success in any state election.
In the May 2001 elections to the state assemblies of Kerala, West
Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Pondicherry, the Congress won
on its own in Assam and was part of the winning alliance in Kerala,
Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. The NDA fared miserably in each of
these states. In February 2002, it was no different. The NDA lost in
each of the four states that went to the polls—Uttar Pradesh, Punjab,
Uttaranchal and Manipur—despite having been in power in three of
these states prior to the elections. The Congress won a majority of
the seats in Punjab and Uttaranchal and managed to form a coalition
government in Manipur.
It was this sequence of assembly elections that seemed to have
convinced the Congress leadership that the longer the NDA remained
in power, the more of an ‘anti-incumbency’ burden it would
accumulate. It was also the party’s belief that if the NDA government
was given enough time to thoroughly discredit itself, the electorate
would have no option but to turn to the ‘natural party of governance’
in the next general elections. That, the Congress believed, represented
142 DIVIDED WE STAND

the party’s best chance of coming back to power on its own, or at least
forming a coalition government in which it would not merely be the
largest constituent, but also be able to call the shots.
Anti-incumbency votes against the NDA were not all what
the Congress was banking on. The party was also anticipating a
realignment of political alliances by the time of the next general
elections. For starters, it was expecting the Nationalist Congress
Party to be part of a Congress-led alliance for the next elections. The
Congress had also anticipated that some of the BJP’s partners in the
NDA, like the DMK in Tamil Nadu, could dissociate themselves
from the BJP by the time the 14th general elections took place and
join hands with the Congress. With the Tamil Maanila Congress
(TMC)—which had broken away from the Congress in 1996—also
merging with the parent party in May 2002, this could significantly
improve the electoral prospects of the Congress in Tamil Nadu, a state
whose polity is dominated by the two Dravidian parties, the DMK
and the AIADMK, and where the Congress had become an almost
non-existent political force.
The Congress’ expectations about political realignments before
the 14th Lok Sabha elections were not entirely unrealistic. In
1999, the Congress and the NCP had contested against each other,
thereby benefiting the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra.
Subsequently, the Congress and the NCP came together to form a
coalition government in the state. However, this alliance has never
looked secure. The Vajpayee government, in 2001, tried to woo Sharad
Pawar by giving him a Cabinet-ranking position as head of an official
all-party disaster management committee. In December 2003, Advani
met Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray apparently to ascertain his reaction
to a situation in which the NCP became a part of the NDA. Thackeray
said he was not averse to the idea provided the NCP dissociated
tself from former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra Chhagan
Bhujbal (who was earlier in the Sena). Despite repeated attempts by
the BJP to woo the NCP, the Congress–NCP coalition in Maharashtra
had not broken down at the time of writing. Meanwhile, the DMK
and the MDMK, both of which had seemed quite uncomfortable
within the NDA, finally broke away from the ruling coalition in
December 2003 and tied up with the Congress in the run-up to the
14th general elections.
 Indian National Congress 143

Apart from the electoral arithmetic, the Congress also devised a

new strategy to refurbish the party’s image among the electorate.
For long, the Congress leadership was perceived as the party
President assisted by a group of geriatrics, most of whom would
find it difficult to win even a local election. These individuals have
been perceived as being more cut out for palace intrigues than for
mass politics, though some of them may have had genuine popular
support in their heydays. There is no dearth of examples of this breed
of Congress ‘leaders’—Ambika Soni, Arjun Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad,
R.K. Dhawan and M.L. Fotedar, to name just a few. Sonia Gandhi
consciously went about projecting a different image of the Congress.
Chief Ministers like Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh, Ajit Jogi of
Chhattisgarh, S.M. Krishna of Karnataka, Ashok Gehlot of Rajasthan,
A.K. Antony of Kerala, Tarun Gogoi of Assam and Sheila Dixit of
Delhi were projected as efficient and dynamic administrators capable
of galvanising development in their respective states.
The projection of Congress chief ministers had acquired a new
fillip after the untimely deaths of two prominent young party leaders,
Rajesh Pilot and Madhavrao Scindia. This was a dramatic shift from the
culture inculcated in the Congress by Indira Gandhi and continued by
her son Rajiv as well as his successors, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Sitaram
Kesri. Since the late 1960s, when Indira Gandhi assumed leadership
of the Congress, Chief Ministers from the party were treated with
complete disdain by the party high command. Not only were they
expected to be at the beck and call of the party President, they would
be routinely removed from their positions depending on the whims
of the high command.
Sonia Gandhi’s change of tack may have been prompted by the
recognition that it was easier to use the chief ministers as pin-up boys
and girls than to rejuvenate the entire party apparatus. On the other
hand, it may have been prompted by a genuine desire to decentralise
the party. Either way, the effects were the same—the geriatrics
were effectively marginalised and a new lot of leaders was projected
as the party’s future. However, the outcome of the December 2003
assembly polls came as a setback to this strategy—the party performed
terribly in Madhya Pradesh under the leadership of Digvijay Singh
who was the state’s Chief Minister for 10 years and had also lost
144 DIVIDED WE STAND

out in Rajasthan where Gehlot was Chief Minister for five years.
In Chhattisgarh, a state that had been in existence for barely three
years, Ajit Jogi too had to eat humble pie as the BJP romped home to
victory. Subsequently, S.M. Krishna ceased to remain Chief Minister
of Karnataka after the Congress lost the state assembly elections in
2004 and A.K. Antony was displaced as Chief Minister of Kerala by
Oomen Chandy in August that year. Both were later ‘rehabilitated’
by the Congress high command, Krishna as Maharashtra Governor
and Antony as Union Defence Minister.

Groping for a Strategy

Events in late 2002 and early 2003 revealed very starkly how devoid of
a coherent strategy the Congress had been in its attempts to counter
the aggressive Hindutva campaign of the Sangh Parivar. The best
illustration of this was in Gujarat, during the campaign for the state
assembly elections of December 2002. Shortly before the elections
were formally notified, the Congress replaced the President of the
state unit, Amarsinh Chaudhary, with Shankersinh Vaghela, a former
BJP Chief Minister of the state and someone who had been an RSS
activist for most of his political career. Vaghela had quit the BJP after
factional fights in the party (see the chapter on the BJP) and formed
his own party, the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP) in 1995, that was later
merged with the Congress.
The appointment of Vaghela as the Gujarat Congress Chief
disappointed all those who had seen the Gujarat elections as a crucial
battle between the aggressive Hindutva of Chief Minister Narendra
Modi and the VHP, and secularism. It appeared likely that the
Congress would not be confronting the BJP’s aggressive Hindutva
head-on. This suspicion was further strengthened when another
former RSS activist and former BJP MLA Narendrakumar Yatinbahi
Oza was nominated to contest against Modi for the assembly
elections. Any doubts that remained were settled by the tone and
tenor of the Congress campaign. Individuals and organisations close to
Vaghela—including a group of sadhus (ascetics)—attacked the Modi
government for not having done enough to completely eliminate cow
slaughter in the state. The fact that an issue that had traditionally been
 Indian National Congress 145

raked up by the Sangh Parivar was now being used by people working
for Vaghela, if not at his behest, spoke volumes about the so-called
‘soft’ Hindutva strategy adopted by the Congress.
The Congress predictably denied the charge made by secularists
that it was following a soft Hindutva policy, but Modi remarked at
more than one election meeting that the people of Gujarat were known
for their willingness to pay a couple of rupees more to buy ‘the real
thing’ rather than settle for an imitation product. ‘Don’t buy copycat
products’, he exhorted the crowds, drawing appreciative chuckles
and applause.
The election results showed just how miserably the Congress
strategy had fared. The BJP romped home with a two-thirds majority.
In the introspection meetings that followed within the Congress,
there were some leaders who blamed the soft Hindutva strategy
for the debacle. Officially, however, the party concluded that the
Gujarat election results were a consequence of a severely communally
polarised society that had been brought about on account of the post-
Godhra violence and not because the Congress had adopted a faulty
campaign strategy to woo the electorate of Gujarat.
The diffidence about taking on the Hindutva campaign was
also evident in the Congress’ response to the assembly elections in
Jammu & Kashmir, which had taken place in October 2002, just
two months before the Gujarat elections. The National Conference,
which had been in power till the elections, finished as the single
largest party in the newly elected assembly with 28 seats, but was well
short of 41, the number needed for a majority. The Congress with
21 MLAs finished second. The next biggest party in the assembly
was the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led by Mufti Mohammad
Sayeed, a former Congressman who had also served as Union Home
Minister in V.P. Singh’s government in 1989–90. The PDP won in 15
constituencies, while the BJP, which had eight MLAs in the outgoing
assembly, managed to retain just one seat.
The indecisive nature of the mandate in the elections meant that no
single party could form a government. It was also clear that the electorate
of the state had voted against the National Conference. The obvious
combination to form a government in the state, therefore, was an
alliance between the PDP and the Congress supported by independent
146 DIVIDED WE STAND

MLAs and MLAs belonging to smaller political parties (including the

Panther’s Party and the CPI[M]). There was, however, a more ticklish
issue that had to be resolved. Which of the two parties would be
the senior partner in the alliance and whose representative would
become the Chief Minister? It might appear obvious that the Congress
as the larger party should have had the privilege of leading the
government. But, the regional composition of the seats won by the
Congress and the PDP posed a problem. While the Congress had won
a majority of its seats in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region, almost
all of the PDP’s MLAs had been elected from the Muslim-dominated
Kashmir Valley.
Why should this have posed a problem? The answer lies in the
turbulent history of insurgency in the Valley. Secessionists have had
some influence in Kashmir ever since its accession to the Indian Union
in 1948. But from 1989 the secessionist demand gathered momentum
and turned violent, especially in the Kashmir Valley. Most analysts
agree that the perception that elections in the state have repeatedly
been rigged by the ruling party contributed to fuelling the insurgency
and the violence. This is why Prime Minister Vajpayee and Chief
Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh repeatedly assured the people
of the Valley that the 2002 elections would be ‘free and fair’, a promise
that was by and large fulfilled when the elections did take place. As
a matter of fact, Lyngdoh alleged after the elections that the NC had
tried to manipulate the government machinery to influence voter
behaviour, but its attempts had been foiled by the EC, a charge that
Farooq Abdullah predictably vehemently denied.
The October 2002 elections were, therefore, seen as the first genuine
chance the people of the Valley have had in a long time to exercise
their franchise. The positive impact of a credible election, it was
feared, would be offset if the people of the Valley did not have their
representative as chief minister, Mufti and his daughter argued. To be
fair to them, this was a view that most neutral observers also shared.
The Congress, however, was reluctant to concede the post of Chief
Minister to a smaller party.
The Congress’ reluctance to concede the Chief Minister’s post to the
PDP was not merely a reaction of a ‘big brother’ to his younger sibling.
 Indian National Congress 147

In the Jammu region, campaigners of the Congress party (including

Ghulam Nabi Azad) had categorically stated that if the Congress
performed well in Jammu, there was every reason to break with
tradition and have a person from this region as Chief Minister. (The
state of Jammu & Kashmir comprises three distinct ethno-religious
regions, Jammu, the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh–Leh—the state’s
Chief Minister had always been an individual from the Valley.) The
Congress also appeared to be concerned about the BJP accusing it
of ‘appeasing’ the minority community (in Gujarat) if it conceded
the Chief Minister’s post to a person from the Valley instead of an
individual from the Jammu region, even if both contenders were in
this case Muslim. The Congress leadership dilly-dallied for over a
fortnight before it eventually agreed to Mufti becoming the next Chief
Minister of Jammu & Kashmir for half the term of the assembly, that
is, two and a half years.
The ambivalence of the Congress’ approach towards Hindutva
was evident once again in early 2003, when Madhya Pradesh Chief
Minister Digvijay Singh suddenly raised the issue of cow slaughter.
Singh was at pains to portray himself as a devotee and protector of
the cow and the BJP as negligent on this issue. The MP Chief Minister
went to the extent of publicly drinking cow’s urine and vouching for
its therapeutic qualities. He then accused the BJP of being insincere in
its campaign against cow slaughter. If, he argued, the BJP was really
keen about banning cow slaughter, what prevented it from enacting
an all-India law on the issue.
The BJP was quick to pounce on this ‘challenge’. In April 2003,
during a discussion on a non-official-private member’s-Bill in
Parliament calling for a national ban on cow slaughter, Minister for
Parliamentary Affairs Sushma Swaraj embarrassed the Congress,
which opposed the Bill. The Minister recalled what had been stated
in the Lok Sabha by Shivraj Patil, a senior Congress MP and former
Speaker in support of a national ban on cow slaughter. Patil was left
sheepishly admitting that he could not recall what he had earlier said
on the subject.
Hindutva is not the only issue on which the Congress has of late been
somewhat ambivalent. Economic policy is another area in which the
148 DIVIDED WE STAND

party’s rhetoric has been perceived to be inconsistent. There have been

deep divisions within the party on the ideological thrust of the
economic reforms programme, including the issue of privatising
public sector undertakings. While there is more detailed discussion
of this topic in the chapter on the economy, it is worth pointing
out here that there has been a marked leftward shift in the party’s
rhetoric since 2003. Indira Gandhi’s garibi hatao was resurrected as:
Congress ka haath, garib ke saath (‘the Congress’ hand is with the
poor’, a reference to the election symbol of the party which is an open
palm) which was thereafter changed to Congress ka haath, aam aadmi
ke saath (‘the Congress’ hand is with the common man’). Sonia
Gandhi and spokespersons of the UPA government have repeatedly
claimed that the party and the government are working for the ‘aam
aadmi’ (common man). In October 2006, the ‘garibi hatao’ slogan
raised by the Congress under Indira Gandhi in 1971 was revived by
the UPA government. In September 2007, Rahul Gandhi, then 37,
was formally inducted into the party as general secretary. One of
his reported wishes was to extend the National Rural Employment
Guarantee programme all over the country—a wish that was promptly
acceded to by the UPA government. It became evident that he would
become a key campaigner for the Congress in the run-up to the 15th
general elections.
Given the absence of a coherent ideology, either political or economic,
can the Congress regain its past glory and form a government on its
own? That is a rather remote possibility.

Sonia Gandhi

Sonia Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress, was

born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino (better known as Sonia Maino)
on December 9, 1946, in Lusiano, a small village in Italy to Roman
Catholic parents. Her father was a building contractor and a former
supporter of Mussolini. Widow of former Prime Minister of India
Rajiv Gandhi, her rise in the country’s political firmament has been
truly exceptional. Sonia met Rajiv Gandhi in England in 1964 where
she was studying English at the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge.
Rajiv was at that time enrolled at Trinity College, University of
Cambridge. They married four years later, she moved to India and
 Indian National Congress 149

the couple started living with Rajiv’s mother who was then Prime
Minister of India, Indira Gandhi.
Despite being married into a highly political family, she and her
husband Rajiv (then a pilot with the public sector Indian Airlines)
preferred to remain aloof from politics. Even after Indira Gandhi was
voted out of power in March 1977 and after Rajiv Gandhi became
general secretary of the Congress after the death of his younger
brother Sanjay in a plane crash in 1980, Sonia stayed far away from
Indian politics preferring to take care of her two children Priyanka
and Rahul. It was not until 1983 that Sonia Gandhi acquired Indian
citizenship, a fact that was repeatedly cited by her poltical opponents
as evidence of her ‘foreign’ loyalties and political ambitions.
Yet, Sonia’s aversion to politics was well known. One writer
(Nicholas Nugent, Rajiv Gandhi—Son of a Dynasty, BBC Books,
1991) claimed that Sonia had even threatened to divorce Rajiv if he
ever entered politics. Rajiv commented on this later saying Sonia
felt she would be losing him. Another writer (Tariq Ali, An Indian
Dynasty—The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Family, Penguin, 1985)
wrote that Sonia had at one point told a friend that she would rather
have her children beg in the streets than have Rajiv join politics.
Circumstances chose otherwise.
In 1986, two years into Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister,
the Bofors scandal broke. Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman
representing Snamprogetti (an Italian government company that
had bagged a series of contracts in India) is believed to have been
involved in the scandal that involved alleged payment of bribes by
the Swedish armaments manufacturer for supply of howitzers to the
Indian Army. He, his wife and their children were close to the ‘first
family’ of India thanks to the Sonia connection and would reportedly
frequent the Indian Prime Minister’s official residence.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s death in May 1991, Sonia remained out
of the limelight for nearly six years appearing only infrequently at
public functions. Though Congress loyalists wanted her to lead the
Congress party, she refused. During P. V. Narasimha Rao’s term as
Prime Minister, she remained in the background though there were
occasional reports in the media claiming that she was unhappy with
slow progress in the investigations into Rajiv’s assassination. It was
after the Congress lost power in the 1996 general elections, that there
150 DIVIDED WE STAND

was a clamour for her to lead the party. The former President of the
Congress, the late Sitaram Kesri said he was willing to do anything—
including falling at her feet—to persuade her to join active politics.
Sonia Gandhi became a primary member of the Congress less than
a year before the plenary session of the Congress in Kolkata in August
1997. She, however, continued to maintain that she was not willing to
be anything more than an ordinary party worker. It was only on the
eve of the 1998 Lok Sabha elections that she finally took the plunge
and became the leading campaigner for the party and was credited
by most observers with preventing an electoral disaster for the party.
She officially took charge of the Congress party as its president in
1998 after much drama. Sonia was elected to the Lok Sabha from Rae
Bareilly (from which constituency in Uttar Pradesh her mother-in-
law had been elected) in 1999 and became Leader of the Opposition
in the 13th Lok Sabha.
The third woman (and eighth person) of foreign origin to hold the
post of President of the Congress party after Annie Besant and Nellie
Sengupta, Sonia Gandhi became the fifth member of the Gandhi-
Nehru family to head the party after Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal
Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
In the run-up to the 2004 general elections, Sonia undertook an
extensive and strenuous campaign for her party propagating the slogan
‘Congress Ka Haath Aam Aadmi Ke Saath’ pitching it against the
‘India Shining’ slogan of the BJP-led NDA. Her campaign style, which
involved wading into crowds despite the high level of security given
to her, was reminiscent of the manner in which Indira Gandhi would
draw people to herself in her heydays. While her speeches in Hindi
were obviously written out for her by speechwriters, she managed
to give them an emotional tenor that seemed to match Indira’s. BJP
activists routinely ridiculed Sonia, saying she was ‘a reader, not a
leader’ and dubbing her a ‘goongi gudiya’ (dumb doll), the epithet
that socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia had once used to describe
Indira Gandhi in her early years in politics. They pointed out that
Sonia rarely spoke impromptu to even the media, hinting that this
was not just because she was unfamiliar with Hindi, but also because
she wouldn’t know what to say.
 Indian National Congress 151

Despite all the ridicule and criticism, the Congress, which many
NDA supporters had forecast would not get even 100 seats, won a
tally of 145 and even her critics had to grudgingly acknowledge that
this was largely due to Sonia’s campaigning skills. Pramod Mahajan,
who was a key campaign strategist for the BJP, candidly admitted that
the Congress leader’s campaign style of connecting with the masses
had worked better than the more distant attitude adopted by his own
party’s leaders.
During the election campaign, Sonia’s political adversaries (most
of them in the BJP) kept emphasising her ‘foreign origin’, the fact that
she became an Indian citizen 15 years after she married Rajiv Gandhi
and started living in New Delhi and her lack of fluency in Hindi or
any other Indian language. Sonia, on the other hand, said she was the
country’s bahu (wife) and she had effectively become an Indian in
her heart the day she became Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law. She
added that even after she became a widow she had chosen to remain
in India. (Earlier, in May 1999, Sonia offered to resign as President
of the Congress after three senior leaders Pawar, Sangma and Anwar
challenged her right to become India’s Prime Minister.)
After the election results were announced on May 13, 2004 and it
became clear that the Congress would lead the coalition that would
form the government, it was widely believed that Sonia would become
the next Prime Minister of India. Three days later, on May 16, she
was unanimously chosen to lead a 15-party coalition government
with the support of the left. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj threatened
to shave her hair in protest if Sonia became Prime Minister. But she
confounded all her critics and surprised her supporters by declining
the position. Instead, on May 18, she nominated Manmohan Singh to
lead the Union government. Her refusal to hold the highest post in
the country was predictably hailed by her supporters as the ‘ultimate’
sacrifice or act of renunciation. Sonia, however, retained the post of
Chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party.
She also became the Chairperson of the National Advisory Council
(NAC), a body comprising eminent persons with expertise in different
areas that was set up to advise the government and interface with civil
society on the implementation of the National Common Minimum
Programme. As CPP chairperson, Sonia was not just the de facto
152 DIVIDED WE STAND

leader of the UPA but also its de jure leader. This status also allowed
her to play the role of the ‘elder statesperson’ or the ‘final arbiter’
in disputes and disagreements, be these between the left and the
Congress or UPA, or within the Congress itself. Her critics described
her as the ‘power behind the throne’ and as an extra-constitutional
authority. Though Congress supporters rejected such criticism of
her role, few had any doubts that her wish would be command, as
far as the Prime Minister or the Congress party were concerned. She
was often perceived as more ‘left of centre’ than Manmohan Singh
and Finance Minister Chidambaram on economic policy issues and
she did play a crucial role in ensuring the enactment of the National
Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) Act—described as the world’s
largest social security scheme—despite the reservations of quite a few
important functionaries in the government. She ‘intervened’ by writing
a letter to the Prime Minister when there was criticism of the UPA
government’s policy on setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZs).
In March 2006, she resigned from the Lok Sabha as well as the post
of NAC head after the ‘office of profit’ controversy broke out—on
whether an MP could hold a post that entailed pecuniary gain—and
was re-elected from Rae-Bareilly by a margin of over 400,000 votes.
She was named the third most powerful woman in the world by
Forbes magazine in 2004 and her rank in 2006 was 13th. Whenever
she was asked if her children would be entering politics, Sonia would
reply that it was up to them. Rahul was almost 34 years old when he
became MP in May 2004, but daughter Priyanka (who many believed
would join politics before her younger sibling) has restricted her
political role to merely campaigning for the party .

Manmohan Singh

Dr. Manmohan Singh is India’s 17th Prime Minister and the first
one never to have won a Lok Sabha election. The only occasion he
contested for the Lok Sabha elections was in 1999 from the South
Delhi constituency—he lost to the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra by
roughly 30,000 votes. Manmohan is the only Sikh to have held the
highest post in the country. Despite having been a Congress MP in
the Rajya Sabha since 1991, he is considered more of a technocrat
 Indian National Congress 153

and academic than a politician. Manmohan is perhaps best known

as the person who liberalised the Indian economy during his
tenure as Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government. It
is this aspect of Manmohan, together with his reputation of being
scrupulously honest, that endears him to many in the country’s upper
and middle classes.
If one goes by academic qualifications, Manmohan is undoubtedly
the most educated Prime Minister India has had. Starting off from
humble beginnings in Gah village in what is now Pakistani Punjab,
Manmohan was able to study in universities like Cambridge and
Oxford thanks to scholarships that were awarded to him for his
academic excellence. Manmohan is on record saying that his eyesight
may not have been as poor as it has turned out to be if he did not
have to spend long hours in his childhood studying by the dim light
of a lantern. The long hours paid off, with Manmohan standing first
in Punjab University in his MA in Economics, before going on to
an Economic Tripos with first class honours from Cambridge and
then a D.Phil from Oxford.
The early part of his public life was spent as a teacher of economics
at various educational institutions, but his first brush with officialdom
came in 1971 when he became economic adviser to the Union
Ministry of Foreign Trade. That was to be the start of a long stint in
government bodies and international organisations, lasting 20 years.
During this period, he was Chief Economic Adviser to the Finance
Ministry, Finance Secretary, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, Deputy
Chairman of the Planning Commission, Economic Adviser to the
Prime Minister and Secretary General of the Geneva-based South
Commission. As observers have pointed out, Manmohan is the only
man to have held all top government jobs relating to the management
of the Indian economy.
Till the point he became Finance Minister in the Rao government,
Manmohan was seen as an economist who had endorsed the
‘socialist’ policy framework of the Indian government. Even as
South Commission Secretary General he articulated the economic
aspirations of the developing countries and delivered a stinging
critique of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank. It came as quite a surprise, therefore, when he espoused a
154 DIVIDED WE STAND

rightward shift in India’s economic policy regime as Finance Minister.

The shift was welcomed not just by the Indian upper and middle
classes, but also by publications like Euromoney and Asiamoney,
which gave him awards for Finance Minister of the Year in 1993
and 1994 respectively. As Prime Minister, Manmohan has had to
tone down his image as a gung-ho economic liberaliser, though he
is still seen as among the more right-wing leaders of the Congress as
far as economic policies are concerned. Former Finance Minister of
West Bengal Ashok Mitra has claimed in a book (A Prattler’s Tale:
Bengal, Marxism and Governance, Samya, 2007) that Manmohan’s
appointment as Finance Minister in the Rao government was on
account of American pressure.
Mild-mannered and soft-spoken, he has rarely courted controversy.
Only on a few occasions has he been in the limelight for the wrong
reasons. In 1992, when he was Finance Minister, Opposition leaders
had attacked him for remarking that he would not lose his sleep
because stock-markets were going down—this comment came at
a time when India’s capital markets were racked by a securities
scandal involving, among others, stockbroker Harshad Mehta.
Manmohan attracted attention when he was elected to the Rajya Sabha
from the north-eastern state of Assam—he stated that he was a
tenant of the wife of the then Chief Minister of Assam Hiteshwar
Saikia. His official bio-data lists his ‘permanent address’ as: House
No. 3989, Nandan Nagar, Ward No. 51, Sarumataria, Dispur, Guwahati
(Assam) 781006.
Former Rajya Sabha member and journalist Kulip Nayyar
petitioned the Supreme Court challenging an amendment to the
Representation of the People Act, 1951, which allows anyone who is
a citizen of India to be elected to the Rajya Sabha from any state even
if he is not a resident of that state. On August 22, 2006, a five-judge
Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India unanimously
upheld the constitutional validity of the amendments that had been
made to the country’s electoral law dispensing with the ‘domicile’
requirement for getting elected to the upper house of Parliament. This
judgement not only provided great relief to Manmohan but to a host
of other Rajya Sabha MPs cutting across political lines.
 Indian National Congress 155

Perhaps the most controversial decision he took as Prime Minister

was the signing of an agreement with the US government headed by
George W Bush called the ‘Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation
agreement’ in July 2005. Manmohan and the government justified
the agreement arguing that it would help end India’s nuclear
isolation—which began after the tests conducted at Pokhran in 1974
and then 1998. The agreement, they said, would give India access to
nuclear technology and fuel that was essential for developing nuclear
power, which in turn was crucial to the country’s energy requirements
for the future. Critics of the deal, who included important nuclear
scientists, the left and the BJP, argued that it would compromise the
country’s sovereignty and its ability to develop its nuclear weapons
programme. The controversy was worrisome for the Congress also
because of the apprehension that the perceived proximity to a Bush-
led US administration might not go down too well with many sections
of the electorate, including the Muslims.
Another aspect of Manmohan’s Prime Ministership that has had a
mixed response is his peace overtures to Pakistan. While his predecessors
had also made gestures of conciliation towards India’s western
neighbour, Manmohan has been seen as more of a peacenik than most.
The BJP has predictably panned him for being too ‘soft’ on Pakistan,
particularly after he made a statement in Havana to the effect that,
like India, Pakistan too was a victim of terrorism.
Three years after he became Prime Minister, Manmohan’s political
instincts appear to have matured, but he is still seen by many as a
person who is more comfortable in the world of academia than in
the portals of power. Despite the relatively high ratings he has got in
several opinion polls, he continues to be perceived as an efficient and
honest administrator and not quite a political leader of significant
stature. The perception remains that it is Sonia Gandhi who calls
the shots on every important issue within the coalition and the
government. Manmohan’s own repeated assertions that Sonia is his
leader have not helped dispel this notion.
 Chapter 4
Bharatiya Janata Party:
Coping with a Power Cut

The Bharatiya Janata Party has for long rightly been perceived as the
political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Recent
electoral history, however, suggests that the party is ambivalent about
the extent to which it should assert its Hindu nationalist identity. One
section in the BJP is of the view that a militantly pro-Hindu image
cuts both ways and may, therefore, have to be used selectively. The
pro-Hindu stance certainly served its purpose in the early 1990s and
catapulted the BJP within a stone’s throw of power in New Delhi.
Yet, this same image limited its further growth in the second half of
the 1990s and on occasions was a distinct liability. It was a liability
primarily in terms of alienating almost all the minority communities
and also large sections of the majority Hindu community. It was also
an image that made other parties wary of joining hands with the BJP.
This latter fact was brought home to the BJP the hard way, when it
failed to win over any new allies to its side in May 1996, despite having
formed the Union government. Thereafter, the party’s leadership
took pains to project a more moderate and secular face while the
BJP-led NDA was in power in New Delhi even though the veneer
kept slipping from time to time.
After the NDA was voted out of power in 2004, the BJP was in a
state of shock. The party had anticipated a clear victory for the NDA
and some even believed that BJP could obtain a majority—or close to
a majority—of seats in the Lok Sabha on its own. The outcome of the
14th general elections, the results of which were declared on May 13,
2004, made the party realise that its ‘India Shining’ campaign had
badly backfired—far from enthusing voters to re-elect the NDA, the
mandate indicated that large sections of the electorate of the country
were not just unimpressed by the high-profile publicity campaign but
in fact had rebuffed the BJP’s claims that close to six years of NDA
 Bharatiya Janata Party 157

rule had benefitted the country’s ordinary people. What is noteworthy

is that it took a long time for many party sympathisers to come
to terms with the factors that had contributed to the NDA losing
power. What was worse for the BJP was that the party appeared to
be in the throes of an internal power struggle with the ‘old guard’
represented by Vajpayee and Advani getting marginalised by a
younger group. However, the divisions within the party were not as
stark or as simple as that.
The unexpected defeat in the elections gave the younger leaders an
opportunity to press their claims to lead the party. At the same time,
sections within the party which had been uncomfortable with the
party’s ‘dilution’ of its core ideology during the NDA government also
sensed a chance to push for a return to the ‘hard Hindutva’ strategy.
The leadership struggle that followed reflected both these currents.
A development that precipitated the internal crisis in the BJP
was a series of remarks made by Advani during a visit to Pakistan in
June 2005. Advani was at the time the Leader of the Opposition in
the Lok Sabha and had been invited by the Government of Pakistan.
Advani created quite a stir by describing Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the
Father of the Nation of Pakistan and the most important leader of
the Muslim League in Independent India, as a great man and a secular
person. He quoted from Jinnah’s speech to the Constituent Assembly
in August 1947 to substantiate his point. Advani’s unexpected
endorsement of a man whom the BJP had traditionally demonised
as the architect of India’s Partition created a storm within the
party and outside. Barring Jaswant Singh who publicly came out in
support of Advani and Vajpayee who made some cryptic remarks
that were open to interpretation, most other BJP leaders were clearly
unhappy with Advani’s apparent attempt to present a moderate face
before the Muslim community. Some like Yashwant Sinha even
openly criticised Advani, saying that his remarks on Jinnah were
‘unnecessary and avoidable’. Another BJP leader and former Chief
Minister of Delhi, Madan Lal Khurana, also expressed his displeasure
with Advani’s comments on Jinnah. The RSS leaders who were also
extremely unhappy with Advani’s comments decided it was time to
flex their muscles and ensure that the BJP was led by a person they
had confidence in.
158 DIVIDED WE STAND

On June 7, 2005 Advani offered to resign from the post of party

president, but took back his resignation three days later. Sinha
meanwhile suggested that Advani should step down from the post of
the Leader of the Opposition as well. He said, ‘Advani has resigned as
BJP president, he should also consider whether he can be an effective
leader of the opposition’. By taking back his resignation, Advani had
temporarily averted a leadership crisis within the party, but it soon
became evident that he would have to quit. There were reports of the
RSS insisting on his exit, though these were predictably denied. The
denials seemed hollow when barely three months later, on September 18,
Advani himself announced that he would soon resign from the post
of party president, though his term was till the end of 2006.
Advani’s impending exit from the post of BJP president precipitated
a deepening of the fissures within the party. Various individuals from
the ‘young’ section of the BJP were perceived as serious contenders
for the party president’s post. These included Pramod Mahajan,
Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh. Eventually Rajnath
Singh became the new party president, though only for the remaining
part of the term that originally Venkaiah Naidu and then Advani
were supposed to have completed. The scheduled three-year term
starting January 2004 had thus seen three individuals occupy the post.
Rajnath Singh was later re-elected for a full term as party president in
November 2006. Soon thereafter, he ‘reorganised’ the party hierarchy
in the process ‘sidelining’ Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley, two
relatively young party stalwarts.
While the game of musical chairs was going on as far as the party
president’s post was concerned, a number of leaders of the BJP who
had held prominent positions had openly started rebelling against the
party leadership as a prelude to their eventual exit from the BJP. Such
leaders included not just Khurana, but also Uma Bharti, former Chief
Minister of Madhya Pradesh and Union Minister. K N Govindacharya,
who had once been a prominent party ideologue and general secretary,
joined Uma Bharti in criticising the BJP leadership for having lost
its ideological moorings. That Bharti was uncomfortable with the
state of affairs in the party had become evident much earlier when she
stormed out of a BJP executive meeting in front of television cameras
in November 2004 daring Advani, who was then party president, to
 Bharatiya Janata Party 159

take disciplinary action against her. Her anger, she said, was prompted
by leaders without any mass base who spent their time planting stories
in the media against more popular leaders like her. While she did not
name any such leader, most observers saw this as an oblique reference
to people like Jaitley. Given the fact that Bharti’s challenge had been
broadcast live on television, Advani had no option but to suspend her
from the party, but she was predictably reintstated a few weeks later.
Bharti’s love-hate relationship with the BJP leadership continued till
she was expelled from the party in December 2005 and went on to
form her own political outfit.
Two apparently unconnected incidents that further dented
the image of the BJP were the sudden death of Pramod Mahajan
and Jaswant Singh’s sensational ‘disclosure’ in his biography that
there had been an American intelligence mole in the office of the
Prime Minister of India for several years. On April 22, 2006, Mahajan
was shot at point blank range by his younger brother, who reportedly
felt humiliated by the manner in which the elder Mahajan had treated
him. Mahajan had held a number of important positions in the
governments headed by Vajpayee as well as the party—in fact he was
a prominent election strategist and spokesperson of the BJP. Not only
was he an important party functionary, he was perhaps the only major
BJP leader from Maharashtra, a state that has provided most of the top
leaders of the RSS. Soon after Mahajan’s death, his aide was found dead
in his official residence under suspicious circumstances and his son was
hospitalised; both were accused of consuming illegal substances. As
for former Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh’s claim about an American
mole in the highest echelons of the Indian government, he released
a document whose authenticity was questioned and Singh was even
accused of seeking ‘cheap’ publicity to boost the sales of his book.
With one embarrassing incident after another denting the party’s
image, there were clear signs by the end of 2006 that the BJP would turn
to its time-tested strategy in an attempt to regain lost ground. When
the party’s national executive met in Lucknow in December soon
after Rajnath Singh was re-elected as the president, he challenged the
Congress and the SP to honour their past commitment to rebuild the
Babri mosque. ‘The BJP is clear that only a grand temple for Maryada
Purushottam (The Most Honourable Man) Lord Shri Ram should
160 DIVIDED WE STAND

be built at that place,’ he said in his speech. With the elections to the
Uttar Pradesh state assembly barely a few months away, it was
clear that the BJP was raising the pitch on the Ayodhya issue (see
Annexure at the end of the chapter). In September 2007, after the UPA
government modified a court petition relating to the Sethusamudram
project, in which Lord Rama had been described as a ‘mythical’
character, the BJP led by Advani sought to politicise the issue and
play on Hindu sentiments.
Even during the period when the NDA was in power, it is not as if
the entire rank and file of the BJP, or even all of the party’s national
leadership, was comfortable with the idea of ‘diluting’ the party’s
core Hindutva agenda. There were sections within the BJP that still
believed that the party would be best served by a single-minded
focus on garnering votes from the majority community. This section
became more assertive after the BJP won a two-thirds majority in the
December 2002 assembly elections in Gujarat after the communal riots,
which severely polarised the state’s electorate. Nevertheless, the
party’s practice even after the Gujarat elections showed that the
dominant opinion within the leadership was in favour of a more
flexible strategy.
As mentioned already, the BJP had also realised it could not hope
to form the Union government without the support of regional
parties. Hence, from a party that insisted, till as late as 1998, that
coalitions were temporary, the BJP did an about-turn and declared
that coalitions are here to stay in India.
Yet, the BJP’s opponents always maintained that the party had
only acquired a façade of moderation and its core agenda of Hindutva
remained undiluted. This has often been referred to as the BJP’s
and the Sangh Parivar’s ‘hidden agenda’. The notion that the ‘hidden
agenda’ is merely a convenient stick for envious opponents to beat
the BJP with is quite a common perception. However, it is not quite
as much of a hoary old cliché as BJP spokespersons would have
us believe. The most overt and blatant manifestation of the real
agenda of the BJP was the manner in which the party’s functionaries
tried to impart a majoritarian bias—often described by the media
as saffronisation, since the colour saffron is considered devout by
Hindus—to the education system and syllabi and content of history
textbooks in particular and also by making key changes in the
academic establishment (more on this later in the chapter).
 Bharatiya Janata Party 161

The party’s reluctance to discard the Hindutva plank was also made
evident in a series of incidents in February–March 2002. The clearest
evidence of this was of course the Gujarat riots. Never after 1947
had communal riots in a state been so widespread and so sustained.
Further, with the exception of the anti-Sikh riots that followed Indira
Gandhi’s assassination by a Sikh member of her personal security team
on October 31, 1984, there have perhaps been no other communal riots
in which virtually all the victims belonged to one community—in this
case the Muslims. It is this that led many observers to characterise the
communal disturbances in Gujarat as a ‘pogrom’. There was another
unique feature about the Gujarat riots. These were the first major riots
in India in the era of private television channels and hence the first
riots to be telecast live, as it were. The Gujarat riots were unique in
yet another respect. For perhaps the first time in India, large numbers
of relatively well-to-do people actively participated in the looting of
property owned by Muslims that accompanied the riots.
While the media and almost all political parties including most
constituents of the NDA were unanimous in criticising the Modi
administration for acting too late—whether it be in calling in the
army to control the rioters or in arranging relief for those affected—
spokespersons of the BJP (including the Prime Minister) blamed the
media for allegedly inflaming communal passions and for playing a
partisan role while reporting the incidents that had taken place.
When the then Prime Minister Vajpayee visited Gujarat for the
first time after the communal violence, he expressed regret for what
had happened and advised Modi to follow raj-dharma (or the duty
of the ruler) and not discriminate among his ‘subjects’. On the same
occasion, on the eve of a visit outside the country, Vajpayee lamented
that the Gujarat violence had made India lose face before the rest of the
world. Within weeks, however, Vajpayee had not-so-subtly changed
his position. At a party conclave in Goa, he claimed that while the
riots should not have taken place, the reasons why they occurred
should not be ignored. He claimed that if Muslims and opposition
leaders had condemned the Godhra incident—in which compartments
of a train carrying Hindu kar sevaks were set on fire in February
2002—strongly enough, the violence that followed might have been
contained. He blamed the BJP’s political opponents and the media
for demonising the entire population of Gujarat—and this became an
election slogan for Narendra Modi.
162 DIVIDED WE STAND

That the BJP was keen on garnering advantage from the communally
charged atmosphere in the state became obvious when the party
sought to hold elections in the state ahead of schedule. The Chief
Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh refused to oblige the party
and, despite the fact that he was a Constitutional authority, was
publicly and privately attacked by those in government. Lyngdoh
had been scathing in his criticism of the state administration for not
having created an atmosphere in which large sections of the minority
community living in rehabilitation camps would have been able to
exercise their franchise without fear of intimidation. The elections
were eventually conducted in December 2002. Modi led a vicious
campaign not only against his main political opponent from the
Congress—Shankersinh Vaghela who used to be a member of the BJP
and the RSS—but kept referring to the Chief Election Commissioner
by his full name, James Michael Lyngdoh, to establish Lyngdoh’s
Christian identity and impute a motive that he was somehow
favouring Sonia Gandhi because of her Christian background. On
more than one public occasion, Modi rhetorically speculated if the
two met in church. It was, of course, a separate matter that Lyngdoh
openly proclaimed that he is an atheist.
The clout of the hardliners within the BJP received a major boost
when Modi’s strategy worked—the BJP swept to power in Gujarat
with a two-thirds majority in the 182-member state assembly. Modi’s
supporters within the party, including Arun Jaitley who was general
secretary of the party at that time, were predictably exultant. The
hardliners kept talking about how the ‘Gujarat experiment’ should
be replicated in other parts of the country. If one excluded the outcome
of the Goa assembly polls that the BJP won with a slim majority,
Gujarat was the first state assembly election won by the BJP since
the third Vajpayee government came to power in New Delhi in
October 1999. But the so-called ‘Modi magic’ had worn off by the
time the next round of assembly elections took place a few months
later, in February 2003. In the small mountainous state of Himachal
Pradesh, the BJP failed to return to power. In December 2003, the
BJP did win assembly elections in three crucial states—Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—but the Hindutva agenda was
conspicuous by its absence, at least from the official campaign.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 163

The BJP’s claims that it had set aside the controversial Ayodhya
issue and adopted the NDA’s agenda as the only one to be followed
by the party while it shared power with its coalition partners also came
under a cloud in February–March 2002. The party’s opponents saw a
‘conspiracy’ when the VHP stepped up the tempo in its campaign to
build the temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya in the run-up to the
assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. The allies, however, were not
yet concerned, since the BJP publicly maintained that it had nothing
to do with the VHP’s campaign and that the Ayodhya dispute could
ideally be settled through a negotiated settlement between Hindus
and Muslims or by a court order. But, the then Attorney General Soli
Sorabjee ended up upsetting many of the BJP’s allies in the NDA
with his suggestion that a token foundation stone laying ceremony
be allowed on land acquired by the government near the disputed
site on March 15. Despite subsequent attempts at damage control,
the BJP’s ‘secular’ allies remained upset at the turn of events. The BJP,
they felt, was not honouring its promise that it would abide by the
Common Minimum Agenda of the NDA and set aside all contentious
issues. The unease of the BJP’s allies grew as the VHP and the RSS
grew increasingly belligerent while the government sought to walk
a tightrope, simultaneously attempting to placate the Sangh Parivar
and the constituents of the NDA.
A year later, the Ayodhya issue was back in focus. In February 2003,
the government moved a petition in the Supreme Court urging it to
vacate its March 2002 order banning religious activity on the acquired
land. There was, however, an interesting contrast from the situation just
a year before. Gone was the pretence that Sorabjee’s was a ‘personal
opinion’ or his reading of the legal situation; the government was
making no bones about the fact that it wanted to give part of the
acquired land to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, a VHP-supported
trust to build a Ram temple.
The outcome of the February 2002 assembly elections in Uttar
Pradesh had dealt a body blow to the BJP’s ambitions to consolidate
its position as the only alternative to the Congress in national politics.
The party’s attempts to project itself as a centrist party believing in
the future of coalitions also took a beating as the outcome of the
UP polls turned out to be much worse than what the BJP had been
expecting. Out of the 400 assembly constituencies that went to the
164 DIVIDED WE STAND

polls, the BJP ended up a poor third with 88 seats after the SP with
143 seats and the BSP with 98 seats.
During the election campaign, the BJP was quite hopeful that it
would be able to impress the electorate of India’s most populous state
and that the party’s Chief Minister Rajnath Singh (who had replaced
the octogenarian Ram Prakash Gupta more than a year earlier) would
be the most effective and efficient person to lead the economically
backward state in which caste sentiments run deep. Rajnath Singh tried
hard to rid his party of the image of being controlled by upper-caste
individuals (mainly Thakur and Brahmin) by offering reservation of
government jobs to the ‘most backward classes’ (MBCs). Though the
Supreme Court shot down his plans, Rajnath Singh had clearly sought
to divide the intermediate and lower castes and appeal to sections that
were seen as staunch supporters of the SP and the BSP. By playing
the ‘MBC card’, he had also attempted to win back to the BJP’s fold
certain lower-caste groups (like the Lodhs) owing allegiance to former
BJP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh who had been expelled from the
party in 1999. (While this strategy failed in UP, it helped the party in
neighbouring Bihar during the assembly elections held in 2005.)
The results of the UP elections left no room for doubt that the
strategy had failed to deliver the goods. Once again the BJP’s focus
in UP shifted to damage control. More specifically, an attempt was
was made to ensure, by whatever means possible, that Mulayam Singh
Yadav’s SP would not be able to form the next government in the
state, despite being by far the single-largest party in the assembly. In
the days immediately following the election results, BJP leaders kept
insisting that the party was quite prepared to sit in the Opposition
benches according to the ‘mandate of the people’. However, at the
same time, party leaders were conducting hectic negotiations with
Mayawati, the BSP leader. Soon enough, the two parties had reached
an understanding on power sharing in the state. Mayawati would
head a coalition government with the BJP and sundry, smaller groups
and individuals as junior partners.
The BJP central leadership did not have an easy time trying to
persuade its UP unit to accept such an arrangement. Several important
leaders of the BJP in UP, including Rajnath Singh, were hostile to a tie-
up with the BSP, with which the BJP had in the past had an extremely
acrimonious parting of ways. These leaders did not bother to make a
 Bharatiya Janata Party 165

secret of their opposition to any alliance with the BSP. They argued that
playing second fiddle to the BSP, a party whose support base was
predominantly among the dalits, would further alienate many of the
BJP’s supporters belonging to the upper castes. These leaders of the
BJP in UP—who were themselves from the upper castes—had to
ultimately relent, when the central leadership reportedly bluntly
told them that they had no choice but to support the coalition led by
the BSP. Rajnath Singh, in what was seen as a face-saving move, was
inducted into the Vajpayee cabinet.
The BJP–BSP tie-up nevertheless remained shaky till Deputy
Prime Minister L.K. Advani in a public appearance on April 14,
2002 made it amply clear that the alliance was there to stay. April 14
is an important day in the BSP’s calendar, since it marks the birth
anniversary of Bhimrao Ambedkar, the only dalit leader with an iconic
status cutting across rival dalit groups and parties in different parts of
the country, who is also considered to be the architect of the Indian
Constitution. At the annual rally to mark the occasion, Advani not
only made it a point to be present, but also extolled Mayawati’s virtues
in no uncertain terms, making it clear that opposition to the BJP–BSP
coalition would not be tolerated.
This remained the position of key central leaders like Vajpayee
and Advani even a year later, when a large delegation of BJP MLAs
from Uttar Pradesh came to meet the Prime Minister in New Delhi
to complain about the ‘step-motherly’ treatment being accorded to
them and their party by the Mayawati government. The two leaders
are said to have ticked them off, pointing out that having failed to
win the elections, they were in no position to be finicky. Without an
alliance with the BSP, they were reportedly told, the BJP would be in
dire straits in UP in the Lok Sabha elections due in 2004.
The central leadership’s anxiety to keep the coalition together was
understandable. Not only was UP itself an electorally crucial state for
the BJP, the possible support of the BSP in the neighbouring state of
Madhya Pradesh could even mean the difference between winning
or losing in that state. With the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections
scheduled for October–November 2003, the party did not want to
rock the boat in UP. Unfortunately for the BJP, while the UP state
unit could understand the compulsions of the central leadership, this
did not prevent many of the MLAs from making their displeasure
166 DIVIDED WE STAND

evident. They continued to maintain that the alliance would only

work to the BSP’s advantage, while the BJP’s support base in the
state would continue to shrink. Ultimately, as detailed in another
chapter, the contradictions between the BJP and the BSP led to the
alliance falling apart in August 2003 leading to Mulayam Singh Yadav
becoming Chief Minister of UP.
Unlike the BJP’s central leadership, Mayawati never bent over
backwards to keep the coalition going. She was not averse to taking
steps she knew would antagonise at least some sections within the
BJP. A prime example of this was her decision to arrest independent
MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh—alias Raja Bhaiyya—and his father.
Raja Bhaiyya is an archetypal feudal lord and is notorious for ‘ruling’
his fiefdom with brute violence. Dozens of criminal cases had been
pending against him for decades, but no progress had been made as
the administration had never before received the political support
necessary to proceed against him and his family. Raja Bhaiyya
was among the independent MLAs who supported Mayawati’s
government when it was formed in February 2002. Towards the end
of that year, however, he was part of a group of independent MLAs
and BJP dissidents who unsuccessfully sought to bring down the
Mayawati government. Suddenly, the Mayawati government swung
into action against Raja Bhaiyya. Cases that had been gathering dust
for years were resuscitated and his estates in Kunda were raided. The
police allegedly found caches of arms, buried treasures, a skeleton of
a man in a pond and so on. The once untouchable feudal lord was
put behind bars and charged under POTA for, among other things,
conspiring to kill Mayawati.
The crackdown on Raja Bhaiyya was an astute political move
that achieved several objectives. First, it sent out a clear message to
all existing and potential dissidents that they should be prepared to
face the wrath of the state if they did not fall in line. At the same
time, it helped Mayawati establish her credentials as a dalit leader
who was not scared of taking on even the most powerful among the
upper castes. Finally, it left the BJP’s leaders with the unenviable
choice of either alienating their upper-caste supporters by backing
her move or being seen as aligning themselves with a person with an
unsavoury reputation.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 167

After the BJP parted ways with the BSP in August 2003 and
Mayawati resigned from the post of UP Chief Minister, speculation
was rife that the party had tacitly supported Mulayam Singh Yadav
in his bid to become Chief Minister. Mulayam’s detractors alleged
that the quid pro quo for the BJP’s tacit support was that the state
government would soft pedal the criminal cases pertaining to the
demolition of the Babri masjid against BJP leaders like Advani, Joshi
and Uma Bharti. What explained the BJP’s changed attitude towards
Mulayam, traditionally the party’s prime rival in UP? The main factor
seemed to be that the BJP wanted to buy time. When the alliance with
the BSP broke up in August 2003, the BJP was clearly in disarray in
UP and could ill afford an election at that stage. Also, it needed to get
its act together before the 14th general elections.
This episode encapsulated the various contradictions that the BJP
tried to resolve in its new avatar as a party in government rather than
as one in opposition. Electorally, it was engaged in an attempt to
reconfigure the caste coalitions it had traditionally banked on.
Politically, it was struggling to find a way by which it could reconcile
the conflicting interests of the Hindutva hardliners and the ‘secular’
allies of the BJP in the NDA. While Vajpayee, Advani, and the
then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh projected the ‘moderate’ or
‘liberal’ mask of the party in power, others like Human Resources
Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi were left free to
vigorously pursue the party’s Hindu nationalist agenda.

Saffronising Education
The very fact that Joshi and another hardliner, Uma Bharti, were
chosen to head the Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry
when Vajpayee became Prime Minister in 1998 was seen by observers
as evidence of the party’s hidden agenda. This was only one of two
ministries in which both the senior as well as junior ministers were
from the BJP, the other being the Ministry for Information and
Broadcasting (which too could greatly help the party’s propaganda
efforts). Joshi’s first stint in the job was surrounded by controversy,
but he retained the portfolio in the third Vajpayee government as well.
This only added to the misgivings of the BJP’s political opponents
about the party’s hidden agenda.
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In his first tenure as HRD Minister, Joshi had already made

sweeping changes in key positions in the academic establishment,
pertaining to both school and higher education. The Indian Council
for Historical Research (ICHR) witnessed a complete revamp, at the
end of which historians known to be inclined towards the BJP were at
the helm. That this was not merely a ‘jobs for the boys’ move is evident
from the pronouncements of historians close to the BJP, like K.S. Lal,
who had earlier headed the Archaeological Survey of India. The right-
wing historian was quoted by Akshaya Mukul who then worked for The
Hindustan Times as arguing that there was nothing wrong with Joshi
attempting to rewrite history, since the Congress and left intellectuals
had (according to him) done the same thing. Lal told Mukul:

Historians like Nurul Hasan saw to it that books written during

his stint as education minister hid the true face of Islam, which is
essentially a barbaric religion. Instead, emphasis was laid on the
study of economic history. Institutions like NCERT [National
Council for Educational Research and Training] and ICHR were
used to propagate this ideology.

Lal went on to assert that the ‘corrections’ would now be thorough.

Textbooks should highlight the achievements of Hindus during

the Vedic period; the role of religion during the medieval period;
how Muslim rulers from [Allauddin] Khilji onwards deliberately
kept Hindu farmers at subsistence level, forcing them to migrate as
indentured labour to Mauritius and the West Indies.

It was the communal bias that is evident in these statements,

which have little basis in fact, that was the real cutting edge of the
attempt to saffronise education. It was not as if Lal’s positions were
an aberration from the norm among those appointed or elevated to
high positions in academia under Joshi’s tutelage. Krishna Gopal
Rastogi, Joshi’s appointee to the NCERT, had in 1998 privately
circulated a copy of his autobiography titled Aap Beeti (literally,
‘My Experiences’). Rastogi has in his book graphically narrated how
he shot dead a Muslim woman in Uttar Pradesh during Partition.
Rastogi has justified his actions by writing that the woman’s beauty
had distracted his friends in the RSS from rioting and turned them
into ‘lusting human beings who were on the verge of raping her’.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 169

The author stated, ‘I have always felt sorry for the action’ (which
stunned his friends into returning to their ‘task’). The RSS head
K.S. Sudarshan had, in his foreword to Rastogi’s book, lauded the
author’s wife for allowing his ‘physical needs’ to be fulfilled during
his trips abroad. On his foreign travels, Rastogi writes that the three
things most easily available in the West were food, liquor and women.
He has, at the same time, claimed that he was reminded of divine
fairies when he saw scantily clad women on a beach in Yugoslavia.
Rastogi has also revealed his unhappiness about not having been earlier
appointed as an adviser to the education minister because he ‘did not
like a more intelligent person to work under him’. After the contents
of Rastogi’s controversial autobiography became public, he claimed
that sections of his account were ‘fictionalised’.
Rastogi was not the only Joshi protege at the NCERT. A few months
after he assumed office, in July 1998, Joshi appointed J.S. Rajput
as Director. Rajput’s mandate was clear, to ‘indigenise’ education.
Guidelines issued by him made it clear that ‘the remnants of the alien
legacy of the pre-independence period have to be shed completely’.
Nor were the ICHR and the NCERT the only institutions that faced
the sweep of Joshi’s broom. The physics professor also radically
revamped the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR)
and the governing body of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla, packing both these institutions with votaries of Hindutva.
The extent of Joshi’s zeal for ensuring that the academic establishment
was packed with those with the right worldview is best illustrated by
what happened at the ICSSR in 2001. The late Manohar Lal Sondhi,
a former MP belonging to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the BJP’s earlier
avatar), who had been appointed Head of ICSSR by Joshi, was
sacked soon after he organised a seminar of ‘intellectuals’ from
India and Pakistan. The seminar was organised days before the Agra
summit meeting in July 2001 between Vajpayee and Musharraf.
While Sondhi was allegedly removed for financial irregularities and
replaced by a bureaucrat, it was no secret that the seminar was the
real reason for his dismissal. The episode revealed how intolerant
the ruling establishment was towards even a ‘liberal’ member of the
Sangh Parivar. Another Joshi nominee who had to face the HRD
170 DIVIDED WE STAND

Minister’s wrath for being too independent was ICHR head

M.G.S. Narayanan who, like Sondhi, was ostensibly removed for
financial irregularities.
The BJP’s determined efforts to ‘saffronise’ the education system
became more evident when the Central Board of Secondary Education
(CBSE) issued a circular deleting certain references made in NCERT
textbooks on history meant for school students. These references
were, among other things, to Hindus eating beef during the Vedic
ages and also on the question of whether there existed a Hindu
civilisation at Ayodhya—the so-called birthplace of the mythical Lord
Rama—around 2000 B.C., the period to which Rama is sought to be
dated according to Puranic tradition. These efforts saw the political
opposition coming together against the BJP and the NDA; Congress
leader Arjun Singh even accused the government of ‘Talibanising’
education which led to members of the ruling coalition walking out
of the Rajya Sabha.
BJP-ruled states too contributed to the effort at saffronising
education. The Kalyan Singh government in UP, for instance, had
rewritten history textbooks (as reported by Frontline in November
1998) to portray the RSS founder, Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, as one of the
leading lights of the freedom movement. Also, the entire period of
rule by Muslims was presented as a ‘period of resistance’ by Hindus.
The Sultanate period was characterised as one in which society was
divided into two main classes—‘ruling or Muslim class and ruled or
non-Muslims of whom Hindus were the majority’.
Even in Rajasthan, a state that was ruled between 1993 and 1998
by the BJP’s Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a Chief Minister seen as very
much in the same moderate liberal mould as Vajpayee and who went
on to become India’s Vice President, the party attempted to use
textbooks for its propaganda. Frontline detailed how school textbooks
in the state not only justified the Pokhran nuclear blasts, but also
played up writings of RSS ideologues like Professor Rajendra Singh,
the then RSS chief, Tarun Vijay, the editor of the RSS mouthpiece
Panchajanya, and K.S. Sudarshan. These attempts were apart from the
RSS-run Vidya Bharati institutions. These include 14,000 schools at
the nursery, primary and secondary levels with 18 lakh students, 60
colleges and 25 other institutions of higher education. An NCERT
 Bharatiya Janata Party 171

report in 1996 had warned that many of the Vidya Bharati textbooks
were ‘designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism’.
Thus, there can be little doubt that the BJP and the RSS did have
an agenda distinct from that of the NDA’s, even if the agenda was
not exactly hidden. At the same time though, the party succeeded in
ensuring that this agenda did not acquire too high a profile, except on
rare occasions like the states’ education ministers’ conference in 1998,
where Joshi’s eagerness to thrust a report drawn up by a known RSS
votary and to use the controversial Vande Mataram song as a substitute
for the national anthem in opening the conference, drew flak from
allies and foes alike.
Historians like Bipan Chandra and Romila Thapar, two so-called
left-wing historians, passages from whose textbooks were deleted by
the NCERT/CBSE dictat, have argued that changing the manner in
which history is taught to young people is crucial for the RSS and
the BJP. For them, it is crucial that India’s ancient past be glorified
so that the country’s subsequent decline can be largely attributed to
the onset of Mughal rule. For the propagandists of the Sangh Parivar,
the achievements of Muslim rulers like Akbar need to be underplayed
just as they seek to lay less emphasis on the degeneration of Hindu
society because of the ills of the caste (varna) system which were
responsible for the rapid spread of Jainism, Buddhism and later, Islam
in the subcontinent. If this slant is not imparted to the interpretation
of ancient and medieval Indian history, Chandra contends that
the entire edifice of the communal ideology of the RSS and the BJP
would collapse.

Controlling the Organs of the State

The BJP’s attempts to propagate its Hindutva agenda were not
confined to the educational establishment. The party’s supporters and
sympathisers over the years came to occupy key positions in various
organs of the state, while those seen as inimical to its ideology and
interests were marginalised in the bureaucracy, the defence services,
the judiciary and in non-government organisations. A large number
of retired judges, bureaucrats and senior officers of the armed forces
joined the BJP in the second half of the 1990s.
172 DIVIDED WE STAND

As a part of this process, some individuals also acquired power and

influence disproportionate to their official position. The most obvious
example was the former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister
who doubled up as National Security Advisor, Brajesh Mishra,
a former career diplomat. Mishra was catapulted to the pinnacle
of administrative power during the second and third Vajpayee
governments. So powerful did he become that at one point in 2000,
the media, the Opposition and even sections within the Sangh Parivar
were of the view that he was the power behind the throne. While some
went as far as to suggest that he was the ‘real prime minister’, most
analysts agreed that Mishra’s ability to influence government policy
and decisions was considerably greater than most members of the
Vajpayee cabinet. At one stage, the RSS as well as the Shiv Sena gunned
for Mishra and another bureaucrat, Nand Kishore (N.K.) Singh.
Vajpayee however, stood behind Mishra like a rock. He made it clear in
no uncertain terms that any attack on his Principal Secretary amounted
to a personal attack on him. Though an official panel suggested that
Mishra be divested of one of his two responsibilities, nothing of the
sort took place. Mishra, whose father was former Congress Chief
Minister of Madhya Pradesh in 1963, continued to wield considerable
clout—he merely adopted a lower public profile.
The importance of Mishra in the Vajpayee regime was indicative
of a bigger strategy followed by the BJP in the ruling coalition—allies
and partners were given considerable ‘autonomy’ to pursue their
political interests provided they did not object to the BJP using the
levers of power to try and fulfil its long-term goals. It was, therefore,
no coincidence that barring the Ministry of Defence, all crucial
ministerial portfolios (including Home, External Affairs, Finance,
and Human Resources Development) were ‘reserved’ for the BJP.
The party had no problems in handing over the stewardships of
many of the economic ministries perceived as lucrative to its partners,
ministries such as Telecommunications, Civil Aviation, Industry and
Commerce, Railways, and Power.
A rather controversial decision of the NDA government was the
appointment of Bhishma Kumar Agnihotri as advisor in the Indian
embassy in the US in August 2001. In an unprecedented move, he was
given a ‘personal’ rank of Ambassador and Ambassador-at-large for
 Bharatiya Janata Party 173

non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin. His appointment

raised the hackles of the political opposition not only because of
Agnihotri’s close links with the RSS but also because the American
government embarrassed New Delhi by categorically refusing to grant
him the diplomatic status that was asked for. The Vajpayee
government sought to ignore the controversy that had been generated.
Nearly four years later, in May 2005, the Comptroller & Auditor
General of India sharply criticised the Ministry of External Affairs
for incurring ‘avoidable expenditure’ of Rs 16 crore of public funds
on the extraordinary facilities that had been provided to Agnihotri.
The Ambassador-at-large resigned in 2004 after his political mentors
were voted out of power.
In early January 2000, the Gujarat government ruled by the
BJP, which had a majority in the assembly on its own, announced
a controversial decision to lift the ban on government employees
joining the RSS. The conduct rules for government employees
not only barred them from joining or aiding any political party or
movement, but also specifically listed 14 organisations including the
RSS as those which they could not join. The Gujarat government’s
order, by lifting the ban on the RSS alone, certainly created the
impression that the state government was bent on appeasing Hindu
organisations. This impression was strengthened by the track record
of the BJP government in Gujarat and the timing of the order on
the eve of a major RSS gathering. Gujarat, through 1998 and 1999,
had witnessed a spate of violent incidents against the Christian
community, particularly in the tribal-dominated Dangs district.
Towards the end of 1998, Vajpayee himself came under considerable
criticism for suggesting that a national debate on religious conversions
take place after a visit to some of the communally disturbed areas
of Gujarat. Since the VHP, which was seen as instrumental in the
attacks, had also taken the position that conversions of tribals by
Christian missionaries had led to communal tension, Vajpayee’s call
for a national debate on conversions was seen as dovetailing into a
communal Hindu agenda.
While the BJP in Gujarat had to climb down from its position
following instructions from the party ‘high command’ and after its
allies kicked up a fuss, the BJP, prior to the Gujarat riots of 2002,
174 DIVIDED WE STAND

had always claimed that it was the best guarantor of protection of

the rights of minorities and that communal disturbances had not
taken place in states ruled by the party. More than one judicial
commission of inquiry has indicted supporters of the Sangh Parivar
for instigating communal riots, but often such riots have occurred
in states in which the BJP has not been in power. Significantly, the
brutal murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two
sons in January 1999 took place in a remote forest area in Orissa, a
Congress-ruled state. This impression that minorities are most safe
under BJP rule has, however, taken a beating after the series of recent
incidents involving attacks on Christians in Gujarat followed by the
2002 communal violence against Muslims.
Earlier, the BJP–Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra had tried
its very best to delay the publication of the report of the Justice
Sri Krishna Commission, which inquired into the December 1992
communal riots in Mumbai and the bomb blasts in March 1993.
The waves of riots which rocked India’s commercial capital in the
wake of the demolition of the Babri masjid left some 3,000 dead and
many more injured, most of them belonging to the Muslim minority.
The Manohar Joshi government in Maharashtra refused to initiate
any action against those who had been indicted in the Sri Krishna
Commission report for inciting the riots, including some of his own
ministers as well as the Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.

Reworking Caste Equations

At the same time, the so-called moderate sections of the BJP continue
their efforts to rid the party of its exclusivist image by actively wooing
tribals and lower-caste Hindus, with varying degrees of success.
In December 1999, Vajpayee announced that the government was
committed to amending the laws relating to job reservations for
those from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Under the
existing provisions, while 22 per cent of all government jobs at the
entry level are reserved for these categories, promotions are ‘merit-
based’. Various SC/ST organisations have for long been demanding
that the 22 per cent reservation be extended to promotions as well.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 175

Merit as a criterion, they argued, was used by upper-caste superiors

to deny the SC/ST employees promotion. The courts, however, have
ruled in the past that promotions without merit as a criterion were
violative of the law. Vajpayee’s assurance in December 1999 was that
the laws would be suitably amended to ensure that merit would no
longer be a necessary criterion for promotion.
This move was out of character with the BJP’s traditionally implicit
apathy towards low caste Hindus. In fact, it was the perception that
the BJP was essentially a party anaemic to the lower rungs of Hindu
caste society that helped the party make the most of the upper-caste
backlash against the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s
report in the Hindi belt. Though not in tune with the BJP’s track
record, Vajpayee’s attempt to woo the SC/ST sections was a response
to the imperatives of the times. In Uttar Pradesh, in particular, the
expulsion of former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh from the BJP led to
an erosion in the party’s support base among the intermediate castes.
This was sought to be countered by Rajnath Singh as Chief Minister
of UP, by a concerted pre-election effort to woo the so-called ‘most
backward castes’ by reserving government jobs for them within the
quota reserved for the ‘other backward classes’ (OBCs). The BJP
justified its strategy by arguing that the relatively advanced sections
of the OBCs had cornered most of the jobs that had been reserved
for this section. While there is certainly considerable merit in
this argument, the party’s detractors are also not wrong in claiming
that this marks the BJP’s attempts to create a rift within the ranks
of the OBCs, a substantial proportion of whom are aligned to the
SP in the state.
What is interesting here is that the BJP in UP had attempted to cobble
together a caste alliance very similar to what the Congress had done
in the 1970s and 1980s. The Congress after 1967 had lost the support
of substantial sections of the intermediate castes, who saw in Charan
Singh a leader of their own ilk, but retained its hold over power thanks
to the support of the upper-most and lower-most castes of the Hindu
hierarchy. Yet, the BJP was a long way from replicating the situation.
For one, the party, unlike the Congress of yore, had virtually no support
among the sizeable Muslim population (in both the 12th and the 13th
176 DIVIDED WE STAND

Lok Sabhas, the BJP had just one Muslim MP). Moreover, given the
consolidation of the BSP, it seems unlikely that the BJP will be able
to win over large sections of the dalits to its fold.
Among the tribals of northern India, on the other hand, the
BJP has made impressive inroads. Seats reserved for candidates
from the scheduled tribes—whether in Parliament or in the state
legislatures—have traditionally been the bastion of the Congress
since independence. This was true more or less across the length
and breadth of India, except in some pockets where local groups
specifically espousing the cause of tribals challenged the dominance
of the Congress. Thus, groups like the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha
(JMM) in Jharkhand (earlier the southern districts of Bihar) or the
Mizo National Front in Mizoram were the only serious challenge
the Congress faced in tribal-dominated areas.
Today, that situation has undergone a drastic change in wide areas
of northern India stretching from Gujarat to Orissa and Jharkhand.
In this band cutting across the heart of India, it is the BJP that now
dominates tribal seats, with the Congress struggling to catch up.
Here are some telling statistics: In the elections to the state assembly
in Bihar (which then included Jharkhand) held in 2000, the BJP
won 14 of the 28 seats reserved for STs, the Congress and the JMM
could do no better than six each. In neighbouring Orissa, where
elections were held at the same time, the BJP contested 23 of the 34
ST seats, leaving its partner the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to contest the
remaining 11. The BJP won 13 seats and the BJD won eight, the same
number as the Congress.
Two-and-a-half years later, the same trend was visible in the
December 2002 Gujarat assembly elections. The BJP won 13 of the state’s
26 ST seats, the Congress, 11. Fast forward another year to December
2003 and move to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—
the trend was if anything, even clearer. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP
won 37 of the 41 ST seats, the Congress just two. In Chattisgarh,
the 34 ST seats were split 25–9 in favour of the BJP and in Rajasthan
the Congress won five of the state’s 24 ST seats against the BJP’s 15.
In these six states put together, therefore, the BJP held at the end of
2003, 117 of the 187 assembly seats reserved for tribal candidates. The
second biggest party, the Congress, held a mere 41 by comparison.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 177

What explains this dramatic turnaround among tribals? Much of

the credit for this impressive performance by the BJP must go to the
Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), an RSS front working among tribals.
For the record, the VKA does various things for the benefit of the
tribals, including setting up schools and health centres. The cutting
edge of its activities, however, remains its campaign to prevent
tribals from being converted to Christianity. The VKA has been
quite successful in polarising tribals along communal lines, pitting
the ‘Hindu’ tribals (many of whom are actually followers of animist
religions) against the Christians. Partly, it has been helped by the fact
that successive Congress governments were quite content to pay lip
service to developing tribal areas, while doing precious little. The
fact that tribals who have converted to Christianity also typically
have better access to education and hence to jobs has also helped the
VKA in its attempts to drive a wedge between tribals belonging to
different religions.
There are many who believe, somewhat simplistically, that the BJP
succeeded in government by becoming increasingly like the Congress,
a centrist political party that had attempted to reconcile the interests of
different sections of society. In the early 1990s, BJP insiders who were
sympathetic to the more rabid sections within the Sangh Parivar would
jocularly remark that Vajpayee was the best known Congressman in
the BJP. One BJP leader, K.N. Govindacharya, was even quoted as
claiming before a foreign diplomat that Vajpayee was the mukhota
(mask) of the party—although this statement was denied, the message
stuck. Little could these BJP ‘hardliners’ have realised—as they did
in June 1996 after the first 13-day Vajpayee government fell—that
they would have to eat their words, that the BJP would have to shed
its exclusivist stance and compromise with its erstwhile political
opponents to remain in power. The BJP subsequently had to justify
these political compromises as a choice between ‘lesser evils’.
To understand the manner in which the BJP has evolved from a
mere adjunct of its ideological parent, the RSS, to a political party that
has sought to occupy the centrist space in the country’s polity vacated
by the Congress, it is necessary to go back in time. In the course of
this chapter, we juxtapose the current face of the BJP with references
to the past to examine how the party has become what it is today.
178 DIVIDED WE STAND

Living Down the Past

The Bharatiya Janata Party is the successor to what was the Bharatiya
Jana Sangh (BJS) between 1951 and 1977, but most of the political party’s
supporters and cadre owe allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh, ostensibly a social association of Hindu nationalists, the largest
organisation of its kind in India and the world. Whereas the Indian
National Congress was formally established in 1885, the growth of
the RSS and some other nationalist organisations like the Hindu
Mahasabha can be traced to the second decade of the 20th century.
The RSS was founded by Keshavrao Baliram Hedgewar in 1925 and
consolidated by M.S. Golwalkar (better known as Guruji, meaning
teacher or guide) from 1940 onwards. But it was only in the wake
of the January 30, 1948 assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the
widespread condemnation of the assassin, Nathuram Godse and his
links with the RSS that the Sangh felt the need for a political front.
The circumstances which led to the founding of the BJS in 1951 were
explained by the former BJP Vice President, the late K.R. Malkani, in
an article on the party’s history posted on the BJP’s official website:

The RSS, along with millions of people, did not approve of

Gandhiji’s Muslim appeasement policy…but it had the greatest
respect for the Mahatma. Indeed, Gandhiji had visited the RSS
winter camp in Wardha in December 1934 and addressed the Delhi
RSS workers in a bhangi [low caste] colony in September 1947.
He had deeply appreciated the ‘noble sentiments’ and ‘astonishing
discipline’ of the RSS…. But after his killing, 17,000 RSS workers—
including Shri Guruji—were accused of conspiracy of the murder of
Mahatma Gandhi…. But during all this time, not one MLA or MP
raised the issue in any legislature. For the RSS, it was the moment
of truth…unless the RSS grew political teeth and wings, it would
always be at the mercy of unscrupulous politicians. This was the
context in which Shri Guruji blessed the birth of the Bharatiya Jana
Sangh under the leadership of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee.

This account of the origins of the BJP clearly establishes that the
party is the political ‘teeth and wings’ of the RSS and is contrary to
the position adopted by certain BJP spokespersons in recent years
that while many party leaders are members of the RSS, the BJP as a
 Bharatiya Janata Party 179

party only has fraternal links with the Sangh and is independent of,
and autonomous from, the RSS.
For the better part of the first half-century of independent India,
the Congress ruled India while the BJP remained a party in
opposition. The BJP and its predecessor participated in a number of
coalition governments both at the Union as well as in a number of
states in northern India from the 4th general elections in 1967.
However, it was not until as late as May 1996, nearly three decades
later, that a representative of this political stream for the first time came
to occupy the highest post in the country when Atal Behari Vajpayee
headed the Union government for a period of barely two weeks.
While this was the shortest tenure of any Indian Prime Minister,
Vajpayee—the first Prime Minister who did not have his origins in the
Congress—returned to the seat of power in New Delhi for a second
time after the February 1998 elections by forming a shaky and fragile
coalition of over a dozen political parties. This government lasted 13
months (for the superstitious, Vajpayee’s first term as Prime Minister
had lasted 13 days!) before it lost a dramatic vote of confidence in the
Lok Sabha by a single vote. Vajpayee returned as Prime Minister for
the third time in October 1999 after the 13th general elections—the
third in barely three-and-a-half years—this time heading a larger and
more stable coalition of some two dozen partners.
The BJP’s political opponents have always dubbed the party’s
followers as communal, exclusivist, majoritarian, fanatical and
fundamentalist. The more militant supporters of the BJP and
its fraternal organisations believe that Hindus in India are in danger
of losing their identity in the land of their birth because successive
Congress governments have pandered excessively to the interests
of minorities (read Muslims). An extreme viewpoint—articulated
by persons like Acharya Giriraj Kishore of the VHP—is that India,
which is home to the world’s second-largest population of Muslims
(after Indonesia), is unique in the sense that the minority community
has been able to control if not dominate the Hindus who comprise a
majority (around 80 per cent of the Indian population). This could
happen, it is claimed, because past Congress governments were
willing to excessively placate Muslims and condone extremist and
fundamentalist elements among them.
180 DIVIDED WE STAND

Some of those from the BJP’s ideological fraternity also contend that
because Hindus are divided into hundreds of castes, while the Muslims
are less divided, the Muslims effectively become the single biggest
group in India rather than a minority community. The more moderate
sections of the BJP, on the other hand, acknowledge that Indian
society is diverse, plural and multi-cultural and Hindus as the
dominant community should accommodate the interests of the
minorities. Nevertheless, those belonging to even this liberal section
within the BJP are not always comfortable condemning majority
communalism in terms as strong as they use for the communalism
that is displayed by fringe sections of the Muslims in India.
Many BJP supporters frequently invoke the violent memories of
Partition and the formation of Pakistan. The Congress has always
attacked the BJP (and earlier the BJS) because Nathuram Godse was
said to be a supporter of the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh spokespersons have, on the other hand, claimed
that Godse had publicly rejected the views of the RSS and joined the
Hindu Mahasabha before he started planning his assassination of
Gandhi. The Congress has always claimed a right to rule the country
on the ground that its organisation was at the forefront of the struggle
for independence that culminated in 1947. At the same time, the
Congress has criticised the BJP because its supporters did not play
an active enough role in throwing British colonial rulers out of the
country. Congress leader Arjun Singh once challenged the BJP and
the RSS to place before the nation the names of those among its
supporters who had opposed British rule. Atal Behari Vajpayee’s
official curriculum vitae (in the Lok Sabha Who’s Who) does, of
course, state that he was jailed in 1942 during the time of the Quit
India movement against colonial rule, but more on that later (see
profile of Vajpayee at the end of the chapter). The BJP’s sympathisers,
on the other hand, don the mantle of being the ‘true’ nationalists, the
‘genuine’ patriots who did not collaborate with the British.
In a critique of the RSS, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags (Delhi:
Orient Longman, 1993), Tapan Basu, Pradip Dutta, Sumit Sarkar,
Tanika Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen, all of whom are left academics
based in Delhi, argued that the events of December 6, 1992 reaffirm the
conviction that the RSS and the VHP dictate the politics of the Hindu
 Bharatiya Janata Party 181

right and define the limits within which the BJP can manouevre. The
editor’s preface to the book states:

The Hindu right has for long operated with two faces…. On the
one hand, it has sought to present a gentle face symbolised in
L.K. Advani’s beatific smile; on the other it has widely projected
an angry, aggressive and savagely sectarian face expressed in
the speeches of Sadhvi Rithambara and Uma Bharti. These two
faces are iconically represented…in the twin images of Ram…the
image of Ram lalla, the child god and the image of Ram as the
masculine warrior god. The Hindu right also talks in two languages:
the language of democracy and that of authoritarianism, the
language of law and that of force. The BJP claims to function within
a constitutional, democratic, legal framework; but the activities of
the RSS, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal mock this framework.

Over the years, the RSS has sought to gain greater acceptability by
appropriating icons of Indian history. The list includes spiritual
leaders like Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Sister
Nivedita, and leaders of the freedom movement like Netaji Subhash
Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Annie Besant, Vallabbhai Patel and
even Gandhi. In fact, most members of the Sangh Parivar have more
than a hint of admiration for independent India’s first Union Home
Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Jawaharlal Nehru’s government
who presided over the construction of a temple at Somnath that had
been destroyed by Muslim conquerors. It is no coincidence that former
Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, had often
been affectionately compared to Sardar Patel. So has Narendra Modi,
who was dubbed the ‘Chhota (small) Sardar’. The supporters of the
Sangh Parivar predictably ignore the fact that Patel was, on many
occasions, a trenchant critic of the RSS. In projecting Patel as a great hero
of the national movement, it also likes to drive home the point that
the Congress has not adequately appreciated the contribution of
leaders like him in the national movement while lauding the role of
the Nehru–Gandhi family.
The need to associate itself with leaders identified with the
freedom movement stems from the fact that the RSS has for long,
and rightly, been perceived as an organisation that stayed aloof
from the mainstream of the anti-colonial struggle. The fact that
182 DIVIDED WE STAND

Gandhi’s assassin had for long been a member and activist of the
RSS (though at the time of the assassination he was a member of the
Hindu Mahasabha) only added to this need. RSS publications (and
its website) prominently display statements by many of these leaders
allegedly praising the activities of the RSS. They, of course, do not
bother to point out that these same leaders had on several occasions
scathingly criticised the RSS as a communal organisation or that
Bhagat Singh was a communist.
The RSS’ selective quoting of Gandhi perhaps best illustrates the
point. Their propaganda material keeps emphasising the fact that
Gandhi had been impressed by the discipline of the RSS cadre when
he visited an organisational camp at Wardha in Maharashtra (not far
from Gandhi’s own Sevagram) at the invitation of the RSS founder,
Dr. Hedgewar, in 1934. Dr. Hedgewar himself had been a former
member of the Congress party and had been jailed briefly during the
Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930–31. What the RSS and the BJP
conveniently overlook is what Gandhi said about the RSS 12 years
after his visit to the RSS camp at Wardha in the wake of the communal
riots of 1946. When one of Gandhi’s supporters praised the RSS cadre
for the work done by them in helping Punjabi refugees at the transit
camp in Wagah (now a border post between India and Pakistan),
Gandhi had answered, ‘But don’t forget even so had Hitler’s Nazis
and the fascists under Mussolini.’ He went on to describe the RSS as
a communal body with a totalitarian outlook and asserted, ‘the way
[to independence] does not lie through akhadas (wrestling groups)…if
they are meant as a preparation for self-defence in Hindu–Muslim
conflicts, they are foredoomed to failure. Muslims can play the same
game, and such preparations, covert or overt, do cause suspicion and
irritation. They can provide no remedy.’
That Gandhi should have drawn an analogy between the RSS and
the Nazis was hardly surprising. M. S. Golwalkar was an unabashed
admirer of Hitler’s methods as this excerpt from his We or Our
Nationhood Defined (1938) reveals:

German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To
keep the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked
the world by her purging the country of the semitic races—the
Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 183

Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races

and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated
into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn
and profit by.

Golwalkar was not reticent when it came to elaborating on exactly

what the lessons for India were:

The non-Hindu people in Hindustan must either adopt the

Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere
Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of
the Hindu nation, i.e. they must not only give up their attitude
of intolerance and ingratitude towards this land and its age-old
traditions, but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and
devotion instead; in one word, they must cease to be foreigners or
may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation,
claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential
treatment, not even citizen’s rights.

Khaki Shorts points out that Golwalkar developed his exclusivist

logic to target one more enemy: the communists who were branded
as being of foreign origin. Even after Nehru’s government banned
the RSS in February 1948 following Gandhi’s assassination, in his
letters to Nehru and Patel, Golwalkar argued for lifting the ban on
the RSS as it could help the government of independent India fight
against the ‘menace’ of communism. There were many within the
Congress at that time, not excluding Acharya Kripalani and Patel
himself, who were sympathetic to his pleas and the RSS won back its
legality in July 1949.

Legitimising the Hindutva Agenda

The BJP and the BJS, even when they were part of coalition
governments in New Delhi or in various states, had sought to retain
their distinctive identity despite being part of bigger coalitions. The
Janata Party government, which came to power in March 1977 after
19 months of Emergency rule by defeating the Congress headed by
Indira Gandhi, broke apart in 1979 on the issue of ‘dual membership’
184 DIVIDED WE STAND

of its constituents, namely, the BJS group led by External Affairs

Minister Vajpayee and Information & Broadcasting Minister L.K.
Advani, who both refused to disown their association with the RSS.
It is ironic to recall how ‘socialist’ George Fernandes—who later
became Vajpayee’s ardent supporter, close confidante and Defence
Minister—was at the forefront of the campaign to remove the BJS
section from within the Janata Party government on this issue. More
than a decade later, in September–October 1990, the V.P. Singh
government collapsed soon after the BJP withdrew its support in the
wake of Advani’s arrest in Bihar during his rath yatra to build the
Ram temple at Ayodhya.
It was the BJP and its allied organisations like the RSS, the VHP
and the Bajrang Dal which took the initiative to mobilise the group
which demolished the Babri masjid. The destruction of what the BJP’s
supporters euphemistically called a ‘disputed structure’ was sought to
be projected as a dramatic assertion of the victory of the Hindus over
the Muslims who had conquered and ruled India for centuries and as
a righting of a historical wrong. Many of those who participated in
the demolition were young lumpens who wanted to return to their
nondescript villages with a handful of rubble (symbolically referred
to as Babar’s bones). The demolition of the mosque, preceded by
Advani’s rath yatra, resulted in a violent fallout more than a thousand
kilometres away in places like Mumbai and Surat in Gujarat where waves
of anti-Muslim riots occurred leaving hundreds dead and thousands
more traumatised. In March 1993, a series of bomb blasts in public
places occurred which were apparently in retaliation for the demolition
of the mosque.
In 1997, Ainslee T. Embree, professor and India-watcher at Brown
University in the US, argued that describing the groups responsible
for the demolition of the mosque as fundamentalist or fanatic can be
misleading as these terms suggest a primarily religious motivation.

Hindu nationalists is a more accurate description, for, their leaders

insisted, they were inspired not by religious fervour but by a desire
to assert the pre-eminence of Hindu culture in the life of the Nation.
The unifying ideology of Hindu culture, to which they gave the
name ‘Hindutva’, was an explicit rejection of secular nationalism,
which, they argued, was a deceptive mask for enemies of the Hindu
 Bharatiya Janata Party 185

nation, including the westernised, denationalised intellectuals that

had made common cause with Muslims, communists, and other
alien ideologies, to seize control of the state.

The rise in the BJP’s political support base was closely linked to the
Ram temple/Ayodhya controversy although the party had consciously
sought to play down the issue in the years when it was in power. The
BJP’s supporters argued that the party had not given up its intention
of building a temple at the site where the mosque stood but was not
pressing the issue since the party on its own did not command a
majority in Parliament.
The BJP’s allies contended that secularism had been made into
a ‘bogey’ to disguise opportunistic opposition to the BJP. Despite
the presence of many persons in the Vajpayee government whose
secular credentials had never been in doubt, it is also a fact that very
few Muslims have come forward to join the BJP in recent years. In
the second Vajpayee government, for instance, there were only two
Muslim ministers, one of them being Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi who also
happened to be the only Muslim MP belonging to the BJP in the 12th
Lok Sabha. Naqvi lost his seat in the 13th Lok Sabha elections and was
made party general secretary and spokesperson. In that Lok Sabha,
the only Muslim MP belonging to the BJP was Shahnawaz Hussain
who also happened to be the youngest minister in Vajpayee’s council
of ministers. Also significant is the fact that Hussain represented
Kishenganj in Bihar, the only Lok Sabha constituency with a Muslim
majority outside Kerala and Jammu & Kashmir. Despite the efforts
made by sections of the BJP to project the party as secular, Muslims
in India have remained by and large wary of aligning themselves with
the BJP. This is hardly surprising given the fact that virtually every
single judicial commission of inquiry into incidents of communal
violence in independent India had indicted either members of the BJP
or persons and parties that have been allied to the party.
At the time of the demolition of the Babri masjid, most senior
leaders of the BJP, especially Vajpayee and Advani, publicly expressed
their sorrow and unhappiness at what happened at Ayodhya. The
Party, however, stopped short of condemning those responsible for
the demolition. In fact, it virtually provided a justification for the
186 DIVIDED WE STAND

act by its stance that the incident was unfortunate but a result of the
Narasimha Rao government not heeding the people’s religious
sentiments. The BJP also harps on the fact that it was during the
tenure of the Congress government headed by Rajiv Gandhi that
the locks on the gates to the Babri complex were opened following
a court order.
The Sangh Parivar has long practiced the art of speaking with a
forked tongue. As early as 1956 when the States Reorganisation Act
was enforced, Guru Golwalkar favoured a more unitary India
whereas Deen Dayal Upadhyay, the then head of the BJS, favoured
the formation of as many as 40 states (against 28 at present). In a more
contemporary context, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal have typically
taken harder and more strident positions, while the BJP seeks to
project itself as a liberal, cosmopolitan organisation.
Despite an antipathy towards minorities in most cases, the BJP
has been able to strike a close rapport with sections of the Sikh
community, especially the supporters of the Shiromani Akali Dal
(SAD), because the Sangh Parivar views Sikhs as ‘essentially’ Hindu.
The alliance between the BJP and the Akalis, which had its origins in
the late 1960s, was cemented after the anti-Sikh riots that took place
in and around New Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by
a Sikh member of her bodyguard on October 31, 1984.
In order to win new allies and influence political leaders, the BJP
had, particularly since the February 1998 general elections, sought
to play down three controversial aspects of its election manifesto, as
already mentioned, namely, the building of a Ram temple at Ayodhya,
the formulation of a uniform civil code for citizens of all religious
denominations, and the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution
of India. Each of these issues was central to the BJP’s manifesto for
the 1998 Lok Sabha elections.
Though the BJP played down these issues after coming to power,
other organisations of the Sangh Parivar had no qualms about
continuing to emphasise these and other sensitive issues. As a matter
of fact, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal kept talking about the need
to demolish structures at Kashi and Mathura (two other cities in
Uttar Pradesh) that had been built centuries ago, allegedly over
Hindu religious sites. The RSS too periodically supported this move.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 187

Their repeated assertions caused quite a bit of embarrassment to the

Vajpayee government. Advani met representatives of the hardliners in
the Sangh Parivar, like Ashok Singhal of the VHP, to try and convince
them to moderate their statements.
There are many in the RSS and allied organisations who desperately
feel the need to correct the wrongs of history and who passionately
argue that the main reason why Hindus have been oppressed over
the centuries is on account of the community being too passive
and too accommodating. At the same time, the moderate voices
within the Sangh Parivar acknowledge the plurality of Hinduism
and its non-partisan character. The one time militant proponents of
Hindutva (or Hindu-ness) currently spare no effort in highlighting
the accommodative and ‘melting pot’ nature of Hinduism; they
agree that Hinduism is perhaps less an organised religion and more
a philosophy of life.
Swaminthan Gurumurthy, a leading ideologue of the Swadeshi
Jagaran Manch (SJM), a front organisation of the RSS which concerns
itself with economic issues, stated in 1993:

We must realise that we have a problem on hand in India, the

problem of a stagnant and conservative Islamic society. The
secular leaders and parties tell us that the problem on our hands
is not Islamic fundamentalism, but the Hindutva ideology.
This view is good only for gathering votes. The fact is that we
have a fundamentalist Muslim problem, and our problem cannot
be divorced from the international Islamic politics and the world’s
reaction to it…the apparently unorganised and diverse Hindu
society is perhaps the only society in the world that faced, and then
survived, the Islamic theocratic invasion.

He goes on to add:

The assimilative Hindu cultural and civilisational ethos is the only

basis for any durable personal and social interaction between the
Muslims and the rest of our countrymen…. A national effort
is called for to break Islamic exclusivism and enshrine the
assimilative Hindutva. This alone constitutes true nationalism and
true national integration.
188 DIVIDED WE STAND

The BJP’s 1998 election manifesto also sought to project Hindutva

as a civilisational concept and not a narrow religious one. It also said:

Every effort to characterise Hindutva as a sectarian or exclusive

idea has failed as the people of India have repeatedly rejected such a
view and the Supreme Court, too, finally endorsed the true meaning
and content of Hindutva as being consistent with the true meaning
and definition of secularism. In fact, Hindutva accepts as sacred all
forms of belief and worship. The evolution of Hindutva in politics
is the antidote to the creation of vote banks and appeasement of
sectional interests. Hindutva means justice for all.

The reference to the Supreme Court is to the December 1995 judgement

of a Constitutional bench of the apex court headed by the then Chief
Justice of India, J.S. Verma (who went on to become Chairman of
the National Human Rights Commission). The judgement came in
response to a petition filed in the court challenging the validity of the
election of Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena
on the grounds that he had appealed to religious sentiments by stating
that industrially prosperous Maharashtra would become India’s first
Hindu state. This, the petition argued, was a corrupt electoral practice.
The judgement stated:

…no precise meaning can be ascribed to the terms ‘Hindu’, ‘Hindutva’

and ‘Hinduism’; and no meaning in the abstract can confine it to
the narrow limits of religion alone, excluding the content of
Indian culture and heritage. It is difficult to appreciate how…
the term ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Hinduism’ per se, in the abstract, can
be assumed to mean and be equated with narrow fundamentalist
Hindu religious bigotry….

Not surprisingly, the BJP’s ideologues were jubilant about this

judgement, while its opponents felt it had given the party an
opportunity to claim that its secular credentials had been upheld by
the apex court of the land.

Speaking with a Forked Tongue

Within the BJP, and especially within the larger Sangh Parivar, members
have held various shades of political opinion from the extreme right to
 Bharatiya Janata Party 189

the relatively moderate. While speaking in many voices can confuse

political opponents when a party is out of power, the same trait can
prove to be a liability when the party is governing. This was what the
BJP realised within months of the Vajpayee government coming to
the helm of power in New Delhi. The BJP’s critics in the Congress
and the left had always claimed that the party and its allies spoke
in a forked tongue and that its public pronouncements concealed a
hidden agenda.
To put Advani’s call for moderation in the public statements
made by VHP leaders in perspective, here’s one example of the
kind of vitriol that was spewed by VHP functionaries. At a public
rally in New Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan in late January 2002, Acharya
Dharmendra attacked Vajpayee in downright abusive terms. He
suggested that the Prime Minister, who had had his knees operated,
should get his eyes operated as well if he was unable to see the mass
upsurge in favour of building the Ram temple at Ayodhya. He also
pointed out that the money spent on the knee operation had come
from the exchequer and asked whether the people had paid so that
Vajpayee could kneel before George Bush and Tony Blair.
Dharmendra then went on to accuse Vajpayee of being a betrayer
to the Ram temple movement and said the Prime Minister ought to
remember the fate of villains like Hiranyakashyap, Ravana, Taimur,
Aurangazeb and even Tony Blair’s ‘aunt’, Queen Victoria, who could
not retain power forever. The VHP leader, somewhat unusually, used
an Urdu couplet to hint that Vajpayee should quit if he couldn’t ensure
the construction of the Ram temple. The couplet went, ‘Had-e-gham-
e-hasti se guzar kyon nahin jaate, Jeena nahin aata hai to mar kyon
nahin jaate, Manzil ko paana hai to toofan bhi milenge, dar agar hai
to kashti se utar kyon nahin jaate.’ (Why don’t you reach beyond the
limits of the perils of being? Why don’t you die if you don’t know
how to live? If the goal is to be reached, storms will have to be braved.
If you are afraid, why don’t you get off the boat?) Advani too was
not spared, with Dharmendra pointing out that those who described
the demolition as a shameful incident would not have reached where
they had but for that incident.
The then BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu created a stir in June
2003 when he described Vajpayee as a vikaspurush (development
man) and Advani as a lohpurush (iron man) and said that his party
190 DIVIDED WE STAND

would contest the 2004 general elections under the leadership of both
these stalwarts. The media interpreted the statement to mean that
Vajpayee could hand over the mantle of leadership of the BJP as well as
the NDA (and future governments as well) to his deputy Advani.
Advani promptly said Vajpayee was his leader but Vajpayee’s own
statement at a party gathering soon after returning from a visit abroad
made it apparent to all concerned that he was the real boss. He said
that he was neither ‘tired’ not ‘retired’ and added, ‘Let the party fight
the elections under Advani’s leadership’. Naidu went into a tizzy
clarifying that he had not questioned Vajpayee’s position nor was he
in any way trying to drive a wedge between the two tallest leaders of
the BJP. While the dust raised by his remarks took some time to settle,
this episode revealed once again that much of the so-called differences
between Vajpayee (the ‘liberal’) and Advani (the ‘hardliner’) lay in the
minds of mediapersons and that if it came to the crunch, Advani too
was clear that Vajpayee was the most suitable person to lead the coalition
and the government even if Advani controlled some of the key
portfolios and was responsible for taking many crucial decisions.
To some extent, Advani’s position was a bit vulnerable at that time
because his name figured in the court cases relating to the demolition
of the Babri masjid. Though the cases had remained largely forgotten
for over a decade, the issue came to the fore in July 2003, when the
CBI filed fresh chargesheets against some of the key accused
including Advani and one other Minister in the Vajpayee cabinet,
Murli Manohar Joshi. (The fresh filing of chargesheets had become
necessary after the Allahabad High Court had rejected the earlier
chargesheets on technical grounds.) It was revealed that the CBI had
dropped the charge of conspiring to demolish the masjid that was part
of the earlier chargesheet. The Opposition accused the government of
having unduly influenced the CBI, while the government predictably
denied the charge. The Opposition also pointed out that it was
untenable for those who were the prime accused in a case to also be
the political masters of the prosecuting agency in the case. As on
previous occasions, the issue ultimately died down, but it did, even
if only briefly, put the spotlight back on an aspect of Advani’s past
that the BJP’s allies and many of its new-found supporters have not
been very comfortable about.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 191

On the economic front, the BJP had often been derogatorily

dismissed as a party of upper-caste traders who had little or no
influence in large parts of the country in the south, east and north-
east. The economic policies articulated by the party have been in
favour of free enterprise capitalism. When the Finance Minister in the
P.V. Narasimha Rao government, Manmohan Singh, unveiled his
policies of economic liberalisation in July 1991, the BJP accused the
Congress of hijacking its economic agenda. This was the same political
party that, despite its avowed pro-business stance, had earlier agreed
to follow the tenets of ‘Gandhian socialism’ in its economic policies.
Active advocacy of the virtues of capitalism was not considered
desirable in the Indian context, not even for the BJP, which (together
with the Swatantra Party in the 1960s) had vociferously espoused the
cause of free enterprise. While there is a lot that is common among
the economic policies of the Congress and the BJP, within the Sangh
Parivar itself there are deep divisions on a number of issues. Thus,
while one section of the BJP is in favour of the government rolling
out the red carpet for foreign investors, another section argues for a
cautious and selective approach towards multinational corporations.
‘Computer chips not potato chips’ was a slogan that became popular
in the run-up to the May 1996 general elections.
One section of the Sangh Parivar, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, had
time and again opposed decisions of the Vajpayee government that
were perceived to be against the interests of local entrepreneurs. In
fact, the extreme right and the left have often made common cause in
articulating the need to protect domestic industries from international
competition (by increasing tariff barriers in the form of higher customs
duties as well as other restrictions on inflows of foreign capital). The
SJM as well as the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the trade union
wing of the RSS and the BJP, opposed some of the economic policies of
the Vajpayee government, which caused considerable embarrassment
to the ruling party.
RSS leaders like Dattopant Thengadi had openly criticised the
government at public meetings where the then Finance Minister
Yashwant Sinha’s competence was questioned. Later, this section of
the Sangh Parivar was persuaded to tone down its criticism. The then
BJP President, late Kushabhau Thakre, had to personally intervene
192 DIVIDED WE STAND

with RSS leaders to ensure that the government’s sympathisers spoke

in one voice. As stated earlier, what was a diversionary tactic for
the Sangh Parivar when in Opposition became a distinct liability
for the Vajpayee government.

Party with a Difference?

The BJP and the RSS have always emphasised the importance of
‘discipline’—the shakhas or gatherings of RSS volunteers clad in khaki
shorts and holding sticks usually begin by a chanting of prayers and
physical exercises. For many years, the leaders of the BJP claimed
that theirs was the most disciplined, cadre-based party in the country
(ironically, as disciplined as members of the communist parties which
have always been their biggest political rivals). But this perception
was more media hype than reality.
The BJP’s claims of being a disciplined party, a party different
from others especially the Congress, were shattered by a series of
incidents which took place in Gujarat in 1995 and 1996. Infighting and
factional conflicts between rival groups culminated in unprecedented
physical violence inside the assembly at Gandhinagar on September 19,
1996. In the state assembly elections in February 1995, the BJP had
secured 121 seats or two-thirds of the total and Keshubhai Patel was
sworn in as Chief Minister in March. Dissensions were evident from
day one and within six months, the fight was out in the open. On
September 27, a group of 46 MLAs headed by Shankarsingh Vaghela
signed a memorandum to the state’s Governor, Naresh Chandra, staking
claim to form a new government after contending that Keshubhai Patel
had lost his majority in the assembly. In a dramatic gesture, Vaghela
took his group of legislators to Khajuraho, apparently to protect them
from the ruling faction of the BJP in Gujarat. In November, the Party’s
national leaders led by Advani intervened to defuse the crisis. Keshubhai
Patel resigned and was replaced by Suresh Mehta as Chief Minister.
The truce between the warring factions lasted barely six months.
On May 20, 1996, factional infighting within the BJP resulted in
supporters of the official group assaulting the octogenarian Cabinet
Minister Atma Ram Patel, seen as sympathetic to the Vaghela group,
and stripping him naked in the presence of thousands of people at a
 Bharatiya Janata Party 193

public meeting addressed by Vajpayee. Three months later, in August,

Vaghela led a group of 46 MLAs in submitting a memorandum to
the Governor that the BJP had been reduced to a minority in the
assembly. Legislators complained that they were being kept under
‘house arrest’ by members of the ruling faction. Soon, Vaghela split
the party to form the Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP).
With both factions prepared to do anything to ensure they
formed the government in Gujarat, matters reached a point where
the Governor had no option but to submit a report to the Union
government in September stating that he had come to the ‘painful
conclusion’ that there had been a Constitutional breakdown in the
state and he was left with no alternative but to suggest invocation of
Article 356 to impose President’s rule in the state. He recommended
that the assembly be kept in suspended animation. The Union
government headed by H.D. Deve Gowda did not act on this report,
but after Chandra sent in a similar report again within days, the Union
Cabinet decided to impose President’s rule in Gujarat.
Vaghela went on to become Chief Minister of Gujarat, but not for
long. By March 1998, Keshubhai Patel was again Chief Minister of
Gujarat after fresh assembly polls were held in the state with Vaghela’s
RJP suffering a major electoral reverse. Nevertheless, the infighting
within the BJP in Gujarat and its eagerness to form coalitions and find
new allies, highlighted how the party had become prone to all the ills
plaguing the Congress.
Factional fighting was to erupt again in the Gujarat BJP on the eve
of the December 2002 state assembly elections. Narendra Modi, who
was seeking re-election after the communal violence in different parts
of India, decided to make it clear who was the boss in the state. As
part of his attitude of brooking no opposition, he refused to let Haren
Pandya, another prominent BJP leader in Gujarat, be nominated as the
party’s candidate for the Ellis Bridge constituency in Ahmedabad, the
state’s largest city. Pandya, who had served as Home Minister in
the Keshubhai Patel government, had represented this constituency
for several terms and won each time with impressive margins. Yet,
Modi put his foot down and made it clear that Pandya would not be
nominated again. Even attempts by senior central leaders of the BJP,
like Advani, to persuade Modi to relent proved futile. Modi had made
it a ‘prestige issue’ and his views prevailed.
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Three months after the 2002 assembly election, in March 2003,

Pandya was shot dead by ‘unidentified gunmen’ outside a public park
in Ahmedabad where he went for his morning walk. He lay bleeding
to death in his car for two hours before he was discovered. It is a
measure of the hostility between Modi and Pandya and the public
perception of this hostility that the opposition Congress was not
alone in insinuating that Pandya’s killing was a ‘political murder’. As
a matter of fact, the same phrase was used during a memorial meeting
by Keshubhai Patel and by Pandya’s father, in the presence of Advani
and Modi. Interestingly, on the same occasion Advani acknowledged
that ‘injustice’ had been done to Pandya by not allowing him to
contest the election.
The virus of indiscipline that the BJP first contracted in Gujarat
later spread to the state that was of paramount importance in its bid
to win and retain power at the centre—Uttar Pradesh. Despite serious
efforts by the BJP’s central leadership to contain the damage of an ugly
factional fracas, it ultimately led to the party’s most high-profile mass
leader in the state at the time, Kalyan Singh, being expelled. While
Kalyan Singh’s threats of causing a vertical split in the UP unit of the
BJP ultimately proved exaggerated, his expulsion did alienate sections
of the OBCs from the party.
Soon after the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, it became clear that the
BJP in Uttar Pradesh was a badly divided house with a section of
the party’s MLAs publicly demanding the ouster of Chief Minister
Kalyan Singh, the man who was seen as the architect of the party’s
dramatic rise in electoral fortunes in the 1990s. There was little
doubt that Kalyan Singh was by far the most popular leader of the
party in Uttar Pradesh. Yet, within his own party he faced a growing
challenge to his leadership from a group predominantly of MLAs
and organisational leaders from the upper castes. It was also widely
believed that while Kalyan Singh enjoyed the confidence of the former
BJP President L.K. Advani, Vajpayee’s own sympathies lay more with
the dissident group.
The dissidents, who included prominent party leaders like Lalji
Tandon, Kailashpati Mishra and Rajnath Singh, were ostensibly
opposed to Kalyan Singh’s leadership because of his autocratic style
and the favours he was alleged to have done for some of his close
 Bharatiya Janata Party 195

associates like the corporator Kusum Rai. They argued that the Chief
Minister’s undemocratic ways were fast eroding public support for
the party and could deliver a body blow to its electoral prospects if
he was not ousted. The media, political analysts and the lay public,
however, remained convinced that their real grouse against the
Chief Minister was the fact that he was from one of the intermediate
castes—a Lodh—and his tenure had loosened the upper castes’ grip
on institutions of power in the state.
Ironically, when Kalyan Singh was first chosen by the BJP in June
1991 to head the state government, it was this same caste background
that played a major role in his selection. The entire northern region
of the country was at the time severely divided along caste lines in
the aftermath of the decision by the Janata Dal (JD) government at
the centre to implement the report of the Mandal Commission. The
report had essentially recommended reservations in government jobs
for the intermediate castes and though most major political parties had
consistently promised in their election manifestoes to implement the
report, there was an unstated understanding that the promises would
remain unhonoured—till V.P. Singh’s own political compulsions
provoked him to announce as Prime Minister that the government
would in fact implement the report. The violent agitations against this
decision, led largely by upper-caste students, laid the foundation for a
caste-based division that was more overt than ever before. It was with
a view towards exploiting these caste divisions that the BJP groomed
Kalyan Singh as its foremost leader in UP through the 1990s.
By the time of the 1999 general elections, it was quite evident that
there was considerable resentment against Kalyan Singh within the
BJP’s state unit. However, the BJP leadership was unable either to
discipline the dissidents or replace Kalyan Singh on the eve of the
crucial Parliamentary elections of 1999, though virtually everybody
in the state, from the political pundits to the layman, was clear that
the Chief Minister would almost inevitably be removed from his post,
whatever be the results of the elections. During the elections, Kalyan
Singh refused to condemn the activities of his former associate Sakshi
Maharaj (who, like him, had been named as an accused in the Babri
masjid demolition case) who openly campaigned against the BJP and
for the Samajwadi Party, a party Sakshi Maharaj later joined. Soon
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after the Lok Sabha elections, this reckoning was proved right. The
fact that the BJP fared rather poorly in UP only helped the dissidents
to raise their campaign for the removal of Kalyan Singh as Chief
Minister. It was the severe anti-incumbency factor against the Chief
Minister, they said, which had led to the BJP winning just 29 Lok
Sabha seats in the state, almost half the number it won in 1998.
The party’s central leadership too was now willing to play along
with the dissidents and, in November 1999, it decided to ask Kalyan
Singh to step down. The man named to replace him, however, came
as a surprise. Ram Prakash Gupta, it is true, had once been Deputy
Chief Minister of the state, but that was more than two decades
earlier, in 1977. Since then, he had maintained a relatively low profile
in politics. What might have swung the decision in his favour were
two facts: first, he was neither from the upper castes, nor quite from
the backward castes. As a bania (member of a trading community),
he could possibly manage to strike a balance in the fight for power
between the two contending caste factions in the BJP’s UP unit.
Equally, Gupta was seen neither as a prominent dissident, nor as a
Kalyan Singh loyalist. Clearly, the BJP’s central leadership was still
hoping that a truce could be negotiated in a factional fight that was
threatening to do severe damage to the party in the state. As part of
this attempt at a truce, Kalyan Singh was offered a berth in the Union
Cabinet, as was a prominent dissident leader, Rajnath Singh. While
Rajnath Singh accepted the offer, Kalyan Singh refused it, giving the
first indications of what was to come.
Immediately after he stepped down as Chief Minister, Kalyan Singh
launched a frontal attack on Vajpayee, blaming him for orchestrating the
revolt against him. He also chose to single out Vajpayee for ‘betraying’
the party’s ideology and its commitment to its voters to build a Ram
temple in Ayodhya. It was this jettisoning of the BJP’s core agenda,
he insisted, that had led to its electoral defeat in the state. Kalyan
Singh also attempted to drive a wedge between Vajpayee and Home
Minister L.K. Advani, by maintaining that Vajpayee had ‘hijacked’
the party, while Advani was feeling suffocated in a party which had
parted from its ideological moorings. All he succeeded in doing in the
process was to force Advani, and other leaders who had earlier been
seen as sympathetic to his travails, to condemn him and deny any rift
within the central leadership. Kalyan Singh’s deliberately provocative
 Bharatiya Janata Party 197

statements against Vajpayee had the predictable result of forcing the

party’s central leadership to expel him from the BJP.
Speculation that Kalyan Singh’s expulsion would lead to a
significant split in the party’s leadership and ranks in UP was belied.
While a few individual leaders spoke in defence of him, there was no
significant desertion from the BJP’s ranks. However, the departure
of Kalyan Singh did cost the BJP dear in the February 2002 assembly
elections. Kalyan Singh’s Rashtriya Kranti Party (RKP) managed to
win in only four constituencies (Kalyan Singh himself winning from
two of them), but damaged the BJP’s prospects in dozens of seats. The
result was that the BJP finished third behind the SP and the BSP.
It is not as if the BJP was unaware of the implications of expelling
Kalyan Singh. Yet, faced with the choice of alienating Kalyan
Singh’s support base or much of its leadership in the state, the party
chose what it felt was the lesser evil. In a significant development
in December 2003, four years after he was forced to resign as Chief
Minister of UP, Kalyan Singh met Vajpayee at the residence of Lalji
Tandon, signaling a thaw in their strained relationship. He went on
to rejoin the BJP before the Lok Sabha elections in April–May, 2004.
Yet again, what became apparent was that there are no permanent
friends or enemies in politics.
The Himachal Pradesh assembly elections of February 2003 saw
factional feuds within the BJP coming out in the open. The party’s
campaign was led by Prem Kumar Dhumal, the incumbent Chief
Minister, who was seeking re-election. The BJP was convincingly
beaten by the Congress, which managed to win a majority in the
assembly despite also being faction-ridden. Shanta Kumar, former
Union Minister for Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs in the
Vajpayee Cabinet, and the senior-most BJP leader in Himachal
Pradesh, who had been elected Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh
on two previous occasions in 1977 and 1990, was quick to blame
Dhumal’s ‘non-performance’ for the debacle. Dhumal, in turn,
accused Shanta Kumar of sabotaging the BJP’s prospects by propping
up ‘rebel’ candidates in several constituencies. The party officially
blamed ‘infighting and factionalism’ for the electoral defeat and Shanta
Kumar was dropped from the Union Cabinet.
Another episode which badly battered the image of the BJP as the
‘party with a difference’ and the attempts of the NDA to present itself
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as a ‘clean’ coalition was the Tehelka episode of March 2001. Two

journalists belonging to the website Tehelka masqueraded as arms
dealers and secretly videotaped a number of defence officials and
politicians. The most sensational of these recordings was a sequence
showing the then BJP President Bangaru Laxman accepting a wad
of currency notes from the two journalists. Laxman, who belongs to
the scheduled castes and was Vajpayee’s nominee as party president
presumably to rid the BJP of its image of being a party dominated by
Hindu upper-caste members, had to resign in ignominy. There was
an attempt to rehabilitate Laxman more than six months later when
he was made the head of a Parliamentary committee on housing.
Though he bitterly complained that he had merely done what all
Indian politicians do, namely, accept funds on behalf of his party and
that he was made a scapegoat because of his caste background, the
damage to the BJP had already been done.
The bigger fallout of the Tehelka episode was the resignation of
Defence Minister George Fernandes, a socialist, a non-practising
Christian, and an individual who had revealed his amazingly dexterous
skills in acting as Vajpayee’s handy-man and trouble-shooter when
it came to placating troublesome allies like Jayalalithaa and Mamata
Banerjee. Fernandes put in his papers since the secretly-filmed
Tehelka tapes indicated that the journalists had entered the Defence
Minister’s official residence and had spoken to his party president
and companion Jaya Jaitly about donating funds to their party (the
Samata Party). Even as the one-judge commission of inquiry was
questioning witnesses to determine the correctness or otherwise of the
charges thrown up by the Tehelka tapes, Fernandes was re-instated
as Defence Minister in October 2001, seven months after he resigned.
The Opposition attacked the government and took the novel step of
refusing to ask Fernandes questions as Defence Minister in Parliament,
arguing that he could not legitimately hold the post till he was cleared
of wrongdoing by the commission.

Going Beyond the Cow Belt

Unlike the Congress till recently, the BJP, ever since it was formed
in 1980, and the BJS before it, has not hesitated in becoming part of
 Bharatiya Janata Party 199

a coalition. After the 4th general elections in 1967, many states in

northern India including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar saw the
formation of non-Congress state governments which were cobbled
together by opportunistic alliances among those opposed to India’s
grand old party. The BJS even agreed to sink its differences with the
communist parties to keep the Congress out of power in these states,
even if the coalition governments that were formed were shortlived
and prone to implosion, since there were no ideological bonds to bring
together the politically diverse groups. Despite such alliances, the BJS
was not a serious force to reckon with in Indian politics till 1977.
In the 1st general elections held in independent India between
October 1951 and February 1952, the BJS won three out of the 94
Parliamentary seats it had contested (two from West Bengal and one
from Madhya Pradesh) out of 489 seats in the first Lok Sabha. In the
2nd general elections held in 1957, the BJS contested more seats (130)
but was able to gain only one extra seat in the aggregate while losing
all four seats it had won earlier. Of the BJS’s four seats in the second
Lok Sabha, two came from Uttar Pradesh and two from Bombay. It
was after the 3rd general elections in 1962 that the presence of the BJS
on the national political scene became more evident, the party won 14
out of the 196 seats it contested, increasing its tally in Madhya Pradesh
(to three) and Uttar Pradesh (to seven) while opening its account in
Punjab (with three seats) and Rajasthan (one seat). The party’s share
in total votes polled went up steadily in the first three general elections
from just over 3 per cent in 1952 to just under 6 per cent in 1957 and
6.4 per cent in 1962.
The 4th general election in 1967 was the first that saw the Congress’
hold on Indian politics diminishing. The BJS won 35 seats in a Lok
Sabha with 520 seats. The party obtained 9.4 per cent of the votes
polled. It expanded its position in Uttar Pradesh with 12 seats, six in
Delhi, 10 in Madhya Pradesh and three in Rajasthan. The three seats
held earlier in Punjab were subdivided into Haryana and Chandigarh.
The BJS opened its account not only in Bihar by winning a seat but
also in south India, by returning an MP from Andhra Pradesh for the
first time. The period that followed saw the beginning of coalition
politics in the states of north India with BJS members participating in
various non-Congress governments in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh,
200 DIVIDED WE STAND

Punjab, Haryana, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. For the first time, the
BJS gained experience of working with diverse political groupings
including ideological opponents like the communists.
The rise of Indira Gandhi eclipsed the growth of the BJS for a
while thereafter. Indira Gandhi headed the Union government for
the first time on January 24, 1966. She split the party three years
later in 1969 to establish the Congress(I), as also her supremacy. She
successfully projected herself as an upholder of socialistic values while
painting her opponents within the Congress as those in favour of a
conservative status quo. Her ‘garibi hatao’ (banish poverty) slogan
caught the imagination of the people as did her stance on issues like
bank nationalisation, abolition of privy purses to feudal lords, and
land reforms.
The 1971–72 war with Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh
saw Indira Gandhi riding the crest of a popularity wave. The first
nuclear test was conducted in Pokhran, Rajasthan, in 1974—this
event was welcomed by the BJS in Opposition, a fact that the party
sought to repeatedly emphasise to garner domestic support after the
second set of nuclear tests were conducted in the second week of
May 1998. In the 1971 elections, the Congress strode ahead with as
many as 342 MPs in a Lok Sabha of 518 members. The BJS got 22 seats
while its share of the votes polled came down to 7.4 per cent.
By the mid-1970s, Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian tendencies and
imperious attitude had become apparent. She was accused of promoting
her younger son Sanjay Gandhi as an ‘extra-constitutional’ authority.
This phase culminated in the imposition of an internal Emergency
that lasted 19 months—this was the only time in independent India’s
history when citizens’ fundamental rights were brutally curbed,
and censorship enforced on the press. The result? Indira and Sanjay
Gandhi and her party suffered a humiliating defeat, and India saw
the re-emergence of the Sangh Parivar from the shadows. While
many within the BJS actively opposed Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian
actions and supported the ‘total revolution’ movement led by
Jayaprakash Narayan popularly know as ‘JP’, there were others in the
Parivar who ‘tactically’ accepted her 20-point programme to escape
the rigours of jail. There was limited opposition within the Parivar
 Bharatiya Janata Party 201

to merging with the Janata Party. Indira Gandhi was routed by Raj
Narain at Rae Bareilly and her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, lost
the elections at Amethi, both in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress had
been routed in the elections, surviving mainly in the south, with 154
MPs elected to the 542-member 6th Lok Sabha. The Janata Party
government, which came to power on March 24, 1977 with Morarji
Desai as Prime Minister, had Vajpayee as External Affairs Minister
and Advani as Minister for Information & Broadcasting. This was
the first time that representatives of the Sangh Parivar participated in
a coalition government in New Delhi.
What followed is well known. Morarji Desai started faltering in
late July 1979, ostensibly on the issue of the ‘dual membership’ of
Vajpayee, Advani and others who refused to disown their allegiance
to the RSS, thus culminating in the fall of the Janata Party government.
The Congress went on to support a minority government led by
Charan Singh which lasted barely six months. There were many
internal contradictions that had dogged the short-lived Janata Party
government. But to some, like socialist firebrand George Fernandes,
who almost overnight switched loyalties from Morarji Desai to Charan
Singh, the issue of dual membership was most significant. Fernandes
had, by then, been accused in the Baroda Dynamite Case. (There is an
interesting sidelight here: among the lawyers who supported him then
was a young man, Swaraj Kaushal, and his wife Sushma Swaraj, who
was, five years later, to move from the Janata Party—as the youngest
MLA and minister in two governments in Haryana headed by Devi
Lal—to become an important figure in the BJP.) Chaudhury Charan
Singh’s government lasted from July 28, 1979 to January 14, 1980.
He was the only Indian Prime Minister who never faced Parliament
during his entire tenure.
Having been unceremoniously rejected by the electorate three
years earlier, Indira Gandhi strode back to power in the 7th general
elections helped by the mileage the Congress extracted from the
rising prices of onions, the Congress(I) won 353 out of 529 seats
in the Lok Sabha with nearly 43 per cent of the votes polled. After
Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984 which led to the
most brutal attacks on the Sikh community by goons—some of
202 DIVIDED WE STAND

them associated with Congress politicians—the Congress, headed by

Rajiv Gandhi and riding a ‘sympathy wave’, won a massive mandate—
415 out of 517 seats in the Lok Sabha with its allies—unprecedented
in the annals of Indian history. This was also the period which saw
the BJP going through its politically weakest phase: the party had
won two out of the 229 seats it had contested in the 1984 elections
and its share of the popular vote stood at 7.4 per cent—the BJS had
obtained an identical proportion of votes polled in the 1971 elections.
The 1980s were truly a lost decade for the BJP. It was only towards
the end of Rajiv Gandhi’s term as Prime Minister, between 1987 and
1989, that the BJP’s political support base started picking up and since
then, the rise has been truly spectacular.
In the 1989 elections, racked by charges of corruption and
inefficiency, the Congress headed by Rajiv Gandhi collapsed. The BJP
bounced back with 11.5 per cent of the votes polled which translated
into a big jump in the number of seats in the Lok Sabha. The party had
86 members in a house of 543 seats making it the third largest after the
Congress with 197 seats and the Janata Dal with 142 seats. The BJP
chose to support V.P. Singh’s minority coalition government without
participating in it. More than the internal contradictions within the
JD that led to Chandra Shekhar being sworn in as Prime Minister on
November 10, 1990 with ‘outside’ support from the Congress headed
by Rajiv Gandhi, there was another more important reason for the
collapse of the V.P. Singh government. This was the clash between his
Mandal Commission agenda—aimed at reserving government jobs for
backward castes—and the agenda of the BJP to build a Ram temple at
Ayodhya after demolishing the Babri masjid, symbolised by Advani’s
rath yatra across the length of north India, whipping up support to
build the temple, before his arrest at Samastipur, Bihar, by the police
in the state whose government was headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The first round of voting in the 10th general elections took place
on May 20, 1991. The next evening, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by
a ‘human bomb’ at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. The elections were
completed on June 15 and a minority government of the Congress
party headed by former Minister for Human Resources Development
in Rajiv Gandhi’s government, P.V. Narasimha Rao, assumed power
 Bharatiya Janata Party 203

in New Delhi on June 21, 1991. The BJP’s tally of 120 seats in a Lok
Sabha with 543 seats made it the biggest Opposition party. The rush to
build the Ram temple picked up in 1992. In late November, Narasimha
Rao cut short his trip to Dakar in Senegal, where heads of state of the
Group of 15 (G-15) developing countries were gathered, to attend a
meeting of religious leaders to sort out the Ayodhya issue which was
threatening to get out of hand. Among the so-called religious leaders
was one of Narasimha Rao’s cronies, controversial ‘godman’ Chandra
Swami, also known as Nemi Chand Gandhi, aka Nemi Chand Jain.

Ayodhya and After

On December 6, 1992, the Babri masjid’s structure was demolished
by gangs of hooligans. As described earlier, it was one of the worst
moments in independent India’s history. India’s image as a tolerant,
secular nation took a battering in the eyes of the world. Vajpayee and
Advani, both in Parliament and outside, expressed regret for what
happened. But the BJP was a divided house. The official bio-data of
Uma Bharti, who took an active role in urging the mob to demolish
the structure, describes her as a ‘religious missionary’. Clad in saffron
and sometimes derogatorily referred to as the sexy sanyasin by her
political opponents, Bharti and Vajpayee openly clashed in public
years later in 1998 when the BJP government was seeking to change
its position on privatising the insurance industry.
Right through the better part of 1994 and 1995, the BJP tried
assiduously to convey the impression that it was indeed the party of
the future, that Vajpayee was the Prime Minister-in-waiting. The
fractured mandate thrown up by the May 1996 general elections
disappointed the BJP, which was hoping it would be able to comfortably
form the Union government, led for the first time by a truly non-
Congress Prime Minister. Even when it was apparent that a majority
would elude the BJP-led alliance, party ideologues convinced
Vajpayee and Advani that they stood a faint chance of convincing
others to support the alliance. As temperatures rose in the capital
city of New Delhi in more than just the metaphorical sense, Vajpayee
remained Prime Minister for just two weeks starting May 16, 1996.
During this fleeting period in Indian history, a significant event took
204 DIVIDED WE STAND

place—Union Finance Minister Jaswant Singh formally approved

the counter-guarantee to the loans taken to set up the country’s first
power project fully financed by a foreign corporate group, Enron
of the US.
The first Vajpayee government may have lasted barely 13 days,
but even that short period was enough for dissidence to raise its
ugly head. The BJP’s only Muslim MP at that time (from the Rajya
Sabha) Sikandar Bakht had been given the Ministerial portfolio of
Urban Development. But he was most unhappy, refused to attend
office or stop sulking till he was made External Affairs Minister.
By then, the BJP’s power brokers, armed with cellular phones, had
come back with the news that no new MPs, individually or in groups,
would be willing to switch their allegiance. The Telugu Desam Party
led by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu
was firmly with the ‘third force’ as convenor of the United Front
and busy confabulating on the formation of the next government. It
was apparent that Vajpayee was bound to lose a vote of confidence
in the Lok Sabha.
In the meantime, the United Front, comprising 13 political parties,
had been formed and had chosen an unlikely ‘dark horse’ candidate,
former Chief Minister of Karnataka H.D. Deve Gowda, as the man
to head its government. After the BJP government fell, Deve Gowda
was invited to form the government and did so with the support of the
Congress. The BJP thus became the main opposition party in the Lok
Sabha for the 18-month period in which the UF remained in office.
During this period in Opposition, the BJP often appeared
divided about its future strategy. Should it stress the accommodative
‘Vajpayee line’ on welcoming new alliance partners to form coalitions
or should it continue with contentious issues like the building of
the Ram temple, the uniform civil code, and so on, which could
alienate existing and potential allies? The hardline view prevailed
and these issues (together with the old BJS issue of a ban on cow
slaughter) were mentioned in the BJP manifesto issued before the
February 1998 elections.
The elections saw India’s voters giving an even more fractured
verdict. While in most states the battle-lines were clear and the polity
 Bharatiya Janata Party 205

was bipolar, by the time the numbers were totted up and aggregated,
it was apparent to all that the 12th Lok Sabha, like the earlier house,
would not be able to provide a government with some degree of
stability for any length of time. Based on the results of 534 seats (in a
lower house of Parliament with 543 seats), the BJP and 12 of its alliance
partners was able to muster the support of just under 250 MPs. The
Congress and its allies won just over 170 seats, the United Front was
considerably weakened with less than 100 seats (93 to be precise),
while independents and ‘others’ took up the remaining seats.
The BJP’s pre-election alliance partners were the Samata Party in
Bihar led by Nitish Kumar and George Fernandes; the Biju Janata
Dal headed by Naveen Patnaik, the son of the late Chief Minister
and ‘strongman’ of Orissa, Biju Patnaik, and a relative greenhorn in
politics; the Shiromani Akali Dal of Punjab; the Trinamool Congress
of West Bengal led by Mamata Banerjee; the Shiv Sena; five parties
in Tamil Nadu: the AIADMK led by Jayalalithaa, the PMK (Pattali
Makkal Katchi) led by Dalit Ezhilmalai, the MDMK (Marumalarchi
DMK or the DMK for resurgence) led by Vaiko, the Tamizhaga Rajiv
Congress led by K. Ramamurthi, the Janata Party of Dr. Subramaniam
Swamy; and the Lok Shakti led by the late Rama Krishna Hegde,
former Chief Minister of Karnataka.
In addition, the BJP alliance included one MP from the Haryana
Vikas Party led by the then Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal. His arch
opponent in the state, Om Prakash Chautala of the Haryana Lok Dal
with four MPs, while opposing Bansi Lal in Haryana, chose to support
the Vajpayee government with the HVP. Such indeed are the curious
twists and turns in Indian politics. Also interesting is the fact that one
member of Parliament belonging to the Janata Party, the colourful
Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, was at this juncture an ardent supporter
of Vajpayee and the coalition government he would head.
While Vajpayee formed his council of ministers that was sworn in
on March 19, 1998, even with the 12 alliance partners, the BJP was
still falling short of the magic majority mark in the Lok Sabha. The
National Conference, as already mentioned, had abstained in the
vote of confidence sought by the Vajpayee government. The final
act in the drama was played out a week later, on the fateful morning
of March 28, 1998.
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Till that morning, on the issue of who would hold the post of
Speaker of the lower house of Parliament, the BJP and its partners had
conveyed the impression that they would settle for the candidature of
P.A. Sangma, Congress leader, former Speaker who had received quite
a few compliments for his stewardship of the 11th Lok Sabha, and
was the first and only tribal to hold the post. In fact, even that morning, the
then Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana had spoken to
him about the BJP’s support for his candidature while, at around
the same time, the Telugu Desam Party had decided to jump the UF
ship and go along with the BJP-led alliance. Chandrababu Naidu,
who was no less than the Convenor of the United Front, justified his
position on the plea that there was no way the TDP could support
a government led by the Congress. The ‘reward’ received by the
TDP for the support of its 12 MPs to the Vajpayee government was
that one of them, G.M.C. Balayogi, became the new Speaker of the
12th Lok Sabha. While the other constituents of the UF predictably
screamed blue murder and accused Naidu of being a betrayer, the
deed had been done.

Defeated by a Single Vote

The second Vajpayee government, which lasted 13 months between
March 28, 1998 and April 17, 1999, was a fragile coalition from the
start. The AIADMK-led group (including the PMK, the MDMK, the
Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress and the Janata Party) that commanded
the support of 27 MPs at that time, kept the BJP on tenterhooks because
Jayalalithaa delayed her letter to the President of India committing
the group’s support to a government led by Vajpayee. From the word
go, when the ruling alliance confabulated on its National Agenda
for Governance, the AIADMK and Jayalalithaa proved to be rather
troublesome and unreliable partners. The portly former film actress
from Poes Garden, Chennai, put her foot down (and got her way)
when it came to ministerial appointments. Her loyalists occupied
crucial positions which, it was believed, was aimed at ensuring that
the 42 corruption cases instituted against her and her associates by
the DMK regime would proceed as slowly as possible.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 207

Among the AIADMK MPs who occupied key posts were

M. Thambi Durai, who became Union Minister for Law, Justice and
Company Affairs, R. Muttaiah, who became Minister of State for
Revenue in the Ministry of Finance (but had to quit after his name
appeared as an accused in one of the court cases against Jayalalithaa
and her associates and was replaced by R.K. Kumar). K. Ramamurthy
of the TRC became Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas.
Predictably, Thambi Durai was later accused of trying to influence
the transfer of prosecutors in Tamil Nadu who were handling cases
against Jayalalithaa and her associates. Similar accusations were
levelled when there were large-scale transfers of officers belonging to
the Income Tax Department. The government—and even the BJP’s
spokespersons—claimed that these transfers and new appointments
were ‘routine’ and the prerogative of the government, but very few
were fooled. The Vajpayee government also took the initiative to sort
out the apparently irreconciliable differences primarily between two
states in southern India, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, over sharing the
waters of the river Cauvery.
The first major decision of the Vajpayee government that stunned
the world was his decision to conduct a series of nuclear tests at
Pokhran in the second week of May 1998. These explosions were
conducted almost exactly 24 years after the first tests were conducted
at the same arid desert zone in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer district. Even as
international attention was focused on the subcontinent, Pakistan
conducted its ‘tit-for-tat’ tests.
Just over a fortnight after the nuclear tests, on June 1, 1998, Finance
Minister Yashwant Sinha presented the first Union budget of the
Vajpayee government, which turned out to be quite a disaster. What
was unprecedented was the fact that within days of the announcement
of the budget proposals, the government backtracked on a number
of key proposals (detailed in the chapter on the economy). The entire
sequence of events following the presentation of the budget conveyed a
distinct impression (even to the BJP’s sympathisers) that the government
was being pulled apart on account of internal dissensions.
As the fragility of the coalition government became more apparent,
the AIADMK continued to put pressure on Vajpayee and his
colleagues to dismiss the DMK government in Tamil Nadu headed by
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Karunanidhi on the ground that the state government was not being
able to check the activities of anti-national terrorists and Tamil rebels
in Sri Lanka. Other partners in the BJP-led alliance like the Trinamool
Congress obtained a ‘Bengal package’ of concessions from the Union
government, which included an extension to the underground railway
in Kolkata.
At around this juncture, the Vajpayee government came under a lot
of criticism for failing to prevent attacks on the Christian community
in the tribal-dominated district of Dangs in Gujarat on Christmas Day
(which coincidentally also happened to be Vajpayee’s birthday). The
Prime Minister returned from a visit to the state and was quoted by
the media as saying that a national debate on religious conversions
was needed. A group of nuns had earlier been gang-raped in Madhya
Pradesh while an Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two
young sons were brutally burnt to death in their vehicle in a village
in northern Orissa. Both Orissa and Madhya Pradesh were ruled by
Congress governments and the BJP sought to dismiss as ‘politically
motivated’ the criticism that attacks on Christians had mounted after
the party came to power in New Delhi.
By the end of December, another major controversy engulfed the
Vajpayee government even as the Prime Minister made his much-
publicised plans to undertake a bus ride across the border to Lahore
to meet his Pakistani counterpart Mian Nawaz Sharif. This was the
sacking of the former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
on December 30, 1998. The same day, the Cabinet Committee on
Appointments also transferred the former Defence Secretary Ajit
Kumar and made him Industry Secretary. Defence Minister George
Fernandes came into the eye of an unprecedented storm after it was
disclosed that he had been approached by all three Chiefs of Staff of the
Army, Navy and Air Force to persuade him to stop the government
(the Defence Ministry) from intervening in what are considered to
be ‘mandated’ and ‘routine’ operations to check the inflow of illegal
arms through sea routes in the Bay of Bengal. The entire operation
was code-named ‘Operation Leech’ and the insinuation that was later
made was that Fernandes for some reason did not want to prevent the
inflow of arms to those opposed to the military regime in Myanmar.
It was pointed out that refugee students of Myanmar had been guests
in the official residence of Fernandes.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 209

The Defence Minister, who had earlier sought to convey an

impression that he was in favour of upholding the interests of ordinary
service personnel by making frequent trips to visit troops in the
Siachen glacier, eating with them and hauling up bureaucrats who
were slow in sanctioning expenses of army jawans in inhospitable
terrain, painted the entire Vishnu Bhagwat episode quite differently.
Fernandes accused Bhagwat of insubordination, of trying to
undermine civilian authority over the defence forces, and for refusing
to make Vice Admiral Harinder Singh the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff.
Singh had accused Bhagwat of discriminating against him in a public
complaint and also described Bhagwat’s wife, Niloufer Bhagwat,
as a communist sympathiser and pointed out that she was half-
Muslim. A distinct impression was created that the government was
trying to kill two birds with one stone, the Shiromani Akali Dal was
keen on Harinder Singh’s appointment because he was a Sikh, while
the BJP’s ally in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena, was already quite
upset with Admiral Bhagwat’s lawyer-wife who had vociferously
protested against functionaries of the Shiv Sena who had been accused
of abetting the anti-Muslim riots in Mumbai before the Justice
Srikrishna commission of inquiry.
As allegations and counter-allegations flew thick and fast, selected
media persons sympathetic to the Vajpayee government were fed
selective bits of information purporting to indicate how Bhagwat
was a troublesome and treacherous character. Bhagwat, in turn,
accused the Defence Minister of having become a victim of the lies
spread by corrupt officials and former senior defence personnel
turned arms agents. Fernandes and Defence Ministry officials, on
the other hand, claimed that Bhagwat was a ‘habitual’ litigant on the
ground that he had gone to court earlier against the decision of the
then Chief of Naval Staff who had not promoted him to the rank
of Vice Chief. What did not help Bhagwat’s cause was that he had
eventually been promoted under former Admiral L. Ramdas who had,
by then, become an important pillar of the anti-nuclear movement in
the country and a bitter critic of the government. Around this time,
former Prime Minister Deve Gowda levelled another accusation at
the Defence Ministry headed by Fernandes. On the basis of leaked
confidential correspondence, he claimed that new Russian tanks were
210 DIVIDED WE STAND

being sought to be hastily inducted into the Indian Army without

proper evaluation and trials. Vajpayee stood by Fernandes in his fight
against the sacked Admiral and his wife. He even spent New Year’s
Eve at the residence of Harinder Singh who was then the Fortress
Commandant of the Navy stationed at Port Blair in the Andaman &
Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
The Bhagwat episode did not die down as quickly as Vajpayee and
Fernandes may have hoped even after Vajpayee made his ‘historic’
trip by road to Lahore in February 1999 to meet his counterpart
in Pakistan, Mian Nawaz Sharif. It was not just the Congress that
attacked the government in general and Fernandes in particular for
having sacked Admiral Bhagwat. The BJP’s largest ally, the AIADMK,
too later demanded that Fernandes be removed from the post of
Defence Minister. There was more than a touch of irony in this demand
because Fernandes had, on more than one occasion, been despatched
by Vajpayee to Chennai to meet and placate Jayalalithaa.
In April 1999, Jayalalithaa’s confidante Subramaniam Swamy (who
had, incidentally, many years earlier been instrumental in instituting
a number of corruption cases against her) organised a tea party at a
Delhi hotel which was attended by, among many others, the Congress
President Sonia Gandhi. The BJP was hoping against hope that the
AIADMK would not pull out from the alliance. The party had weaned
away the AIADMK’s former supporters to its side. But the writing
on the wall was clear, there was no way that Jayalalithaa could be
persuaded not to withdraw the support of 18 AIADMK MPs from
the Vajpayee government. The inevitable took place on April 14, 1999
after the AIADMK withdrew its support to the government and the
President of India asked Vajpayee to seek a fresh vote of confidence
in the Lok Sabha.
The following day, Vajpayee moved the vote of confidence in his
13-month government and stated that while all his political opponents
had ganged up opportunistically to defeat his government, they would
not be able to form an alternative government. He was proved correct.
The Lok Sabha debated the motion that evening and the whole of
the following day with the Lok Sabha session stretching till past
6.00 am. On April 16, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) led by Om
Prakash Chautala with four MPs in the Lok Sabha decided to abstain
 Bharatiya Janata Party 211

from voting after earlier claiming that the party would vote against
the Vajpayee government and in favour of a pro-farmer leader like
Deve Gowda. Also unexpected was the position adopted by the five
MPs of the Bahujan Samaj Party led by former Uttar Pradesh Chief
Minister Mayawati. On the floor of the house, Mayawati claimed that
the BSP would abstain from voting but when the votes were cast the
next morning, it became evident that the BSP had voted against the
Vajpayee government.
In the cliff-hanging vote of confidence, the government obtained
269 votes while one extra vote (or a total of 270 votes) was cast against
the motion of confidence. Just before the voting took place, objections
were raised against Giridhar Gamang casting his vote since he had
by then become Chief Minister of Orissa although, technically, he
remained a member of the lower house of Parliament since he had not
been elected to the state legislative assembly. The Speaker, Balayogi,
asked Gamang to use his ‘good sense’ to decide whether or not
he should vote. Gamang did. Another MP who said his conscience
dictated that he flout his party’s directive to vote in favour of the
Vajpayee government was Saifuddin Soz of the National Conference.
Soz had never been comfortable with his former leader, Chief
Minister Farooq Abdullah’s decision to ditch the UF and support the
Vajpayee government.
After the Vajpayee government was reduced to a ‘caretaker’ status
on April 17 and he had put in his papers, unsuccessful attempts were
made to form an alternative government. Congress President Sonia
Gandhi first claimed before the President of India that 272 MPs
would support an alternative government led by the Congress (and
presumably under her leadership). Thereafter, the Samajwadi Party
led by Mulayam Singh Yadav stated that it could not under any
circumstances support a minority government comprising the
Congress. The Congress, in turn, claimed that it would not be part of
a coalition government. The CPI(M), which had been actively trying
to woo its partners among the left parties, found that there was
dissension in the ranks of the left as well. Two small left parties, the All
India Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, stated that
their MPs would not support a government of which the Congress
was a part. Even after the four MPs of the Janata Party (including two
212 DIVIDED WE STAND

former Prime Ministers, Deve Gowda and Gujral) agreed to support

a Congress government, Sonia Gandhi realised much to her chagrin
that instead of 272 MPs, just about 233 MPs would go along with a
Congress government.
At this time, BJP supporters carried out a systematic ‘whisper
campaign’ against President K.R. Narayanan, hinting that he was
biased in favour of the Congress because he had served as a bureaucrat
in successive Congress governments and had been a Congress MP too.
It was claimed that the President should not have asked Vajpayee to
prove his majority but instead let the government be defeated on
the floor of the house in the normal course. It was also argued that
Narayanan gave Sonia Gandhi ‘too much time’ to try and cobble
together an alternative government. Eventually, the 12th Lok Sabha
was dissolved. The President asked all parties to come together to
pass the Union budget (which had been presented as usual in end
February) without any amendment and without any discussion to
avert a possible financial crisis.

• Within a fortnight of the fall of the Vajpayee government, as

already mentioned, dramatic developments occurred. In early
May, hundreds of armed infiltrators crossed the Line of Control
(LOC) in the Kargil area of Jammu & Kashmir.
• Three senior Congress leaders broke away from the parent party
and formed the NCP, after demanding that Sonia Gandhi make
it clear that she would not be a Prime Ministerial aspirant.

Kargil and Sonia’s foreign origins thus became the two key issues
in the BJP’s election campaign. As Kargil gripped the country and
became India’s first televised war, the Vajpayee government and its
supporters sought to play up jingoistic sentiments. Many believe the
Kargil war was a key factor that ensured that the BJP and its allies
returned to power after the 13th general elections in October 1999.
Yet, as already observed, the impact of Kargil was not uniform, there
was no apparent impact in states like Punjab, Karnataka or Uttar
Pradesh. The ‘mandate’ of the 13th general elections may have been
widely welcomed by the BJP but clearly there was no euphoria.
For the first time since 1984, the BJP had not been able to increase
 Bharatiya Janata Party 213

the number of Lok Sabha seats it held nor its share of the popular
vote. In fact, the BJP’s share of the total vote came down by roughly
2 per cent between the 12th and the 13th general elections.
The results of the 13th general elections meant two things for
the party. On the one hand, they gave Vajpayee’s third government
a firmer hold on power than his previous attempts. On the other,
they greatly increased, at least initially, the dependence of the BJP
on its allies for remaining in power. This latter fact was crucial in
ensuring that the so-called Vajpayee line of moderation prevailed.
Not only were functionaries of the BJP in the Union government at
pains to deny they had any agenda other than the National Agenda
for Governance adopted by the National Democratic Alliance,
even state-level BJP leaders making contrary noises were quickly
chastised. The former Chief Minister of UP, Ram Prakash Gupta, for
instance, sought to clarify that the BJP had not forgotten its promise
to its supporters on building a Ram temple at Ayodhya. Following
predictable protests from the allies, Vajpayee declared in the Lok
Sabha that Gupta had assured him that he never said the temple was
part of the UP government’s agenda.
More significant was a BJP national council meeting held in
Chennai in December 1999. The meeting adopted a resolution putting
all contentious issues on hold. The initial draft of the resolution
had, in fact, contained a paragraph suggesting that the party had
no agenda apart from the NDA agenda. This was clearly too much
for the hardliners in the 1,400-member national council to stomach
and had to be dropped. Thus, the struggle between the hardliners
and the moderates within the BJP continued and if the moderate
position prevailed more often than not, it was largely because of
political compulsions.
These compulsions have tested Vajpayee’s ability to walk the
tightrope, a skill he has mastered over the years. For example,
soon after a trip to the United States where, while addressing a
group of non-resident Indians, Vajpayee described himself as a true
swayamsevak (a member of the RSS, literally, one who volunteers
to serve society before self). Then, he put out a long, written treatise
entitled Musings from Kumarakom—a holiday resort in Kerala. In that
treatise, Vajpayee described the Ram Mandir issue as one involving
‘national prestige’ even as he asserted that no person was above the
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law, in an apparent attempt to counter the assertion of the VHP, the

Bajrang Dal and others that a temple would be constructed at the
disputed site at Ayodhya irrespective of the outcome of lawsuits
which were pending in various courts.
Vajpayee and the BJP thus continued to equivocate on the
Hindutva issue. The question about whether Hindutva would remain
the main vote-catching plank for the party or whether it would evolve
into a more moderate, secular organisation remained alive. If Gujarat
convinced most observers that the BJP would continue to rely on its
communal card to deliver votes, the victories in Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December 2003 led political analysts to
suggest that the party had discovered the virtues of making governance
a primary election issue. The BJP, it was suggested, had realised that
the communal card was yielding diminishing returns and hence was
unlikely to use it aggressively in future.
Such a prognosis was more than a little premature. True, the
assembly elections of December 2003 showed that the BJP could
win elections even without using the communal card. However,
the manner in which the party responded to the defeat in the 2004
Lok Sabha elections shows quite clearly that the tendency to keep
returning to the Hindutva plank whenever the BJP sees itself as
facing a crisis is far from being a thing of the past. The manner in
which the party attempted to use the Sethusamudram controversy
in September 2007 only underlines this point. What has also not
been demonstrated yet is whether the BJP can retain power without
resorting to an election campaign that polarises the electorate along
communal lines. The only state in which the BJP has won two
successive terms in the recent past has been Gujarat, where its return
to power seemed threatened till the post Godhra riots took place in
the first half of 2002.

Monopoly ‘Nationalists’
The Sangh Parivar has always projected itself as the only truly
nationalist force. It has traditionally portrayed the left as a political
force whose patriotism is questionable, as one that has owed greater
allegiance to ‘masters’ in Moscow (when the Soviet Union was still
a communist regime) and Beijing than to India. The minorities have
 Bharatiya Janata Party 215

been painted as people whose patriotism cannot be taken for granted

since they too owe allegiance to authorities or holy places outside
Indian soil, whether it be the Vatican or Mecca and Medina. Guru
Golwalkar did not mince words in saying as much. In one of his books,
Bunch of Thoughts, he described the Muslims, the Christians and the
communists as post-independent India’s three ‘internal enemies’. In
more recent times, the Sangh Parivar, and in particular the BJP, have not
been quite as candid about this formulation, but the mindset has not
changed very much, nor has any leader of the RSS or the BJP ever
disowned these views. Nor has the BJP ever taken exception to one of
its staunchest allies, the Shiv Sena, periodically voicing such sentiments
about the minorities.
The questioning of the Congress’ nationalist credentials has been
somewhat more subtle. In the immediate post-independence phase,
it was obviously not easy to sell the line that the Congress was not a
nationalist party. Hence, the Sangh Parivar concentrated its criticism
of the Congress on pointing out that it had acquiesced in partitioning
the country, that its leaders were ‘appeasing’ Muslims and in general
were too corrupt and self-serving to bother about the interests of
the country at large. With Sonia Gandhi becoming President of the
Congress, the BJP stepped up its propaganda against her origins, a
position that went down well with sections of the middle class.
After it came to power in 1998, the BJP assiduously sought to
propagate its more patriotic-than-thou image. The first attempt to
‘monopolise’ the nationalist agenda was seen when the government
decided to conduct nuclear tests in Pokhran in May 1998 and
announced to the world that India was now capable of weaponising
its nuclear programme. The tests were justified by citing ‘threat
perceptions’ not just from Pakistan, but also from China in the east.
Those who spoke against the nuclear weapons programme were
dubbed anti-national, if not agents of Pakistan’s infamous spy agency,
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Nine months later, in February 1999, Vajpayee took his famous
bus ride to Lahore for a summit with his Pakistani counterpart
Nawaz Sharif. The trip was hyped up as one that could provide a new
direction to India-Pakistan relations and reduce tensions between
the two neighbours. Those who had said the Pokhran blasts would
vitiate the atmosphere between the two countries were being proved
216 DIVIDED WE STAND

wrong, the government claimed. On the contrary, India’s nuclear

blasts had forced Pakistan to take a more conciliatory position, the
BJP argued. Within a month of the fall of the Vajpayee government
in April that year, the Kargil war took place. As the facts revealed
themselves, it became clear that Pakistan’s intrusion in Kargil was on
even as Vajpayee and Sharif were discussing plans to meet each other.
No longer could the BJP and the government claim that Pakistan
had been brought to heel by the Pokhran blasts. The tack, therefore,
changed. Kargil became a rallying point for jingoistic posturing.
Once again, those who questioned the wisdom of the Pokhran blasts
or suggested that the government had been too complacent about
the Lahore trip or claimed that Kargil took place on account of
intelligence failure were sought to be clubbed into the ‘anti-national’
category by the BJP and its supporters. The BJP claimed its critics
had ‘politicised’ what was a matter of national concern and that these
misguided sections should be training their guns on Pakistan instead
of attacking the government.
When the Taliban regime in Afghanistan destroyed the world’s largest
statues of Buddha carved out of mountainsides at Bamiyan, leaders
of the BJP spared no efforts in condemning the move. These leaders
were extremely uncomfortable when media commentators sought to
compare the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas with the destruction
of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya.
In May 2001, Vajpayee and General Pervez Musharraf (who replaced
Nawaz Sharif as Pakistan’s head of state in October 2000) met at Agra.
The summit meeting, which had been preceded by considerable media
hype, turned out to have raised more expectations than it fulfilled.
Vajpayee sought to unsuccessfully change Pakistan’s position that
Kashmir was at the ‘core’ of the dispute between India and Pakistan—
his close friend and then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had
said Kashmir was at the core of Indian nationhood. At Agra, Musharraf
did not bend one bit and managed to hog much of the media limelight
after his meeting with senior Indian journalists (which was supposed
to be off-the-record) was broadcast over television channels.
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and
the Pentagon on the outskirts of Washington on September 11, 2001,
provided yet another occasion for the Vajpayee government to
 Bharatiya Janata Party 217

propagate its view that some Muslims were not to be trusted. Even
before September 11, the Vajpayee government had displayed its
affinity towards American interests when it enthusiastically welcomed
the new George W. Bush administration’s announcement of a missile
development programme to militarise space. Weeks before the
American air attacks on Afghanistan started, Foreign Minister Singh
had told a journalist that the Indian government would be happy to
provide military support to the US by offering its airports as bases.
Despite obvious pointers that the US was not interested in
extending its ‘war on terror’ to Kashmir, at least in the immediate
context, the government kept trying to portray American intervention
in Afghanistan as a golden opportunity. The suggestion was that
the US would become more appreciative of India’s concerns about
terrorism in Kashmir and exert pressure on Pakistan to stop its
‘proxy war’. In reality, of course, the US restricted itself to paying lip
service to the Indian government’s concerns and refused to pressurise
Pakistan to stop its support for ‘freedom fighters’ in Kashmir. In
fact, the attacks on Afghanistan gave the Pakistani President an
opportunity to demand, and get, various financial sops in the form of
write-off of loans from multilateral aid agencies.
A month after the September 11 attacks, the government banned
the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), charging the
organisation with having links with Osama bin Laden and his Al-
Qaeda network and with having participated in acts of terrorism in
India. Riots broke out in Lucknow, a city with a sizeable Muslim
population, when the authorities followed up the ban by arresting
several SIMI leaders. Fortunately, however, the riots neither spread to
other parts of the country nor lasted very long. The timing of the ban
on SIMI, just four months before the elections to the Uttar Pradesh
assembly were to be held, was seen not just by Muslims but also by
most political analysts as motivated.
Most commentators not identified with the BJP or the Sangh
Parivar also pointed out that the ban betrayed a communal bias.
While not defending SIMI, they asked why organisations like the
Bajrang Dal, which made no secret of their aggressive intent against
Muslims, had not been included in the ban. Advani disingenuously
sought to explain this by saying that while there was specific evidence
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of SIMI’s connections with terrorist acts and organisations, nobody

had presented any evidence of the Bajrang Dal being involved in
such ‘anti-national’ activities. The Opposition pointed out that there
had been any number of reports in the media on the Bajrang Dal
distributing arms and organising camps to train its cadres in the use
of these weapons.
In the last quarter of 2001, the ruling party mounted a concerted
campaign to push through a law ostensibly aimed at curbing ter-
rorism. In October, the Union Cabinet suddenly got the President
to promulagate an ordinance called the Prevention of Terrorism
Ordinance (POTO). This was done without consulting even the BJP’s
allies in the NDA, leave alone the Opposition. The ordinance raised a
big hue and cry. The political Opposition, civil rights groups, several
jurists and most journalists protested against the promulgation of
the ordinance. Even some allies of the BJP, like the DMK, publicly
announced their opposition to POTO.
The opposition to POTO was on several counts. The most common
cause for resistance was the experience with the Terrorist and
Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) that had been in force between
1987 and 1995. Critics pointed out that POTO was simply TADA
reincarnated. In fact, they said, the new law included some provisions
that were even more draconian than those in TADA. For instance,
under POTO, the accused need not be given the identities of
‘witnesses’ deposing against him. TADA had been allowed to lapse
in 1995 since Parliament agreed that it had not served the intended
purpose. Worse, it had been severely misused by the police against the
minorities, particularly the Muslims, or to settle personal scores. The
fact that at a time when terrorism was rampant in Punjab, Kashmir and
much of the north-east, the largest number of those detained under
TADA came from Gujarat, a state with no history of terrorism, was
seen as clinching evidence of its misuse. That barely one per cent of the
76,000-odd people charged under TADA had been convicted was also
cited as evidence of its ineffectiveness and of the fact that its preventive
detention provisions had been misused on a large scale.
Apart from these general reservations on TADA and hence POTO,
the media had a specific cause for worry. A provision in POTO made
it mandatory for journalists with any information about terrorists
 Bharatiya Janata Party 219

to pass it on to the authorities. Failure to do so would make the

journalist liable to prosecution under POTO. Thus, for instance, if
a journalist were to secure an interview with, say, the commander
of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, it would be mandatory for him or her
to tell the authorities where, when and through whom the interview
was arranged. This provision, journalists pointed out, would severely
curtail their ability to gather information without fear of being labelled
as abettors of terrorism.
The government initially took the attack to the critics, accusing
them of effectively helping the terrorists by trying to block the passage
of the Act to replace POTO. Like President George Bush, Advani
presented everybody with a choice of being ‘with-us-or-with-them’.
Those who did not support POTO were playing into the hands of
terrorists, he argued. His Cabinet colleagues like Arun Jaitley, Union
Law Minister, argued that POTO had in-built safeguards that did not
exist in TADA. Jurists like Fali Nariman, former Attorney General
and now a member of the Rajya Sabha, were not impressed by these
‘safeguards’. The law, he maintained, was too draconian and in any
case not needed since existing laws were adequate to deal with most
of what POTO was trying to tackle.
The government also attacked the Opposition, accusing it of being
hypocritical. States like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, both ruled
by the Congress either by itself or in an alliance, and West Bengal,
which was ruled by the CPI(M), it pointed out, had enacted similar
laws to deal with organised crime. While the CPI(M) responded by
announcing that it would withdraw the Prevention of Crime Act
(POCA) that it was proposing to pass, the Congress governments
argued that the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act
(MCOCA) and the corresponding Act in Madhya Pradesh were not
similar to POTO and that the BJP was being disingenuous in making
the comparison.
After a standoff in Parliament lasting weeks and after growing protests
against POTO, the government changed its tack somewhat. While
still insisting that POTO was essential to combat terrorism and that
there could be no compromise on it, the Prime Minister admitted that
the government should have consulted all political parties before
promulgating the ordinance. He also said that the government was
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willing to consider suggestions on how the law could be fine-tuned, but

would not relent in its resolve to get the legislation through Parliament.
An all-party meeting was convened in early December 2001,
but failed to make any difference to the entrenched positions. Shortly
thereafter, the government made more conciliatory gestures, saying
that the law would not be misused against journalists.
POTO eventually became POTA, after the government convened
a joint session of the two houses of Parliament. This became necessary
since the government was not sure that it would be able to muster a
majority in support of the Bill in the Rajya Sabha. Under the Indian
Constitution, legislation must be adopted by both houses before it
becomes law. In the event of the Rajya Sabha rejecting a Bill that has
been adopted by the Lok Sabha, it can still become law provided a
joint sitting of both houses votes in favour of the Bill. This provision
in the Constitution had been used only on two previous occasions in
the history of independent India. The fact that the government chose
to use it to pass POTA was clearly intended to prove that it was
committed to fighting terrorism.
Ironically, one of the first occasions the law was used was to jail
Vaiko (formerly known as V. Gopalaswamy) who was arrested by
the Tamil Nadu government headed by Jayalalithaa for allegedly
supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka—
the organisation had been banned in India after its leader Velupillai
Pirabhakaran was accused of conspiring to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.
Vaiko’s arrest was ironical for more than one reason. First, his party,
the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) was a
partner in the NDA government headed by Vajpayee. Second, he
was arrested at a time when the AIADMK under Jayalalithaa was
making a concerted effort to come close to the Vajpayee government.
Finally, Vaiko himself had vociferously argued in Parliament in favour
of enacting POTA and, in fact, had rubbished suggestions from the
opposition that the enactment was ‘draconian’ and that its provisions
were liable to be misused against political opponents.
Also significant was the fact that whereas POTA was used against
all the persons accused in the Godhra incident of February 27, 2002,
the law was not used even once against any person involved in the
subsequent violence that took place in Gujarat that was specifically
 Bharatiya Janata Party 221

targeted at Muslims. POTA, as already mentioned, was also used by

the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh against MLA Raja Bhaiyya
(Raghuraj Pratap Singh) and his father for allegedly conspiring to kill
the Chief Minister.
POTA once again figured prominently in the BJP’s attempts to
portray itself as the only ‘nationalist’ party and the Opposition—the
Congress in particular—as suspect on this count, in the context of
Jammu & Kashmir. This state as we know has been gripped by terrorist
violence since 1989 that has claimed over 60,000 lives. The terrorists—
who have received moral and material support from Pakistan, not
to mention training in the use of arms—have undoubtedly been
helped by a sense of alienation from the Indian mainstream within
large sections of the population in the Kashmir Valley, which is
predominantly Muslim. Elections over the years have been perceived
as rigged, with the government in New Delhi conniving with the one
in Srinagar to keep out genuine representatives of the people who
might have demanded greater autonomy or perhaps even secession.
As is typical in such situations, the Indian security forces’ attempts
to counter the militants involved some excesses, which added further
fuel to the fire and accusations of large-scale violation of human rights
by groups like Amnesty International.
It was in this context that the state assembly elections of October
2002 were held. Unlike in the past, these elections were perceived as
being relatively free of official coercion or manipulation. The fact
that the BJP and the National Conference, the parties in power in
New Delhi and Srinagar respectively, were trounced, helped buttress
this feeling. No single party managed to get a majority, but the
Congress in the Hindu-majority Jammu region of the state and the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the Muslim majority Kashmir
Valley emerged as the winners. Though the Congress overall had
more MLAs than the PDP, it was ultimately the PDP that headed
the coalition government formed by the two parties along with some
smaller parties and independents. One of the key campaign promises
of the PDP had been that it would disband the Special Operations
Group (SOG) of the J&K police. This group, formed specifically for
counter-insurgency operations, was seen as particularly ruthless and
unconcerned about human rights.
222 DIVIDED WE STAND

Not surprisingly, among the first announcements made by PDP

leader Mufti Mohammed Sayeed when he became Chief Minister of
the state was a declaration that the SOG personnel would be absorbed
into the main police force and that POTA would not be used by his
government. This policy, which he described as a ‘healing touch’,
was immediately attacked by the BJP as ‘going soft on terrorists’.
These developments took place barely two months before the Gujarat
elections. As a result, the BJP made the ‘fight against terrorism’ one of
the major issues of the Gujarat election campaign and Modi constantly
accused the Congress of playing into the hands of terrorists. In fact,
he even kept referring to the Congress as sympathisers of ‘Mian
Musharraf’ (the Pakistani President) in his election speeches.
Out of power after the 2004 general elections, the BJP once again
sought to portray itself as more patriotic than the Congress. One issue
that gave it an opportunity to do so was the death sentence handed
out to Afsal Guru, one of the accused in the December 13, 2001
attack on Parliament. While Guru’s clemency petition was pending
before the President, most leaders in Kashmir, including Congress
Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad appealed for his life to be spared.
The BJP immediately latched on to Azad’s statement, saying that it
showed how ‘soft’ the Congress was on terrorists and was part of the
Congress’ policy of appeasing Muslims.
A nuclear deal reached between Manmohan Singh and US President
George Bush was also attacked by the BJP as having compromised
national sovereignty. A party that had boasted of how it brought
India closer to the US while in power was suddenly singing a different
tune altogether. The language it used to attack the deal was virtually
indistinguishable from that used by other critics of the nuclear
agreement, including those belonging to the left and scientists and
retired officials who were part of the nuclear establishment.

Pragmatism, BJP Style

An interesting feature of the alliances that the BJP has forged since 1998
has been what the party likes to describe as ‘pragmatism’, but others
might see as opportunism or ruthlessness. As already mentioned, the
BJP forged a coalition with the BSP in Uttar Pradesh for a third time,
 Bharatiya Janata Party 223

despite having gone through two previous acrimonious alliances with

the same party. This is not because the BJP leadership was under any
illusion that the latest tie-up with the BSP would be long-lived or less
problematic. It was simply because the BJP believed it needed the BSP
to survive the short term in Uttar Pradesh and to pose a serious threat to
the Congress in Madhya Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh is not the only state where the BJP has shown
such clinical ‘pragmatism’ in deciding its alliances. Andhra Pradesh,
Haryana and Tamil Nadu are three states where the party has
jettisoned pre-election allies without even a pretence of any differences
merely because other parties in these states had become more ‘useful’.
The first of these instances was in Andhra Pradesh in 1998. In the
Lok Sabha elections that year, the BJP had partnered the Lakshmi
Parvathi faction of the Telugu Desam Party, contesting against the
faction headed by Lakshmi Parvathi’s step-son, Chandrababu Naidu.
Unfortunately for the BJP, Naidu’s faction got 19 out of the 42 Lok
Sabha seats in the state, while Lakshmi Parvathi’s faction could not
win a single seat. Without even a formal announcement of the alliance
with the Lakshmi Parvathi faction being broken, immediately after
the election results were known, the BJP started negotiations with
Naidu to form the government in New Delhi.
In 1999, the BJP acted equally ruthlessly in Haryana. The previous
year, the BJP had fought the assembly elections in the state in alliance
with Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party (HVP) and come to power.
When the second Vajpayee government fell in April 1999 and it
became clear that another general election was round the corner, the
BJP decided that Om Prakash Chautala’s INLD was the horse to back
in Haryana. It withdrew support to the Bansi Lal government,
resulting in its fall, and helped Chautala form a government in July
1999. Its assessment about the INLD being a more useful ally proved
right, with the BJP–INLD alliance winning all 10 Lok Sabha seats in
the state in the September–October general elections.
What happened in Tamil Nadu was perhaps the most bizarre
example of the BJP’s ‘pragmatism’. On the one hand, the DMK was a
constituent of the NDA and its leaders were members in the Vajpayee
governments’ council of ministers till December 2003. Yet, it was evident
that the AIADMK, which was formally an Opposition party, was closer
224 DIVIDED WE STAND

to the BJP than the DMK. Similarly, Vaiko had been in jail for over a
year, charged under POTA, but there was hardly any protest from the
BJP or any acknowledgement that the case against the MDMK leader
was politically motivated. The reason was simple enough, in the last
assembly elections held in Tamil Nadu in May 2001 the AIADMK won
close to three-fourths of the seats, the DMK and the MDMK had to
eat humble pie. In December 2003, the DMK and the MDMK both
finally left the NDA.
In the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh, an interesting
development occurred after the assembly elections in the state
coinciding with the May 1996 general elections. Out of 68 seats, the
BJP won 31 seats, the Congress 31 seats, the HVC (headed by former
Union Communications Minister Sukh Ram who was expelled from
the Congress after corruption charges were filed against him following
the recovery of large sums of unaccounted money from his residences)
won five seats, there was one independent candidate who won, while
elections were not held in one constituency.
The BJP—which had attacked Sukh Ram in 1995 and, together with
other Opposition parties, paralysed the Lok Sabha which was debating
the Narasimha Rao government’s telecommunications policies for
two weeks—realised the only way it could form a government in
Himachal Pradesh was by aligning with Sukh Ram. By aligning with
the HVC to come to power in the state, the BJP proved that it could
act as opportunistically as any of its political opponents.
There is an interesting aside to this episode. Fortuitously for the
BJP, the HVC split down the middle with two of its MLAs joining the
BJP. Interestingly, Sukh Ram later described this split as his ‘master
stroke’. It might seem strange that a party leader should welcome a
split in his own party and treat it as a master stroke. But Sukh Ram
was not being facetious. Given the provisions of the anti-defection
laws as they were at the time, the five-member HVC would have
been open to the threat of defections from its ranks to the Congress,
which would then have been in a position to form the government.
Under the prevailing law, if one-third or more of a legislature party’s
members left the parent party it would qualify as a ‘split’ rather than
a defection and the members would not be disqualified from the
legislature. By ‘making’ two of his MLAs join the BJP, Sukh Ram had
 Bharatiya Janata Party 225

effectively ensured that they could not defect, since they were now
part of a much bigger group in the legislature.
There is little doubt, therefore, that the BJP’s much-touted
‘coalition dharma’ is not far from being a euphemism for crass
opportunism, principles and loyalty be damned.

Atal Behari Vajpayee

Atal Behari Vajpayee, the first person to become Prime Minister of

India without ever having been a member of the Congress party,
has been in the political limelight for most of the past four decades.
Though he was a founder member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh when
it was formed in 1951, and a protégé of the first President of the BJS,
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, he was first noticed on the national
stage when he got elected to the Lok Sabha in 1957 from Balrampur,
having failed in his earlier attempt to enter Parliament from Lucknow
in a by-election in the mid-1950s. In 1957, he was just one of four
successful BJS candidates all over the country, though Vajpayee too
lost from two other constituencies, forfeiting his security deposit in
one of them. In all, Vajpayee has been elected to the Lok Sabha on
nine occasions and lost elections twice. His losses came in 1962 from
Balrampur in Uttar Pradesh and from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh
in 1984, when he was defeated by Madhavrao Scindia, in an election
that saw just two BJP members being elected MPs. Vajpayee is the
only person to have been elected to the Lok Sabha from four different
states—Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi.
India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, impressed with
Vajpayee’s Parliamentary interventions had, as early as the 1960s,
picked him out as one with a bright future in Indian politics and a
man who could even one day become Prime Minister—an insight
that has proved truly prophetic. Along the way to becoming India’s
10th Prime Minister (and later the 13th and 14th as well), Vajpayee
has had an impressive political career in his party, in public office,
and above all in being able to steer (but not entirely, as we shall see)
clear of controversy.
He has been awarded the country’s second highest civilian
award, the Padma Vibhushan, and was the first recipient of the Best
226 DIVIDED WE STAND

Parliamentarian Award in 1994. In the citation for the latter award,

he was described as a ‘multifaceted personality’ and as ‘an eminent
national leader, an erudite politician, selfless social worker, forceful
orator, poet, litterateur and journalist’. The extent to which this
opinion is shared by people cutting across the political spectrum is best
illustrated by two facts. For one, it was noticeable that when the Lok
Sabha was debating the motion of confidence in his government in
May 1999, speaker after speaker from the Opposition ranks castigated
the government for its failures on all fronts, but made it a point to
shower praise on Vajpayee the individual. For another, many of the
partners in the coalition led by Vajpayee, like Mamata Banerjee of
the Trinamool Congress, pointedly observed that their support is to
the leadership of Vajpayee, not to the BJP.
This non-partisan appreciation of his qualities, which few Indian
political leaders have been able to command, has also been the reason
for Vajpayee’s participation in, and on one occasion leadership of,
Indian delegations to international fora. He was part of the Indian
delegations to the United Nations General Assembly in 1988, 1990,
1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996. He also led the Indian delegation to
the UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva in 1993 (when
he was in the Opposition) and was widely acknowledged as having
done a commendable job of forcefully presenting the Indian position
on human rights.
As the External Affairs Minister in the Janata Party government of
1977, Vajpayee was credited with having taken a significant step towards
normalisation of Sino–Indian relations by initiating a visit to the
Chinese capital. During this period, he also created a minor flutter
by insisting on addressing the UN General Assembly in Hindi, the
first time anybody had done so.
Vajpayee has long been perceived as having views that are not
always fully in tune with his party’s, even if he has been content
with merely expressing a divergent view rather than aggressively
countering the party’s stance. Invariably, such differences have seen
Vajpayee espousing a moderate line against the more hardline Hindu
nationalist positions of his party colleagues. The most striking example
of this divergence between Vajpayee’s position and his party’s came
immediately after the Babri masjid demolition. Vajpayee described
 Bharatiya Janata Party 227

the incident as India’s ‘darkest hour’, while the rest of the party
was busy celebrating privately and publicly refusing to condemn
the incident. It is another matter that with the passage of time the
two positions have converged into what is now the official party
position—the demolition was ‘unfortunate’ but the inevitable
outcome of playing with the people’s religious sentiments.
The differences Vajpayee has often expressed from the party’s official
position has contributed in great measure to large sections of people who
do not agree with the BJP’s ideology, and the media, describing him as
‘the right man in the wrong party’, an image that has helped immensely
in winning him support from outside the BJP’s spheres of influence.
The same image, however, has also periodically resulted in those within
his party and the larger Sangh Parivar viewing him with suspicion,
or at least seeming to do so publicly. The BJP’s general secretary,
K.N. Govindacharya, for instance, started quite a controversy when
he allegedly contemptuously dismissed Vajpayee as little more
than the party’s public ‘mask’ and as a leader of no consequence
in the party organisation. There are many who argue that such
apparent distinctions between Vajpayee’s positions and those of
other BJP leaders are no more than an elaborately played out charade
scripted by the Sangh Parivar to appeal both to militant Hindus and
more moderate elements. A conspiracy theory of this sort would
normally have found no takers, but for the Sangh Parivar’s well-
established penchant for speaking in different voices.
However, despite all his perceived or real differences with the
BJP’s official stance, Vajpayee has been its most acceptable public
face and no non-entity in the party organisation either. He led the
BJS from 1968 to 1973 and into its merger with the Janata Party
in 1977 and subsequently became the BJP’s first president when
the party was formed in 1980 with the BJS sections of the Janata
Party breaking away. He has also been the undisputed choice of the
party and its electoral partners for the post of Prime Minister since
the 1996 elections.
Vajpayee himself has not only denied that he has any differences
with the ideology and the philosophy of the RSS, he has categorically
stated in an article published in Panchajanya, ‘The single reason for
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my long association with the RSS is that I like the sangh, I like its
ideology and above all, I like that RSS attitude towards people, towards
one another which is found only in the RSS.’ Having elaborated on
his first links with the RSS, which was then dominated in Gwalior
by Maharashtrians, Vajpayee described how his own brother was
changed after he joined the RSS and persuaded to give up his ‘elitist’
habit of cooking his own food and not eating the same fare offered
to others in a camp.
Vajpayee’s attitude towards Muslims as revealed in this article does
not seem very different from the dominant view in the RSS.

[The] Congress has not correctly understood the Muslim problem.

They continue to carry on their policy of appeasement. But to
what effect? The Muslims of this country can be treated in three
ways. One is tiraskar which means if they will not themselves
change, leave them alone, reject them as out-compatriots. [The]
second is puraskar which is appeasement, that is, bribe them to
behave, which is being done by the Congress and others of their
ilk. The third way is parishkar, meaning to change them, that is,
restore them to the mainstream by providing them samskaras [a
Sanskrit word whose meaning is a complex amalgam of culture,
tradition and etiquette]. We want to change them by offering them
the right samskaras….

While Vajpayee is clearly not implying that violence or force be used

against Muslims, it is revealing that he too sees the Muslim ‘problem’
as one of a community that has to be provided the ‘right samskaras’.
On the Ayodhya issue, Vajpayee has in the same article stated:

We [meaning, the Hindus] did pull down the structure in Ayodhya.

In fact, it was a reaction to the Muslim vote bank. We wanted to
solve this problem through negotiation and legislation. But there
was no puraskar for burai [no reward for an evil act]. We change
burai also with parishkar. Now I think the Hindu society has
been regenerated which was the prime task of the RSS. Earlier,
Hindus used to bend before an invasion but not now. This change
in Hindu society is worthy of welcome. So much change must
have come with the new-found self-assertion. This is a question
of self-preservation. If the Hindu society does not expand itself, it
will face the crisis of survival….
 Bharatiya Janata Party 229

Vajpayee is obviously a highly complex personality—one who

can write poetry expressing empathy with the victims of the nuclear
holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet spearhead the
government’s decision to go ahead with the nuclear tests in May
1998. It is said that as early as the 1950s, Vajpayee publicly said that
one could live with half a piece of bread (adha-roti) but India must
have its own atomic bomb to earn the respect the country deserves in
the comity of nations.
It would, however, be incorrect to state that Vajpayee has never
had a taste of controversy since he was initiated into public life while
still a student by the senior RSS leader Balasaheb Deoras in the
late 1930s. In fact, the controversy that has dogged him most over
the last two decades pertains to his role in the Quit India Movement
launched by Mahatma Gandhi against the British rulers in 1942. Life
sketches sponsored by the Sangh Parivar and the BJP have invariably
included a reference to Vajpayee being jailed during the Movement,
without providing any further details. Vajpayee himself describes
the incident rather blandly in his own article ‘The Sangh is my Soul’.
The third paragraph of the article ends, ‘I also participated in the
Quit India movement in 1942 and was jailed. I was then studying for
my Intermediate examination. I was arrested from my native village
Bateshwar in Agra district. I was then 16.’ (This would imply that
Vajpayee was born in 1926, but more of that later.) The unstated,
but clearly intended, implication of all the references to Vajpayee’s
term in jail is that he indeed played a heroic role during the Quit
India Movement, a major milestone in the history of India’s freedom
movement. Interestingly, a hagiography of Vajpayee written by two
of his long-standing associates (including one who became a Union
minister) makes no mention whatsoever of the Bateshwar episode or
the Prime Minister’s role in the Movement.
In India under Atal Behari Vajpayee: The BJP Era, C.P. Thakur
and Devendra P. Sharma (UBS Publishers, 1999) have devoted a full
chapter to detailing Vajpayee’s career in politics. The chapter entitled
‘Gwalior to New Delhi: A Short Distance But a Long Journey’
goes into considerable detail about Vajpayee’s childhood, his family
background, his early education and his rise in the Sangh Parivar and
the BJP. The authors are notably silent on Vajpayee’s involvement,
230 DIVIDED WE STAND

if any, in the freedom movement. Since 1974, charges have been

levelled from time to time by his political opponents that Vajpayee’s
testimony before a magistrate in his native village of Bateshwar, near
Agra in Uttar Pradesh, on September 1, 1942 was, in fact, responsible
for at least one ‘freedom fighter’, Liladhar Bajpai, being sentenced
to five years’ rigorous imprisonment. It is ironical to recall today
that one of those who made this charge against him in 1989, the late
P. Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, was later a prominent member
of the BJP and Cabinet Minister in the second and third Vajpayee
governments. Earlier, Kumaramangalam, as a Congress MP at the
time, was a signatory to a letter by 52 MPs accusing Vajpayee of
playing a ‘nefarious role’ in the Quit India Movement and suggesting
that ‘he implicated a number of freedom fighters to save his own skin’.
In fact, the letter even insisted that Vajpayee has signed a confessional
statement that was ‘the only basis for sentencing a whole group of
freedom fighters for long terms of imprisonment’.
On every occasion on which this charge has been raised since 1974
(when Blitz published an article on the topic), Vajpayee, his party,
and the Sangh Parivar have responded by dismissing the allegations
as totally baseless and even threatening to sue those who made
the accusations. The controversy, however, refused to die down.
Ultimately, in early 1988, the facts of the case were brought to light by
a detailed investigation by a team of journalists for Frontline magazine
and were confirmed by Vajpayee himself.
As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in-between the two
extreme positions taken by the supporters of the accused and the
accusers. While it is true that Vajpayee’s testimony was not used
as evidence in court, it is also equally true that Vajpayee did sign a
confessional statement absolving himself of any role in an incident
that had taken place in September 1942 in which a government
building at Bateshwar village had been damaged by a group opposed
to British rule in India. In that statement, Vajpayee also named
Liladhar Bajpai alias Kakua as one of those who led the mob that
had damaged the building.
Clearly, therefore, while Vajpayee was not directly responsible for
Liladhar Bajpai being sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment,
he was also by his own admission not an active participant in the
 Bharatiya Janata Party 231

Quit India Movement. That Vajpayee was arrested on the occasion

was merely due to the fact that he, with his brother, was present in
a crowd. In defence of his having named Liladhar Bajpai, Vajpayee
has clarified that his confessional statement was recorded in Urdu,
a language he cannot read, and it was not read out to him later.
However, Vajpayee did confirm (in an interview with Frontline editor
N. Ram) that he had indeed signed the statement. Liladhar Bajpai
himself contended that though the confessional statement signed
by Vajpayee was not used as evidence in court, it was a major factor
in his being sentenced since the Vajpayee brothers were, unlike the
rest of the village, educated and hence considered more dependable
in their testimony by the police and the court. He also suggests that
the case of the prosecution very closely mirrored the testimony of
the Vajpayee brothers.
Another occasion on which Vajpayee created a bit of a flutter
in political circles was when he described Indira Gandhi soon after
the 1971 war with Pakistan as Durga, a reference to one of the most
popular mother goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. Just a few years
later, during the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi in 1975, he
was jailed as were most prominent Opposition leaders.
There is also a relatively trivial controversy surrounding Vajpayee’s
age. Official records say he was born on December 25, 1926.
Vajpayee’s own article, quoted earlier, bears this out. So too does the
hagiography of Vajpayee written by Thakur and Sharma. However,
his confessional statement of September 1, 1942 records his age as 20,
by which logic he should have been born in 1922. In recent years, his
supporters have taken to celebrating his birthday, Christmas Day,
with great fanfare. Special supplements were brought out in leading
national dailies on his ‘75th birthday’ both in 1997 and in 1998.
Interestingly, there were posters on Delhi’s walls again in December
1999 announcing celebrations of the Prime Minister’s 75th birthday,
till newspapers reported that Vajpayee had decided not to celebrate
his birthday as a gesture of solidarity with those being held hostage
in a hijacked Indian Airlines aircraft at that time.
In the middle of 2000, Vajpayee’s knees were operated on. Many
felt that by then he had lost the metaphorical spring in his step. He
seemed to be smiling less and his famous wit and oratory skills were
232 DIVIDED WE STAND

less in evidence. His critics claimed he had started resembling former

Prime Minister Narasimha Rao who would often make a virtue out of
inaction. To many, Vajpayee remained more than a bit of an enigma.
The same man who described himself as a swayamsevak to a gathering
of non-resident Indians at Staten Island, New York, would in his
Musings from Kumarakom talk of the Ram Mandir problem as an
issue of ‘cultural nationalism’ even as he asserted that the verdict of
the courts would be respected in the case of the Ayodhya temple.
Vajpayee revelled in trying to be everything to everybody. He
would seek to placate the hawks in the RSS by stating that the writing
of history should not be one-sided. At the same time, he would project
a moderate ‘Nehruvian’ image of himself as the archetypal liberal
politician who would strive to attain a balance between conflicting
viewpoints. While the media would often highlight the differences
between the two ‘camps’ in the BJP, one led by Vajpayee and the other
by Advani, Vajpayee himself would periodically attempt to paper over
such alleged differences by suddenly dropping in, unannounced, to
Advani’s home for lunch. Advani too would from time to time assert
that Vajpayee was his senior and leader and that there was no man
he admired more. Nevertheless, the differences in their styles were
apparent to all observers of the Indian political scene, Vajpayee’s
approach was indeed laid-back and conciliatory. He loved his good
food and his jokes. Advani, on the other hand, was the man who
was in charge of things, a ‘modern-day Sardar Patel’ who would not
fight shy of controversy in stating his positions. His lifestyle, unlike
that of Vajpayee, was spartan, almost puritanical. The two were a
study in contrasts.
It is clear that Vajpayee has never quite adhered to the ascetic
and austere image that many other leaders from the Sangh Parivar
have sought to project. For instance, he makes no bones about the
fact that he is a bachelor and not a brahmachari (celibate). He told
a group of children in a jocular vein that he hadn’t married because
no woman was willing to marry him. His love for poetry, music and
cinema has only added to his image as a charming and multi-
dimensional personality.
It was reported that Vajpayee was not in favour of the 14th general
elections being held roughly four months ahead of schedule in April–
May 2004. He, however, had to go along with the rest of the BJP and
 Bharatiya Janata Party 233

the NDA. It will perhaps never be known whether his reluctance to

bring forward the election schedule was on account of him anticipating
a electoral setback for the coalition or whether he was of the view that
his government’s ‘India Shining’ campaign had not really worked. He
was graceful in accepting the defeat of the NDA and slipped quietly
into the shoes of the ‘elder statesman’.

Lal Krishna Advani

Lal Krishna Advani also known as Lal Kishenchand Advani (born
November 8, 1927, in Karachi, now in Pakistan) was president of
the BJP for three separate terms, the last ending in December 2005.
He is Leader of the Opposition in the 14th Lok Sabha. He was the
second in command in the Vajpayee government, the rank of Deputy
Prime Minister being added to his designation of Union Minister for
Home Affairs. His political career began in the RSS in 1942. He was
the Sangh’s Karachi branch secretary. He is accused as an absconder in
the Mohammed Ali Jinnah murder conspiracy case still registered in a
Pakistani police file in Karachi, though the government in Islamabad
has stated that no charges would be pressed. The case was lodged at
Karachi’s Jamshed Quarters police station, on September 10, 1947.
Till 1977, Advani maintained a somewhat a low public profile and
was considered to be a largely ‘organisational’ leader. He often likes to
refer to himself as a journalist. Advani came into the limelight when,
like a number of other oppositon political activitists, he was detained
under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) during the
Emergency (June 1975–March 1977). He became a Union Minister
for the first time in 1977 in the Morarji Desai government when he
held the portfolio of Information & Broadcasting.
After 1984, when the BJP won only two seats in the Lok Sabha,
Advani was credited with building the party in different parts of the
country virtually from scratch. From 1970 till 1989, he was a member
of the Rajya Sabha. In 1989 and again in 1991, he was elected to the
Lok Sabha. In 1989–90, Advani turned the BJP into a significant
force in Indian politics by undertaking a rath yatra (chariot tour) to
mobilise public support for the building of a temple dedicated to Lord
Rama at Ayodhya at the site where the Barbi mosque stood. After the
234 DIVIDED WE STAND

demolition of the mosque on December 6, 1992, a police FIR (first

information report) was filed in which Advani was named amongst
other leaders of the BJP and the RSS. They were accused of delivering
‘inflammatory speeches to spread communal hatred’.
In his appearances before the Justice M S Liberhan Commission,
a judicial body set up to investigate the events leading up to the
demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992, Advani claimed
that the demolition was the most agonising moment of his life. Advani
who was present in Ayodhya on the day the Babri mosque was
demolished, had left the site on that very day.
Advani has traditionally been known for his hardline views on
the issues of terrorism and Pakistan. This image made it particularly
surprising that while touring Pakistan in June 2005, he made
apparently laudatory remarks about Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan
that created a huge controversy in his own party. He became the first
major Indian political leader to visit Jinnah’s mausoleum and he wrote
in the visitors’ book:

There are many people who leave an irreversible stamp on

history. But there are few who actually create history. Qaed-e-
Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual. In his
early years, leading luminary of freedom struggle Sarojini Naidu
described Jinnah as an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. His
address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11,
1947 is really a classic and a forceful espousal of a secular state in
which every citizen would be free to follow his own religion. The
State shall make no distinction between the citizens on the grounds
of faith. My respectful homage to this great man.

Despite the controversy it created within the BJP and the larger Sangh
Parivar, Advani refused to retract his comments on Jinnah. In fact, till
as late as the end of 2006, he was still justifying his remarks. He told
a television interviewer in December 2006 that his remarks on Jinnah
were meant to assure Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular
that contrary to what the BJP’s political opponents claim, his party
was not against Muslims.
If that was indeed the purpose behind his remarks, Advani would
seem to have at least partly succeeded. While the Pakistan government
was cautious in its official response, The News of Pakistan in an editorial
 Bharatiya Janata Party 235

said, ‘His remarks have certainly given him a new look among the
Pakistani people, who otherwise would reject him as a hardcore radical
with nothing good to contribute to peace’. Others in Pakistan saw
this as posturing on Advani’s part to widen his appeal to the Indian
masses to appear as a prime minister in waiting.
In the December 2006 interview, Advani was asked whether he
had ambitions of becoming the Prime Minister of India. His reply
was that he was the leader of the Opposition and the convention
in Britain—from which India has borrowed much of its political
structure—was that the person who led the Opposition was treated
as a shadow Prime Minister. This observation by itself was unlikely
to have created a storm, though it would have seemed to be a pointer
towards Advani’s ambitions. What created a controversy was media
reports that Advani had said that while he had proposed Vajpayee’s
name as Prime Minister a decade earlier, he did not expect Vajpayee
to return the favour to him. This was perceived as an expression of
Advani’s bitterness.
To be fair, this is questionable interpretation of what Advani
actually said. The interviewer Bhupendra Chaubey of CNN-IBN had
asked him, ‘Many years back, you proposed the name of Atal Behari
Vajpayee to be the Prime Minister. Are you expecting Mr Vajpayee
to return the favour?’ Advani replied, ‘There is no question of anyone
returning any favour of this kind. It is a question of assessment and I
still think that it will depend a lot upon not only Atal Behari Vajpayee,
but the whole party to decide who will be the Prime Minister.’
In March, 2006, following a bomb blast at a Hindu shrine at
Varanasi, Advani decided to undertake another yatra which he called
Bharat Suraksha Yatra or a journey to raise awareness about India’s
security. This campaign, in stark contrast to his earlier rath yatra
1989–90 to campaign for the building of a Ram temple at Ayodhya,
turned out to be a damp squib. Over a period of more than a decade
and a half, Advani had moved from being a leader who was virtually
setting the country’s political agenda to one who was struggling to
retain his status even within his own party.
Within the BJP, Advani has always had a reputation of being
widely-read and contrary to his public image as a Hindutva hawk, he
is believed to be an agnostic of sorts in his personal life.
236 DIVIDED WE STAND

Annexure
Ayodhya Dispute
Ayodhya, a small town in eastern Uttar Pradesh, has been at the
centre of a major controversy since the mid-1980s. A section of
Hindus claims that a mosque (the Babri masjid) built in this town by
a general of Babar, the first Mughal emperor, in the 16th century had
been constructed by demolishing a temple to mark the birthplace of
the mythical Lord Rama. For over half a century, ownership of the
land on which the mosque existed has been disputed. Before the mid-
1980s, few outside Ayodhya were aware of (or even bothered about)
this dispute. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or World Hindu
Organisation started a campaign to build a temple where the disputed
structure stood at Ayodhya in 1986. This campaign received a major
fillip in 1989 when the BJP threw its weight behind the VHP’s
campaign and Advani undertook a rath yatra (a procession led by a
‘chariot’) across the country to popularise the demand for building
a Ram temple to replace the Babri masjid. The dispute erupted
on December 6, 1992, when a mob of Hindus chanting slogans,
demolished the structure. Prime Minister Rao was the perfect picture
of a helpless spectator as the official media provided a running
commentary that afternoon of how the domes of the mosque were
being reduced to rubble one by one. (Months later, Home Minister
in Rao’s government S.B. Chavan was to remark that all that the
Prime Minister did that afternoon was watch television, a remark he
later withdrew.) Vajpayee was not present at the site, but other BJP
leaders Advani, Uma Bharti, and Sadhvi Rithambara among others,
were. Communal riots ensued in different parts of India, particularly
Mumbai and parts of Gujarat.
After December 1992, the Union government acquired the land
around the site where the disputed structure had stood. The Supreme
Court of India ordered the government to ensure that the status quo
was maintained in the area and no fresh construction was allowed.
Even as leaders of the VHP periodically hyped up a demand to construct
a temple at the site where the demolished mosque had stood, it backed
off from precipitating a direct confrontation with the authorities.
 Bharatiya Janata Party 237

Towards the end of 2001, Vajpayee declared that he was confident

the dispute could be resolved through negotiations between Hindu
and Muslim organisations and that he was hopeful the settlement
would be reached by March 2002. In January 2002, the VHP issued
an ‘ultimatum’ that it would start constructing the temple on March
15 irrespective of whether the various disputes had been resolved by
the government or the courts of law. Shortly thereafter, the Prime
Minister announced that his attempts to resolve the issue through
negotiations had failed and that it was now up to the courts to
give their verdict.
The VHP steadily stepped up its aggressive posture as the campaign
for the Uttar Pradesh elections drew to a close, leading most observers
to conclude that the timing was more than a coincidence. After
the UP election results and the communal violence in Gujarat, the
VHP’s posture became even more strident and it started asserting
that it would install the foundation stone (shila) for the Ram temple
in Ayodhya on March 15, come what may. Many of the BJP’s allies
within the NDA, including the numerically most significant TDP,
expressed their strong disapproval of the VHP’s stance and publicly
called upon the government to ensure that law and order was
maintained in Ayodhya.
Meanwhile, a Muslim petitioner from Delhi pleaded with the
Supreme Court to prevent the shila pujan (ceremony to consecrate
the stone) at Ayodhya on March 15. With March 13 being set as
the date for the court to deliver its verdict on this petition, the BJP’s
allies stepped up pressure on the government to ensure that the
court’s verdict was strictly implemented. At an all-party meeting
Vajpayee assured those present that the government was committed
to upholding the law and that it would strictly follow the directions
of the apex court.
On March 13, the Supreme Court ordered that no religious activity
of any sort should be allowed on the land acquired by the government
in Ayodhya till further orders. While the order was widely welcomed
by the Opposition in Parliament and by almost all the BJP’s allies in
the NDA, the Attorney General’s (Soli Sorabjee’s) pleadings while
appearing in court on behalf of the Union government led to fresh
controversy within the NDA and outside it. When asked for the
238 DIVIDED WE STAND

government’s response to the petition, Sorabjee told the court that the
Union government was of the view that a symbolic ceremony could be
allowed under strict conditions to ensure that no untoward incidents
took place. Several of the BJP’s allies took exception to this position
taken by Sorabjee and protested that they had not been consulted
before formulating the government’s position. These allies further
argued that this position smacked of a ‘soft’ or ‘conciliatory’ attitude
towards the VHP. The opposition too attacked the government,
charging it with actively colluding with the VHP.
The government immediately started a damage limitation exercise.
Several of its ministers appeared on television channels to ‘clarify’ that
the stand taken by Sorabjee in court was not the government’s, but
his own. The following day, Vajpayee reiterated this point of view in
Parliament and Sorabjee too was at pains to suggest that he had merely
offered a legal opinion and not put forward the government’s views
on what ought to be done or not done on March 15. The Opposition
dismissed the entire exercise as an absurd claim. The Trinamool
Congress and the TDP publicly appeared to accept the explanation,
although many of them said they still disapproved of Sorabjee’s
intervention in court.
Meanwhile, security in Ayodhya had been stepped up to
unprecedented levels. Trains and bus services to the town had been
suspended after the Gujarat riots and outsiders seeking to enter
Ayodhya had to obtain special passes. Sensing that it would not be
able to mobilise enough people in Ayodhya on March 15 to precipitate
a confrontation with the administration, the VHP toned down its
rhetoric and said it was prepared to settle for a symbolic puja outside
the acquired land. On March 15, the government finally acceded
to the VHP’s demand that a symbolic puja be allowed in Ayodhya
outside the land acquired by the government and that an official
from the Prime Minister’s office be present to accept the symbolic
shila after the puja from Ramchandra Das Paramhansa, president of
the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas, a VHP front organisation set up for the
specific purpose of constructing the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
While this strategy ensured that March 15 passed off peacefully,
barring stray incidents of communal violence in Gujarat and some
other parts of northern India, it led to fresh accusations from the
 Bharatiya Janata Party 239

Opposition of the government having become party to the VHP’s

programme. Though the BJP’s allies did not publicly support this
position, there was definite unease among many of them at the manner
in which the VHP seemed to be setting the agenda. The unease grew as
the VHP announced that it would be initiating a campaign (asthi yatra)
in which urns carrying the ashes of the victims of the Godhra carnage
would be carried to various parts of the country to be immersed in
different rivers. Once again, the BJP’s allies joined the Opposition
in protesting that this was calculated to whip up communal passions
and should not be allowed. Soon thereafter, the VHP claimed that it
had no intentions of organising any such procession.
The Ayodhya issue came to the fore again in February 2003, when
the government moved a petition in the Supreme Court urging it to
vacate its March 2002 order banning religious activity on the acquired
land. Interestingly, this time round there was no pretence that this was
not the official position of the government or that it was the Attorney
General’s ‘personal opinion’. Nor was there any protest from the
allies, unlike a year earlier. It is another matter that the Supreme Court
dismissed the government’s petition on March 31, 2003.
The BJP keeps raising the Ayodhya issue from time to time. As
recently as December 2006, BJP president Rajnath Singh had stated
that the law of the land would be changed to enable the construction
of a Ram temple at the site where the Babri mosque had stood if the
party wins a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha. Reports indicate that
the so-called liberal faction within the BJP is of the view that the party
should not rake up the Ayodhya issue, a view that is contrary to
the position held by the RSS and the ‘hardliners’ in the party. Till
September 2007, the M.S. Liberhan Commission had not submitted
its report on the Babri Masjid demolition despite having been given
41 extensions of its term since it was appointed 10 days after the
December 6, 1992 demolition. Anupam Gupta, who served as the
commission’s lawyer since 1999, spoke out against Justice Liberhan
for not consulting him while writing the section on Advani’s role in
the demolition.
 Chapter 5
Hindi Heartland:
Asserting Caste Identities

Political parties with a base only in specific regions or states have been
around for as long as India has been independent. Such parties would
typically appeal to the narrow, parochial sentiments of the people of a
particular region of the country or even of a specific section of people
within that geographical area—emphasising regional over national
loyalties and stressing affiliation to caste, religion and language. The
omnibus label of ‘regional party’, however, could be misleading in
many cases. It would be worthwhile to make a distinction between
parties that consciously appeal to a regional identity and those that seek
to appeal to people over a wider geographical area, but have in practice
been unable to exert their influence beyond one or two states.
For instance, the DMK and the AIADMK are by definition not
even seeking to appeal to voters in the north, east or west of the
country, since these populaces would not qualify as ‘Dravidian’. In
fact, these parties are apparently not even interested in extending their
support base very much beyond the Tamil-speaking areas, which
include Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and a few pockets in neighbouring
Karnataka and Kerala. The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand,
appeals to a constituency that is largely caste-based (though, of late, it is
trying to reach out beyond this constituency). The fact that support
for the SP has remained, by and large, confined to Uttar Pradesh is not
on account of the party’s unwillingness to spread its wings to
other parts of the country, to states like Maharashtra for example.
The same considerations hold good for the Rashtriya Janata Dal,
which has been unable to find too many supporters outside Bihar,
not for want of trying.
There are a number of examples of political parties that have defined
themselves in terms of a particular region or ethnic group. In that
sense, the term ‘regional’ is appropriate to describe a wide and diverse
 Hindi Heartland 241

range of political parties which would include the Telugu Desam Party
(TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab,
what was once the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) in Tamil Nadu,
the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in Assam and the Haryana Vikas
Party (HVP) in Haryana. In another category would come parties
like the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Orissa, the National Conference
(NC) in Jammu & Kashmir, and the Trinamool Congress in West
Bengal—all these parties apparently do not appeal to people belonging
to a certain region but have, in fact, not even attempted to go beyond
the particular state in which they originated. Then there are parties
like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that—like the SP and the RJD—are
often considered ‘regional’ but in fact would like to spread their
support base across a number of states. Into this group would also
fall the Shiv Sena (which is based mainly in Maharashtra) and the
Nationalist Congress Party that broke away from the Indian National
Congress in 1999 but had a presence mainly in Maharashtra and
Meghalaya (thanks to the influence of two of its stalwarts, Sharad
Pawar and P.A. Sangma) before it split in 2004.
The fact that some of these parties are by definition regional while
others do not quite fit the tag is no coincidence. This distinction stems
from the factors that have contributed to the emergence and growth
of each of them. The Hindi heartland—in particular the states of Uttar
Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar—has witnessed the phenomenon
of ‘Mandalisation’ since August 1990. The Mandal Commission had
advocated reservation of 27 per cent of all government jobs for the OBCs.
The decision to implement this recommendation sparked off a sharp
polarisation along caste lines in many states in north India. Parties like
the SP and the RJD (both of which did not exist at that time and were
part of the undivided Janata Dal) have been the main beneficiaries of
this polarisation, emerging as champions of the OBCs.
This was possible because while the two biggest national parties—
the Congress and the BJP—did not overtly oppose the implementation
of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations, restricting their
official criticism to the manner in which V.P. Singh had attempted
to implement the commission’s suggestions, it was hardly a secret
that the bulk of the leadership of both the Congress and the BJP
was unhappy with the decision. The violent protests by upper-caste
students all over north India that followed the decision were widely
242 DIVIDED WE STAND

believed to have had the tacit support of both the Congress and the
BJP. In this highly charged atmosphere, only parties that were willing
to aggressively play the caste card could hope to win the loyalty of
the OBCs. V. P. Singh’s Janata Dal—of which the SP and the RJD are
offshoots—was the only major political force that adopted such an
aggressive posture.
The BSP too has, from its very inception, defined itself as a party
of the dalits and other oppressed castes. Its origins lie in the All India
Backward (SC, ST, OBC) and Minority Communities Employees’
Federation (BAMCEF), an organisation of government employees led
by the late Kanshi Ram when he was himself a government employee.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the BSP’s vision is not confined
to any specific state or region.
Many supporters of the BJP and the Congress often disparagingly
dismiss the communist parties too as regional parties, pointing out
that their influence is largely restricted to the states of West Bengal,
Kerala and Tripura, though they may have enclaves of influence
in various other states. This is not factually inaccurate, though the
two communist parties have had their representatives elected to
the legislatures of most states in India barring Gujarat and a few
of the smaller states. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to club the
left even with parties like the SP or the RJD, which claim a national
vision but are restricted to a couple of states. This is because, unlike
the SP or the RJD, which are targeting specific caste or community
groups, the left’s appeal is not sectarian in nature.
Parties like the TDP and the AGP, in contrast to the caste-based
formations of northern India, have emerged by exploiting the
apprehensions of domination by Delhi. They are manifestations of
what academics would refer to as sub-national aspirations. By the very
nature of their sub-national character, they cannot afford to broaden
their support base for fear of losing their core section of followers.
The Dravidian parties may seem to fit into the category of caste-based
formations. After all, their origins lie in the anti-Brahmin movements
led by the Justice Party in British-ruled India. Yet, the fact is that
the process of social churning that has been witnessed in north
India since the 1990s had taken place in south India more than half a
century earlier. From the 1960s, therefore, the Dravidian movement
 Hindi Heartland 243

has acquired an increasingly regional flavour rather than a caste

identity. So much so that the unchallenged leader of the AIADMK
J. Jayalalithaa is herself a Brahmin. To that extent, the DMK and the
AIADMK are more akin to the TDP or the AGP today than to the
SP, the BSP or the RJD.
Like the regional parties, the left too has made an issue of the
centralised and unitary nature of the Indian state and of the
‘discrimination’ faced by states ruled by it. The communist parties
have repeatedly alleged that successive Union governments have
starved states like West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala of funds for
development for partisan political reasons. The left had till the 1980s
also often taken a lead in organising conclaves of state governments
to demand a more federal fiscal structure and a more de-centralised
polity. (More on this in the chapter on the left.)
The supporters of the BJP and the Congress have often sought
to portray the so-called regional parties as having narrow, partisan
interests. The leaders of these parties have been described as ‘myopic’
individuals who have not been able to transcend the confines of their
state. Thus, sections of the BJP and the Congress have argued that
the interests of the country as a whole cannot be safe in the hands
of leaders of these regional political formations. However, such a
coloured view cannot be substantiated, as such leaders have time and
again displayed a capacity to look at issues from a wide perspective.
On the contrary, it is the failure of the ‘national’ political parties to
address the aspirations of large sections of the population that has
contributed in no small measure to the emergence and growth of
regional parties. The fact that Indira Gandhi, sitting in New Delhi,
whimsically and contemptuously changed successive Chief Ministers
in Andhra Pradesh was taken advantage of by N.T. Rama Rao,
founder of the TDP. He was able to successfully use injured ‘Telugu
pride’ to such effect that the TDP swept the first state assembly
election it ever contested.
More importantly, the decline in the fortunes of the Congress and
the inability of the BJP or the communist parties to fill the vacuum
created by this decline resulted in the growing influence of smaller
parties. It also meant that no single party was any longer able to win
a majority in the Lok Sabha. As a result, the smaller parties have often
244 DIVIDED WE STAND

been able to exert an influence on the government disproportionate

to their numerical strength. The clout that the AIADMK led
by Jayalalithaa wielded in the second Vajpayee government and
the manner in which the TDP led by Chandrababu Naidu was often
able to have its way with—some would say arm-twist—the third
Vajpayee government are clinching evidence of the growing
importance of smaller parties in national politics.

The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj

Party: Changing Caste Arithmetic in Uttar Pradesh
The course of politics in Uttar Pradesh (UP) in the last decade to an
extent represents a microcosm of what is happening in Indian politics
as a whole. Arguably, no other state has seen as rapid a fragmentation
of the society and the polity as UP has since the beginning of the
1990s. Understandably, the fragmentation in India’s largest state,
accounting for almost a sixth of the country’s population, has not
been on linguistic or ethnic lines, but along the lines of caste and
community. This polarisation of UP society along caste lines has
resulted in the rise of two strong regional parties, the BSP and the SP,
both of which have enjoyed power in the state, in alliance with each
other and separately with the support of other parties. At the same
time, the polarisation has led to the marginalisation in UP of the once-
powerful Congress, which, despite a modest resurgence in the 1999
Parliamentary elections, has been relegated to an also-ran in the politics
of the state. The BJP, on the other hand, through astute management
of caste equations, had become the strongest of all the parties in the
state, that is, till the results of the assembly elections of February
2002, the Lok Sabha polls of 2004 and finally the assembly elections
of April–May 2007 gave it a series of severe jolts. In each of these
elections, the BJP finished third, behind the SP and the BSP and with
each passing election, it slipped further.
The process of social churning in UP is far from over. Caste
equations and correlations are fast changing and how they move will
remain the key determinant of the course of politics in the state in the
foreseeable future. It is not surprising therefore, that the 1990s in UP
saw political alliances that proved extremely shortlived and fragile.
 Hindi Heartland 245

A single-party majority was not thrown up in the state since 1991,

that is, until the stunning victory of the BSP in 2007, when the party
won 206 of the 402 seats that polled (voting in one constituency was
countermanded due to the death of a candidate).
The BSP’s win has the potential to completely change the course of
politics in UP. Some commentators are even suggesting that it could
usher in a bipolar polity in the state, but the two poles would be the
BSP and the SP, with the Congress and BJP getting progressively
weaker despite the fact that prominent leaders of both parties
(including Rahul Gandhi, Sonia’s son in his late-30s) had conducted
extensive campaigns to canvass support for party candidates. The
prognosis that the two parties that would continue to matter in
UP politics are the BSP and the SP seems quite plausible, especially
since the SP increased its vote share in the 2007 assembly elections
marginally (by less than one percentage point) though the number
of seats won by the party declined dramatically from 143 to 97. The
BSP, on the other hand, increased its tally in the assembly from 98 to
206 with its vote share going up by 7.4 per cent.
The rapid rise of overtly caste-based parties in UP was clearly
precipitated by the decision of V.P. Singh’s government to implement
the recommendations of the Mandal Commission in 1990. While this
led to an immediate and violent backlash among the upper castes in the
state, as in some others, it also helped to a large extent in consolidating
the OBCs, who are estimated to account for over a third of the state’s
population. Simultaneously, the process of dalit consolidation behind
the BSP also gathered steam. Though neither the OBCs nor the dalits
completely switched allegiances to any one party, the magnitude of
the consolidation of these two vote banks was sufficient to create
new viable political forces that were able to play a major role in the
politics of UP.
At the time of the state assembly elections in 1993 though, a
series of political developments including some emanating from the
national capital had repercussions in UP. They had left the Janata Dal
in no position to capitalise on this consolidation. On the contrary, it
was the Samajwadi Party, a breakaway group of the Janata Dal, which
cashed in on the benefits of the Mandal programme. The events that
led to this denouement began with the BJP’s rath yatra to Ayodhya
in 1990, as part of an agitation to ‘grab’ the Babri masjid from the
246 DIVIDED WE STAND

Muslims and build a temple dedicated to Lord Rama. This was really
part of a calculated strategy to create a communal polarisation across
the country and in UP in particular. The BJP believed, rightly as
subsequent events proved, that such a polarisation would work to
its advantage in electoral politics.
Mulayam Singh Yadav, a prominent leader, who was then the
Janata Dal Chief Minister of UP, cracked down on the agitators
ruthlessly. While this led to his being accused of running a police state
and being derogatorily dubbed ‘mullah Mulayam’ by the BJP, it also
ensured that he won the loyalty of the Muslims who, till that stage,
had by and large been voting for the Congress. This switch on the
part of the Muslim community was to prove crucial in determining
the new equations in UP. Yadav also had the support of the bulk
of his community, the Yadavs, who account for about 10 per cent
of the state’s population. The Mandal programme also meant that
the Janata Dal had the support of substantial sections of other OBC
castes. However, some of the most backward castes among the OBCs
were not too enamoured of the Mandal plank, convinced as they were
that it would yield benefits only to the relatively advantaged sections
among the OBCs. This conviction and the successful mobilisation of
these sections by the BJP through the emotive Ram temple issue also
won the BJP the support of a major chunk of the OBCs.
Despite this, however, the Janata Dal at this stage could reasonably
hope to command over a third of the popular vote in the state, with
almost the entire Muslim community and the bulk of the OBCs as
also a section of the dalits backing it. In a four-cornered fight with
the BJP, the Congress and the BSP, it should have been sufficient
to bring it back to power. This was, however, not to happen. When
V.P. Singh’s government fell in November 1990 within a year of
coming to power, the Janata Dal itself split. While in most other
parts of the country the bulk of the Janata Dal remained in the parent
party, in UP a substantial chunk, led by Yadav, joined the breakaway
Samajwadi Janata Party headed by Chandra Shekhar, who replaced
V.P. Singh as Prime Minister with the support of the Congress. The
only major leader of the Janata Dal in UP who remained with the
parent party was Ajit Singh, the son of former Prime Minister Charan
Singh, who was the unquestioned leader of the Jats of western UP
and Haryana in his time. While the US-educated Ajit Singh, who had
 Hindi Heartland 247

worked in an American computer firm before taking to politics, was

not a patch on his father as a political leader, old loyalties meant that
the Jats, a powerful peasant community in the grain bowl of western
UP, continued to support the Janata Dal.
The split in the Janata Dal meant that Yadav’s government, which
was always in a minority, now became even more precariously
perched, entirely dependent on Congress support for its survival.
Since the Congress was supporting the SJP government in New Delhi,
it also extended its support to the government in UP. Soon after the
Congress withdrew support to the Chandra Shekhar government in
March 1991, however, the clamour to pull down Yadav’s government
grew within the upper caste dominated Congress in UP. This was
partly triggered by the feeling that Yadav’s aggressive championing of
the OBC cause could alienate upper caste supporters of the Congress,
who could consider the BJP a better option, and partly by the fear
that Yadav’s continuing in power could further cement his already
strong roots among the Muslim community. The Congress’ central
leadership, with Prime Minister Narasimha Rao at the helm, resisted
such pressures for some time, but ultimately succumbed, precipitating
mid-term elections to the assembly in 1991.
As was to be expected, the vertical split in the Janata Dal’s support
base ensured an easy victory for the BJP, which won 221 seats in the
425-member assembly. Apart from the emotive appeal of the Ram
temple issue and the split in the Janata Dal vote, another key factor
in the BJP’s win was its projection of Kalyan Singh, a leader who
belonged to the Lodh community (part of the OBCs), as the party’s
Chief Ministerial candidate. For the first time, the BJP, a party that
had traditionally been dominated by the upper castes, was projecting
someone from an intermediate caste as its main leader. This helped the
BJP win over a sizeable section of non-Yadav OBC votes, in particular
those of the Lodhs and Kurmis, who, like the Yadavs, are among the
relatively better-off sections of the OBCs with many among them
being middle peasants. As was to happen later in neighbouring Bihar,
the attempt by Yadav leaders to monopolise the benefits of the Mandal
platform alienated other sections of the relatively powerful among the
OBCs. As later in Bihar, so also in UP in 1991, this rift within the
ranks of the OBCs worked to the advantage of the BJP.
248 DIVIDED WE STAND

The BJP government in UP, however, lasted just over a year, before
being dismissed (along with three other BJP-led state governments)
by the Union government in December 1992 for having aided and
abetted the demolition of the Babri masjid. There followed a nearly
year-long spell of President’s rule before fresh elections to the UP
state assembly were held in November 1993.
By this time, Mulayam Singh Yadav had floated his own party,
the Samajwadi Party, though he continued to have an alliance with
Chandra Shekhar’s SJP. Political commentators writing before the
elections foresaw an easy victory for the BJP despite the tie-up
between the SP and the BSP. This was largely based on the assumption
that the old Janata Dal base would still be vertically split between
the parent party and the SP. As it turned out, this did not happen.
Yadav’s credentials among the Muslims and in his own community
stood him in good stead. The SP–BSP alliance and the BJP emerged
as the largest groups with 176 members each in the 425-member
state assembly, though short of a majority by about 37 seats. The
Janata Dal managed to win just 27 seats and the Congress a mere 29
seats, by far the lowest number of MLAs it had ever had in the UP
assembly. Given the composition of the assembly, both the Janata
Dal and the Congress, as also the four MLAs from the left parties,
had little choice but to support a Yadav-led SP–BSP government
to keep the BJP out of power. The change in the vote shares of the
various parties and groups in these elections was a clear indicator of
the changing patterns in UP politics. While the Congress lost about
2.4 per cent of the vote from the 1991 elections, the BJP and the
BSP gained about 2 per cent each. The major loser was the Janata
Dal, whose share of the vote dropped from 18.8 per cent in 1991 to
12.2 per cent in 1993, most of this loss being picked up by the SP,
which, in its earlier incarnation, had won 12.5 per cent of the votes
in 1991, but now managed 18 per cent.
The violent incidents inside the state assembly on the first day that
it met were later seen as symbolic of the new-found confidence among
sections that had traditionally been at the lower rungs of the social
hierarchy. The predictable jibes between the BJP MLAs on the one
hand, and the SP–BSP MLAs on the other, soon degenerated into ugly
brawls in which microphone stands were uprooted from their tables
 Hindi Heartland 249

and used as weapons, while paperweights were used as missiles. Several

MLAs, most of them from the BJP, were injured in the fracas and were
taken to hospitals for first aid. Scenes of BJP MLAs crouching behind
the assembly benches while their SP–BSP counterparts attacked were
seen on national television that night and have remained imprinted
in the memories of those who saw the episode as a powerful symbol
of changing caste equations in the state. Even those who interpreted
the unruly scenes in the UP assembly as the beginning of the state
descending into a phase of anarchy, chaos and criminalisation of
politics, reluctantly agreed that the days of upper-caste domination
of the state’s politics were on the way out, if not over.
The SP-BSP alliance, though heralded as the first real consolidation
of the oppressed sections of UP society, was beset with internal
contradictions from its very inception. With the benefit of hindsight,
it can be argued that the alliance never had the potential for longevity
given the ground realities of caste equations in UP. While the
BSP’s support base was almost entirely confined to the dalits (and
in particular to the Jatavs or Chamars, who were traditionally in
occupations connected with leather and hides), the SP’s stronghold
was among the relatively affluent sections of the OBCs, particularly
the Yadavs. The Yadavs, thanks to tenancy reforms ushered in by
Congress governments since independence, had become a prominent
land-owning community, like many of the other relatively prosperous
OBC communities—the Kurmis, the Lodhs and the Koeris, to name
a few. The bulk of the dalits in the rural areas, on the other hand,
were agricultural labourers with little or, more often, no land. It was
hardly surprising, therefore, that there should be a fierce hostility
between these two communities, which were constantly pitted
against each other in real life. The alliance between the SP and the
BSP was, to that extent, an attempt to impose from above a coalescing
of forces that were inherently opposed to each other and had
conflicting interests.
The bickering between these two alliance partners continued, but
remained within manageable proportions for the best part of the
next year-and-a-half. The BSP’s two most prominent leaders, Kanshi
Ram and Mayawati, throughout this period used public platforms
to drive home the point that while Yadav was the Chief Minister
250 DIVIDED WE STAND

and commanded the support of a larger number of MLAs than their

party, he would ignore the BSP’s strength at his own peril. Despite
these tensions, however, Yadav used his tenure as CM to further
buttress his claims of being the champion of the OBCs in the state.
One of the key instruments used was his decision in 2000 to extend
the reservation for OBCs in government jobs to the hill districts of
the state, now Uttarakhand.
These districts of western UP had for long witnessed a movement
for a separate state—proposed to be called Uttarakhand—and the
attempt to foist OBC reservations in an area which had virtually no
OBC population added fuel to the fire. Of all the districts of what
was then UP, the territory of the proposed Uttarakhand was the most
upper-caste dominated, with Brahmins and Rajputs constituting the
majority of the population. While the dalits too had a significant
presence, though less than in the plains, the OBCs were conspicuous
by their absence. The attempt to introduce reservations in these
areas was, therefore, viewed as just another instance of people from
the plains trying to exploit the hill folk. The Uttarakhand agitation
visibly gained impetus and a call was made for a mass rally in Delhi
to press for the demand for a separate state and to protest against the
reservation policy.
The state administration decided to do its best to prevent the
agitators from reaching Delhi, and on October 2, 1994, the anniversary
of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, busloads of Uttarakhand supporters
were stopped on their way to Delhi and brutally beaten by the police
near Muzzafarnagar in the plains. Some of the women in the group
were allegedly raped by the policemen. While this incident shocked
the country and gave the Uttarakhand movement a profile that it did
not have nationally till that stage, political observers also saw it as a
cynical ploy by Yadav to gain support among the OBCs in the plains
at the expense of unpopularity in an area of the state in which he had
no political stake.
The period of Yadav’s government was also characterised by
deep rooted suspicion within the BSP that he was trying to engineer
a split in the BSP’s ranks, particularly among the Muslim and non-
dalit MLAs of the party, to further consolidate his position. The
apprehension, as later events proved, was not entirely misplaced.
 Hindi Heartland 251

Matters came to a head in the elections to the panchayats and zila

parishads held in May 1995.
In these elections, the SP was seen as having used muscle power
not just to defeat the BJP and Congress candidates, but also BSP
candidates in several areas. Many instances of SP workers voting for
Janata Dal candidates to defeat BSP aspirants were witnessed in the
state. This proved the proverbial last straw for the BSP, which was
already finding it difficult to justify the alliance among its cadre and
support base, which felt that Yadav’s tenure as Chief Minister had
only further emboldened their Yadav oppressors in the rural areas.
The BSP withdrew its ministers and its support from the Mulayam
Singh Yadav government in June 1995, with the BJP’s Murli Manohar
Joshi, who later became the party’s President and a Union Cabinet
Minister, actively egging the BSP on to part ways with Yadav.
On June 2, 1995, the day after the BSP withdrew support to Yadav’s
government, the state guest-house in Lucknow was witness to
scenes that were testimony to all the acrimony between the erstwhile
partners, the SP and the BSP. Thousands of SP activists patrolled
the streets outside the guest house where Mayawati was staying at the
time, and virtually kept her under house arrest while Yadav and his
lieutenants worked on weaning away some of the BSP’s legislators to
ensure that his government would survive. Sensing an opportunity to
build ties with the BSP, the BJP ‘rescued’ Mayawati from the guest
house. Once out, Mayawati insisted that the SP activists had been
sent specifically to physically eliminate her, while Mulayam protested
that they had merely been ‘protecting’ her from those who might
be incensed at the BSP’s ‘betrayal’. Even ignoring these exaggerated
claims, there is no denying the fact that the fateful day has left as
indelible a mark on UP politics as the violence in the UP assembly
the first time it met during the SP–BSP government’s tenure. Ever
since that day, the SP and the BSP have been sworn enemies. The BSP
has since then fought an election in alliance with the Congress, it has
formed governments with the help of the BJP, but it has refused to
have anything to do with the SP.
Despite the rift between the SP and the BSP, over the second half
of the 1990s and the first couple of years of the new millennium,
both parties have managed to consolidate their electoral base in UP,
252 DIVIDED WE STAND

relegating the BJP and the Congress to third and fourth positions
respectively. Interestingly, while the BSP used its brief stints in
power to great effect in its strategy to woo new sections to its fold, the
SP thrived despite having been out of power in the state throughout
this period.
The BSP has made no bones about the fact that it has no compunctions
about aligning with anybody in its attempts to come to power. It has,
in the last decade, allied with the SP, the Congress and the BJP at
different points of time in Uttar Pradesh. On none of these occasions
has there been any attempt to justify the alliance on ideological grounds.
As far as the BSP is concerned, all of these parties are manuvadi (which
can be loosely translated as serving the upper castes) and there is
fundamentally no difference between them. The BSP states quite clearly
that it merely uses these manuvadi parties to further the interests
of the dalits. In this sense, the BSP is quite unique in Indian politics.
No other party is as brazenly contemptuous of the need to cover up
opportunism with an ideological fig leaf.
The BSP is also unique in that Mayawati has never denied the
fact that she asks those who wish to become party candidates (or
ticket-seekers) to pay large sums of money before their cases are even
considered. This has been highlighted quite a bit in recent years in
the mainstream media. Video recordings of meetings of BSP leaders
where Mayawati is shown asking prospective candidates to contribute
to party coffers were widely circulated among journalists by SP
representatives. When confronted with such evidence, Mayawati
said she found nothing unusual about the fact that as the leader of
a political party, she was raising funds for the BSP. All parties raise
funds in a similar manner, she argued. A criminal case against her
for allegedly acquiring assets disproportionate to known sources of
income is pending. But these allegations do not appear to have made
any dent whatsoever on the popularity of the BSP or its leader. On
the contrary, she appears to have become even more popular and not
only among the dalits who comprise roughly a fifth of the population
of UP. The BSP is perhaps also the only party to publicly favour
unstable governments. Mayawati and Kanshi Ram said several times
that they prefered a majboor sarkar (a dependent government) to a
mazboot sarkar (a strong and stable government) in New Delhi. Their
 Hindi Heartland 253

rationale was fairly simple, only a government dependent on them

for survival would be forced to listen to the voice of the dalits; one
that was stable would ignore them as most governments have done.
Stable governments, the argument went, were in the interests of the
elite and those in favour of the status quo, not those who wished to
change society for the better.
While Mayawati’s first three stints in power in Uttar Pradesh were
characterised by an imperious style that antagonised her coalition
partners and large sections of the state’s bureaucracy, apart from
her political opponents, she does seem to have been successful in
using power to consolidate the BSP’s vote bank among the dalits and
thereafter expanded it to include substantial sections of the upper
castes (in particular the Brahmins and Banias) and the Muslims and a
relatively smaller section of the OBCs . The mainstream English—and
vernacular—media have built a stereotype of Mayawati as a whimsical,
crude, crass, domineering Chief Minister who throws her weight
around and terrorises anybody who dares to oppose her. Interestingly,
these same attributes are seen to be her strengths by her supporters
(see profile of Mayawati later in the chapter). But for the terror she
evokes in the state administration, her supporters argue, the upper-
caste dominated bureaucracy would have remained unsympathetic and
callous towards the dalits. These supporters are quick to cite instances
of the difference her presence has made to their lives.
Said one dalit at a village near Hapur in western UP to one of
the authors in 1999:

In the old days, if we went to the police station to complain about

our women being molested by some upper-caste males, not only
would no case be registered, the officer-in-charge would probably
abuse us and perhaps even beat us up, accusing us of bringing false
charges against respectable citizens. We would not even be allowed
to sit on the bench in the police station, we would have to squat
on the floor. After behen [sister] Mayawati came to power, that
has changed. The police will now register a case, even if nothing
much happens thereafter. We are at least treated with respect.
The policeman knows that if word reaches Mayawati that he
has illtreated dalits or refused to register their complaints, there’ll
be hell to pay.
254 DIVIDED WE STAND

Unlike most other parties in coalition situations, the BSP has also
shown that it is quite willing to antagonise even sections that support
its partners in the alliance. The rationale seems to be that the BSP’s
need is less than the partner’s need to keep the coalition going.
This was true of the BSP’s alliance with the SP, in which Kanshi
Ram and Mayawati were not afraid of publicly and repeatedly
proclaiming the SP’s dependence on them and threatening to pull
down Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government if he did not heed their
word. It was also true of the BSP’s alliances with the BJP on more
than one occasion. The BSP seemed to take the attitude that it would
pursue its agenda and if the partner did not like some elements of the
agenda, so be it.
An episode that most clearly illustrated this attitude was the way in
which Mayawati confronted Raja Bhaiyya in 2003. She was well aware
that large sections of the BJP, which was supporting her government,
were against his arrest and his being charged under the Prevention of
Terrorism Act (POTA). However, she was also aware that the BJP
central leadership would do its best to prevent the disgruntled BJP
MLAs from destabilising her government. Many others in her position
might not have thought the gamble worthwhile, but she did. The
arrest of Raja Bhaiyya triggered off a reaction that did, for some time,
threaten the survival of Mayawati’s government, but she had gambled
right. The BJP’s top leadership, including Vajpayee and Advani
intervened to ensure that the dissident MLAs fell in line.
Unlike the BSP, the SP made a virtue of the necessity of remaining
in Opposition for almost seven years from 1995. While the BJP was
in power in the state, it positioned itself as the only party that had
the intent and the strength to present a credible opposition. The
Congress was evidently too weak to play this role and the SP was
keen to drive home the point, particularly among Muslims, that the
BSP could not be depended upon to oppose the BJP since it had in
the past had an alliance with that party. This campaign does seem to
have ensured that the bulk of the Muslims of UP have remained loyal
to the SP, though Muslims in specific constituencies have voted for
the Congress or the BSP, where these parties have been perceived as
best placed to defeat the BJP.
When Kalyan Singh was expelled from the BJP, the SP promptly
took up cudgels on his behalf and even had a tacit understanding with
 Hindi Heartland 255

him during the February 2002 assembly elections. This was despite
the fact that Kalyan Singh was one of those accused of conspiring to
demolish the Babri masjid at a time when he was the Chief Minister.
One of the factors that ultimately led to Kalyan Singh’s expulsion
from the BJP was the fact that he had publicly accused Vajpayee of
having ‘cheated’ his supporters by promising to build a Ram temple if
the BJP came to power and then having forgotten about the promise.
Logically, one would expect that Kalyan’s projecting himself as the
real Ram bhakt (devotee) while Yadav was seen as the strongest
opponent of the Ram temple agitation led by the Sangh Parivar
should have made it impossible for them to make common cause. Yet,
it was widely acknowledged that Kalyan Singh’s Rashtriya Kranti
Party and the SP had an implicit electoral understanding. Both sides,
understandably, preferred to play up their OBC identity rather than
focus on their respective positions on the Ayodhya mandir–masjid
(temple versus mosque) controversy. (As already mentioned, Kalyan
Singh later returned to the BJP’s fold.)
After the 2002 assembly elections, with the BJP in decline in UP,
the SP switched tack to portray itself as the only credible opposition to
the BSP and Mayawati. In the Raja Bhaiyya incident, for instance, the
SP was quick to cash in on the disillusionment with the BJP among
the Thakurs. Amar Singh, the SP’s general secretary, who is himself
a Thakur, was projected as a Thakur kulbhushan (an ornament of the
Thakur or Rajput clan) at a public rally organised the members of his
caste. The message was loud and clear, Rajputs had been loyal to the
BJP for close to a decade, but had been badly let down by the party.
It was time they switched allegiance to the SP.
Dramatic events in August 2003 led to the ouster of Mayawati
and to Mulayam Singh Yadav being sworn in as Chief Minister for
the third time in his political career. There was hardly any indication
of the impending changes when Mayawati hinted to the media
on August 24 that she would give them ‘spicy news’ the next day,
when the BSP was scheduled to hold a public rally in Lucknow. The
papers the next morning were rife with speculation that the BSP leader
might be preparing for a break with the BJP and for a snap poll in the
state. The speculation was not misplaced. On August 25, Mayawati
held a cabinet meeting barely an hour before the rally in which—she
256 DIVIDED WE STAND

later claimed—it was decided that the government would recommend

dissolution of the assembly and the holding of fresh elections. The
BJP disputed her claim.
The provocation for this decision came from a standoff between
Mayawati and the BJP on the Taj corridor issue that had been brewing
for a couple of months. What had transpired was that work on a project
to develop a commercial corridor near the Taj Mahal had begun without
obtaining the necessary approval of particular departments of the Union
government—these included the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry
of Environment and Forests. The matter came to light after media
reports highlighted how the area around the Taj—declared as a World
Heritage Site by UNESCO—was going to be disfigured. A public
interest petition was also lodged. Subsequently, the Union government
clarified that it had not sanctioned the project and sought the
state government’s explanation on who was responsible for approving
the commencement of work on such a project. Mayawati flatly denied
that she had approved the project and, in fact, called for the resignation
of Jagmohan, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism.
What was till that stage a minor fracas between coalition partners,
spun out of control after the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to inquire
into who was responsible for sanctioning the project. Mayawati was
humiliated when forced by the BJP to withdraw her demand for
Jagmohan’s resignation. The CBI then started interrogating various
officials in the UP government to find out the truth. What is significant
is that Mayawati decided to part ways with the BJP a day after the
CBI interrogated her confidante, the state’s Environment Minister
Nazimuddin Siddiqui.
After the BJP-BSP alliance broke, both sides freely traded charges
against each other. Mayawati accused the BJP of putting pressure on
her to tinker with the legal cases on the Babri masjid demolition in
which Advani, Joshi and Uma Bharti, among others, had been named
as accused. BJP loyalists on the other hand claimed that Mayawati
was on the defensive because the CBI investigation would ultimately
rest at her doorstep.
While there was a dispute between the BJP and the BSP about
whether Mayawati had first recommended dissolution of the assembly
or whether the BJP had withdrawn its support to the BSP, the fact is
 Hindi Heartland 257

that the BJP Parliamentary Board met in New Delhi on August 27

and decided that the party would play the role of opposition in the
state. On August 28, UP Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri formally
asked Mulayam Singh Yadav to present him with a list of MLAs who
would support his claim for becoming the Chief Minister. The SP
provided the governor with a list of 205 out of 405 MLAs, including
MLAs belonging to the Congress, the RLD, Kalyan Singh’s RKP and
sundry small parties (including the ABCD, or the Akhil Bharatiya
Congress Dal). Interestingly, the list also included 14 MLAs from
the BSP. The list was enough to convince Shastri that Yadav should
be invited to form a government, though the actual trial of strength
would take place on the floor of the assembly two weeks later.
What went on behind the scenes after Mayawati’s dramatic
announcement that she had sought the dissolution of the assembly
highlighted quite clearly how desperate the BJP’s position in UP
had become. It was quite apparent that the BJP did not under any
circumstances want an immediate election in UP. The only way of
avoiding an election was to allow the SP to form a government. The BJP,
therefore, let it be known that it would not try and prevent Yadav from
forming the government in Lucknow. This was quite a remarkable
turnaround for a party that had repeatedly aligned itself with the BSP
in the past for the sole reason of ensuring that the SP could not form
a government in the state.
What had changed in 2003? For starters, the BJP’s rank and file—
and a substantial section of its upper-caste leadership—had realised
that the alliance with the BSP was steadily eroding the party’s support
base. At the same time, it needed time for the ‘taint’ of its association
with the BSP to be washed away from public memory before any
elections. An SP government in Lucknow, therefore, suited the party
admirably. It would, the BJP hoped, give the party some breathing
space and hopefully ensure that any anti-incumbency sentiment would
work against the SP rather than the BJP because of its association
with the BSP. Finally, with an SP government, the BJP could hope to
turn the political battle in the state into one between itself and the SP,
pushing the BSP off centrestage.
This was important for the BJP because, over the last decade, the
BSP and the SP had, willy-nilly—or perhaps deliberately—emerged
258 DIVIDED WE STAND

as the two parties with the sharpest contradictions in UP politics. In

the process of fighting their battles, neither set too much store by
ideological niceties. But the fact that they managed to dictate the terms
of political confrontations in the state meant that first the Congress and
then increasingly the BJP were getting marginalised in India’s most
populous state.
Interestingly, the growing marginalisation of the two ‘national’
parties has meant that both the SP and the BSP are now attempting
to expand beyond their sectarian vote banks and reach out to new
sections. Perhaps this is because of the realisation that if the BJP and
the Congress do get marginalised, it will no longer be possible for them
to win elections with just the 25–30 per cent vote shares they have
historically had, which was enough in a three or four-cornered contest.
The manner in which the two parties have sought to expand their
base has, however, been different. The BSP has, in a turnaround that
would have seemed almost unthinkable just a few years ago, actively
wooed sections of the upper castes like the Brahmins, assuring them
that her party was not hostile to them or their interests. A party that
had once raised slogans like ‘tilak, tarazu aur talwar, inko maaro
joote chaar’ (loosely translated as give the boot to the mark on the
forehead—symbolising Brahmins—the weighing scales—symbolising
the Banias or traders—and the sword—symbolising the Rajputs, the
so-called warrior caste) now started talking of having nothing against
any community or caste. Mayawati specifically organised meetings of
Brahmins and Banias in various parts of the state to drive home the
point that she had nothing against these communities.
Mulayam’s attempts at expanding his support base were less
blatantly caste-based. Having the advantage of being in power in the
state, he tried to reposition the SP, as the party that had a new vision
for UP, one that would transform the state beyond recognition.
Mulayam’s right-hand man in the SP, Amar Singh (who comes
from a business family in Kolkata) spearheaded the effort to woo
industrialists from different parts of the country, including the head
of the Mumbai-based Anil Ambani group. Amar Singh’s proximity
to the younger Ambani sibling as well as to a UP-based businessman
Subroto Roy, who heads the Sahara group that has interests in para-
banking, real estate, media and aviation, was used to good effect. Both
 Hindi Heartland 259

groups announced a series of mega projects in the state, including

what is claimed to be Asia’s largest gas-based power plant and a
massive township. Ironically, these projects also became the source
of controversy, with allegations that the state government was giving
away land to industrialists close to the Chief Minister and Amar Singh
at throwaway prices. Embarassingly for Mulayam, the protests were
led not by the BJP or the BSP, but by his former leader, V.P. Singh,
and a rebel MP from his own party, film star Raj Babbar. The CPI
too was part of the protests.
An attempt by Mulayam to widen the SP’s support base was the
state government’s ‘kanya vidya dhan yojana’ or a scheme to provide
a grant of Rs 20,000 to girl students from ‘poor’ families who had
completed their high school (or cleared the intermediate examination)
to enable them to study further. Not only did this programme become
popular, it enabled the SP to woo women voters in the state. As Chief
Minister, Mulayam personally supervised the handing over of cheques
to the beneficiaries of the programme. Amar Singh and Mulayam are
also particularly close to Amitabh Bachchan (arguably India’s most
popular film actor and a stalwart of the Mumbai cinema industry)
and his equally well-known wife Jaya and their son Abhishek.
Not only has this led to Jaya becoming an SP member of the Rajya
Sabha, Amitabh also starred in a series of advertisements for the
party, designed to project the state government’s programmes of
industrialising and modernising Uttar Pradesh.
Even as the SP attempted to widen its appeal, its critics pointed
out that it had become increasingly desperate about retaining the
support of the Muslims and in the process encouraged fundamentalist
elements from within the community. One party bigwig based in
Maharashtra (Rajya Sabha member Abu Asim Azmi) was accused
of having close connections with Islamic fundamentalists and was
arrested for allegedly making ‘anti-national’ remarks. A minister in
Mulayam’s government in UP, Haji Mohammad Yaqoob, created
quite a stir by making a public announcement that he would pay
Rs 51 crore to anybody who would behead the Danish cartoonist who
drew offensive cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. Another incident
that contributed to the perception that the SP was pandering to
communal sentiments was a riot that broke out in Mau in eastern UP
in October 2005. While accounts of what caused the riots and who was
260 DIVIDED WE STAND

responsible for the mayhem continuing for days vary, independent

MLA Mukhtar Ansari—seen as a strongman of the region and a leader
close to the SP—was portrayed by much of the media as one of the
key instigators.
In the run-up to the April–May 2007 assembly elections, Mulayam’s
coalition partners started deserting him. The first was the Ajit Singh-
led RLD followed by the Congress. In February 2007, the Supreme
Court ruled that 13 out of the 37 MLAs who had been elected as BSP
candidates and who had ‘defected’ from the party in four batches to lend
their support to the Mulayam Singh government in the third quarter
of 2003 were indeed defectors and disqualified them. (The 37 MLAs
comprised more than one-third of the 98 MLAs who had been elected
as BSP candidates.) The court directed the assembly speaker to decide
the fate of the remaining 24 MLAs. At the time Mualayam Singh
became UP Chief Minister in August 2003, it had been suggested that
there was a tacit understanding between him and the BJP not to rock
each other’s boats in the interest of some political stability since neither
the SP nor the BJP was keen on another round of elections. As part
of this so-called ‘understanding’, Mulayam Singh agreed to let Kesri
Nath Tripathi continue as speaker of the assembly—soon thereafter,
Tripathi ruled that the MLAs deserting the BSP to support the
SP government were not defectors but had ‘split’ the party under the
provisions of the Anti Defection Act. This decision was challenged
by the BSP, eventually leading to the Supreme Court judgement.
After the judgement, the SP’s political opponents called for
Mulayam Singh’s resignation on ‘moral’ grounds but he stood his
ground and said he still commanded a majority in the assembly. The
Supreme Court judgement did not threaten the survival of the SP
government which remained in charge of the state administration
in the run-up to the assembly elections, even if it was perceived as
embarrassing for Mulayam Singh. At one point it appeared likely
that the Congress would persuade the UPA government to dismiss
Mulayam Singh’s government in UP on the grounds that it was
‘unconstitutional from day one’ since it was based on the support of
the 13 BSP MLAs who should have been immediately disqualified.
Despite the vehement opposition of the CPI(M) to any such move, the
Congress seemed to have made up its mind to dismiss the government.
 Hindi Heartland 261

Mulayam Singh alleged that a conspiracy to dismiss his government

had been hatched by a leading industrialist (who he did not name) and
had the support of the Congress and the BJP. Earlier, Mulayam had
alleged that UP Governor T. Rajeshwar had sent a report to New Delhi
recommending that his government be dismissed. Even as Congress
spokespersons interpreted the law to support their claim that the UP
government should go, SP leaders wondered why the Congress had
supported the government in Lucknow for more than three years if it
was indeed ‘unconstitutional from day one’ as it was now claiming.
As speculation mounted about Rajeshwar having recommended
dismissal of the Mulayam government under Article 356 of the
Constitution, the Election Commission announced the dates for
an unprecedented seven-phase election in April–May 2007 and the
threat of dismissal of the state government receded. On the day the
EC announced the poll schedule, February 21, the SP announced
that it was withdrawing its support to the UPA, though this made
little difference to the stability of the government. On May 21, after
Mayawati had been sworn in as UP Chief Minister, in his opening
address to the newly constituted assembly, Governor Rajeshwar
referred to the previous state government led by Mulayam Singh
Yadav as ‘unconstitutional’, ‘the people’s verdict was ridiculed
by forming an unconstitutional government after splitting political
parties,’ he stated under the new political dispensation. Meanwhile,
a court in Lucknow asked the CBI to seek the permission of UP
Governor Rajeshwar (former head of the Intelligence Bureau in the
Union government) to start prosecution proceedings against BSP
chief and UP Chief Minister Mayawati in the Taj corridor case. The
Governor denied his permission. The Supreme Court also asked
the CBI to inquire into the veracity of allegations contained in a
public interest litigation to the effect that Mulayam and his family
members had acquired assets disproportionate to their known sources
of income. Both Mulayam and Mayawati said the cases against them
were politically motivated.
The UP assembly election of April–May 2007 were unprecedented
in the sense that the voting was to take place in seven phases spread over
more than a month from April 7 to May 8. The Election Commission,
obviously enthused by its performance in earlier elections in Bihar and
262 DIVIDED WE STAND

West Bengal, had decided that an election broken up into a large number
of phases was conducive to ensuring that it was ‘free and fair’.
On the eve of the elections, most opinion polls in the media
predicted a very even battle between the SP and the BSP with the BJP
not too far behind in the third position. The polls differed on whether
the SP or the BSP would finish ahead of the other, but they seemed to
agree that there would be very little difference between the number
of seats they would win. As the elections got under way, this picture
changed only slightly. Most exit polls now showed the BSP as the
front-runner but none of them suggested that the party would get
anything more than 140 seats. At the end of the last phase of polling
on May 8, most polls still held on to this projection, some even giving
the BSP as little as 120 seats. The maximum that any exit poll was
willing to give the BSP was 168 seats. Another point on which almost
all the polls agreed was that the SP would lose both votes and seats,
while the BJP and Congress would gain on both counts. Only one
poll predicted a decline in the BJP’s vote share and seats, but even
that showed only a minor decline.
When the results were finally declared in May 11, therefore,
they came as a complete surprise not only to pollsters, but also to
most political analysts. For the first time since 1991, UP had given
a single party a majority on its own. The BSP won 206 seats, the SP
97, the BJP 50 and the Congress 22. The BSP’s vote share had gone
up dramatically since 2002, the SP had marginally increased its vote
share, the Congress vote share had dropped marginally (by less than
one percentage point), while the BJP lost over 3 per cent from its vote
share. In fact, if we take into account the fact that Kalyan Singh’s
Rashtriya Kranti Party had won about 3.5 per cent of the votes in
2002 and had since merged back into the BJP, the effective decline
in the BJP vote share was closer to 6.6 per cent.
The outcome forced political commentators to come up with
new explanations for the exit polls going wrong and what explained
the decisive mandate obtained by the BSP. What the data suggests
is that it was the result of a combination of successful wooing of
some upper-caste voters by the BSP as well as a consolidation of the
anti-incumbency votes behind the party seen as most likely to be able
to defeat the SP.
 Hindi Heartland 263

Mayawati
The rise of Mayawati (normally used as a single name, prefixed by
Behen meaning sister) in Indian politics has been truly phenomenal.
An icon for millions of dalits—once described as ‘untouchables’ or
‘harijans’, both terms no longer considered politically acceptable
to those belonging to the lower castes—Mayawati was born on
January 15, 1956, into a relatively poor family of Jatavs or Chamars,
a community whose traditional occupation was skinning animals and
working with leather. She was born in Delhi where her father Prabhu
Dayal was employed as a supervisor with the Department of Posts &
Telegraphs; his family traces its roots to Badalpur village in what was
then the district of Bulandshahr (now Ghaziabad) in Uttar Pradesh.
The national capital was also where Mayawati received much of her
education—she completed her bachelor’s degree as well as a degree
in law from Kalindi College, University of Delhi; later she earned a
degree in education from the same university. As a student, she was
active as a public speaker who would often participate in debating
contests. She taught in various schools run by the Delhi administration
between 1977 and 1984 before associating herself with Kanshi Ram
who had by then floated the non-political organisation, BAMCEF.
When she met Kanshi Ram for the first time, before he became
her political mentor, Mayawati was studying to appear for the
examinations held to select civil servants. She was hoping to join
the Indian Administrative Service when Kanshi Ram reportedly told
her that she should instead join him because he would make her a
‘queen’ who could control and decide the fates of IAS officers. Her
political career formally began with the establishment of the Bahujan
Samaj Party in April 1984. Kanshi Ram’s ‘partiality’ towards her was
apparent even earlier and led to some of his supporters leaving the
company of first, BAMCEF and then, DS-4 or the Dalit Soshit Samaj
Sangharsh Samiti.
Interestingly, Mayawati lost the first three elections she contested
as a BSP candidate—for the Lok Sabha constituency of Kairana (a
part of Muzaffarnagar district in western UP) in December 1984 and
then, two Lok Sabha bye-elections from Bijnor and Hardwar. She
was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1989 from Bijnor.
Thereafter, in 1994, she was elected to the Rajya Sabha. As already
264 DIVIDED WE STAND

stated, the BSP supported the SP in UP in 1993 and on June 3, 1995,

in the wake of the incidents leading up to the ‘guest house incident’,
she and her party parted ways with Mulayam Singh Yadav and joined
hands with the BJP for the first time. When she became Chief Minister
of UP the following day, she was only 39 years old, the youngest ever
head of India’s most populous state and the first dalit to hold the
post. This was perhaps the first indication that she had acquired
a political stature independent of her mentor. While Kanshi Ram
remained the party supremo, it had become evident that she had all
but taken complete charge of the party in UP. Her first stint as UP
Chief Minister lasted a few months and ended in October that year
with the BJP-BSP alliance abruptly coming unstuck.
In the 1996 elections to the UP assembly, she contested and won
from two seats, Bilsi in Badaun district and Haraura in Saharanpur
district; she retained her latter constituency. A new alliance between
the BSP and BJP was struck under which it was decided that each
party would have its own Chief Minister for six months at a stretch.
Mayawati was sworn in as UP Chief Minister for the second time
in March 1997, becoming the first woman to have a second term as
the head of UP’s government. After six months, she withdrew from
the coalition government on the ground that her partners in the
BJP were not cooperating with her party’s attempts to rigorously
implement a law (the Dalit Act) aimed at prevention of atrocities
against those belonging to the lower castes. The widely held
perception at that time was that she feared that the BJP could engineer
a split in the BSP to form a government on its own in UP and chose
to pre-empt such a possible move.
Mayawati won both the 1998 and 1999 Lok Sabha elections
from Akbarpur constituency that was reserved for Scheduled Caste
candidates. Her choice of this constituency was significant in that
Akbarpur is in eastern UP whereas all the constituencies she had
contested from earlier (during assembly and Lok Sabha elections)
happened to be in the western part of the state. This indicated her
confidence in the BSP’s ability to garner votes all across a state that
was then geographically larger than the whole of Western Europe. (In
terms of population, UP would be the sixth most populous ‘country’
in the world had it been an independent nation-state.)
Her third stint as Chief Minister of UP lasted just over a year,
from May 3, 2002 to July 25, 2003. The BJP withdrew support to her
 Hindi Heartland 265

government soon after her decision to build a commercial corridor

near the Taj Mahal generated a major controversy and allegations of
corruption were levelled against her, ministers in her government and
bureaucrats who were supposed to be close to her. She was accused
of approving a project in violation of laws that protect the famous
monument. The Supreme Court ordered an investigation by the CBI
into the case and also ordered a probe into allegations that she and
her family members had acquired assets disproportionate to known
sources of income.
Mayawati won the Ambedkarnagar Lok Sabha seat in 2004 but
resigned the following year to become a member of the upper house
of Parliament. Soon after her third stint as UP Chief Minister, a new
controversy surrounding her broke out when members of Kanshi
Ram’s family instituted legal cases against her for, among other things,
allegedly making him her ‘prisoner’ and denying family members
access to him. Kanshi Ram was by then very ill and in hospital most
of the time. Even after his death in October 2006, his family members
claimed she did not allow them to take his body before cremation.
Mayawati has often been criticised for her imperious style of
functioning. Her birthdays have been celebrated lavishly; these
became public occasions attended by thousands of supporters.
Sections of the media have often highlighted the size of the cakes she
has cut, described the glittering sets of diamond jewellery she wore
and the change in the way she styles her hair (from a ponytail to a
bobbed cut) and mentioned her penchant for pink salwar-kameez
dresses. If by emphasising such information, attempts were made
to paint an unflattering picture of the BSP leader, the impact on
her supporters was just the reverse. For many dalits, the fact that
one of their representatives can currently boast a lifestyle that was
earlier considered a prerogative of the rich, upper castes is a matter
of considerable satisfaction and pride. Political observers draw an
analogy between Mayawati’s public demeanour and the sartorial
habits of the best known dalit leader in pre-independence India,
B. R. Ambedkar, who used to invariably wear a suit and tie, the dress
of the country’s British colonial masters.
Following the victory of the BSP in the 2007 assembly elections
in UP, in her fourth stint as Chief Minister of India’s most populous
state, Mayawati appears to have become politically mature. She has
chosen to fill up key administrative positions with bureaucrats who
266 DIVIDED WE STAND

have a reputation for efficiency and probity. Instead of breathing fire

at her political opponents in spontaneous speeches, she has chosen
to read out of prepared texts during her interactions with the media.
If she remains Chief Minister of UP till 2012 (and there is a strong
possibility that she would), she would become the first Chief Minister
of the state to have completed a full term of five years after Sucheta
Kripalani completed her tenure as UP Chief Minister in May 1967—
incidentally, Kripalani was the first ever woman Chief Minister in
the country.
Mayawati has set her sights higher than the position she occupies
in Lucknow. She has made no secret of her ambition to one day
become the Prime Minister of India. Whether or not she is able to
hold the most powerful post in the land is a matter of conjecture.
But what cannot be disputed is that for an unmarried woman who
grew up outside Uttar Pradesh and who entered active politics
when she was just 28, Mayawati’s political career has indeed been
quite remarkable.

Bihar: Can the ‘Worst’ State Show the Way?

During the 1950s and even during much of the 1960s, Bihar was
considered to be one of the best-administered states in the country.
However, through the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s, this image
plummeted precipitously. The state acquired the reputation of being
one of the most backward in India, backward in just about every
respect—certainly in terms of social and economic indicators. It is said
that Bihar symbolises the existence of a ‘Fourth World’ in a Third
World country.
Bihar is one state where feudal feelings are perhaps most evident,
where caste sentiments determine the course of politics, and where
the economic divide has resulted in active Naxalite groups espousing
the cause of poor and landless labourers fighting periodic pitched
battles against ‘armies’ comprising members of upper castes and
representatives of landlords. Bihar is also a state where corruption has
become more than a fact of everyday life; it is a state where corruption
is so endemic that myths and legends have been woven around
the phenomenon.
 Hindi Heartland 267

In the middle of the 1970s, Bihar became the focal point of a

political and social movement aimed at sampoorna kranti or ‘total
revolution’, spearheaded by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP). The movement
that had begun in Gujarat and had spread rapidly across the country
acquired such momentum in Bihar that Indira Gandhi placed many
leaders of the movement behind bars before declaring Emergency in
June 1975. The fact that Bihar remains the only state in India in which
individuals who had cut their teeth in the Janata Party and later the
Janata Dal continue to dominate the course of politics, is undoubtedly
an important legacy of the JP movement.
But the existence of a strong anti-Congress political formation dates
back to 1967. That was the year in which the Congress for the first time
saw its hold on power slipping in many states in India, particularly
those in the north. The Samyukta Vidhayak Dal government that came
to power in Bihar in 1967 saw the left and the right coming together
for the first time to prevent the formation of a Congress government
in the state. The socialists, the communists and the BJS made common
cause. Given the obvious political differences between these groups,
it is hardly surprising that there followed a period of considerable
instability, with chief ministers enjoying brief stints punctuated by
the frequent imposition of President’s rule. Between 1968 and 1980,
President’s rule was imposed in Bihar on as many as five occasions.
Between March 1967 and June 1980, chief ministers were sworn in on
no less than 15 occasions in Patna. No chief minister lasted even two
years in this phase, Karpoori Thakur’s 22-month-long tenure from
June 1977 to April 1979 being the longest.
Karpoori Thakur’s espousal of the interests of the intermediate
castes was to leave a lasting legacy, though the Congress remained in
power through almost all of the 1980s. Thakur had forged a coalition
of backward and intermediate castes including the numerically
significant Yadav community and made this social coalition the pivot
of his anti-Congress political platform. This was quite akin to what
happened in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, where leaders like the
socialist Ram Manohar Lohia and Charan Singh had built a similar
caste-based coalition.
After the V.P. Singh government implemented the recommendations
of the Mandal Commission, the Janata Dal was able to tap into this
268 DIVIDED WE STAND

hitherto dormant political base both in UP and in Bihar. In both states,

the Congress—which lost power in 1989—has since been relegated to
an also-ran in the electoral race. In Bihar, as in UP, the Congress has
seen its erstwhile supporters from the upper castes shifting allegiance
to the BJP, which these sections feel is better placed to confront the
growing political clout of the intermediate castes and protect their
interests. Again, as in UP, in Bihar too a single party has been unable
to garner the support of all of the intermediate and lower castes.
Just as in UP, with the SP and the BSP competing to occupy this
political space, in Bihar also the RJD and the JD(U) both claim to be
the true representatives of the ‘downtrodden’. Interestingly, in both
states, this fragmentation in the ranks of the middle and lower castes
has not worked to the advantage of either the Congress or the BJP.
Politics in Bihar (after Jharkhand was carved out) is dominated by the
confrontation between the RJD and the JD(U)—or earlier the Samata
Party—with the Congress and BJP being reduced to lesser partners
of these two antagonists.
While Bihar was still undivided, it was not quite as obvious that
the BJP and the Congress were not powerful forces in the state’s
electoral battleground. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, for instance,
the BJP won 23 of the 54 seats in the state, more than any other party.
However, 11 of these 23 seats came from the 14 that were subsequently
carved out to form Jharkhand. Further, many of the remaining 12 seats
that the party won in central and northern Bihar (which constitute the
truncated Bihar) could not have been won without the support of the
Janata Dal (United), the BJP’s ally. Similarly, the Congress won three of
the 54 seats in undivided Bihar in the 1999 elections, but two of these
were in what became Jharkhand. The bulk of the 40 seats that now
remain in Bihar, therefore, were won by the RJD and the Samata Party,
neither of which won any seats in Jharkhand. The division of Bihar
has, therefore, made a dramatic difference to electoral politics in the
state. The RJD, which had never managed to win a majority on its own
in the state after the 1989 assembly elections, hoped to make a credible
bid for power on its own. But that was not to be. As mentioned, the
non-NDA political players were so deeply divided that the RJD’s
ambitions were not fulfilled. The Samata Party, on the other hand, that
had, since its inception, almost been compelled to play second fiddle
to the BJP, could assert its dominance in the NDA as its strongest
constituent in the state.
 Hindi Heartland 269

Again, there is a parallel with the situation in Uttar Pradesh. In

UP too, the newly carved out state of Uttaranchal was an area in
which neither the SP nor the BSP had a meaningful presence, while
the BJP and the Congress were the two dominant parties. Thus,
the separation of Uttaranchal undoubtedly helped the SP and the
BSP in Uttar Pradesh, while hurting the BJP and the Congress. The
difference, however, is that while Uttaranchal (now Uttarakhand)
accounted for just five of the 85 seats in undivided UP, Jharkhand had
a considerably bigger share of the Lok Sabha constituencies (14 out
of 54) that formed undivided Bihar. Clearly, therefore, the impact of
the division of the state is greater in Bihar than in UP.
The division of Bihar changed caste-based political affiliations
in the state. In undivided Bihar, the upper castes had the choice of
supporting either the BJP or the Congress. Now that the Congress
has been marginalised in the state, upper-caste voters are more or less
committed to going along with the BJP as long as it remains an ally
of the JD(U). If ever the JD(U)-BJP alliance were to break up, upper
caste sections could be confronted with having to choose between
two parties, the RJD or the JD(U), both of which espouse the cause
of the intermediate and lower castes. In Tamil Nadu, those belonging
to the upper castes found that their votes would be ‘wasted’ if they
did not support either of the two Dravidian parties. In UP as well,
upper-caste voters increasingly have to choose between the SP and
BSP since both the BJP and the Congress have become weak in
the state. Will a similar voting pattern be replicated in Bihar? The
possibility certainly exists. If such a situation indeed takes place, as
the Tamil Nadu experience has indicated, the sectarian, caste-based
character of the RJD and the JD(U) could undergo a gradual change.
These regional parties would necessarily have to broaden their appeal
if they are to attract voters from different social strata—as the BSP
and the SP have already begun to do in UP.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, who was a student leader during the JP
movement in the mid-1970s, became Chief Minister of Bihar in
February 1990, less than three months after V.P. Singh became Prime
Minister in December 1989. Despite the nationwide anti-Congress
wave in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, which was still in evidence
during the February 1990 assembly elections in Bihar, the Janata Dal
did not actually obtain a majority on its own or even come close to
270 DIVIDED WE STAND

doing so. In the 324-member assembly, the JD’s tally was only 123.
It was with the support of the BJP (39 seats), the CPI (23 seats), the
JMM (19 seats) and the CPI(M) (six seats) that Lalu was able to form
the government in Patna. Having formed the government, he lost little
time in trying to reduce his dependence on these allies. He engineered
defections from the BJP, the JMM and the Indian People’s Front
(IPF), one of the few Naxalite groups that participated in electoral
politics, to increase his strength in the assembly. It was this strategy
that enabled Lalu to survive in office even after the BJP withdrew
its support to his government following the arrest of L.K. Advani in
Bihar in October that year.
This episode helped Lalu acquire a national profile. Advani’s
nation wide rath yatra was halted at Samastipur in Bihar and he was
‘jailed’ in a government bungalow at Masanjore near the Maithon
dam. The incident sparked off riots in neighbouring UP with
protesting BJP supporters going on the rampage and targeting the
Muslim community, but Bihar remained peaceful. This did not go
unnoticed. The same Bihar had in October 1989 witnessed one of the
worst riots in its history, when over a thousand people were killed
in Hindu–Muslim clashes in Bhagalpur. The arrest of Advani and
the state administration’s determination to prevent any communal
backlash helped Lalu consolidate the support of the Muslims.
Along with his own Yadav community, this gave him a formidable
electoral base to build on. At this early stage in his political career,
Lalu also had with him prominent leaders of the Kurmi and dalit
communities in Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan, who were to
later break away from him.
By the time the Bihar assembly elections of 1995 were held, the
JD under Lalu had strengthened its position considerably. The party
secured a slim majority on its own, winning 167 of the 324 assembly
seats. With its allies from the left, the CPI (26) and CPM (six), the JD
had control of 199 seats. The BJP, which was the next biggest party
in the state assembly, won just 41 seats, while the fledgling Samata
Party had a mere seven seats in the new assembly. The Congress too
had been reduced to 29 seats.
Ironically, having survived a full term as Chief Minister without
having a majority in the state assembly, Lalu could not complete
 Hindi Heartland 271

his second term when he did have a majority. Barely a year after his
second stint as Chief Minister, the ‘fodder scam’ hit the headlines. The
Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had found that hundreds of
crores of rupees from the state’s coffers had been siphoned off under
the pretext of being used to provide fodder for cattle. The period to
which the audit pertained included Lalu’s first term as Chief Minister
as well as that of his predecessor Dr. Jagannath Mishra. The BJP
demanded Lalu’s resignation, alleging that he was not just morally
responsible for the scam, but one of those directly involved and
among the biggest beneficiaries of the funds siphoned off government
coffers. The party demanded an inquiry into the scandal by the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and urged the Union government,
then headed by Narasimha Rao, to grant permission for such an
inquiry, which was acceded. The investigations were spearheaded by
U.N. Biswas, who was the CBI’s Joint Director (East) based in Kolkata.
Whereas one section perceived Biswas as a maverick police officer
who was incorruptible, dogged and unafraid of politicians in power,
others saw him as a publicity seeker and even as a closet sympathiser
of the Hindutva ideology to explain his zealousness in pursuing the
cases against Lalu.
At the end of July 1997, after the CBI had decided to prosecute
both Chief Minister Lalu and former Chief Minister Mishra, Lalu
was arrested for the first time. He remained in jail for more than
100 days before he was released in December that year. Over the
next four years, Lalu was to be jailed on four more occasions.
However, well before he was actually arrested and imprisoned,
Lalu had been forced to resign as Chief Minister after the CBI filed
a chargesheet against him. By this time, there was a United Front
government in power in New Delhi with H.D. Deve Gowda as
Prime Minister. The sequence of events can be summarised thus:
the BJP and its allies had been demanding Lalu’s resignation on
the ground that he was a Chief Minister against whom corruption
charges had been levelled that were being probed by the CBI. If he
remained in office, he could influence the course of the investigations
and misuse his position to tamper with evidence, it was argued. On
the other hand, the UF government—of which the Janata Dal was
the biggest constituent—contended that an elected chief minister
272 DIVIDED WE STAND

should not be forced to resign merely because certain unsubstantiated

allegations had been made against him. Not even a formal chargesheet
had been issued against him, it was pointed out. When the CBI
actually chargesheeted Lalu, the Janata Dal as well as the rest of the
UF was in a quandary. They clearly found that it was becoming
increasingly difficult to continue defending Lalu. They advised
him to put in his papers, which he was unwilling to consider.
It was at this juncture that the Janata Dal split. The party was
to elect a new president on July 6, 1997. Lalu and his supporters
announced that they would be boycotting the elections and instead
organised a parallel meeting on July 5 at which the Rashtriya Janata
Dal was formed and Lalu was voted as its first President. Sharad
Yadav was elected President of the Janata Dal. Given the split in the
JD, the Bihar Governor A. R. Kidwai asked Lalu to seek a fresh vote
of confidence in the state assembly. On July 15, Chief Minister Lalu
won the vote of confidence with the support of two factions of the
JMM (including one led by Shibu Soren) and 14 independent MLAs.
The Congress was in an uncomfortable situation. It did not wish to be
seen as supporting a ‘corrupt’ chief minister and at the same time did
not want to go along with the BJP. It therefore abstained from voting
during the confidence motion in the assembly. On July 17, the United
Front in New Delhi realised that the RJD could no longer be a part
of the UF so long as Lalu was the head of the RJD. Eight days later,
on July 25, Lalu finally resigned as Chief Minister after the designated
CBI court issued an arrest warrant against him. The same day,
Lalu got the RJD MLAs to ratify his decision to nominate his
wife, Rabri Devi as his successor. She thus became the first woman
Chief Minister of Bihar.
Why did Lalu decide to resign only after he realised that the CBI
had issued a warrant of arrest against him and not earlier? It seemed
that Lalu wished to ensure that his nominee—in this case, his wife—
would succeed him as Chief Minister rather than wait for a situation
where he would be behind bars and a party colleague who could later
become his rival would be elected by the MLAs of the RJD. The sheer
cynicism of the move shocked quite a few people, including many
who were not hostile to him. After all, till she became Chief Minister,
Rabri Devi had been a home-maker looking after their nine children.
 Hindi Heartland 273

She had never contested an election in her life or even participated in

any political activity worth mentioning. Neither Rabri Devi nor Lalu
made any bones about the fact that he would continue as the de-facto
Chief Minister of the state. Even those sympathetic to Lalu felt that he
had gone too far in taking the support of his party’s MLAs for granted
and that Rabri Devi would not be able to survive the mandatory vote
of confidence that any new chief minister would necessarily have to
seek. Three days later, on July 28, the Rabri Devi government won a
vote of confidence in the Bihar assembly.
The very next day, the CBI ordered Lalu’s arrest. Lalu surrendered
before the CBI court in Patna and he was remanded to judicial
custody. Before his arrest, the CBI’s Biswas reportedly asked the court
to seek the intervention of the Army, fearing a violent backlash from
Lalu’s supporters. This was a completely unprecedented situation.
Law and order is meant to be a state subject and the state government
has to decide how this is to be maintained. Lalu was to later argue that
this was yet another clear instance of Biswas over-stepping his
authority and attempting to paint him black. He claimed that the
fact that nothing much happened when he was arrested went to show
how Biswas had sought to malign him by raising the bogey of RJD
hoodlums wreaking violence on the streets of Patna.
In 1999, Rabri Devi survived an attempt made by the NDA
government in New Delhi to dismiss her government by invoking
Article 356. By this time, Kidwai had been replaced as Bihar’s
Governor by Sunder Singh Bhandari, a member of the RSS and a
former Vice President of the BJP. The incident that prompted the
NDA government to invoke the controversial provisions of Article
356 was the massacre of 12 dalits by members of an upper-caste ‘army’
at Narayanpur village in Jehanabad district. Governor Bhandari, in his
report to New Delhi, had suggested that there had been a complete
breakdown of the working of the constitutional machinery in the state.
On February 12, two days after the Jehanabad massacre, the Union
government dismissed the Rabri Devi government. It had two months’
time to have this decision ratified by both houses of Parliament. After
dithering for some time on what position it should take, the Congress
decided to oppose the government’s resolution authorising President’s
rule in Bihar. Some of the BJP’s allies in the NDA, like the TDP and
274 DIVIDED WE STAND

the Shiromani Akali Dal, were uncomfortable about supporting the

use of Article 356 to dismiss an elected state government, but they
eventually fell in line.
In the Lok Sabha, where the NDA had a clear majority, the
government was able to get the resolution imposing President’s rule
in Bihar passed quite easily on February 26. The problem arose in
getting the resolution adopted by the Rajya Sabha, in which the NDA
was in a minority. The BJP believed the Congress could be persuaded
to change its stance since the party’s state unit was clearly opposed to
the idea of bailing out the Rabri Devi government, so much so that
as many as 40 members of the party’s local executive had put in
their papers in protest against the decision of the Congress central
leadership to oppose President’s rule. Sonia Gandhi too had earlier
been rather critical of the RJD government in the state. On March 7,
Prime Minister Vajpayee spent 45 minutes with Sonia Gandhi trying
to persuade her to make her party change its position on opposing the
imposition of President’s rule in Bihar, ostensibly on the ground
that it would be in the ‘national interest’ to do so. It was reported
at that time that Vajpayee had even offered to replace Governor
Bhandari with a person ‘more acceptable’ to the Congress as part of
a quid pro quo if the Congress was willing to vote in favour of the
government’s resolution in the Rajya Sabha. Sonia Gandhi refused
to oblige Vajpayee.
On March 8, Home Minister L.K. Advani announced in the Lok
Sabha that the Cabinet had decided to revoke the imposition of
President’s rule in Bihar.
Soon after Rabri Devi resumed office as Chief Minister, Governor
Bhandari decided to quit. Since he had evidently been a prime
mover in the attempt to unseat Rabri Devi, her return to power was
clearly a loss of face for Bhandari. However, the BJP did not want to
convey the impression that he had been sacked. He was, therefore,
promptly appointed Governor of Gujarat. The man who replaced
him at the Raj Bhavan in Patna was Vinod Chandra Pande, a former
bureaucrat, who had risen to prominence as Revenue Secretary in
the Rajiv Gandhi government and later as Cabinet Secretary in the
V.P. Singh government.
Many political analysts saw the Congress’ decision to oppose the
dismissal of the Rabri Devi government as a ‘blunder’ on par with
 Hindi Heartland 275

Sonia’s ill-considered boast just a month later—in April 1999—that

she had the support of 272 Lok Sabha MPs for her bid to become Prime
Minister after the Vajpayee government lost a vote of confidence. The
results in Bihar of the September–October 1999 general elections
seemed to bear out this analysis. The NDA won 40 of the 54 Lok
Sabha seats in Bihar, the BJP winning 23, the JD(U)—which included
the Samata Party—getting 17, and the Shiv Sena winning one seat. In
contrast, the RJD won just seven seats and the Congress four. The BJP
and the JD(U) were ecstatic. Their decision to dismiss the Rabri Devi
government had been ratified by the people of Bihar, they claimed,
and the Congress’ decision to stick by the RJD had been rejected.
The euphoria was not to last very long. In the state assembly
elections of February 2000—barely four months after the Lok Sabha
elections—the RJD once again emerged as the single largest party. The
party won 124 seats in the 324-member assembly on its own. Along
with the Congress and the CPI(M), which had fought the elections
as its allies, it could count on the support of 149 MLAs in the new
house. The NDA, on the other hand, could muster only 122 MLAs
from within its own ranks, the BJP having won 67 seats, while the
Samata Party and the JD (U)—which were by this time once again
two separate parties—won 34 seats and 21 seats respectively. Yet,
what was clear was that neither of the two pre-election alliances had
a majority in the newly elected assembly.
Both sides started frantically hunting for possible supporters
among the 53 MLAs who were part of neither front. Here again,
the RJD had an advantage over the NDA. Various left parties—like
the CPI, the CPI (ML)-Liberation and the Marxist Coordination
Committee—accounted for 12 of the 53 seats. While they had their
reservations about the RJD and Lalu, there was little doubt that the
NDA was for them the bigger enemy and when it came to the crunch,
they would not allow an NDA government to be formed in Patna. The
only other big blocks that could be wooed by either side were the
JMM (12 MLAs) and the independents (20 MLAs, many of them
with criminal backgrounds who had in fact contested and won the
elections while in jail). The RJD soon announced that it had secured
the support of the JMM and that it was, therefore, just two short of the
163 required to muster a majority. The NDA, which had nominated
Nitish Kumar as its Chief Ministerial aspirant—despite the Samata
276 DIVIDED WE STAND

Party being a junior partner in the alliance—predictably rubbished

the claim and presented its own counter-claim. Nitish’s bid for Chief
Minister, they asserted, had the support of 146 MLAs. Further, they
maintained that this was more than the RJD could muster, since
not all the Congress MLAs would actually support Rabri Devi’s
bid to become Chief Minister for a second term. As had become the
norm in such situations, both sides presented lists of ‘supporters’
to the Governor.
For reasons best known to him (and reasons which the world
will never know because of his demise), Governor Pande decided
to swear in Nitish Kumar as the next Chief Minister of Bihar on
March 4, 2000. The RJD protested, arguing that the Governor was
only encouraging ‘horse-trading’ since parties and individuals who
accounted for at least 173 seats in the 324-member assembly had gone
on record to say that they would not support an NDA government in
Bihar. Neutral observers could not help but agree with this contention.
Pande asserted that his intentions were above board and in an attempt
to prove that his motives were honourable, he gave Nitish Kumar only
10 days to seek and win a vote of confidence in the assembly. The
NDA’s power brokers got into the act. The 20 independent MLAs
were aggressively wooed. Those of them who were in jail informally
elected Suraj Bhan their leader. Suraj Bhan, who was an accused in as
many as 26 cases, told reporters that his group had decided to support
the NDA ‘to give a new direction to development in the state’.
Despite such brazen attempts at garnering support, it was becoming
clearer each day that Nitish Kumar would find it extremely difficult,
if not impossible, to win the vote of confidence. The first effective
trial of strength was to take place even before the formal vote of
confidence. The Speaker of the new assembly was to be elected on
March 9. The RJD-led alliance proposed the name of Sadanand Singh,
a Congress leader, for the post. The voting to elect the Speaker, the
alliance asserted, would nail Nitish’s claims to having the support of a
majority of MLAs in the assembly. That the NDA was also aware
of this became clear when it announced that it would not put up its
own candidate—ostensibly because it wanted a consensus—for the
post of Speaker. The game was almost over by then. The next day, on
March 10, Nitish resigned after two-and-a-half hours of debate on
 Hindi Heartland 277

his motion of confidence, without waiting for the debate to conclude

and the assembly to vote. The second brief interlude in the 11-year
old Lalu–Rabri reign had lasted less than a week.
What happened thereafter has already been recollected in the
Introduction to the book. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the state’s
voters expressed their mandate overwhelmingly in favour of the UPA.
The alliance won 29 of the 40 seats in Bihar, the NDA having to settle
for just 11 seats. The RJD was the biggest gainer, winning 22 seats.
Within months, however, political equations in Bihar were to change
dramatically against the RJD and for the NDA.
In the first of two assembly elections held in 2005 in the state, the
UPA had fallen apart with Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP striking out on its
own with the CPI for company. The Congress was ambivalent about
which of the two main UPA constituents in the state—the RJD or
LJP—it should go with. The February election results threw up a hung
assembly. The RJD remained the single largest party, but the NDA
had more seats than the party and its allies (even if one included the
Congress in that category) had. If the LJP had also thrown its weight
behind the RJD, it would have been just a little short of a majority
in the assembly, but that was not to be. The LJP insisted that it was
committed to defeating Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi as Chief Minister and
not aligning with the ‘communal’ NDA. Paswan was faced with a real
dilemma. His job as a Union Minister in New Delhi obviously made it
difficult for him to align with the NDA. On the other hand, the bulk
of his MLAs belonged to the Bhumihar caste which was extremely
hostile to Lalu and any attempt on his part to mend fences with the
RJD would have resulted in a rebellion among his legislators. He,
therefore, continued to sit on the fence.
The stalemate continued for weeks before Governor Buta Singh
(a former Congress Union minister) recommended President’s rule
in the state on the grounds that he was convinced no government
could be formed without ‘horse-trading’. Coming close on the heels
of media reports that Nitish Kumar had finally mustered the numbers
required and was about to approach the Governor to stake a claim to
form the government, Buta’s move was seen as a blatantly partisan
attempt at preventing the NDA from forming the government. The
assembly was dissolved. Even as the Supreme Court was a hearing a
278 DIVIDED WE STAND

petition challenging the dissolution, the Election Commission

announced that assembly elections would be held in October for the
second time that year. On the eve of the elections, the court issued an
interim order that said Buta Singh’s decision was wrong, but refrained
from doing anything to stop the elections.
The UPA once again failed to stay together and this time the NDA
was able to make the most of it. Analysts also believed that the alliance
had successfully managed to woo the most backward castes (MBCs)
away from the RJD’s fold. The NDA gained a comfortable majority
on its own, with the JD(U) winning 88 seats and the BJP 55 for a
combined tally of 143 seats. It was not just the RJD that suffered,
its seats being cut to 54, but also the LJP, whose sitting on the fence
after the earlier elections seemed to have gone down badly with
the electorate. Paswan’s party could win just 10 seats in October. The
man who had set out to be king-maker in Bihar had been reduced to
a marginal player by the voters.
Nitish Kumar was sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar for the
second time on November 24, 2005. The Supreme Court subsequently
minced no words in criticising former Governor Buta Singh’s
recommendation to dissolve the state assembly in March 2005. Buta
Singh resigned his post in January 2006. West Bengal Governor Gopal
Krishna Gandhi took over temporarily before Republican Party of
India leader R.S. Gavai was sworn in as the Governor of Bihar on
June 22, 2006.

Janata Dal (United): Tripping on Egos

The rise of the Samata Party—which later became the Janata Dal
(United)—perhaps best illustrates how Lalu’s near-instant success
in dominating Bihar’s politics also became his biggest weakness. The
Janata Dal in Bihar at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s was
certainly a party with no dearth of leaders. Apart from Lalu himself,
there were George Fernandes, Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan and
Sharad Yadav, each of whom could in varying degrees lay claim to
having acquired a national profile. Of these, George Fernandes and
Sharad Yadav were not strictly speaking Biharis—the former being
 Hindi Heartland 279

a Mangalorean and the latter a native of Madhya Pradesh—but both

had made Bihar their political home.
When Lalu became Chief Minister of Bihar in 1990, he was
definitely a relative newcomer to the big stage of politics compared
to some of these stalwarts. Yet, within a couple of years it was clear
to everybody that the undisputed leader of the Janata Dal in Bihar
was Lalu. It also became increasingly clear that despite the presence
of Nitish Kumar and Paswan in the party’s leadership, neither
the Kurmis nor the dalits could hope to break the stranglehold of the
Yadavs on the levers of power in Patna under Lalu’s regime. Lalu was
also not averse to periodically ‘reminding’ George Fernandes that he
remained a leader in Bihar only at Lalu’s mercy. He also made it clear
to Nitish and Paswan that while he did not grudge them their share
of the limelight in New Delhi, they would be well advised to play
second fiddle to him in Bihar. The repeated rebuffs eventually proved
too much for Fernandes and Nitish to stomach. In 1994, the two left
the Janata Dal to float the Samata Party and immediately launched a
virulent campaign against the ‘misrule’ of Lalu’s government.
As yet, however, the two Samata Party leaders were not willing to
consider an alliance either with the Congress—against which party
Fernandes had fought throughout his political career—or with the
BJP, which they continued to see as a communal outfit. In the 1995
state assembly elections, therefore, the Samata Party was on its own,
and—as we have seen—made a rather pathetic debut in electoral
politics. This soon convinced the party that the BJP’s communalism
was a ‘lesser evil’ in Bihar than Lalu’s so-called ‘jungle raj’ and
caste based politics. Thus, by the time the 1996 Lok Sabha elections
took place, the Samata Party had struck an alliance with the BJP in
Bihar. The alliance was not spectacularly successful, but it did help
the Samata Party win its first Lok Sabha seats—six from Bihar and
one each from Uttar Pradesh and Orissa.
Since then, the Samata Party/JD(U) has grown considerably, from
first becoming the main rival to the RJD in the state after it was divided
to ultimately leading the ruling coalition in Bihar in October 2005. It
has become the nucleus around which political and social forces hostile
to Lalu’s Yadav–Muslim combine have gathered. There is a parallel
280 DIVIDED WE STAND

in this with what had happened in Uttar Pradesh, though there are
important differences as well. The social support base of the RJD in
Bihar, like that of the SP in UP, is largely among the Yadavs and the
Muslims. Like in UP, in Bihar too, the BJP succeeded in preventing
this base from expanding further to include all the non-Yadav OBCs.
The difference, however, is that while in UP the BJP was able to
achieve this by projecting a non-Yadav OBC leader—Kalyan Singh,
who belongs to the Lodh community—from within its own ranks, in
Bihar it had to depend on the Samata Party/JD(U) to split the pan-
OBC coalition that Lalu was attempting to build. Another similarity
between the political situation prevailing in UP and Bihar in terms
of caste equations is the manner in which dalit leaders like Mayawati
and Paswan have managed to deny the SP and the RJD—as well
as the BJP and the Congress—substantial sections of the votes of
their community.
Unlike the SP in Uttar Pradesh, however, Lalu started off with the
support of powerful non-Yadav OBC castes like the Kurmis—he was,
of course, a part of the Janata Dal at the time. He also had the support
of the dalits, which again was something that the SP did not have to a
significant extent at any stage. In that sense, it would perhaps be fair to
say that Lalu has contributed in substantial measure to the alienation
of these castes from his party and has squandered more opportunities
than Mulayam ever had to widen and expand his support base across
different caste groups.
Politics in Bihar, of course, is substantially different from that in
UP in at least one major aspect: The presence of ‘armies’ and Naxalites
who are outside the electoral process, but who are nevertheless
an important and integral part of politics in the state. While
the Naxalites, as Marxists, are ideologically not motivated by caste
factors, there is little doubt that the bulk of their sympathisers
come from those at the lower end of the caste hierarchy. This is not
surprising given the fact that their focus on agrarian issues has pit
the Naxalites constantly against big landowners of Bihar and in
favour of agricultural labourers. Since the upper castes and Yadavs
dominate big land-holdings in Bihar and agricultural labourers in
the state are predominantly dalits and other lower castes, there is a
considerable intermeshing of caste and class in the battles between
 Hindi Heartland 281

the Ranvir Sena—the private army of upper-caste landlords—and

Naxalite groups like the People’s War Group (PWG) and the Maoist
Communist Centre (MCC).
To return to the Samata Party/JD(U) in Bihar, ego clashes among its
leaders have from time to time conveyed the impression that the party
could break up. Besides the existence of two factions allegedly owing
allegiance to George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar, the party’s MPs
and MLAs have often issued statements in their ‘personal’ capacity,
which have run contrary to the official party position. For instance, the
former spokesperson of the party Shambhu Srivastwa was extremely
critical of the failure of the Gujarat government to control the
communal riots in the state. He stopped short of asking for what the
Opposition to the NDA had been demanding—the resignation of
Modi. Srivastwa’s statements were brushed aside as his ‘personal’
views and not those of the Samata Party. Subsequently, in May 2003,
Srivastwa—a medical doctor by profession—quit his post and joined
the Congress. He later re-joined the Samata Party/JD(U). Certain
Samata Party/JD(U) representatives have also openly expressed
their unhappiness with their party’s leadership on account of the
presence of former party general secretary Jaya Jaitly who is close to
George Fernandes.
Matters came to a head in June 2003 when Nitish Kumar submitted
his resignation from the post of Railway Minister to Vajpayee on
the grounds that it would be morally untenable for him to continue
since his own party colleagues were accusing him of corruption in
purchase contracts. The reference was to charges made against him
by Samata Party MP Prabhunath Singh. While Singh has always had
the reputation of being a maverick and a ‘loose canon’, Nitish clearly
believed that he had Fernandes’ backing. Nitish specifically asked
why no disciplinary action had been taken against Prabhunath Singh
by the party president George Fernandes. The resignation drama
lasted for three days, during which time speculation was rife about a
possible split in the Samata Party with Fernandes and Nitish leading
rival factions. As in the past, however, the storm soon blew over after
Nitish was ‘persuaded’ to withdraw his resignation.
The Samata Party/JD(U) has by and large been confined to Bihar,
despite the fact that it had MPs like Kalpnath Rai (who had been asked
to quit his post as Food Minister in the Narasimha Rao government
282 DIVIDED WE STAND

for alleged acts of corruption) from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and

Bhakta Charan Das (formerly of the Janata Dal) from Orissa. The party,
however, surprised many by obtaining the allegiance of a number
of MLAs from Manipur in north-east India in 2002. This state has
witnessed rapid changes in government and its MLAs have acquired
notoriety for the frequency with which they have switched political
parties. In the run-up to assembly elections to the state in February
2002, a group of MLAs from Manipur decided to support the Samata
Party and even took on the BJP (with which it was in alliance in New
Delhi) to destabilise the state government in Imphal. It was not as if
the Samata Party had had a support base in Manipur for a long time;
it was merely that a group of MLAs from the state found the Samata
Party a convenient platform on which they could come together.
The personality clashes within the JD(U) again came to a head in 2006,
when George Fernandes was ‘ousted’ by Sharad Yadav as president of
the party. While Yadav won the party elections by a massive margin,
Fernandes’ supporters alleged that the process had been irregular.
His defeat seemed to signal the beginning of the process of another
split in the party. In early 2007, Fernandes loyalists held a convention
in New Delhi seeking to revive the Samata Party. Interestingly,
while Fernandes ‘blessed’ these efforts, he made it clear that he
would continue as a JD(U) MP as well as the Convenor of the NDA.
What follows are thumbnail sketches of some of these important
politicians from Bihar.

Lalu Prasad Yadav

In less than a decade and a half, Lalu Prasad Yadav has risen from
being a virtual nonentity, even in his native Bihar, to arguably one
of the best known political leaders in India. True, Lalu had been a
member of the Lok Sabha as early as 1977, when the Janata Party made
a clean sweep of all 54 seats in Bihar riding a wave of popular anger
against the Emergency which had ended barely three months before
the elections were held. Yet, hardly anybody outside his constituency
had heard of Lalu in this period. In fact, he had not even been a
member of the Bihar assembly prior to contesting the Lok Sabha
elections. Today, he symbolises the very essence of Bihar for most
Indians like nobody else ever has.
 Hindi Heartland 283

Lalu’s beginning in politics was in the JP movement in the mid-

1970s. He was at that time—in 1973–74—the President of the Patna
University Students’ Union. There’s a story about a specific incident
during those days that could well be apocryphal. The story goes that
on the day of a much-publicised rally to be addressed by JP in Patna,
the police cracked down with teargas and lathi charges to ensure that
many of those who wanted to participate in the rally would not be
able to do so. That evening, Lalu himself called up newspaper offices
to announce grandly that ‘Lalu Yadav has been arrested’. Many of
the journalists contacted were puzzled by this piece of information
and wanted to know who Lalu Yadav was. At this point Lalu is said to
have expressed shock at their ignorance of such an important student
leader. The story may well be untrue, but if it sounds plausible it
is because Lalu remains to this day a man who knows how to stay
in the news and hog the headlines, whether for the right reasons or
for the wrong ones.
Despite his carefully cultivated image of being a rustic buffoon,
Lalu has certainly been one of the most media-savvy politicians in
India. He has never ducked questions or refused a request from a
journalist for an interview, no matter how big or small the publication
or organisation the journalist represents. His clever one-liners have
not merely spawned a series of jokes but have also been the delight
of television journalists looking for a sound byte and a godsend for
headline writers. For example, on the day the RJD was formed in
July 1997, Lalu had appeared on a TV news programme where the
anchor patronisingly remarked that his party could at best hope to
be described as a regional party. Pat came the reply without batting
an eyelid, ‘Regional party? RJD is the original party’. Of course, this
was not a just a play on words. In his characteristic style, Lalu had
used humour to drive home the message that his party would be the
one to matter in Bihar, not the parent Janata Dal.
Humour has been an important weapon in Lalu’s armoury. He has
used it to disarm aggressive critics—whether inside a TV studio or on
the floor of the Bihar assembly or in Parliament. He has also used it
to great effect in attacking his opponents. While most other ‘secular’
leaders prefer to angrily rave and rant at the Sangh Parivar’s activities,
Lalu more often than not resorts to ridiculing them. For instance, at
a public rally he made fun of Murli Manohar Joshi—who was then
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the BJP President—for getting knocked down by police personnel

using water cannons during a demonstration near Parliament during
the tenure of the Narasimha Rao government. He referred to Joshi
‘keeling over like a sick pup’ under the impact of a ‘shower’ and
wondered aloud how such a leadership could claim to provide an
alternative to the Congress. Most other politicians would have
considered his choice of words ‘unparliamentary’ if not downright
vulgar, but the guffaws that followed from the thousands assembled
near the Red Fort left little room for doubt that his gag had gone
down well with the crowd. His penchant for referring to the Chief
Secretary of Bihar as bade babu—a term more commonly used to
describe a head clerk—was another instance of his deliberate use of
ridicule. It certainly wasn’t considered offensive or rude behaviour
by millions of people who did not think too highly of a bureaucracy
that they perceived as an institution that only harassed them. At the
same time, it also served to tell the Chief Secretary—and hence the
rest of the bureaucracy—who the real boss was.
The choice of language and idiom is decidedly rustic, but
undoubtedly deliberately so. Lalu realises only too well that the more
he is berated by the English media for being a boor, the easier it is for him
to project himself as a man of the people, one who doesn’t mind talking
bluntly. Unlike many others, who might prefer to play down their
humble beginnings, Lalu goes out of his way to keep reinforcing the
fact that he is from a family of cowherds and had lived for many years
in the quarters given to his brother as a government peon. While other
politicians from northern India will spend Holi paying visits to other
bigwigs or receiving guests at home and exchanging sweets, Lalu can
be seen on the evening news drenched in coloured water and playing
the dholak with gay abandon. It is not uncommon to find TV footage
of Lalu talking to journalists wearing a sleeveless ganji (vest) and dhoti.
Most other politicians would dread the thought of appearing in public
dressed so informally, but for Lalu it is just one more opportunity to
tell his supporters that he remains one of them, not a leader who has
become so big as to live like the elite.
Lalu also knows, perhaps better than any other Indian politician,
the public relations value of being able to laugh at oneself. Thus, when
asked about the incongruity of his government preaching the virtues
 Hindi Heartland 285

of small families when he himself is a father of nine children—two

sons and seven daughters—Lalu just chuckles. Similarly, when asked
whether Rabri Devi is merely a de-jure Chief Minister and he is the
man who really calls the shots, Lalu grins and says that Rabri is a
good Indian wife and like all good Indian wives takes her husband’s
word as her command. The candour is disarming, as Lalu knows
only too well. His whacky sense of humour is also evident from
the fact that he named one of his daughters Misa—the acronym for
Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) that was misused by
Indira Gandhi during the Emergency—because she was born while
he was imprisoned under that Act. Another of Lalu’s daughters is
named Jalebi, a popular sweet.
It would be foolish, however, to view Lalu as merely a person with
a sense of humour and as a good communicator. As he has revealed
on more occasions than one, he is no simpleton when it comes to
high-stake political battles. The ease with which he has managed to
engineer defections from other parties—those friendly to him as well
as those hostile to him—and keep his governments and Rabri Devi’s
governments afloat even when they were in a minority in the assembly
is testimony to his consummate skills in the murky numbers game that
has come to dominate many of India’s legislatures. An equally telling
indicator of his political acumen was the manner in which he
transformed Jagannath Mishra, a former Congress Chief Minister of
Bihar, from one of the biggest leaders in the state to someone who
was seen as Lalu’s lackey even by his own party colleagues.
He has also shown a better appreciation of the compulsions of
coalition politics than many other Indian politicians, especially the
dictum that there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics.
When the RJD was formed in 1997, he was ostracised by many of
his own former colleagues in the JD, as well as erstwhile allies in
the United Front. In such a situation, many politicians would have
become bitter and borne a grudge, but not Lalu, who has displayed
a spirit of magnanimity. In this respect, he presents a sharp contrast
to another Yadav leader, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has never
forgotten his brushes with his political rivals or opponents, be these in
the Congress party (Sonia Gandhi’s alleged disrespect towards Amar
Singh before she staked her claim to form the Union government in
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April 1999), or the Bahujan Samaj Party (the Lucknow guest house
incident involving the attack on Mayawati by goons allegedly owing
allegiance to the Samajwadi Party).
At the same time, Lalu also suffers from a weakness common to
many Indian politicians. He has been unable to resist the temptation of
flaunting his riches and his power. Thus, his daughter Misa’s wedding
was celebrated with much pomp and splendour that stood out starkly
in an economically backward state. It was reported that his cohorts
coerced car dealers to part with their brand new vehicles for a short
period to ensure that the wedding guests could travel in style. He has
also been quite brazen about the manner in which he has patronised
criminals and goons. Mohammed Shahabuddin, the RJD MP from
Siwan in northern Bihar is notorious in the area as a ‘don’ who has
been accused of engineering the murder of several people including
Chandrashekhar, a former president of the students’ union at Jawaharlal
Nehru University in New Delhi, for daring to organise political
opposition to him as part of a Naxalite group. Lalu’s own brothers-in-
law, Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, have been a law unto themselves
in the state and, as in the case of Shahabuddin, the local administration
and the police have never taken any action against their strong-arm
tactics. To be fair to Lalu, however, it is not as if he is the only politician
in Bihar—or indeed in India—to patronise criminals and musclemen.
Yet, he and subsequently Rabri Devi have been unable to prevent
Bihar from being seen as the most lawless of India’s states.
The Samata Party first referred to the RJD’s reign as ‘jungle raj’,
an accusation that has subsequently been echoed by many others,
including the BJP, the Congress and the CPI, not to mention the
media. Lalu once attempted to laugh this away by quoting from a hit
Hindi film song of the 1970s—chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe, kahne
do ji kahta rahe, hum pyaar ke toofanon mein ghire hain, hum pyaar
karen (loosely translated, ‘I don’t care if anybody calls me a savage, I’m
caught up in a whirlwind of love, I just continue to love’). However,
when India Today magazine organised a conclave in New Delhi and
disclosed the results of a survey that ranked Bihar at the bottom of
the list of all Indian states in terms of various socio-economic criteria,
Lalu got Rabri Devi to walk out of the conclave in protest. He himself
stayed on, since he was one of the speakers. In his speech, he argued
 Hindi Heartland 287

that Bihar’s economic backwardness was due to the discriminatory

attitude that New Delhi had adopted towards Bihar since it was
ruled by a party hostile to the BJP. Lalu hasn’t always bothered to
seriously respond to the charge that economic development was a
casualty under the RJD. For instance, there is this story—once again
perhaps apocryphal—about a villager complaining to him that the
road passing through the village had been potholed for years without
anybody bothering to repair it. Lalu is said to have replied that smooth
roads would only help those with fancy cars and would actually be a
threat to the children and cattle in the village, who might be run over
by speeding vehicles.
In a largely successful political career, Lalu had to face an
embarrassing defeat in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. In these elections,
Lalu contested from Madhepura, considered a stronghold of the
Yadavs and hence of the RJD supremo. The contest was particularly
important for Lalu because the man opposing him as the NDA’s
candidate was his erstwhile colleague in the Janata Dal, Sharad Yadav.
Lalu boasted that he would prove Sharad Yadav a mere paper tiger
and a person without a mass base. Sharad Yadav, on the other hand,
asserted that he would prove he was a taller leader of the Yadavs in
Bihar than Lalu. As the campaign progressed, it was evident that the
contest would be closer than initially expected. Nevertheless, few
people expected Lalu to lose. So much so, that immediately after the
polling was over, Sharad Yadav demanded a re-poll alleging massive
rigging by RJD supporters. When the Election Commission refused
to yield to the demand, Sharad Yadav alleged bias and announced
that he would fast unto death unless a re-poll was ordered. The EC
went ahead with the counting and Sharad Yadav was ultimately left
facing the comic situation of wildly cheering supporters informing
him that he could break his fast, since he had won in an election that
he had earlier insisted had been rigged!
The second time Lalu Prasad had to eat humble pie was when his
party lost the assembly elections in October 2005 after the UPA fell
apart, as already mentioned. Exhibiting the resilience and political
acumen for which he has always been known, Lalu quickly reinvented
himself on the national scene. A man who had thus far been seen more
as a populist and a bit of a buffoon by the urban middle classes was
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being feted by the media as a minister who had turned around the
Indian Railways. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad,
one of India’s leading business schools, invited him to lecture its
students on how the turnaround had happened and several media
opinion polls indicated that he had higher approval ratings than even
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, who has for long been a darling of
the middle and upper classes. Experts may question the extent to which
Lalu contributed to the turnaround of the Railways, arguing that all
he did was to allow his professional managers to have their way. To be
fair to him, however, it is not very often that a politician as big as Lalu
will let bureaucrats run the show without interfering too much.

Nitish Kumar

The two tallest leaders of the Samata Party/JD(U), Nitish Kumar and
George Fernandes, come from different backgrounds, the only common
thread being their espousal of the socialist cause. Born in 1951, Nitish
cut his political teeth in the JP movement—he was held under the
notorious MISA in 1974 and was also jailed during the Emergency.
Despite his claims to the contrary, his support base was confined largely
to the Kurmis, an intermediate caste that is powerful in his Lok Sabha
constituency, Barh. He became an MLA for the first time in 1985, and
in 1987 became the president of the Yuva Lok Dal in Bihar. In 1989,
when the Janata Dal was formed, he became the secretary general of
the party’s Bihar unit. The same year, he was elected to the Lok Sabha
for the first time. He has been re-elected on four subsequent occasions
from the same Parliamentary constituency and also from Nalanda.
Nitish Kumar’s first stint as Union minister in the V. P. Singh
government was a short one—from April to October 1990—when
he served as Minister of State for Agriculture. He became all-India
general secretary of the Janata Dal in 1991. He was appointed to
the important post of Railway Minister in the second Vajpayee
government in 1998. He moved to the Ministry of Surface Transport,
then to the Agriculture Ministry. He moved back to the Rail Bhavan
in March 2001 after Mamata Banerjee resigned as Railway Minister,
holding additional charge of the Railway Ministry while continuing
as Agriculture Minister. In July that year, he was relieved of the
 Hindi Heartland 289

Agriculture portfolio when Ajit Singh took over as Agriculture

Minister. From March 1998 onwards, he continuously served in the
Union Cabinet holding some portfolio or the other, barring the brief
period between March 3, 2001—when he had to resign as Union
minister to be sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar—and March 20
when he rejoined the Union government.
One of the most controversial decisions taken by Nitish Kumar
as Railway Minister was to reorganise the different railway ‘zones’ in
the country. He decided to break the erstwhile Eastern Railways into
three parts, including a large chunk that went into a newly created
zone called the East Central Railways headquartered at Hajipur
in Bihar. This move, although accompanied by less controversial
decisions to create six more railway zones, was opposed by each
and every political party in neighbouring West Bengal while being
supported by every party in Bihar. Thus, while the CPI(M) and the
RJD would act together on many national issues, the two parties found
each other on opposite sides of the debate to create the new railway
zone. Similarly, the Trinamool Congress headed by Nitish Kumar’s
predecessor in Rail Bhavan, Mamata Banerjee, staunchly opposed the
move to trifurcate the Eastern Railways although both the Trinamool
Congress and the Samata Party were constituents of the NDA. Such
indeed were the curious compulsions of coalition politics. At one
stage, Mamata had issued veiled threats to quit the NDA unless
Vajpayee reversed Nitish’s decision but that did not happen. Nitish,
on his part, pointed out that the decision to create new railway zones
had been taken when Ram Vilas Paswan was Railway Minister and
that this decision had not been reversed during Mamata’s tenure as
head of the Railway Ministry.
The other controversial decision taken by Nitish Kumar was his
move to build an ‘extension’ of an existing railway line to make it run
through three Parliamentary constituencies: his own (Barh), that of
his party colleague and Union Defence Minister George Fernandes
(Nalanda), and that of former Union Minister Dr. C.P. Thakur
(Patna). The existing railway line, approved by the Planning
Commission, ran between Fatuah and Islampur. Without obtaining
fresh approval from the Planning Commission, Nitish Kumar carried
out what was euphemistically described as a ‘material modification’
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to the railway line to ensure that it would now run 123 kilometres
from Neora to Daniama, Biharsharif, Barbigha and on to Sheikhpura.
Since Neora and Sheikhpura were already connected, the ‘modified’
railway line was slated to run more or less parallel to an existing
railway line. Nitish claimed that he was within his rights as Union
Railway Minister to ‘modify’ the railway line by incurring an
additional expenditure of Rs 255 crore not included in the annual
Railway Budget, but his political opponents (as well as estranged
MPs belonging to the Samata Party) argued that the Railway Minister
had ‘abused’ his authority to benefit his constituents and those of his
colleagues and allies.
Nitish Kumar had earned compliments in February 2002 when
his Railway Budget had taken the politically difficult decision to
increase passenger fares. His predecessor Mamata Banerjee had not
increased passenger fares for two years in succession—a move that
was described as ‘populist’. In February 2003, however, faced with a
4 per cent drop in passenger earnings, Nitish Kumar took a leaf out
of Mamata’s book and chose not to touch passenger fares.
As already mentioned, Nitish was sworn in for the second time
as Chief Minister of Bihar in November 2005. This time round there
was no doubt about the stability of his government. During his first
year in office, he maintained a rather low profile and enhanced his
reputation of being a hard-working administrator. A major move
that could have a long term impact on the politics of Bihar was his
government’s decision to reserve half the seats in all local bodies
(panchayati raj institutions) for women.

George Fernandes

If Nitish Kumar’s term as Railway Minister was reasonably

controversial, the political career of George Fernandes is replete
with so many twists and turns that it is a difficult task to unravel the
ideological contradictions that are apparent in his complex personality.
Born in 1930 to a poor Christian couple from South Kanara district
of the Mangalore region of Karnataka, in his youth Fernandes was
sent to a seminary by his father to become a Catholic priest. Not
only did he choose not to pursue his theological studies, he became
 Hindi Heartland 291

a confirmed socialist after a meeting with Ram Manohar Lohia. The

man who would have been a priest became instead a firebrand labour
leader and a ‘younger brother’ of socialist ideologue Madhu Limaye.
In 1967, he captured national attention when he beat S.K. Patil—a
senior Congress leader—to enter the Lok Sabha for the first time
from a Mumbai constituency. Four years later, however, he had to
eat humble pie when he not only lost in the 1971 general elections,
but forfeited his deposit as the Congress rode the electoral wave
generated by the euphoria of the war that year and the creation of
Bangladesh. An angry Fernandes swore he would never again contest
from Mumbai. He has stuck to that pledge.
He gained national prominence once again in 1974 when, as
president of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation, he spearheaded
the longest ever strike by workers in the Indian Railways. In fact, the
strike was one of the important factors that prompted the Emergency.
During the strike, he was charged with sedition and attempt to
destabilise the Indian state by, among other things, planting dynamite
allegedly to blow up railway tracks in what came to be known as
the Baroda Dynamite Case. He was jailed towards the fag end of the
Emergency and was still in prison when the general elections were
conducted in March 1977. He won from Muzaffarpur in Bihar by
about 3.5 lakh votes, one of the largest margins of victory at that
juncture. Since then, Bihar has served as Fernandes’ political home
although he has also contested from Bangalore.
As Industry Minister in Morarji Desai’s government, George
acquired international fame when he decided to throw out two giant
multinational corporations from India, Coca-Cola and IBM (formerly
International Business Machines), for not adhering to the provisions
of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA). Yet, during the
same period, Fernandes was also accused of unduly favouring the
German multinational Siemens by ‘forcing’ the Indian public sector
engineering company, BHEL, to enter into a technical collaboration
agreement with the German firm. Even though Fernandes insists till
today that he remains a socialist at heart, he became the blue-eyed boy
not only of Vajpayee and Advani but also the RSS and organisations
affiliated to it. In fact, Fernandes is the only non-RSS, non-Hindu
political leader to have featured on the cover of Panchajanya the
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mouthpiece of the RSS. Asked to explain the contradiction between

his personal economic ideology and the policies followed by the
Vajpayee government, he argues that Narasimha Rao had surrendered
India’s economic sovereignty to the World Trade Organisation and
that successor governments have no choice but to continue along the
same path.
Many years earlier, in July 1979, when the Morarji Desai government
was teetering on the brink of collapse, Fernandes had made an
impassioned speech in the Lok Sabha defending the government
during a vote of confidence. Within days, however, he had switched
sides and became an equally vociferous supporter of Charan Singh,
Desai’s rival who deposed him as Prime Minister with the support
of the Congress. When asked to explain his sudden turnaround,
Fernandes claimed that he was not aware at the time that he was
making the speech in Parliament, that many of his close political
associates like Madhu Limaye and Biju Patnaik had already decided
to ditch Morarji Desai and instead support Charan Singh. When he
subsequently learnt about this, he says he was left with the choice
of either falling out with his associates or eating his own words.
He says he chose the latter, knowing that it was bound to adversely
affect his personal credibility.
His ideological somersaults have not been confined to the economic
and political spheres. While he was in jail in 1974, he had stayed up
all night to write a long diatribe against Indira Gandhi’s decision to
conduct nuclear tests at Pokhran. ‘Should any government discuss
such a proposition [meaning, building nuclear weapons] seriously
without first taking steps to provide all citizens of the country with
food, clothes, shelter, pure drinking water, education and a chance
to live a life befitting human beings, such a government can be called
nothing but criminal,’ Fernandes wrote (in what was later published
as a booklet) while describing talk of building a nuclear bomb as
so much ‘bombast’. Twenty-four years later, after the Vajpayee
government had conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, as Union
Defence Minister George Fernandes was to remark that he was proud
of the achievements of Indian scientists in making India a nuclear
weapons state. His explanation for his about-turn was that there is
one aspect of national life that comes above everything else—and
that is national security.
 Hindi Heartland 293

One consistent aspect of Fernandes’ worldview through the many

metamorphoses he has undergone is his dislike for China. At the time
of the Pokharan II blasts, he had reportedly stated that India’s nuclear
programme should not be seen as being aimed primarily against
Pakistan and that China was a larger and perhaps more dangerous
‘enemy’ in India’s neighbourhood. After his remarks raised a hue
and cry in diplomatic circles, Fernandes clarified that this view had been
stated in successive annual reports brought out by India’s Ministry of
Defence. But Fernandes’ views on China may have changed after his
visit to Beijing as Union Defence Minister in May 2003.
The change in Fernandes’ position on civil liberties has not been any
less dramatic than the volte face in his views on nuclear disarmament.
As a man who has been associated with Amnesty International and
the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), Fernandes had a
history of opposing all ‘draconian’ laws. In fact, he had once stated
in Parliament that the only purpose served by laws like TADA was
to suppress legitimate trade union activity at the behest of influential
business groups. Yet, Fernandes had no compunctions supporting the
enactment of POTA. Still, these apparent ideological contradictions
pale into insignificance when one considers how Fernandes’ views
on the communal character of the BJP and the RSS have changed
over the years.
Till 1996, Fernandes had consistently opposed the Sangh Parivar.
As a matter of fact, an important reason why the Janata Party split
in 1979 was his insistence that the two ministers in the Morarji Desai
government belonging to the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh—that
is, Foreign Minister Vajpayee and Information & Broadcasting
Minister Advani—should give up their ‘dual’ allegiances since they
continued to be members of the RSS although their party (the BJS)
had formally merged with the Janata Party.
After his decision to ally the Samata Party with the BJP in 1996,
George Fernandes was attacked time and again and reminded of his
speeches and statements against the BJP and the RSS following the
demolition of the Babri masjid in December 1992. Interestingly,
even at this stage, Fernandes and his party did not question the
characterisation of the RSS and the BJP as communal organisations.
They merely argued that in the specific context of Bihar, casteism
294 DIVIDED WE STAND

and corruption were bigger and more immediate dangers than

communalism. They had, the argument went, joined hands with the
lesser evil to defeat the bigger one.
In the years since then, Fernandes has changed his position even
further. Today, he insists that the RSS and the BJP are transformed
from what they once were and are no longer communal. The very fact
that he—a Christian—had been given such a high position in the
BJP-led government and treated with great respect by the RSS and its
front organisations is illustrative of how they have changed, he asserts.
Perhaps the most telling indicator of how much Fernandes’ view of
the RSS and BJP has changed over the years is the fact that the Samata
Party remained silent even when other allies of the BJP in the NDA
kicked up a fuss about the big brother trying to ‘impose’ its agenda
on the NDA. Whether it was the Gujarat riots of 2002, the murder of
Australian missionary Graham Staines in 2000, or the controversy over
the VHP’s Ayodhya agitation, the one ‘secular’ ally of the BJP that
steadfastly refused to criticise the BJP or even the VHP was Fernandes’
Samata Party. As a matter of fact, even when individual leaders of the
Samata Party like spokesperson Shambhu Srivastwa expressed their
dissatisfaction with the communal agenda of the Sangh Parivar, the
party was quick to dissociate itself from such views.
As Defence Minister, Fernandes took great pains to project an
image of being the soldier’s man. More than any other minister, he
repeatedly visited jawans at the military base located on top of the
Siachen glacier—the world’s highest battleground and one of
the coldest. The same individual who had participated in innumerable
anti-war demonstrations all over the world did not find it incongruous
to transform himself into an ardent advocate of India’s military
might. One of his most controversial decisions as Defence Minister
was his removal of Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat.
The decision strained relations between the bureaucracy and the
military establishment as never before. But Vajpayee and Advani
stood steadfastly behind Fernandes on this occasion, as they did on
most other occasions. As a matter of fact, as convenor of the NDA,
he revelled in his role as the Prime Minister’s trouble-shooter—from
rushing to Chennai to placate a recalcitrant Jayalalithaa during
the second Vajpayee government, to keeping in regular touch with
a sulking Mamata Banerjee.
 Hindi Heartland 295

Usually clad in a cotton kurta and pyjama, ‘socialist’ George

Fernandes’ ‘clean’ image took a beating like never before when
tehelka.com, a news and current affairs website, produced secretly-
recorded videotapes in which Fernandes’ companion and Samata
Party general secretary Jaya Jaitly was heard discussing defence
deals with two journalists posing as arms dealers. What made matters
worse was that the videotape had been recorded in Fernandes’
official residence. The tehelka tapes also contained recordings of
conversations with the then treasurer of the Samata Party R.K. Jain
(who was promptly sacked), bragging about how he could swing
defence contracts because of his proximity to Fernandes. The Defence
Minister’s explanation of how a man like Jain could become party
treasurer was not particularly convincing. Soon after the tehelka
tapes (that also depicted the then BJP president Bangaru Laxman
receiving wads of currency notes) were made public in March 2001,
Fernandes put in his papers. He had insisted that he wanted to
resign before he actually did but that Vajpayee did not wish to accept
his resignation letter.
The government appointed a one-man inquiry commission headed
by a retired judge of the Supreme Court to inquire into the revelations
made in the tehelka tapes, but well before the commission could arrive
at a conclusion Fernandes was reinducted into the Union Cabinet
later that year. Soon thereafter, in December, the Comptroller and
Auditor General of India published a report alleging that the Indian
Army had purchased coffins from the US for those killed during the
Kargil war at highly inflated prices. The coffins had arrived well after
the conflagration was over. The scandal, dubbed ‘Coffingate’, also
dented Fernandes’ image as a ‘clean’ minister who took care to uphold
the interests of ordinary soldiers. After he returned to the Cabinet,
the entire Opposition took a decision not to recognise Fernandes
as Defence Minister and boycotted proceedings of Parliament that
involved interacting with him. This decision was broken as late as
May 2003 by a few Congress MPs including Jagmeet Singh Brar—who
went on to apologise for his actions but was nevertheless reprimanded
and removed from his position as party whip. Other Congress MPs
who had violated the party’s directive to boycott Fernandes in
Parliament included Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh’s
brother Laxman Singh and former Union minister K.P. Singhdeo.
296 DIVIDED WE STAND

Not surprisingly, after the UPA came to power, it directed the CBI
to inquire into the allegations against Fernandes and his associates,
decisions that were equally predictably described as politically
motivated by him. Out of power and out of the limelight, George
Fernandes seemed to have lost a bit of his ‘firebrand’ reputation.
What made things worse for him was the fact that even his own party
compatriots in the JD(U) did not seem particularly enamoured of his
legendary leadership qualities and had marginalised him to the extent
that he and Jaya Jaitly have sought to revive the Samata Party.

Ram Vilas Paswan

When Ram Vilas Paswan first entered parliamentary politics in

1977, he seemed to be a politician with a bright future. He made
his presence felt in the first Lok Sabha elections he contested from
Hajipur, setting a new record for the highest margin of victory in
any Lok Sabha constituency up to that point—4.24 lakh votes. He
was to subsequently break his own record by winning from the
same constituency in 1989 by 5.05 lakh votes, a record later broken
by Narasimha Rao when he won from Nandyal in Andhra Pradesh
by over 6 lakh votes in a by-election.
By the late 1980s, Paswan had not only made a habit of winning
Lok Sabha elections by huge margins, he had also acquired a profile
well beyond his constituency or even his state. He had started being
recognised as an important leader of the dalits even in areas like
western Uttar Pradesh and the outskirts of Delhi. So much so that
the Dalit Panthers—an organisation floated by some of Paswan’s
supporters—were able to organise fairly impressive rallies in western
UP. The extent of Paswan’s fan following can be gauged from one of
the slogans often raised at these rallies, ‘Upar aasmaan, neeche Paswan’
(there’s the sky above and on the earth there’s Paswan). Analysts
saw in him the first dalit leader after Jagjivan Ram (who was also
from Bihar) to have a support base extending across a wide swathe
of the Hindi heartland.
Right up to the mid-1990s, Paswan remained on a steadily climbing
political career graph. In 1988, he became the general secretary of the
 Hindi Heartland 297

newly-formed Janata Dal and a secretary of the National Front that

the JD had forged with the left parties and some regional parties.
When the National Front led by V.P. Singh came to power in 1989,
Paswan—who was barely 43 at the time—became a Cabinet Minister,
handling the Labour and Welfare portfolios. When the United Front
came to power in 1996, Paswan not only got the prestigious Railways
portfolio, he was also designated the leader of the Lok Sabha. This
unusual situation of the Prime Minister not being the leader of
the lower house came about because both H.D. Deve Gowda and
I.K. Gujral his successor as Prime Minister, were members of the Rajya
Sabha and not the Lok Sabha. Even if the position came to Paswan
partly by default, it was an indication of his political stature.
Since then, Paswan’s career seems to have stagnated, while his
politics have been perceived as crassly opportunist. By the time of the
1998 elections, the Janata Dal in Bihar had badly disintegrated. Having
survived the exit of people like George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar
to form the Samata Party in 1994, the Janata Dal in 1998 was struggling
to cope with the serious damage done by Lalu Yadav’s decision to
split the party and form the RJD in 1997. In 1998, therefore, Paswan
and Sharad Yadav were the only leaders of any consequence in the JD
in Bihar and of these Sharad Yadav was hardly a person with a huge
mass base in the state. Not surprisingly, the JD fared very poorly in
the 1998 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar. Though Paswan comfortably
retained his own seat, no other candidate of the JD won from Bihar.
Paswan could, however, draw some consolation from the fact that his
party had polled close to 9 per cent of the total votes despite having
fought on its own.
When the second Vajpayee government faced its crucial vote of
confidence in April 1999, after the AIADMK had withdrawn support,
Paswan was among those who spoke strongly against the ‘communal’
BJP and voted against the government. Yet, when the 1999 Lok Sabha
elections were held barely six months later, the JD led by Paswan and
Sharad Yadav had made common cause with the NDA and formally
joined the Front. Like the Samata Party, Paswan was now rather
unconvincingly trying to argue that his alliance with the BJP was
not opportunistic but based on the principle of fighting corruption
and jungle raj in Bihar.
298 DIVIDED WE STAND

Paswan’s ability to attract as much as 9 per cent of votes in Bihar

may have amounted to little in the 1998 elections, but in 1999, this
proved a decisive advantage for the NDA against the RJD–Congress–
left alliance. The NDA won as many as 40 of the 54 seats in Bihar. The
Samata Party and the Janata Dal, which had fought under the common
symbol of the Janata Dal (United), won 16 seats. The RJD was reduced
to just seven seats. Paswan’s reward for his role in bringing about
this scenario came in the form of the coveted Telecommunications
portfolio in the Union Cabinet.
As Telecommunications Minister, Paswan lost much of his earlier
image as a dynamic leader. Instead, he came to be seen as a man
more interested in doling out favours to cronies by setting up various
official bodies to accommodate them. Speculation also started
mounting about whether it was just a coincidence that some of his
policy decisions as Minister suited the business interests of powerful
industrial houses.
In September 2001, Paswan was ultimately relieved of the telecom
portfolio in the face of mounting criticism by the media and others.
He was assigned the Coal and Mines portfolio, which was seen as a
distinct demotion from his earlier job. Already smarting under this
‘insult’, Paswan realised that his future within the NDA was dim
when the BJP formed a coalition government with the BSP in Uttar
Pradesh in March 2002. It was clear to most observers that BSP leader
Mayawati would use her new-found clout with the BJP to try and cut
Paswan to size. Given the fact that Paswan, like Mayawati, is a dalit
leader, the latter was keen to ensure that Paswan’s political stature did
not reach a point where he could become a threat to her mass base in
UP or become a rival dalit leader at the national level.
However, Paswan could not be seen to be exiting the NDA because
of a political or ego clash with another dalit leader. He, therefore,
needed a credible reason for his exit. The communal riots in Gujarat
provided him with just the excuse he was looking for. He joined
various other allies of the BJP in asking for the resignation of Gujarat
Chief Minister Narendra Modi for his dubious role in the manner in
which the state government dealt with the riots, but unlike the others
quit the NDA in April 2003 when the BJP refused to sack Modi.
 Hindi Heartland 299

Paswan then formed his own party, the Lok Jan Shakti Party. As
the 1998, 1999 and 2004 Lok Sabha elections and the October 2005
assembly elections have taught him, he can be a formidable force in
Bihar as part of an alliance, but can hope to win very little contesting
without any allies. Interestingly, however, Paswan seems to believe
that while forging alliances with either the NDA or the RJD is the
right strategy for Lok Sabha elections, his interests are better served
by staying away from both as far as assembly polls are concerned.
Perhaps this stems from the calculation that a lone MP can hardly
be a kingmaker in New Delhi, but a party that gets a dozen or more
seats in the assembly could hold the key to government formation.
Unfortunately for Paswan, as already mentioned, his calculations
backfired in the two rounds of assembly polls in Bihar in 2005. Even
his transparent attempt at gaining brownie points among the Muslims
by insisting after the February 2005 elections that he would be willing
to support an RJD government provided it was led by a Muslim,
seems to have fallen flat.
As a Union Minister in the NDA government, Paswan chose
populism as his USP (Unique Selling Proposition). As Communications
Minister, he announced that all calls on the network of the state-
owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) network over a
distance of upto 250 km would be treated as local calls. He also gave
all employees of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) free
telephones at home, a move that was castigated by the media as a case
of the minister buying himself some cheap popularity with public
money, but which Paswan defended on the grounds that it was
nothing unsusual for even a private sector firm to give its workers
its own product or service either free or at a huge discount. So what
was wrong if BSNL did the same? As Minister for Chemicals and
Fertilisers in the UPA government, he made a number of publicised
efforts to control prices of medicines with limited success.
 Chapter 6
Regional Parties:
Increasingly Influential

The Telugu Desam Party: NTR, the Populist;

Chandrababu Naidu, the Opportunist
Andhra Pradesh, formed in 1953 out of the Telugu speaking areas of
the erstwhile Madras province, is geographically the largest and most
populous of the four states of south India. For nearly three decades
after the state came into existence, it was ruled by the Congress party.
Between November 1956 and January 1983, the month Nandamuri
Taraka Rama Rao (better known as NTR) was first sworn in as Chief
Minister, the state had seen eight Congress chief ministers. One Chief
Minister, Bhavanam Venkatram remained in his position for only
seven months.
Venting his anger against the Congress headed by Indira Gandhi,
NTR, who founded the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) after having acted
in some 300 films, wrote the following in the first manifesto of the
party that he founded:

The 35 years of Congress misrule has created such a mess that

the Telugus have to hang their heads in shame. Despite the
overwhelming majority of the ruling party in the state assembly,
political instability has become the order of the day. The
enthronement of four and the dethronement of three chief
ministers within the span of five years is an indication of the sorry
state of affairs. The elected representatives of the people have
become mere pawns….

The way the Congress functioned under both Indira Gandhi and
Rajiv Gandhi was to a great extent responsible for NTR’s meteoric
 Regional Parties 301

rise to power and his successful projection of himself and his party
as upholders of the ‘self-respect’ of the Telugu speaking people.
Former President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy ruled Andhra Pradesh as
Chief Minister from November 1956 till June 1964, after whom
K. Brahmananda Reddy ascended the seat of power in Hyderabad.
He was rudely removed by the Congress high command in September
1971 to make way for P.V. Narasimha Rao, who eventually went on
to become India’s first Prime Minister from the south in June 1991.
During successive Congress governments, all important decisions
in the state—including the transfer of middle-level officials—were
referred to New Delhi. In fact, the Congress in Andhra Pradesh was
deeply divided into at least three major factions led by Narasimha
Rao, M. Chenna Reddy and T. Anjaiah (all of whom served as CMs
at different points of time).
Another factor that surely must have contributed to the Andhra
Pradesh electorate’s disenchantment with New Delhi was the fact
that under Congress rule and even thereafter, Andhra Pradesh
remained the least developed of the four southern states. A study
conducted by the Planning Commission had estimated that the state
had slipped from 8th position in the country in 1961 to 14th position
in 1978. Though the literacy rate in the state went up from under 30
per cent in 1981 to just over 45 per cent 10 years later, Andhra Pradesh
still lagged behind in almost all other respects.
Besides exploiting the resentment born out of these factors, NTR
was also able to channelise the attempt by the Kammas (whose
standing in Andhra Pradesh is not dissimilar to that of the Yadavs in
UP or Bihar) to grab the reins of power from the Brahmins and the
Reddys who had traditionally dominated Andhra Pradesh politics.
The dominance of the Reddy community can be gauged from the
fact that approximately one out of four members of the legislative
assembly belonged to this caste.
In the 1983 assembly elections, the newly-formed TDP swept to
power winning 203 seats out of the 294 seats in the assembly with
over 46 per cent of the popular vote. The Congress won only 60
seats despite retaining more than one-third of the share of the total
votes cast. NTR stormed to power as Chief Minister within barely
nine months of having formed his own political party. The TDP
302 DIVIDED WE STAND

was the main Opposition party in the Eighth Lok Sabha (1984–89)
during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister and the party joined
the National Front led by V.P. Singh after he became Prime Minister
in December 1989.
There are a number of similarities between the TDP and parties
like the DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. One was the whipping
up of sub-national sentiments. The second related to the fact that like
NTR, almost all the important leaders of the DMK and the AIADMK
have been associated with films. NTR’s was a household name in
Andhra and having spent all his life in show-business, he excelled in
using all forms of media to project himself as the saviour of Telugu
pride, a just ruler who was a sanyasi (saint) as well. He portrayed
himself as someone who desired nothing but the welfare of the poor,
having accumulated enough riches of his own thanks to his flourishing
career in cinema. He played out on celluloid the characters of Krishna,
Karna, Bhishma, Rama—just about everybody’s favourite Hindu
mythological figures.
As a political leader, NTR traversed the length and breadth of
his state in an adorned vehicle he called the Chaitanya ratham
(Chaitanya’s chariot) long before L.K. Advani’s rath yatra aboard a
similar vehicle. Above all, NTR assured voters that they would get
rice for Rs 2 per kg through the ration shops and children in schools
would be provided free mid-day meals. Like Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian
parties, NTR asserted time and again that the Union of India had
discriminated against states like Andhra Pradesh. Right through the
early 1980s, NTR aligned himself and his party with all those who
supported his theme of the economic neglect of the state by the central
government in New Delhi. Yet, the public rhetoric of NTR was
different in one important respect from that of the Dravidian parties.
He never brought up the issue of secession from the Union. On the
contrary, NTR said he wanted to integrate Andhra Pradesh with the
Indian nation. At the same time, he also stood for local autonomy.
The Congress used every trick at its command to oust NTR’s
party from power in Andhra Pradesh. In fact, NTR was elected to
his post no less than four times in 11 years, first in January 1983,
then in September 1984, again in March 1985 and for the fourth and
last time, in December 1994. On each occasion the Congress tried to
 Regional Parties 303

remove him, he emerged stronger. But there was one problem with
the charismatic NTR: his populism was not entirely sustainable in
economic terms. The Rs 2-a-kilo rice scheme as well as the mid-day
meal scheme drained the state’s exchequer. The TDP lost the assembly
elections in March 1989 and the party’s vote share came down
by almost 10 per cent to under 37 per cent—the TDP had 74 MLAs against
181 owing allegiance to the Congress in the legislative assembly.
The TDP under NTR was, however, able to bounce back five years
later in the November 1994 elections winning a record 213 seats in
the 292-member assembly. NTR’s charisma faded somewhat towards
the end of his life and his fourth and last term as Chief Minister.
A widower, his decision to marry his official biographer Lakshmi
Parvathi was disapproved of by many, notably his son-in-law
N. Chandrababu Naidu with whom his relationship was often
strained. Naidu made no secret about the fact that he was most
unhappy that NTR, by then over the age of 70, had chosen to marry
a once-married woman who was then half his age. And, he was upset
by NTR’s opposition to his marriage to his eldest daughter. Even if
NTR’s mass appeal was on the wane at that time, his death on account
of a heart attack on January 18, 1996, ensured that he would remain
a martyr in the minds of many in Andhra Pradesh. Shortly before
NTR died, his astute 45-year-old son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu (or
Babu as he is often called) had split the party he had founded. NTR
witnessed to his mortification an overwhelming majority of MLAs
belonging to the TDP switching sides to join Naidu.
Naidu apparently lacked his father-in-law’s appeal but he turned
out to be a durable politician. By the turn of the century, in a period of
less than five years, he had acquired a high profile in India and abroad.
He became one of the country’s best-known Chief Ministers the
world over thanks to his propagation of the virtues of information
technology and his self-projected image as the Chief Executive Officer
of Andhra Pradesh. Naidu had evidently come a long way from the
days when he was known as an activist of the Youth Congress. Public
memory is short and few remember Naidu as the person who had
stood staunchly behind Sanjay Gandhi well after the infamous 19-
month Emergency.
304 DIVIDED WE STAND

Born on April 20, 1950 in Naravaripally in Chittoor district,

Chandrababu Naidu became an MLA for the first time in 1978 from
the Chandragiri constituency from the same district on a Congress
ticket. He served for a while as director of the state’s Small Industries
Development Corporation. He even served as a minister in the state
government headed by K. Vijayabhaskar Reddy. Between 1980 and
1983, he held various ministerial portfolios in the state government
including those of Archives, Cinematography, Technical Education,
Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development, Public Libraries and Minor
Irrigation. He also served as head of a state government body (Karshak
Parishad) looking after farmers’ interests, before he quit the Congress
and joined the recently founded TDP. He initially served as general
secretary of the party. In 1989, Naidu was elected from Kuppam and
was re-elected in 1994 from the same constituency by a handsome
margin of around 57,000 votes. Thereafter, he was entrusted with the
crucial portfolio of Finance and Revenue by NTR.
Naidu and Lakshmi Parvathi perceived each other as competitors
for NTR’s attention and Naidu was not averse to hijacking the party
and splitting it to quash Lakshmi Parvathi’s political ambitions. A
month after NTR’s death, in February 1996, Lakshmi Parvathi bitterly
complained in an interview to a journalist: ‘I will not sleep till I teach
Naidu a lesson’ (Outlook, March 13, 1996). She—like NTR’s son
Haribabu, who later parted ways with Naidu in 1998—proved no
match at all for Naidu’s masterly political skills. Both were eventually
consigned to oblivion and remained outside the public eye.
Chandrababu Naidu’s political stature rose really rapidly after
he became convenor of the centre-left United Front, the 13-party
coalition that came to power in New Delhi in the wake of the May
1996 general elections. After the fall of the UF government headed
by I.K. Gujral and after the outcome of the February 1998 elections
that saw the second Vajpayee government comprising the NDA
coming to power became known, the computer-savvy politician
from Andhra Pradesh demonstrated his astute abilities yet again. He
dropped the United Front like a proverbial hot potato and instructed
the 12 MPs belonging to the TDP in the 12th Lok Sabha to abstain
from voting against the second Vajpayee government in the motion
of confidence adopted by the Lok Sabha. For his support, which
 Regional Parties 305

was critical for the new government to survive, Vajpayee appointed

Naidu’s nominee, G.M.C. Balayogi as the Speaker of the Lok
Sabha— in fact, Balayogi became the first (and thus far, the only)
dalit to hold this important post. (Balayogi died on March 3, 2002 in
a helicopter crash.)
A former Congressman himself, Naidu persuasively argued that
the very existence of the TDP depended on it continuing to oppose
the Congress. Naidu’s opportunism paid him rich political dividends.
Although he realised that he risked alienating nearly 20 per cent of
the voters of his state—mainly Muslims and Christians—he took a
calculated risk and aligned the TDP with the BJP after ditching the
communists. In the September–October 1999 Lok Sabha elections
that were conducted simultaneously with the assembly elections in
Andhra Pradesh, the TDP was able to return to power albeit with a
reduced majority. The Congress improved its performance but not
enough to threaten Naidu’s government.
The media often painted Chandrababu Naidu as the most ‘forward
looking’ among India’s Chief Ministers. He too was adept at managing
the media and his visit to the US to meet, among others, Bill Gates,
was widely publicised. He successfully sought to place Hyderabad
on the ‘netlas’ of the world and set up a high profile educational
institution, the Indian School of Business. He also headed the first
state government in India that successfully obtained a huge Rs 2,200
crore loan from the World Bank despite the economic sanctions
imposed against India in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear tests
conducted by the Vajpayee government in May 1998.
Unlike his one-time mentor and father-in-law, Naidu apparently
shunned the economic populism that was associated with NTR. He
cut subsidies by increasing power tariffs, water rates and bus fares.
The state government he headed reduced subsidies on distribution of
rice and increased taxes on professionals and traders. While Naidu
said he wanted to make Andhra Pradesh the fastest growing and
economically most advanced state in India, he, more than anyone
else, surely knew he had a long way to go. Like many other states, the
Andhra Pradesh government remained—and still remains—steeped
in debt and teetered periodically on the brink of bankruptcy.
Even as Hyderabad glittered and glowed and promised to match
306 DIVIDED WE STAND

Bangalore as the infotech capital of the country, if not the world,

the rural population in the state remained vulnerable to epidemics
and penurious farmers committed suicide when they were unable to
repay loans. Extremist groups, including the People’s War (earlier
the People’s War Group), a Naxalite outfit, continued to indulge
in acts of violence with impunity. Naxalite groups remain active
in many parts of the state, including Telengana, which has a long
history of violent insurgency from the pre-independence period when
peasants rose in arms against the Nizam of Hyderabad’s mercenaries
as well as the British.
Naidu, like other Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, equivocated
on the issue of dealing with the Naxalites. Attempts at initiating a
dialogue with the People’s War were interspersed with periods during
which the state government cracked down hard on the Naxalites and
the latter responded in a similar manner. During one such phase, in
October 2003, Naidu came perilously close to being assassinated by a
landmine planted along a route he was travelling. The mine exploded
as his car passed over it, killing his driver and seriously injuring one
of his ministers who was travelling with him. Naidu himself suffered
relatively minor injuries. His subsequent decision to call for early
elections to the state assembly was perceived as an attempt to cash in
on the ‘sympathy’ factor. If so, the attempt was a disastrous failure,
as we shall see.
While asking for enhanced central financial assistance to tackle
the activities of Naxalite groups in Andhra Pradesh, Naidu strongly
opposed the Vajpayee government’s position on carving out smaller
states from big ones. He certainly did not want Telengana to become
a separate state. Naidu and the TDP also opposed the position of the
BJP hardliners on the Ayodhya issue. On August 3, 2003, Naidu
reiterated his party’s position that it was in favour of the Supreme
Court resolving the dispute over the construction of the Ram temple.
Earlier, in February 2003, he had reportedly said exactly the same
thing during his meetings in New Delhi with BJP leaders, including
Vajpayee and Advani.
Naidu time and again affirmed the TDP’s support for the BJP-led
NDA government, but emphasised that its support was contingent
on the government sticking to the Common Minimum Programme of
 Regional Parties 307

the NDA. For instance, a resolution passed by the party’s mahanadu

(or convention) held at Tirupati in May 2002 stated that the TDP
would ‘not continue its support blindly’ if the BJP introduced its own
agenda which was different from the agenda of the NDA.
While occasionally asserting its ‘independence’ from the BJP on
issues like Ayodhya and while underlining the fact that the TDP was
not a part of the government or the NDA, Naidu was not averse
to arm-twisting the Union government to ensure that more funds
flowed from New Delhi to Hyderabad. He successfully lobbied with
the Vajpayee government to ensure that more money was given to
the state for various natural calamities and to ensure that the public
sector Food Corporation of India procured large quantities of rice
from farmers in the state. The state government was at the forefront
while representing before the 11th Finance Commission that it should
not be ‘discriminated’ against for having ‘performed’ well— that is,
by bringing down the rate of growth of population and by improving
education and health care facilities in the state. The TDP was also
among the political parties that had vehemently opposed the decision
of the then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha to increase the officially
administered prices of fertilisers in his budget speech delivered in
February 2002.
On one occasion it appeared as if the ideological rift between the
TDP and the NDA government would widen. This was during the
communal riots in Gujarat between March and May 2002. Less than
six weeks after the communal riots began in Gujarat, on April 11,
2002, the TDP formally called for the ouster of Narendra Modi. At a
meeting of the politbureau of the TDP—the only common aspect of
the communist parties and the TDP is the name of their highest
decision-making bodies—the party adopted a resolution asking the
BJP for an immediate change in leadership in Gujarat. The TDP was
severely critical of Modi’s administration and leadership and said
the Gujarat government had ‘failed miserably’ in discharging its
responsibilities in an impartial and effective manner. The party was
also critical of the state government not providing adequate relief to
the victims of the communal riots. It said that there had been ‘erosion
of public confidence’ because of the Gujarat government’s failure to
provide ‘just governance’ and that it was important at that juncture
308 DIVIDED WE STAND

for the state to provide a ‘healing touch’. Asserting that secularism

is one of the ‘fundamental tenets’ of the TDP, the party resolution
did not stop at criticising the Modi government but added that the
communal riots in Gujarat had ‘tarnished India’s image’ as a liberal,
modern and secular society.
It was reported in newspapers that Naidu had been told in
confidence by Vajpayee that Modi would be replaced in Gujarat and it
was this ‘assurance’ that emboldened the TDP to attack the BJP, using
the kind of strong language that it did, language that would normally
have been associated with a party of the Opposition and not an ally of
the ruling coalition. It was further claimed that Vajpayee’s statement
at the Goa conclave of the BJP in support of Narendra Modi came as
a surprise to Naidu. Whereas it is difficult to verify if there was any
grain of truth in these speculative reports in the media, what is a fact
is that the 28 MPs of the TDP abstained from voting in the Lok Sabha
on May 1, 2002 after a 16-hour debate during which the Opposition
unsuccessfully sought to pass a motion castigating the government
for the communal riots in Gujarat.
Even on the eve of the Gujarat assembly elections that took
place in December 2002 in a communally charged atmosphere, on
November 17 the TDP publicly backed the order of the Election
Commission banning religious rallies from being held in Gujarat.
The party categorically stated: ‘religion and politics should not be
mixed’. Naidu, presumably with an eye towards the Muslim voter,
would periodically seek to underline his party’s secular character
and would emphasise the fact that the TDP was only supporting the
BJP-led NDA government ‘from outside’, that the party was not a
part of the coalition government and that it was not interested in the
perquisites of power. The TDP was also at the forefront of the protests
in Parliament over the issue of imposing a ban on cow slaughter.
Naidu reportedly told Vajpayee that not only was the issue not part
of the NDA’s agenda, it certainly could not be considered a priority
for the country.
What Naidu’s supporters claimed was his ‘independent’ position
was predictably perceived by his political opponents as a ‘hypocritical’
stand. Like NTR, Naidu had travelled extensively across Andhra
Pradesh and sought to temper his pro-rich image (played up by his
 Regional Parties 309

political opponents) by initiating schemes like the Janmabhoomi

scheme: a programme of community participation to build projects in
rural areas. His critics complained that Naidu’s policies widened the
gap between the rich and the poor, that he was too opportunistic to
be a reliable ally, and that he believed in no ideology other than the
ideology of power. His supporters, on the other hand, contended
that more than most other Indian politicians, Naidu understood
the importance of modern technology and its potential to radically
change the lives of the majority of Indians, especially those living
in rural areas. He was perceived as a zealous economic liberaliser
pleading for higher inflows of foreign investment in the poorest
state in south India.
The image did not help him in the state assembly elections held
together with the countrywide 14th general elections in April–May
2004. The electorate of Andhra Pradesh summarily rejected the TDP.
Naidu was clearly perceived as a political leader whose programmes
had benefitted only the affluent. In his zeal to spread the message
about how important information technology was to the ordinary
person in the state, he had forgotten to commiserate with the families
of farmers who had committed suicide because of their inability to
repay usurious loans obtained from local moneylenders. His political
opponents said he had time only for the big ‘Bills’ (Clinton and Gates),
not for poor villagers.
The mainstream media had played up Naidu’s so-called
achievements to such an extent that after he lost the elections, the
former Union Information & Broadcasting Minister S. Jaipal Reddy
sarcastically remarked that if one went only by what a large section
of the media (especially the English media) claimed, the people of
Andhra Pradesh sprung a huge surprise on the people of India by
voting the TDP out of power. This section of the mainstream media
had not merely lapped up everything Naidu claimed (he was rather
savvy in dealing with journalists), it had completely ignored the
intensive campaign launched by his principal political opponent,
Congress leader Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy, who had walked over 1,000
km from village to village in the peak of summer, traversing virtually
the length and breadth of the state. Out of power, Naidu was contrite
and apparently apologetic for having ignored the poor. He later tried
310 DIVIDED WE STAND

briefly to revive a Third Front by aligning with the Samajwadi Party

and making overtures to the left by distancing the TDP from the BJP.
In the second half of 2007, as anti-incumbency sentiments started
apparently mounting against the Congress government, Naidu and
the TDP got closer to the CPI(M) as the left party attacked the state
government for the police firing on farmers on land-related disputes.

Friend or Foe?—Changing Equations

in Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu can lay claim to at least one unique feature in Indian
politics—it is the only state in which no national party has ever been
in power in the last four decades, to be precise, since 1967. Nothing
can illustrate the lasting impact of the ‘Dravidian’ movement in the
state better than this simple fact. Yet, ironically, each of the several
pillars on which that movement was built has been dismantled
by parties that are offshoots of the movement. The pillars of the
movement were anti-Brahminism, an antipathy to the north of India
and its predominant language, Hindi, atheism, rationalism—none
of these is in great evidence today in the inheritors of the Dravidian
movement, so much so that Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK is herself a
Brahmin. Also, her government was one jump ahead of even the BJP in
pushing through a law ostensibly aimed at checking forcible religious
conversions. As for the hostility to the north, both the DMK and the
AIADMK have, since 1998, had alliances with the BJP, a party that
was till a few years back almost entirely confined to north India and
was seen as the most ardent champion of a unitary nation in which the
hegemony of Hindus and Hindi was emphasised.
Tamil Nadu till recently had more political parties represented in
the Lok Sabha than almost any other Indian state. The 39 MPs that the
state sent to the Lok Sabha in the 2004 general elections belonged
to six political parties. (Uttar Pradesh has representatives of eight
parties in the 14th Lok Sabha.) In the 1999 elections, however, there
were eight parties representing these 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in
Tamil Nadu and in the 1998 elections there were nine. Despite this
proliferation of parties, the state had not had a coalition government
since its inception. Even when alliances have won assembly elections,
it had invariably been the case that the leading party in the winning
 Regional Parties 311

alliance secured a majority of the assembly seats on its own, enabling

it to form a government without having to accommodate the junior
partners. This pattern changed after the May 2006 elections, in which
the DMK—which led the UPA to power in the state—did not have
a majority of seats in the assembly. In fact, with 96 seats in the 234-
member assembly, the DMK was well short of a majority. Yet, none
of the other coalition partners joined the government which was
formed by the DMK.
Till as late as 1998, the only national parties with any presence in
Tamil Nadu were the Congress, the CPI and the CPI(M). The BJP had
not won even a state assembly seat, leave alone a Lok Sabha constituency
in the state. Even the three national parties that did have a presence in
the state were in no position to contest on their own and had to align
themselves to one of the two main Dravidian parties—the DMK or the
AIADMK—to be able to make any significant headway in terms
of winning seats in either the assembly or the Lok Sabha. In 1998,
Jayalalithaa surprised everybody by tying up with the BJP for the
Lok Sabha elections. Political pundits, opinion polls and exit polls all
suggested that the experiment would be a failure. The results proved all
of them completely wrong, with the AIADMK-led alliance winning
36 of the 39 seats in the state. Besides the AIADMK and the BJP, the
coalition included a clutch of smaller parties—many of which had
come into being only in the 1990s—like the Marumalarchi Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK),
the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress (TRC) and the Janata Party. The BJP
had finally managed to register its presence in Tamil Nadu and as
subsequent events indicated, it was there to stay. Even today, the BJP
would be hard put to win a single seat on its own strength, but since the
1998 general elections the party has made a significant breakthrough—
it is no longer considered an ‘untouchable’ in Tamil Nadu politics.
The reasons for the dominance of the AIADMK and the DMK
in Tamil Nadu politics since 1967 lie in a socio-political movement
whose origins can be traced back to the Justice Party formed in 1916
in what was then the Madras Presidency of the British Raj. The Justice
Party was formed by P. Thyagarayar as a platform for the area’s non-
Brahmin social elite. In the first general elections in British India
held in 1920, the Justice Party won a landslide victory in the Madras
Presidency, bagging 63 of the 98 seats. It remained in power in the
provincial government for the next 17 years, advocating ‘social justice
312 DIVIDED WE STAND

and equality’ for all segments of society. E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker

(EVR), who was a member of the Indian National Congress, found
himself agreeing with the ideology of the Justice Party. He joined
the party and started the Non-Brahmin Self-Respect Movement in
1925. In 1944, by which time Naicker was the leader of the party, he
renamed the party the Dravida Kazhagam (the Dravidian Federation)
and demanded the establishment of an independent state called
Dravidasthan. The Dravidian movement had begun.
To the anti-Brahmin thrust of the Justice Party was now added an
ideology that defined itself in racial terms. The Brahmins—and the
people of north India—were identified with the Aryans, who were
invaders, while the non-Brahmins were portrayed as Dravidians
and the true descendents of those who had built the Indus Valley
civilisation. So virulent was the Justice Party’s opposition to ‘the
north’ and its leaders, that the party saw August 15, 1947 as a ‘black
day’, a day on which the British rulers while leaving the country had
left them at the mercy of the north. The Justice Party had demanded
that if India were to be granted independence, the south should be
carved out as a separate Dravidasthan.
The antipathy to ‘Aryans’ also extended to hostility to their
religion—Hinduism—which was seen as a religion that had sanctified
caste oppression, by the Brahmins in particular. Thus, the Dravida
Kazhagam campaigned actively against religion, indeed even against
the concept of God. The most prominent religious texts of the
Hindus—the Ramayana and the Gita—were denounced as part of an
Aryan conspiracy to enslave the Dravidians. The DK also launched a
campaign for sua-maryadai kalyanam (self-respect marriages), which
were weddings bereft of any of the Sankritised rituals and hence, of
Hindu priests. This again was an attempt to deny the Brahmin any
pride of place in the everyday lives of people.
The next plank of the Dravidian movement was a logical corollary
of these moves. Language became the central focus of the movement.
Tamil was eulogised as the oldest ‘living’ language in the world and
the most ‘evolved’ of all languages, while Sanskrit and Hindi were
presented as impositions by the aggressors from the north. It was
this, in fact, that provided the real cutting edge for the Dravidian
movement in electoral politics. The Congress, being an all-India party,
 Regional Parties 313

could hardly have accepted such a hardline linguistic stance. As the

party governing India, it was also committed to the attempt to make
Hindi a link language nationally. It could, perhaps, have shown greater
sensitivity towards the suspicions of the Tamils about the attempts to
‘impose’ Hindi, but it seems to have failed to understand the depth
of feelings on this issue.
The language issue was to become the catalyst that precipitated
the decline of the Congress in Tamil Nadu and the ascendance of the
Dravidian parties. But before that could happen, EVR himself had
lost the leadership of the movement. A group of young DK leaders,
led by C.N. Annadurai and including Muthuvel Karunanidhi (both
were to later become Chief Ministers of the state) left the party over
personal differences with EVR. They formed the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (DMK) in 1949 which remains to this day one of the two
main Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu.
The first anti-Hindi agitation was launched by EVR in 1952, but
it was the agitations of 1965 and 1968 that really assumed a mass
character. Both were spearheaded by the DMK. In 1965, the
Congress was still in power at the centre and in what was then
the state of Madras. Its government in Madras cracked down on
the agitation, arresting thousands of agitators. This played no small
part in the DMK’s victory in the 1967 assembly elections—one
in which Congress leader K. Kamaraj had boasted that he would
win without having to get up from bed. As soon as it came to power, with
‘Anna’ as the Chief Minister, the DMK government released all those
jailed for the anti-Hindi agitation. The very next year, in 1968, another
massive agitation against the centre’s attempts to impose Hindi was
launched, this time with a sympathetic government running the state.
The DMK warned the Congress government in New Delhi that any
attempt to impose Hindi would only strengthen the demand for
a separate Dravida Nadu (the land of the Dravidians). A group of
students leading the anti-Hindi agitation told Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi when she met them that she should choose between Hindi
and the unity of the nation.
An interesting paradox of Tamil Nadu politics is the fact that
in a state in which language has been the major political issue, at
least three important political personalities trace their origins from
314 DIVIDED WE STAND

outside the state. M.G. Ramachandran, or MGR as he was popularly

called, whose iconic status remains unchallenged, was a Malayalee of
Sri Lankan origin. Jayalalithaa, though a Tamil, comes from a family
of Brahmins from Mysore. Finally, Rajnikanth is a Marathi who spent
the early part of his adult life as a bus conductor in Bangalore before
moving to Madras and Tamil films. Throughout MGR’s tenure as
Chief Minister, the DMK cadre would try to make an issue of the
fact that he was not a Tamil, though the leadership would never
publicly raise the issue. Yet, the campaign cut no ice with the
electorate. Equally, the AIADMK cadre’s attempts to counter this
by insinuating that Karunanidhi himself was actually a Telugu and
not a Tamil left the voters cold.
Having ridden to power on the strength of a movement that was
explicitly anti-Brahmin, anti-religion and anti-north, the DMK
gradually diluted each of these agendas. This process picked up
pace after the formation of the AIADMK in 1972, when MGR
broke away from the DMK. He preferred to focus on projecting
the image of the AIADMK as a party of the downtrodden. The
groundwork for this had, ironically, already been done by his
erstwhile mentor M. Karunanidhi, who had written the scripts for
most of the films that MGR had starred in. As a conscious political
strategy that has perhaps no parallel anywhere in the world, the DMK
had systematically used the medium of cinema to project its leaders
and its message. MGR had been the prime vehicle for this strategy. In
film after film, he appeared either as someone from the working classes
or as a benefactor of the working classes—fishermen, rickshaw pullers,
landless labourers and so on. Karunanidhi’s acknowledged prowess in
writing powerful scripts had ensured that MGR was seen as a ‘messiah
of the people’ even before he floated his own political party.
MGR made the most of this image both as the leader of a political
party and as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu after 1977. He also made
a conscious effort to specifically target women as a vote bank, coining
the term tai kulam (literally, the family of mothers) while referring
to them. Arguably the single-most important measure he undertook
as Chief Minister was to introduce the mid-day meal scheme in the
state. Under the scheme, every child who attended primary school
was entitled to a meal in school at the expense of the state. There
 Regional Parties 315

were additional incentives for girl children in particular. The idea

was to provide an economic incentive for poor families to send
their children to school rather than to work for a living. To begin
with, most economic commentators were aghast at the scheme,
derogatorily describing it as ‘populist’ and arguing that it would
place an unsustainable burden on the state’s coffers. More than a
decade later, even the World Bank, one of the most virulent critics of
the mid-day meal scheme when it was introduced, was forced to admit
that it had indeed been a major success and more and more states
sought to emulate the scheme.
There were other schemes as well that buttressed MGR’s image as
a messiah of the masses. One scheme was to motorise rickshaws in
Chennai which did away with almost all the physical labour involved
in plying such vehicles. The other scheme was to construct pucca
houses for fisherfolk. These schemes became so popular that MGR
came to be known as puratchi thalaivar (revolutionary leader) and
the AIADMK was to stay in power from 1977 to 1989. Many outside
Tamil Nadu have simplistically perceived MGR’s popularity to
be primarily a consequence of his popularity as a film personality.
The reality was clearly more complex.
MGR’s tenure also saw an interesting innovation being brought
into the manner in which electoral alliances were struck. After the
creation of the AIADMK, the politics of Tamil Nadu had followed
a pattern—the Congress, which by this time had acknowledged that
it could not come to power on its own in Tamil Nadu, realised that
it could play a decisive role by aligning with either the DMK or the
AIADMK. The two Dravidian parties also recognised that the Congress
could tilt the electoral balance even if it couldn’t do very much on
its own. MGR, however, carried this logic a step further. In 1984,
when general elections and state assembly elections were held
simultaneously, the AIADMK agreed to let the Congress contest
as many as 26 of the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu.
In the assembly elections, however, the Congress contested only 72
of the 234 seats, while AIADMK candidates contested from as many
as 155 constituencies.
This was a radically different approach from what had been practiced
all over India till then. Traditionally, the share of seats contested
316 DIVIDED WE STAND

by alliance partners remained more or less the same irrespective of

which level of government the elections were for, and would depend
on the relative strength of the partners. What MGR’s ‘two-third,
one-third’ formula sought to formalise was the understanding that
while the Congress was undoubtedly the only partner in the alliance
making a bid for power in New Delhi, in the state the AIADMK
would be the one that would form the government if the alliance was
voted to power. In effect, MGR was telling Rajiv Gandhi, the then
Prime Minister and leader of the Congress, ‘you keep New Delhi,
but leave Madras to me’.
The formula may not have become a precursor for coalition
arrangements in other parts of the country, but it was a significant
acknowledgement by both the Congress and the AIADMK of their
relative strengths and weaknesses. The Tamil Nadu electorate had
in 1980 played its part in bringing about this recognition. That year,
roughly four months had separated the Lok Sabha elections that saw
Indira Gandhi returning to power and the state assembly elections.
In both the elections, the Congress was in alliance with the DMK,
while the AIADMK contested with the left parties as partners. The
Congress–DMK alliance swept the Lok Sabha seats, winning in 37 of
the state’s 39 constituencies. Just three months later, the same alliance
fared miserably in the assembly elections, winning just 68 of the 234
seats, while the AIADMK-led alliance won in 156, or two thirds of
the assembly constituencies.
By the time of the 1984 elections, Jayalalithaa was already one
of the most important leaders of the AIADMK. Her rise in the
party structure had been meteoric thanks to the patronage of MGR.
Jayalalithaa formally joined the AIADMK only in June 1982, but
the following year MGR made her the party’s propaganda secretary.
The move was stiffly resisted by senior AIADMK leaders, but
MGR refused to budge. As propaganda secretary, Jayalalithaa was
increasingly calling the shots in the absence of MGR, who was often
bed-ridden or hospitalised. The victory in the 1984 assembly elections,
in which Jayalalithaa was the main campaigner, further strengthened
her position in the party.
When MGR ultimately died of a prolonged illness in 1987, the
battle for succession in the AIADMK had boiled down to MGR’s
 Regional Parties 317

widow Janaki Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa. Senior AIADMK

leaders recognised that they could not take on Jayalalithaa on their
own, since MGR in his lifetime had made it amply clear that he saw her
as his second in command. In Janaki, however, they thought they had
found a person who could make the most of the ‘sympathy wave’ that
was bound to follow MGR’s death. Jayalalithaa was not willing to give
up her claims to the MGR legacy without a fight. She tried to portray
herself as the chief mourner at MGR’s funeral, fighting to clamber
on to the vehicle carrying his body, only to be rudely pushed away by
party leaders who felt they no longer had to play second fiddle to her.
Janaki became Chief Minister and leader of the AIADMK legislature
party, while Jayalalithaa was left out in the cold.
The unsavoury infighting that followed saw the Election
Commission ‘freezing’ the AIADMK’s election symbol of ‘two leaves’.
The resultant confusion helped the DMK come to power in the 1989
elections, winning 155 of the 234 assembly seats. Both factions of
the AIADMK—the AIADMK (JR) and the AIADMK (JL)—were
humiliated. Despite the humiliation, however, Jayalalithaa had scored
an important political point. While the Janaki faction managed to win
just one assembly seat, the Jayalalithaa faction won 27. The debate
over which of the two women in MGR’s life was his political heir
had been settled.
Jayalalithaa emerged as the undisputed leader of the AIADMK,
with her supporters anointing her puratchi thalaivi (revolutionary
leader) in an obvious allusion to the sobriquet conferred on MGR.
Janaki faded into oblivion and most other AIADMK leaders who had
supported her swallowed their pride and pleaded with Jayalalithaa
to let them back into the party. Most importantly, the party had got
back its election symbol, ‘two leaves’ by which voters all over the
state recognised the AIADMK candidate on ballot papers. The impact
was immediate. In the Lok Sabha elections of December 1989, the
AIADMK–Congress alliance made an almost clean sweep, winning
all but one of the 39 seats in the state. The AIADMK itself won all
the 11 seats it contested.
In the 1991 assembly elections, the party’s performance was even
more impressive. This time, the AIADMK–Congress alliance won
in 224 of the state’s 234 assembly constituencies, a performance that
318 DIVIDED WE STAND

has not been bettered before or since by any alliance in Tamil Nadu.
The DMK was left with just two MLAs in the new assembly, one of
them the deposed Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.
The period since then has seen fairly dramatic developments in
Tamil Nadu politics. Jayalalithaa’s first term as Chief Minister saw
her adopt an imperious style of functioning that has now become
her trademark. Stories abound of how even senior ministers and
party leaders would not be allowed to sit at the same level as ‘amma’
on a dais during public meetings. They would also publicly touch
her feet and make it a point to sing praises of the puratchi thalaivi
at every opportunity. The state’s bureaucracy too learned how
not to offend the Chief Minister in any way, since she could be
extremely humiliating. Jayalalithaa was also perceived as a corrupt
leader, one who used power to confer undue favours on those close
to her, including, above all, Sasikala Natarajan, a woman who had
almost overnight become her close confidante and was seen as an
extra-constitutional authority in the state. A southern industrialist,
Rajarathinam, who emerged as a take-over tycoon out of the blue,
was also seen as a frontman for Jayalalithaa.
The incident that did most damage to Jayalalithaa’s reputation,
however, was the marriage of Sasikala’s son in 1995. The streets of
Chennai through which the wedding procession was to pass were
decorated in a manner reminiscent of royal weddings of yore. Plantain
trees in hundreds were cut down in various parts of the state and
planted along the route of the procession and the state machinery
was blatantly used for the organisation of the lavish ceremony. Many
residents of Chennai who witnessed the extravaganza first-hand were
shocked at the pomp and show, but the DMK made sure this sense of
shock was not confined to Chennai alone. Sun TV, the most popular
private television channel in the state and one that is owned by former
DMK leader Murasoli Maran’s family, spared no effort in ensuring that
the pictures of this outrageous splurge reached every corner of the
state. (If films were the medium for the political message in Tamil Nadu
till the 1980s, TV subsequently emerged to grab that role. If the DMK
could depend on Sun for propaganda, Jaya TV made sure Jayalalithaa’s
views reach the masses.)
 Regional Parties 319

As the 1996 Lok Sabha and state assembly elections drew near, it
had become increasingly clear that Jayalalithaa’s charisma had begun
to fade and that voters were disillusioned with her government and
fed up with her autocratic and corrupt ways. The Congress leadership
in the state, having seen the writing on the wall, tried to persuade
the central leadership of the party that striking an alliance with the
AIADMK for the elections would prove suicidal. P.V. Narasimha
Rao, who was then Prime Minister and Congress president, however,
insisted on an electoral pact with Jayalalithaa. This led to a revolt in the
state unit, with almost the entire local leadership quitting the Congress
to form the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC). The TMC then struck
an alliance with the DMK. In the assembly elections that followed,
the DMK-TMC alliance romped to victory, winning 212 of the 234
seats. Tamil Nadu had rejected Jayalalithaa almost as decisively as it
had voted her to power just five years earlier.
Among the first things the DMK government (the TMC did
not join the government, but supported it from outside) did after
assuming power was to get the state administration to institute a slew
of corruption cases against Jayalalithaa, charging her with impropriety
in land allotments, import of coal, foreign exchange transactions
and so on. Special courts were set up to deal with these cases on the
grounds that they involved the larger public interest and could not
be allowed to proceed at the languid pace at which cases normally
proceed in India’s logjammed judicial system. At the behest of the
DMK government, police officials raided her residence at Poes
Garden. The media was treated to detailed accounts of the number
of sarees she possessed, not to mention pairs of shoes and jewellery.
These were also shown on the Sun channel and she was sought to
be derogatorily portrayed as an Indian version of Imelda Marcos,
the late Filipino dictator’s wife with a reputation for a fondness for
the good things in life.
Jayalalithaa was arrested and put in jail. This, as later events proved,
was an error of judgement on the part of the DMK government. As
with Indira Gandhi in the immediate aftermath of the Emergency,
public anger against Jayalalithaa soon turned to sympathy for a woman
who was seen as being hounded by her political opponents. Jayalalithaa
contributed to this by portraying herself as a defenceless woman who
320 DIVIDED WE STAND

was being made to suffer in jail like an ordinary criminal as part of

a politically motivated witch-hunt. However, she also realised that
mere public sympathy would not be enough to undo the damage
that the cases against her could do. For that, she would need access
to the levers of power.
In 1998, she took the plunge by striking an alliance with the BJP
and a host of smaller parties that had sprung up in the state during
the mid-1990s. Most analysts and political pundits were dismissive
of this alliance. The BJP, it was pointed out, was rather weak in
the state, having won an assembly seat in Tamil Nadu for the first
time in 1996. The other partners in the AIADMK-led alliance included
fledgling regional parties like the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), the
Marumalarchi DMK and the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress, none of
which were expected to make a major contribution to the cause of the
alliance. Opinion polls and exit polls conducted before and during the
1998 Lok Sabha elections seemed to bear out the prognostication of
political analysts that the AIADMK-led alliance would not perform
well. The results, however, proved the pollsters and the pundits
completely wrong—Jayalalithaa’s electoral strategy proved to be a
winner with the AIADMK-led alliance winning 30 of the 39 Lok Sabha
seats in the state.
In retrospect, a series of bomb blasts in Coimbatore on February 14,
1998, the day L.K. Advani was to address an election meeting in that
city, appear to have played a significant role in catalysing the switch in
voter preference towards the AIADMK and the BJP. The blasts, which
were the handiwork of an organisation of Muslim fundamentalists,
served the AIADMK-BJP alliance at two different levels. At one
level, they helped the BJP polarise voters along communal lines not
only in Coimbatore, but also in other parts of the state where it had
had till that stage a marginal presence. At another level, it helped the
alliance portray the DMK government as being inept and reluctant
to deal with the menace of terrorism.
The AIADMK with 18 MPs turned out to be the single largest ally
of the BJP in the second Vajpayee government that came to power
in New Delhi in March 1998. Jayalalithaa used her clout from the
word go—she delayed providing a formal letter of support to the
Vajpayee government till almost the final hour. Then, she demanded
that her nominees (including Dr. Subramaniam Swamy of the Janata
 Regional Parties 321

Party who had, ironically, earlier been responsible for instituting a

number of criminal cases against her) be allocated key portfolios in
the Union government. As a matter of fact, she even demanded that
Dr. Swamy be made Finance Minister, a demand that was rejected by
Vajpayee and his supporters (including Jaswant Singh who had gone
to Chennai to negotiate with Jayalalithaa). The AIADMK general
secretary did, however, succeed in having her party’s MPs as Union
Law Minister and Minister of State for Finance.
What became evident in no time at all was that these Ministers had
a single-point agenda: to ensure that the criminal cases against their
leader were either dropped or placed in cold storage. Minister of State
for Finance, R.K. Kumar, who was in charge of Revenue, Banking
and Insurance, did his bit for his leader by transferring a number
of income tax officers. However, Jayalalithaa asked him to resign
in May 1998. The ostensible reason was that his health was rather
poor. It was another matter that speculation was rife that the real
reason for his removal was that Jayalalithaa felt he hadn’t done
what she had expected of him. Another AIADMK leader, K.M.R.
Janarthanan, who was earlier Minister of State for Personnel and
Grievances in the Vajpayee government, later got Kumar’s job in the
Finance Ministry. Another AIADMK Minister, Sedapatti Muttiah,
who held the Surface Transport portfolio, had to quit within weeks
of his becoming Minister for different reasons—a court hearing
the corruption cases against AIADMK leaders passed strictures
against Muttiah for allegedly acquiring assets disproportionate to his
known sources of income.
Law Minister M. Thambidurai transferred large numbers of legal
officers in Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa’s supporters wanted to transfer
some of the criminal cases pending against her from the special courts
in Chennai to the Supreme Court in New Delhi. The gameplan was
to try and ensure that the state government would not remain the
prosecuting authority. Jayalalithaa’s lawyers also sought to convince
the apex court of the country that the criminal cases against her had
been politically motivated and should, therefore, be dropped and the
special courts be disbanded.
The Supreme Court did not accept the AIADMK’s plea that the
cases against Jayalalithaa should be moved from Chennai to New Delhi.
She and her supporters then stepped up their demands for a dismissal
322 DIVIDED WE STAND

of the Karunanidhi-led DMK government in Tamil Nadu under

Article 356 of the Constitution of India. The Coimbatore blasts and
the DMK’s alleged softness towards the perpetrators of that crime
were presented as the reason for invoking Article 356. Vajpayee
and other senior leaders of the Union government refused to play
ball. Having always protested against the misuse of Article 356 by
Union governments led by the Congress, they argued, they could
not now turn around and apply the same constitutional provision
on the flimsiest of excuses to dismiss a democratically elected state
government. The friction between the BJP and the AIADMK that was
to ultimately result in the fall of Vajpayee’s government in April 1999
had reached a critical point.
The dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over the sharing
of the waters of the River Cauvery (also spelt Kaveri) became another
issue on which the Vajpayee government found itself facing pressure
from Jayalalithaa. For the BJP, the issue was decidedly ticklish. On the
one hand, Karnataka was a state in which the BJP had made significant
inroads in recent years. The party also believed at that time that it
could split the ruling Janata Dal in Karnataka and further enhance its
presence in the state. The Vajpayee government could not, therefore,
adopt a stand on the sensitive issue of apportioning the waters of
the Cauvery (especially during the summer months) that would be
seen to be against Karnataka’s interests. On the other hand, taking a
position that was entirely supportive of Karnataka would nip in the
bud any prospects the BJP had of making headway in Tamil Nadu,
a state in which the party had only just managed to register its
presence. Jayalalithaa also spotted in the controversy an opportunity
to embarrass an ally who had refused to give in to all her demands,
while simultaneously scoring political points against her main
political opponent in the state, the DMK and its Chief Minister
M. Karunanidhi. She, therefore, adopted a hardline stance, accusing
the centre of being deliberately partisan towards Karnataka and the
DMK state government of not doing enough to protect the interests
of the farmers of Tamil Nadu’s Cauvery delta.
Jayalalithaa also took exception to the dismissal of Chief of
the Navy, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. This was a clear sign that
the AIADMK leader was increasingly distancing herself from the
 Regional Parties 323

Vajpayee government, since the then Defence Minister Fernandes had

often acted as an emissary between the Prime Minister and her, and
was seen as having a better rapport with her than many others in the
Vajpayee government.
It was a matter of time before the rapidly deteriorating relationship
between the AIADMK and the BJP finally fell apart. Matters came to
a head in April 1999, ultimately leading to the fall of the government.
However, Jayalalithaa’s gameplan did not succeed fully. The Congress’
attempt to form an alternative government failed. The AIADMK
supremo did not have the friendly government in New Delhi that she
had so desperately tried to bring about. The criminal cases instituted
against her continued to do the rounds of courtrooms.
In the September–October 1999 Lok Sabha elections, political
alliances in Tamil Nadu had changed drastically from what they were
a year earlier. The BJP was now in an alliance with the DMK, as were
smaller parties like the PMK, the MDMK and the TRC. The TMC,
earlier the DMK’s partner, refused to have anything to do with an
alliance that included the BJP. On the other hand, the Congress and
the left parties being in alliance with the AIADMK meant that the
TMC could not be part of that front either. After all, the very existence
of the TMC was due to the fact that its leaders had left the Congress
because of its tie-up with the AIADMK. Thus, the TMC was left
out in the cold, having to contest more or less on its own, though it
had an alliance with the Puthizha Tamizhagam (PT), a party that was
trying to build itself as a representative of the dalits, much like the
BSP in Uttar Pradesh.
The results of the 1999 elections in Tamil Nadu were not quite as
decisive as had been the trend in the state. The DMK-led NDA won 26
of the 39 seats, but the AIADMK-led alliance also managed to win 13
seats. The TMC, not surprisingly, drew a blank. In 2000, Jayalalithaa
became the first Chief Minister to be convicted and sentenced in a
criminal case of corruption. The case involved allotment of land by
a state government undertaking, the Tamil Nadu Small Industries
Corporation (TANSI), allegedly at throwaway prices, to a company
associated with the Chief Minister. Jayalalithaa’s lawyers appealed
against the special court’s decision in the High Court but before the
court decided on the appeal, assembly elections were notified to take
place in May 2001. It was generally believed that the AIADMK would
324 DIVIDED WE STAND

be able to defeat the DMK in the elections. Jayalalithaa becoming

the next Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu seemed an almost foregone
conclusion. She filed her nomination as a contestant from four separate
constituencies—Krishnagiri, Pudukottai, Andipatti and Bhuvanagiri—
but her nomination papers were rejected in all four constituencies.
In Krishnagiri and Andipatti, her nomination papers were
rejected on the ground that she had been convicted in a criminal
case and hence could not contest elections under Section 8 (3) of the
Representation of People Act, 1951. Jayalalithaa’s lawyers argued
that since she had filed an appeal against her conviction in a higher
court, she should be allowed to contest the elections. The returning
officer of the constituency from where she had filed her nomination,
on the other hand, ruled that as a convicted individual she was not
eligible to contest the elections under the provisions of the Act. The
fact that she had filed an appeal against her conviction, the returning
officers pointed out, did not imply that the conviction was no longer
valid. In Bhuvanagiri and Pudukottai, the returning officers rejected
her nomination on the ground that Section 37 (7) (b) of the Act
prohibited a person from contesting elections from more than two
constituencies simultaneously.
The dispute on Section 8 (3) went to the Supreme Court, which
stated that during an election, the ruling of the returning officer was
final. Any appeal against the officer’s order could be made only after
the elections had been concluded. Jayalalithaa was thus unable to
contest the assembly elections that saw the AIADMK emerging as the
ruling party—the party on its own won 132 seats and with its allies
(the Congress, the left parties and the PMK) won 173 seats in the 234-
member assembly. Jayalalithaa was sworn in as Chief Minister because
the law provided for a person who was not an elected member of the
assembly to become a Chief Minister provided such a person was
elected to the assembly within a period of six months. The decision of
Tamil Nadu Governor Fatima Beevi to swear Jayalalithaa in as Chief
Minister despite her conviction drew a lot of flak not just from the
DMK and the BJP, but also from several legal luminaries and political
leaders. The critics pointed out that as the first woman to become a
judge of the Supreme Court, Beevi should have known better than to
interpret the law in the manner in which she did. So much so, that the
 Regional Parties 325

Governor was eventually asked by the Union government to put in

her papers. However, Jayalalithaa continued as Chief Minister even
after Beevi was replaced.
Jayalalithaa nevertheless needed to get elected to the state assembly
by November 2001, when the six-month deadline would run out.
Unfortunately for her, the High Court did not decide on her appeal
against her conviction in the TANSI land case by that time. Jayalalithaa
appealed to the Supreme Court to ask the High Court to expedite its
decision, but the highest court of the land refused to intervene. Hence,
she had no choice but to step down as Chief Minister. The question
upper-most in the minds of most political analysts was whom would
she nominate to act as stand-in Chief Minister. In her characteristically
imperious style, Jayalalithaa deliberately chose O. Panneerselvam,
a first-time MLA to succeed her. Not only was Panneerselvam too
junior to harbour any ambitions of his own, he was also a ‘dependable’
stand-in because he was a protégé of T.T.V. Dinakaran, the nephew of
Jayalalithaa’s confidante Sasikala and a member of the Lok Sabha.
Soon thereafter, the Chennai High Court upheld Jayalalithaa’s
appeal against her conviction in the TANSI land case, thereby
clearing the way for her to become Chief Minister once again. She
was subsequently elected to the assembly from Andipatti. Soon after
she returned as Chief Minister in March 2002, Jayalalithaa left nobody
in doubt that the DMK and others in the Opposition would have to
pay for the ‘wrongs’ done to her during the DMK’s stint in power. A
slew of corruption cases were filed against Karunanidhi and some of
those who had been ministers in his government. Officials who were
seen as close to the DMK were transferred en masse. The extent to
which Jayalalithaa’s quest for ‘revenge’ would go became clear when
policemen arrested Karunanidhi from his home in the middle of the
night. The DMK alleged that the septuagenarian leader had been
manhandled by policemen and Sun TV repeatedly broadcast shots of
Karunanidhi being bodily lifted to the waiting police vehicle while
crying out for help. Karunanidhi would not spend too much time in
jail, but the drama had made its point—Jayalalithaa would not pull
punches in her battle against the DMK and its top leadership.
Any doubts on this score were settled when the AIADMK used its
majority in the assembly to push through legislation which prohibited
326 DIVIDED WE STAND

the same person from being a member of the legislative assembly and
holding the post of mayor at the same time. It was no secret that the
law was aimed specifically at M.K. Stalin, Karunanidhi’s son and heir
apparent. Stalin was at that time Mayor of Chennai as well as an MLA.
Despite the passage of the law, Stalin refused to resign from either
post. He was then disqualified from holding the post of Mayor.
Subsequently, in July 2002, the Tamil Nadu government threw
another bombshell when it had V. Gopalaswamy (who prefers to be
known as Vaiko) arrested under POTA on the ground that he had
made speeches supportive of the banned LTTE. The MDMK leader
had been among the most vociferous in supporting the enactment
of POTA, in particular arguing strongly in Parliament that it had
enough safeguards to prevent its misuse for partisan political purposes.
(Ironically, having spent 19 months in jail and having been part of the
UPA’s clean sweep of the seats in Tamil Nadu in the 2004 Lok Sabha
elections, Vaiko had no compunctions in joining the AIADMK in
an alliance for the assembly elections of May 2006. He and his party,
however, continued to remain part of the UPA in New Delhi.)
At the time of Karunanidhi’s arrest, together with two of his party
colleagues who were central ministers, the Union Law Minister Arun
Jaitley had argued that a grave constitutional impropriety had been
committed. A state government, he insisted, could not arrest central
ministers without the permission of the Union government. The
governor of Tamil Nadu was asked for a report on the law and order
situation in the state, the underlying threat being that the central
government could invoke the provisions of Article 356 to dismiss
the state government. When Vaiko was arrested, on the other hand,
the BJP restricted itself to making statements to the effect that the
use of POTA may have been inappropriate in this case. The reason
for the strangely subdued tone of the protest was not very hard to
find. Jayalalithaa had by the time of Vaiko’s arrest started making
overtures to the BJP, clearly indicating that she was willing to
forget the acrimony of the past and build new bridges with the
Vajpayee government.
The message became increasingly louder thereafter. One of the
clearest signals was when Jayalalithaa, during a press conference in
Delhi, ‘volunteered’ the information that she was against Sonia Gandhi
 Regional Parties 327

becoming Prime Minister because she was born an Italian. Considering

that the press conference was taking place after a meeting convened
by the Prime Minister to discuss the Cauvery waters dispute between
Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Jayalalithaa’s unsolicited comment on
the Congress president’s Italian origins acquired considerable
political significance. In December 2002, Jayalalithaa was the only
Chief Minister whose party was not a member of the NDA to be
invited to the swearing in ceremony of Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi and the only one to attend it. The AIADMK supremo
also gladdened the BJP by enacting a law in Tamil Nadu ostensibly
aimed at preventing ‘forcible’ religious conversions. Modi approvingly
cited Tamil Nadu’s example and promised to follow suit by enacting
a similar law in Gujarat.
While these moves by Jayalalithaa were signs of a growing closeness
between the AIADMK and the Vajpayee government, they were also
a telling indicator of how drastically ‘Dravidian’ politics has changed
over time. The AIADMK today is indistinguishable in its ideology
(and to a large extent so is the DMK) from any of the other mainstream
parties in India. The anti-Brahminical thrust, the shunning of ritual
and religion, the demonisation of the north of India, are all at best
fast fading memories.
This perhaps also explains the fragmentation of Tamil Nadu’s
polity in recent years. The reasons for the formation of each of the
many new parties in the state may vary, but ideology certainly doesn’t
appear to be the motive force. The MDMK, for instance, was formed
because Vaiko, who was one of the most prominent young leaders
in the DMK, could see that the rise of Stalin under Karunanidhi’s
patronage made his progress within the party hierarchy extremely
unlikely. The PMK arose as a party restricted to espousing the cause of
the Vanniyars, an intermediate caste group accounting for a significant
part of the population in some of the northern districts of Tamil Nadu.
The Puthiya Tamizhagam (PT) has emerged as a party specifically
focusing on dalits, though it is yet to make much headway. In the
heyday of the Dravidian movement, these were all groups who saw
their aspirations find expression within the Dravidian fold.
At the same time as these small groups have been breaking away,
the DMK and the AIADMK have been trying to extend their influence
328 DIVIDED WE STAND

beyond their traditional vote banks to groups like the Brahmins.

Interestingly, the beginning of a similar phenomenon is discernible
in the caste-polarised polity of states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,
where the SP, BSP and RJD are all attempting to woo voters from
the upper castes as well.
In the May 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the DMK-led alliance had
thrashed the AIADMK coalition by winning all the 40 Lok Sabha
seats in the state as well as in Pondicherry. Unlike the left, which
chose to support the UPA government in New Delhi from outside,
the DMK became a significant partner of the Congress in the UPA.
This shock woke Jayalalithaa up. In the months that followed, the
former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister unleashed a series of programmes
aimed at wooing the poor and very poor. She offered free books to any
student, girl or boy, up to Class XII. She also offered Rs 500 to every
woman who reported pregnant at the local government hospital. If
the woman delivered a child, she got an additional Rs 5,000. This was
aimed at trying to end the practice of female foeticide in Tamil Nadu.
With a slew of other schemes, Jayalalithaa ensured that every poor
family got at least one monetary offering a month.
And in the first week of March, she managed to break the DMK-
led alliance when she got Vaiko to her side. This was the same Vaiko
whom Jayalalithaa had kept in prison under the Terrorist and
Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) for 19 months because Vaiko was
said to have spoken to Tamil activists from Sri Lanka who belong to
the LTTE. The state government had also been complimented for its
efforts during the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of the tsunami
of December 2005.
Despite the AIADMK’s attempts to match the DMK in announcing
populist schemes, such as providing rice at Rs 2 per kg and free
television sets, Jayalalithaa and her party lost the assembly polls in
May 2006. She had tried very hard to change her image of being a
haughty and arrogant leader. After dismissing many striking state
government employees, she agreed to reinstate them. None of these
moves eventually helped her in the assembly elections. The DMK
emerged as the single largest party in Tamil Nadu after polling
26.45 per cent of the votes and winning 96 seats. Its biggest ally, the
Congress, won 34 seats, a huge improvement from 2001 when the party
 Regional Parties 329

won only 7 seats. The alliance obtained 44.73 per cent of the votes,
around 4.7 per cent more than its opposing coalition.
Tamil Nadu politics has been influenced greatly by its film
personalities, as already mentioned. In 2006, a new political outfit
headed by a film personality, Vijayakant, the Desiya Murpokku
Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), played the role of spoiler by fielding
candidates in as many as 206 out of the 234 seats in the assembly;
the party’s candidates were placed third in many constituencies and
indirectly worked towards the defeat of AIADMK candidates. In fact,
the DMDK polled 8.38 per cent of the total votes polled in the state,
which was almost equal to the vote share of the Congress and four
times more than the vote share of the BJP (2.02 per cent).
Another newly floated party that entered the electoral fray for
the first time was the Lok Paritrana party that was led by former
and current students of the Indian Institute of Technology at
Chennai. This party sought to make a point that educated individuals
should enter politics. However, the best a candidate of the party could
do was to be placed in the third position in the posh Anna Nagar
constituency in Chennai.
An interesting fallout of the 2006 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu
has been that the Congress and the DMK have become more
dependent on each other. The DMK is for the first time heading a
minority government in the state with the Congress as one of its
partners, while the DMK is an important constituent of the UPA
government in New Delhi.
Dramatic events in May 2007 illustrated both the problems that are
likely to confront the DMK after Karunanidhi is no longer around
as well as the manner in which coalition partners ‘nominate’ their
members to hold ministerial positions in New Delhi, irrespective of
what the Prime Minister might want. In early May, Dayanidhi Maran,
who was then Union Minister for Communications & Information
Technology, had to resign following a factional fight within his own
party, the DMK, that claimed three lives.
The problem started with the Tamil daily, Dinakaran, publishing
an opinion poll on who should succeed Karunanidhi when he hands
over the reins of the party. According to the poll, the younger of
the DMK chief’s two sons from his second wife, M.K. Stalin, was
330 DIVIDED WE STAND

chosen by 70 per cent of the respondents, while Stalin’s elder brother

M.K. Azhagiri and Karunanidhi’s youngest daughter, Kanimozhi
(from his third wife) got barely 2 per cent support each from those
polled. An undefined group of ‘others’ was supported by 20 per
cent. Azhagiri’s supporters saw this as an attempt by the Marans,
who own the Dinakaran and the Sun media group (the largest
conglomerate of its kind in southern India, headed by Dayanidhi’s
elder brother Kalanidhi), to marginalise him and to indirect promote
Dayanidhi’s own claims to succeeding Karunanidhi. They went on a
rampage attacking the Dinakaran office on the outskirts of Madurai
with petrol bombs. Two systems engineers and a security guard died
in the resulting fire.
The fracas detracted from what was supposed to have been a
period of grand celebration for Karunanidhi—he had just completed
50 years in the state assembly and his 84th birthday was to follow
soon on June 3.
Far from condemning the Azhagiri faction’s strong-arm tactics, the
DMK leadership threw its weight behind the Chief Minister’s family
and demanded that action be taken against Dayanidhi—himself a
grandnephew of Karunanidhi. Dayanidhi had no option but to resign
as Union minister even as he kept insisting that he would remain a
supporter of the DMK till the day he died. He told journalists how he
as a Union Minister had been responsible for bringing to Tamil Nadu
major investments made by multinational telecommunications firms.
While Dayanidhi denied that he had promoted his brother’s business
interests, it is also correct that the Sun group had drawn up ambitious
expansion plans not only in the media (including a tie-up with a Rupert
Murdoch-controlled organisation) but also in aviation. Dayanidhi
hinted that his hope of making a major announcement—abolishing
of ‘roaming’ charges within India for users of mobile telephones—
on Karunanidhi’s birthday had been dashed. The Chief Minister’s
loyalists in the DMK accused Dayanidhi of over-stepping his limits
by calling up the Home Secretary in the state government ‘threatening’
him with stern action if he did not apprehend the ‘real’ culprits behind
the arson and violence in the Madurai office of Dinakaran.
The Prime Minister had no option but to acquiesce in the exit
of Dayanidhi from the Union Cabinet and wait for the DMK to
 Regional Parties 331

nominate someone to replace him. Interestingly, the DMK actually

settled for one Cabinet post less than it earlier had. While A. Raja, who
was Union Minister for Forests and Environment was given
Dayanidhi’s portfolio, the new DMK person inducted, M.K. Selvi,
was given only a Minister of State rank. Both ranks and portfolios
were decided by the DMK, not Manmohan Singh.
What this episode made evident was that in coalition governments,
there is an unwritten rule that partners have specific quotas ‘reserved’
for them in the Union Cabinet and Council of Ministers and it is up
to them and not the prerogative of the Prime Minister to decide who
should hold which of these posts.

Biju Janata Dal: Father to Son

Any account of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)—named after the late Biju
Patnaik, political stalwart of Orissa, freedom fighter, Chief Minister,
daredevil pilot and Union Steel Minister, among other things—has to
begin with his second son Naveen Patnaik. Naveen Patnaik was by any
reckoning the most unlikely successor to Biju Patnaik. It seems the
first person who was chosen to succeed Biju-babu was his eldest son,
Prem, a businessman with interests in the paper industry. He refused.
Gita Mehta, Biju Patnaik’s only daughter, is married to publisher
Sonny Mehta and divides her time between New York, London and
Delhi. She was also said to be not particularly keen on becoming a
politician and, almost by default, the mantle of Biju-babu’s political
legacy fell on his younger, unmarried son, Naveen.
To many who had known Naveen, his decision to leave the rarefied
comfort of his Aurangzeb Road house in New Delhi for Aska, a
dusty township north-west of Behrampore (the closest airport,
Bhubaneshwar, is a three-hour drive away) to contest the Lok Sabha
elections came as a bit of a surprise. Till 1997, Naveen Patnaik was
better known for his parties than his party work, for his connections
with socialites than his socialist ideology. Naveen’s friends were
among the rich and the famous, his social and intellectual pursuits
more jet-set cosmopolitan than grassroots provincial. His friends
and acquaintances include Rolling Stone Mick Jagger whom he met
in 1970, Martand Singh of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art
332 DIVIDED WE STAND

and Cultural Heritage) and the Rajmata of Jaipur, to name just a

few. Jagger and Jerry Hall had invited him to stay at their chateau in
France. Yet, Naveen Patnaik invariably claims he is appalled by the
appellation of ‘socialite’ tagged on to him.
Admittedly, Naveen Patnaik had no experience of either politics
or social work. Until his election in 1997, he had never visited
Aska, although he does remember going once in the 1960s to a
neighbouring town, Chhattarpur, for a Congress party session that
his father was attending. When he contested the by-election for
the Aska Parliamentary seat in June 1997, he could barely speak
his mother tongue and his campaign speech comprised a single
sentence—‘Mothers, sisters and brothers please vote for me’—
delivered in hastily-learnt Oriya. This limitation hardly affected the
electoral verdict. He won by a huge margin of some 76,000 votes and
became an MP in the 11th Lok Sabha. His political rivals attributed
his victory to feudal instincts running deep among the electorate
and the so-called ‘sympathy factor’. Naveen Patnaik himself cited the
love of the people of his constituency for his father as a major factor
in his electoral success.
Within six months of Naveen Patnaik’s election as MP from
Aska, on December 15, 1997, the Janata Dal in Orissa split: 29 out of
43 legislators left the party to form a new political entity under the
stewardship of Naveen Patnaik. The chief architect of the rebellion
was Dilip Ray, who had served as Union Minister of State for Food
Processing in the United Front government. The split was justified
on the ground that it had become ‘impossible’ for the new group
to cohabit with the United Front in Delhi, which was then being
supported by the Congress, whereas the group was staunchly opposed
to the Congress in the state. Soon thereafter, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)
came into being as an independent electoral entity. Two of the four
MPs of the JD in Orissa joined the new party and the BJD went on
to form an alliance in the state with the BJP that had, incidentally, not
won a single seat in the state in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections.
As for his party’s alliance with the BJP, Naveen Patnaik said
his principal aim was to fortify anti-Congress forces in Orissa. He
told Frontline magazine that the voters of Orissa had ‘rejected the
corrupt Congress government’. He added, ‘Ours is a secular party.
 Regional Parties 333

We have built up an alliance with the BJP with the primary objective
of removing the corrupt Congress from power in the state.’ The
victory of BJD candidates, he said, had ‘vindicated our contention that
our party is the real inheritor’ of Biju Patnaik’s legacy. He said the
Biju Janata Dal had entered into a seat sharing adjustment with the
BJP but did not necessarily agree with every aspect of the BJP’s
agenda: An objective reading of the politics of Orissa would suggest
that the BJD had read the writing on the wall and was acting before
it was too late.
The BJP had been a growing political force in the state, though it
had not yet reached a stage where its presence could be electorally
felt. There was a growing feeling within the erstwhile Janata Dal in
Orissa that the BJP’s growing influence was eroding its vote base
to a level where the Congress might become invincible. The tie-up
with the BJP was thus an attempt to consolidate the anti-Congress
vote. For the BJP too the alliance made sense. While it might over
time have dislodged the Janata Dal or its successor as the main
challenger to the Congress in Orissa, here was an opportunity to fast
forward the process.
In the 1998 elections, Naveen Patnaik was re-elected to the Lok
Sabha from Aska. Out of the 21 seats from Orissa, the BJD obtained
nine, the BJP seven while the Congress was left with the remaining
five seats. The rise of the BJD–BJP combine in Orissa saw the
simultaneous decimation of the Janata Dal and its left allies together
with the decline of the Congress. Enfeebled by the December 1997
split, the JD saw large-scale desertion of party workers and suffered a
funds crunch. The party’s sole star candidate, former Union Minister
for Tourism and Parliamentary Affairs Srikant Jena, finished third in
Kendrapara, a key coastal constituency that was hitherto considered a
‘safe’ seat for the JD. Jena secured only 91,565 votes against the BJD
candidate’s 2.82 lakh votes, while the Congress came a close second
with 2.74 lakh votes.
If the JD was wiped out, the Congress was severely battered.
Having won 17 of the 21 Parliamentary seats in the state in 1996, the
Congress was swept aside by an anti-incumbency wave. Only twice
in the past had the Congress fared worse—in 1977, when it won four
seats, and in 1989, when it won three. Three campaign tours by Sonia
334 DIVIDED WE STAND

Gandhi did not have much of an impact in electoral terms. The BJP
won its first Parliamentary seat from Orissa in 1998. It won seven of
the nine seats it contested, mainly from western and northern Orissa.
The BJD won nine of the 12 seats it contested and most of these were
in coastal Orissa. Significantly, the BJD-BJP combine made inroads
into Congress strongholds in constituencies with a high proportion
of tribals and dalits.
Congress leaders in Orissa claimed that the outcome of the 1998
Lok Sabha elections was not a referendum on the performance of the
state government and J.B. Patnaik dismissed calls for his resignation.
Some Congress leaders, however, admitted in private that a strong
anti-establishment mood combined with the Janata Dal’s obliteration
led to a consolidation of BJD-BJP votes. Others blamed the infighting
in the Congress. Dissident leaders claimed that the party fared badly
because voters were disenchanted with J.B. Patnaik’s alleged misrule
and nepotism: they pointed to the fact that his wife, son-in-law and
relatives all held positions of power.
After the poor performance of the Congress in the Lok Sabha
elections, in February 1999, the party’s leadership decided to replace
J.B. Patnaik as Chief Minister with a tribal, Giridhar Gamang, who
had earlier served as Union minister. (Patnaik, incidentally, was one
of the longest serving Chief Ministers in the country, having headed
the state government for 13 years over three terms.) The position
of the Congress in Orissa continued to deteriorate rapidly. In the
September–October 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the BJD-BJP combine
won 19 out of the 21 Parliamentary seats in the state—the Congress
was left with only two MPs from Orissa.
In the assembly elections of February 2000, the BJD-BJP combine
wrested power from the Congress in Orissa by forming the government
in Bhubaneswar. On March 5, 2000, Naveen Patnaik was sworn in
as the new Chief Minister of the state—the date of the swearing-in
is significant as it is the birth anniversary of the late Biju Patnaik.
Capitalising on the strong anti-incumbency sentiments prevailing in
the state, the BJD-BJP combine secured a two-thirds majority in the
147-member assembly, virtually repeating its performance in the 1999
Lok Sabha elections. The BJD contested 84 assembly seats and won
68; the BJP won 38 of the 63 seats it contested. The Congress, which
 Regional Parties 335

had 81 members in the earlier assembly, suffered a serious setback

winning only 26 seats. The BJD–BJP coalition won most of the seats
in western and southern Orissa.
Within the BJD, however, Naveen Patnaik was perpetually kept
on his toes by internal rivalry and squabbles in the initial years of his
political career. In most cases, the challenge to his leadership or his
decisions came from a group of leaders who were perceived as being
very close to Biju Patnaik while he was alive and who clearly resented
Naveen Patnaik’s attempts to sideline them and gain unquestioned
command over the BJD. These individuals included Bijoy Mohapatra,
Nalini Mohanty and Dilip Ray. Naveen Patnaik was successful in
warding off challenges to him from within the BJD. He was even
able to expel these three leaders without the party splitting down the
middle, as seemed possible at one stage. One reason for his success, it
appears, was the fact that he took on his detractors within the party
sequentially rather than at one go. Another could be the fact that most
BJD politicians faced a TINA (There Is No Alternative) factor. If they
had left the BJD, their only option would have been to either join
hands with the Congress, a party they have opposed throughout their
political careers, or risk facing marginalisation in the state’s politics.
Whatever the reason, the BJD has survived more or less intact under
Patnaik. What’s more, the marginalisation or expulsion of senior
leaders did not prevent the BJD from coming back to power, with the
BJD-BJP alliance winning 93 of the 147 seats in the assembly elections
that coincided with the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.
Patnaik has periodically had to deal with friction between his
party and its ally, the BJP. For instance, in October 2001, a problem
arose for his government following a sudden spurt in the influx of
refugees from Bangladesh following the assumption of power by the
Bangladesh National Party (BNP) government in Dhaka in October.
There were tensions between Bangladeshi refugees and local tribals
in the Raigada district. The tribals claimed the state government was
not evicting illegal migrants from their lands. In November, there
were clashes between tribals and Bengali settlers and three tribals
died in police firing. There were also instances of deportation of
alleged infiltrators from Bangladesh who were accused of spying
and gathering sensitive information on defence installations like
336 DIVIDED WE STAND

the missile testing range at Chandipur in Balasore district. The

state government’s Welfare Minister Mangala Kisan said that after
thorough investigations, a number of Bangladeshi citizens had been
booked under the Foreigners Act. He told the state assembly that a
total number of 2,854 infiltrators had been identified in the districts
of Sambalpur, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Malkangiri, Kendrapara and
Nabarangpur, and that 392 of them had been deported to Bangladesh
with the help of the Union government.
These developments caused a strain in relations between the BJD
and the BJP. Spokespersons of both parties attacked each other at
public press conferences. While a section of the state’s BJP leaders
took up cudgels on behalf of the Bengali-speaking settlers in Raigada,
the BJD in turn accused its coalition partner of double standards.
BJD secretary general Dr. Damodar Rout pointed out that while the
BJP had been agitating for deportation of infiltrators from Assam
and West Bengal, it was opposing their deportation from Orissa.
BJP spokesperson Raj Kishore Das and party MP Anadi Sahu, however,
claimed after the party’s two-day state executive committee meeting
that the Bengali-speaking individuals being deported were refugees
who had come to the state in the 1960s and were not infiltrators.
Political analysts saw the tensions between the two coalition partners
as a consequence of the fact that while the BJP had a support base
among the Bangladeshi refugees and settlers, the BJD had the support
of tribals who lived in the same areas in Orissa’s Nabarangpur and
Malkangiri districts.
On March 16, 2002, activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and
Bajrang Dal stormed the Orissa assembly building, smashing the
window panes of the Chief Minister’s office. The VHP and Bajrang
Dal goons ransacked the assembly complex, protesting against remarks
allegedly made against the two organisations by certain MLAs. The
protesters, including a number of women, had been agitating outside
the main gate of the assembly. Subsequently, some of them managed
to get past two police cordons, entered the assembly building complex
and went on a spree of destruction shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and
‘Naveen Patnaik murdabad’ (‘Down with Naveen Patnaik’). Sporting
head-bands bearing the names of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, the
protesters hurled stones, broke flower pots, tore out name plates
of ministers in the assembly library complex, and pulled out fire
extinguishers from the walls and hurled them into the garden. The
 Regional Parties 337

mayhem continued for roughly 20 minutes. The protesters could

have wreaked more havoc but were prevented from entering the
lobby of the assembly by security personnel who had by then bolted
the doors.
Even if Naveen Patnaik has been able to defuse internal dissensions
in the BJD, he has a long way to go before he is able to improve the
economic condition of the majority of the people living in Orissa. The
state has been and remains one of the most backward in the country,
as the starvation deaths in the state in 2001 so starkly highlighted.
What does not help is that, perhaps on account of his upbringing
and his association with the well-off, Naveen Patnaik continues to be
perceived as a member of the elite and an individual who has remained
aloof from the people of his pathetically poor state.
Patnaik’s approach has been to try and attract mega projects in
Orissa. International steel giants like Posco of South Korea, Mittal
Steel and Tata Steel have all been wooed by the state government and
the companies have found the offers lucrative given the large deposits
of high grade iron ore in the state. Orissa also has the best chromite
deposits in the world. These projects have created quite a controversy
for two major reasons. The first of these relates to the rehabilitation
of—and compensation for—people who would be displaced, a
significant proportion of them being tribals. The other is the issue
of whether Orissa is gifting away precious natural resources—such
as iron ore—to multinational firms rather than using them to add
value locally.
Patnaik’s ability to manage such political and economic
contradictions will definitely be put to the test by such issues. What
is clear, however, is that he has matured as a politician and is no longer
a person dependent entirely on his father’s legacy.

Trinamool Congress: Mamata the Maverick

To talk about the Trinamool Congress party in West Bengal without
talking about its colourful leader Mamata Banerjee is almost
impossible. Born on January 5, 1955, to lower-middle class parents,
the late Promileswar Banerjee and Gayatri Banerjee, Mamata was
the second of eight children, six sons and two daughters. While
she has preferred to remain single, her brothers are all married and
338 DIVIDED WE STAND

run small businesses of their own. Her father had opposed British
rule as a supporter of the Congress party. He died soon after Mamata
completed her school-leaving examinations.
After joining Jogamaya Devi College in Kolkata, she started a unit
of the Chhatra Parishad (the students’ wing of the Congress party) to
confront the existing leftist students’ union. Mamata became an active
supporter of the Congress when the violent Naxalite movement (of left
extremists) was at its height during the late-1960s and early 1970s.
Right through her childhood and youth, Mamata had to struggle
hard to overcome economic hardship—she presumably got used to
a spartan lifestyle at that stage of her life, a lifestyle that she would
flaunt many years later as a Union Minister in New Delhi. During her
years in college, she earned around Rs 150 a month giving tuition to
four or five school-going children. Besides, she did all kinds of odd
jobs so that she could complete her studies without imposing any
additional financial burden on her family. She worked as a part-time
assistant in a state government milk depot earning Rs 60 a month. She
also worked as a part-time teacher in several local schools and was
reportedly even instrumental in founding a school.
It was in the mid-1970s that Mamata found a supporter and mentor
in Subrata Mukherjee, who was a Minister in the then West Bengal
Chief Minister Siddharta Shankar Ray’s cabinet and also a leader of
the Chhatra Parishad. As president of the South Calcutta (Kolkata)
District Congress Committee, Subrata Mukherjee displayed faith in
Mamata’s political skills and made her secretary of the committee,
a position she held from 1978 to 1981. Through the 1970s, she also
held the posts of general secretary, Mahila Congress (I), West Bengal.
Subrata Mukherjee then entrusted her with overseeing accommodation
arrangements for Rajiv Gandhi at the plenary session of the All India
Congress Committee (AICC) held in Calcutta in 1983. This, incidentally,
was the last AICC session presided over by Indira Gandhi who was
then Prime Minister and Congress President while Rajiv Gandhi was
one of the general secretaries of the party. Mamata’s work evidently
did not escape the attention of Rajiv Gandhi for when her name was
proposed as the Congress candidate for the Lok Sabha seat at Jadavpur
(in south Kolkata) in 1984, he was quick to recollect her name and
promptly gave the green signal.
 Regional Parties 339

That year, two Congress stalwarts from West Bengal, Professor

Debi Prasad Chattopadhyay (who had served as a Union Minister in
Indira Gandhi’s government) and Saugata Roy, had both refused to
contest from Jadavpur, which was considered to be a stronghold of
the Marxists. Subrata Mukherjee proposed Mamata Banerjee’s name
and she ended up creating history in the first election she contested.
Mamata was elected to the 8th Lok Sabha by defeating CPI(M)
stalwart, Somnath Chatterjee (now Speaker of the Lok Sabha), by a
margin of nearly 20,000 votes.
From the mid-1980s onwards, Mamata held a number of positions
in New Delhi while continuing to maintain close contact with her
supporters in Kolkata. By 1990, she had become president of the
Youth Congress in West Bengal. On August 16 that year, she survived
what she claimed was a near-fatal attack on her by goons supporting
the CPI(M). The following year, in May 1991, she was re-elected to the
10th Lok Sabha for a second term. Between 1991 and 1993, for
the first time, she served as a Union Minister in New Delhi in the
P.V. Narasimha Rao government.
In the April–May 1996 elections, she was elected yet again to
the Lok Sabha. The ensuing months saw her party, the Congress,
supporting the centre-left coalition government of the United Front.
The fact that the UF government was supported by the CPI(M) made
Mamata most uncomfortable. After all, her fight in West Bengal was
first and foremost against the ruling Left Front in the state. By this
time, she had begun openly rebelling against the official leadership of
the Congress in West Bengal—the party in the state was at that time
being headed by Somen Mitra. Mamata was also very unhappy with
the central leadership of the party for ignoring her claim to become
the head of the party in West Bengal.
In September 1997, after a four-month-long agitation, she floated
a formation called the Trinamool Congress (or the Grassroots
Congress) after accusing the official leadership of the Congress in the
state of being ineffective and acting as if it was the ‘B Team’ of the
CPI(M)-led ruling Left Front. The then President of the Congress,
Sitaram Kesri, finally expelled Mamata Banerjee from the Congress
in December 1997 for allegedly splitting the party’s West Bengal unit.
The Trinamool Congress then became a separate political entity.
340 DIVIDED WE STAND

By the time the March–April 1998 general elections took place, it

was clear to most that Mamata was ready to jump ship and would
be throwing her weight behind the BJP-led National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) formation. Sure enough, after she was elected to
the Lok Sabha for the fourth time and after Atal Behari Vajpayee
was sworn in as Prime Minister for the second time, Mamata Banerjee
was elevated to the highest official post she had ever held, that of
Union Minister for Railways, heading the second largest railway
system in the world.
The first Railway Budget presented by Mamata Banerjee in late
February 2000 was described by all as ‘populist’: she took the decision
to not increase passenger fares and increased freight rates only
moderately. She was especially generous towards her own state. Eleven
railway projects in West Bengal that had been in limbo for a decade and
a half were all revived and money sanctioned for land acquisition.
Mamata’s second Railway Budget for 2001–2002 presented in
February 2001 turned out to be an even more blatantly populist
exercise than her first budget. This time, she clearly had an eye on the
elections to the West Bengal assembly scheduled for May that year.
She chose to ignore all advice given to her about the need to take hard
decisions to improve the financial health of the Indian Railways. In an
unabashed bid to woo her constituents, she announced a slew of new
projects for West Bengal, including seven of the 24 new trains that she
proposed to start. She left her political opponents in the Left Front
government in West Bengal completely dumbfounded—they could
not criticise her budget for the new trains would clearly benefit the
state. (The left had been arguing for years that the Union government
in New Delhi had neglected West Bengal by denying it new projects,
including new railway lines.)
If people in West Bengal cutting across political lines were happy
with Mamata Banerjee’s Railway Budget for 2001–2002, those in
other states were rather vocal in expressing their dissatisfaction. No
railway minister is able to satisfy the demands of all states, but this
time round there were unusually loud protests from MPs belonging to
Bihar, Andhra, Karnataka, and particularly, Orissa. The protests from
Orissa MPs were rather embarrassing for the Vajpayee government.
The Biju Janata Dal, together with the BJP, was not only ruling
 Regional Parties 341

Orissa but the party was a part of the NDA coalition in New Delhi.
BJD MPs registered their protest against Mamata’s Railway Budget
by walking out of the Lok Sabha after claiming that they were being
given ‘step-motherly’ treatment.
Mamata Banerjee was roundly criticised by the media for her
populism. But she remained unfazed. After all, she was convinced
her actions would be supported by the people of the country—not
excluding, of course, the voters from her own state. But weeks before
the assembly elections took place in West Bengal, two extremely
significant developments took place. The first and most important
development was Mamata’s decision to switch sides—she chose
to ditch the BJP-led NDA in March 2001 and go along with the
Congress—a party she had earlier derogatorily referred to as the
‘B team’ of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. She quit her post as Union
Minister for Railways and her party, the Trinamool Congress, left
the NDA coalition.
The stated reason for her decision to resign from the Union
government was Prime Minister Vajpayee’s apparent reluctance to
accept the resignation of Defence Minister George Fernandes who was
then in the dock following the tehelka.com episode. The real reason
for Mamata quitting the NDA government was, of course, quite
different. She wanted to improve her party’s electoral prospects by
aligning the Trinamool Congress with its parent party, the Congress,
by forming a mahajot or grand alliance against the CPI(M)-led Left
Front. And this was simply because she felt (perhaps rightly so) that
West Bengal’s Muslim voters would stay away from the Trinamool
Congress as long as it was closely associated with the BJP.
The second important development that considerably weakened
Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress days before the
elections was the revolt that took place within the ranks of her own
party. This revolt was led by Ajit Panja. He was the only politician
other than Mamata in the Trinamool Congress who had had a long
career in politics. As a matter of fact, Panja had held positions in
the Union government and been around in Congress politics much
longer than Mamata. On April 17, 2001, Panja publicly aired his
differences with Mamata Banerjee at the Kolkata Press Club. Panja,
a co-founder of the Trinamool Congress, said he could not go along
342 DIVIDED WE STAND

with Mamata’s decision to align with the Congress and ditch the BJP-
led NDA alliance before the West Bengal assembly elections. Though
a tearful Panja said he had taken a principled position, cynics claimed
he was most reluctant to give up his post as Minister of State, External
Affairs, in the Vajpayee government—a post with considerable perks
and opportunities to travel all over the world.
The Congress–Trinamool Congress combine, which had been
cobbled together barely a month before the last date of filing nom-
inations, failed to defeat the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the as-
sembly elections held on May 10, 2001. On the contrary, the ruling
Left Front improved its position by bucking anti-incumbency
sentiments and successively romped home. This electoral victory of
the left in West Bengal was the sixth consecutive one since 1977—a
record not only in India but anywhere in the world. Many voters in
the state clearly perceived Mamata as a maverick, an impulsive and
unreliable individual heading a team that would not have been able
to offer better governance in the state. She had been going hammer
and tongs at the Left Front government for its alleged failure to
maintain law and order—especially after a series of violent incidents
in Midnapur district where Trinamool Congress sympathisers were
reportedly killed by left supporters.
Despite Mamata Banerjee’s shrill criticism of the Left Front, her
charges clearly failed to influence the pattern of voting in the state.
It was not merely the infighting within the ranks of her party that
adversely affected her credibility as a political leader, but the local units
of the BJP seized the opportunity to play spoiler. The other factor that
worked in favour of the Left Front was the image of Chief Minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who is a good 30 years younger than his
predecessor Jyoti Basu. During the election campaign, Bhattacharjee
had cleverly refrained from personal attacks on Mamata and he was
successful to an extent in winning back the support of the middle-
classes in urban and semi-urban areas in the state—sections of the
electorate that had become staunchly anti-left. The Chief Minister’s
‘new left’ image evidently went down well with the voters. He was
seen as a communist who was not only willing to acknowledge the
mistakes made by the CPI(M) in the past, but was also willing to mend
the ways of his party’s cadres to make them more responsive to the
aspirations of the people of the state.
 Regional Parties 343

The Left Front improved its position in the 294-member West

Bengal assembly from 189 seats to 200 seats. Even the most ardent
supporters of the left were unwilling to predict such a convincing
victory. In the earlier assembly elections held in 1996, the undivided
Congress had obtained 85 seats. On this occasion, the Trinamool
Congress–Congress alliance could win only one extra seat. The poor
performance of the Trinamool Congress–Congress combination
shocked Mamata. She had, after all, confidently predicted an electoral
defeat for the Left Front and at least on this occasion, she knew that
her standard complaint that the Left Front’s victory was on account
of ‘scientific rigging’ of elections would sound like a lame excuse.
After the assembly elections were declared, Mamata Banerjee went
into a deep sulk. She held the Election Commission of India, the
central government as well as the ‘machinations and manipulations’ of
the Left Front responsible for her party’s performance. Her criticism
of the Election Commission appeared to be an instance of the referee
being blamed for the defeat of one’s team. Asked why she had chosen
to align her party with the Congress during the assembly polls,
she claimed, ‘We had waited for the BJP for a seat adjustment, but
they rejected it. Since the Left Front had so many parties in its fold,
we too wanted to have a front. So, we had to go along with other
parties to fight the left.’
Her explanations did not sound convincing. Mamata then decided
to act against Ajit Panja by stripping him of all official positions in
the party. On May 21, Panja was reduced to becoming an ordinary
primary member of the party. Panja had earlier held the positions of
chairman of the party’s West Bengal unit and a member of the All
India Trinamool Congress Working Committee. Panja remained
unrepentant and continued to criticise Mamata’s decision to quit the
NDA and go along with the Congress. (During the election campaign,
Panja had shared a platform with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
at a rally near Kolkata.) Panja told all who were willing to listen that
he was the only ‘real’ leader in the party and that Mamata Banerjee’s
style of functioning was ‘undemocratic’.
While the assembly elections debacle did not lead to any real
questioning of Mamata Banerjee’s authority in the party, there was
growing criticism of what was seen as a tendency on her part to take
344 DIVIDED WE STAND

hasty and impulsive decisions. Though all talk of a split in the party
was quelled, there were reports that Panja might attempt to woo
two of the party’s nine MPs away from Mamata. On August 28,
2000, former Union minister and founder-member of the Trinamool
Congress was formally suspended from the party.
A day before she removed Ajit Panja from the Trinamool Congress,
on August 27, 2001, Mamata indicated that her party’s alliance with
the Congress was over. She said the Congress had been more of a
burden than an asset for the Trinamool Congress during the West
Bengal elections. Mamata and her Trinamool Congress were back with
the NDA. She sought to emphasise that her party’s support was being
extended to Prime Minister Vajpayee and his government but that this
did not imply that the Trinamool Congress would automatically have
an understanding with the state unit of the BJP. There was a touch of
irony that it was none other than Prime Minister Vajpayee’s trouble-
shooter, Defence Minister and NDA convenor, George Fernandes,
who persuaded the alliance to readmit Mamata Banerjee.
She justified her re-entry by saying her party had left the NDA
on the tehelka issue and that the Prime Minister had subsequently
accepted all the demands she had made on the issue. She also claimed
that the Trinamool Congress would give ‘issue based’ support to the
Vajpayee government, a fact that she pointed out had been clearly
mentioned in the party’s election manifesto. Despite disagreements
with the BJP-led alliance, Banerjee maintained that the NDA was
a ‘natural ally’ of her party.
Mamata Banerjee’s morale touched a new low after four of her
party legislators voted in favour of a rival candidate in the Rajya Sabha
elections. Then, in March 2002, an important party leader Debi Prasad
Pal quit the Trinamol Congress and returned to the Congress. These
two incidents exposed the fragility of the party leadership. While the
Congress candidate for the Rajya Sabha, Arjun Sengupta, failed to
get elected and the Trinamool Congress candidate, Dinesh Trivedi,
did, the cross-voting exposed the dissensions that continued within
Mamata’s party.
Her relations with the BJP as well as the NDA had been turbulent
and continued to be so. As early as October 1998, during the second
Vajpayee government, Mamata went on record stating that she and
 Regional Parties 345

her party were unhappy with the agenda to ‘saffronise’ education as

devised by Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar
Joshi. Then, in October 2000, Mamata Banerjee and Ajit Panja put
in their papers protesting against the government’s decision to hike
the prices of petroleum products. Mamata claimed she had not been
consulted on the decision. She withdrew her resignation only after
Prime Minister Vajpayee sent her a fax saying he would personally
look into the issue after he returned to Delhi following surgery of
his knees. The prices of petroleum products were not rolled back and
Mamata and Panja continued in their positions.
Much later, during the communal carnage that took place in Gujarat
in April and May 2002, she repeatedly sided with the government’s
opponents by calling for the removal of Narendra Modi. She also
demanded a ‘comprehensive relief package’ for the victims of the
carnage and urged that an all-party peace march take place to restore
the confidence of minorities in the state. At the same time, she could
not resist taking pot-shots at the West Bengal government. In the
Lok Sabha, she claimed that the violence that had occurred in both
Gujarat and West Bengal was tantamount to state sponsored terrorism
while urging the Union government to intervene and put a stop to this
kind of ‘barbarism’. Yet, curiously, despite demanding the removal
of Narendra Modi, when it came to voting in the Lok Sabha, she and
MPs from her party voted in favour of the Vajpayee government.
Earlier, MPs belonging to the Trinamool Congress deliberately
absented themselves during the discussion in Parliament on POTO
and also abstained from voting in favour of the Ordinance. Mamata
Banerjee said she and her party could not support POTO since the
Trinamool Congress had opposed a similar act, POCA, or Prevention
of Crime Act, that had been enacted by the West Bengal government.
She claimed that both POTO (that later became POTA) and POCA
would be misused by the authorities to harass the political opponents
of those in power, both in New Delhi and in Kolkata.
Besides POTO, the Trinamool Congress also expressed serious
reservations about the Union government’s proposal to amend
the Industrial Disputes Act by permitting employers to lay-off or
retrench workers in industrial units employing up to 1,000 employees
without obtaining the prior approval of the concerned government
346 DIVIDED WE STAND

authorities. Describing the decision to amend the Act as ‘dangerous’

for employees, Mamata Banerjee said such decisions should be arrived
at only after wide-ranging consultations had taken place among all
political parties in the NDA.
In late May 2003, Vajpayee decided to reshuffle his Council of
Ministers and it was widely believed that the Trinamool Congress
would once again find representation in the Union government.
There was speculation about the portfolio that would be allotted
to Mamata since Nitish Kumar was well ensconced in the post of
Railway Minister and it seemed unlikely that he would be removed.
Media reports suggested that Mamata might be made Agriculture
Minister. What transpired thereafter turned out to be a bit of an anti-
climax. On the evening of May 24, 2003, the day before the reshuffle,
Mamata reportedly spoke to Vajpayee and BJP president Venkaiah
Naidu and told them not to induct any representative of her party
in the government. She told her party colleagues in Kolkata that the
Trinamool leader in the Lok Sabha, her one-time confidante Sudip
Bandopadhyaya, had been lobbying hard with Deputy Prime Minister
L.K. Advani and was expecting to be made minister. She told members
of her party’s working committee that Sudip was proving to be a ‘risk
to the unity’ of the Trinamool Congress.
Just as the manner in which Mamata fell out with Sudip seemed
inexplicable to many, the way in which she buried the hatchet with
Ajit Panja was equally unexpected. Nearly two years after he had
been suspended from the Trinamool Congress, Panja’s suspension
was formally revoked in July 2003. There was no explanation as to
how the person who had publicly trashed his party leader had again
endeared himself to her.
Mamata’s long wait to become a minister in the Cabinet finally
ended in September 2003, but in the most bizarre fashion. While she
was made a Cabinet Minister, Vajpayee refused to succumb to her
demand that she be given the Railways portfolio. With Mamata also
refusing to settle for any other portfolio, the standoff meant that she
remained a Minister without portfolio till January 2004, when she
finally accepted the portfolio of Coal and Mines.
Mamata Banerjee’s unpredictable behaviour has not exactly
endeared her to her current political allies and has made potential
 Regional Parties 347

partners circumspect about aligning with her. Her party failed to make
any headway—in fact, it lost considerable support—during the next
assembly elections that took place in West Bengal in April–May 2006.
For the first time, elections in the state were conducted over five
phases and under the strict supervision of the Election Commission of
India. On this occasion as well, defying anti-incumbency sentiments
prevailing in the rest of the country, in West Bengal, the Left Front
returned to power for the seventh time increasing the number of seats
held by it by 39 from 199 to 235 in the 294-member state assembly.
Significantly, the anti-left vote was splintered. Five years earlier,
in 2001, when the Trinamool Congress had cobbled up an alliance
with its parent, the Congress, the combine obtained 39.3 per cent of
the total votes cast in West Bengal. The Trinamool Congress ended
up with 60 seats in the assembly and the Congress with 26 (plus three
independent candidates supported by it). In 2006, the Trinamool
Congress stuck with the BJP—which does not have much of a support
base in the state—and ended up with 28.9 per cent of the vote and
29 assembly seats; the Congress won 21 seats with two independent
legislators supporting it.
Interestingly, the Trinamool managed to retain much of its
support base in Kolkata—the Left hardly increased its vote share in
the city (from 42.3 per cent to 42.5 per cent) but won nine instead of
eight seats. It, therefore, became clear that although sections of the
urban upper and middle classes have apparently moved towards the
CPI(M)—during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, for the first time, only
one anti-Left candidate won and she was Mamata herself from south
Kolkata—residents of urban areas in the state, especially Kolkata,
by and large, remain opposed to the Communists and support either
the Trinamool Congress or the Congress. In the state as a whole, the
weakness of the opposition made life that much simpler for the left.
Far from matching its organisational strength, both the Trinamool
Congress and the Congress could not even find enough supporters
to act as election agents in all the polling booths in the state.
Mamata Banerjee’s political career seemed to be reaching a dead end.
However, in late 2006 and early 2007, a controversy over acquisition
of nearly 1,000 acres of land at Singur, in Hooghly district, 40 km from
Kolkata, by the state government to facilitate the establishment of a
348 DIVIDED WE STAND

car manufacturing factory by Tata Motors, brought her dramatically

back into the political limelight. She went on a hunger strike in the
centre of Kolkata protesting against the manner in which the state
government had sought to ‘forcibly’ acquire fertile land from farmers.
From the Governor of West Bengal Gopal Krishna Gandhi to former
Prime Minister V.P. Singh, the President and the Prime Minister of
India, a large number of prominent personalities urged her to break
her fast and come to the negotiating table. She did eventually break
her fast, which lasted 25 days, at a time when it appeared that she
would have to be hospitalised.
She was joined in her protest against the Left Front’s policies
of acquiring agricultural land to set up industrial ventures by a
combination of parties and individuals cutting across ideological
lines—on the one hand, there was BJP President Rajnath Singh and on
the other, there were extreme-left Naxalite groups and social activists
like Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy. Though many of those who
opposed the Tata Motors project at Singur were ideologically poles
apart from the Trinamool Congress, Mamata Banerjee undoubtedly
did benefit from the perception that she had become a rallying figure
of sorts. What helped her was that after Singur, another conflagration
over acquisition of land broke out at Nandigram in Midnapur district
where the state government had made a tentative attempt to acquire
land for a special economic zone to be set up by the Indonesia-based
Salim group. Following protests by local villagers and skirmishes
with the police which resulted in the deaths of several local people,
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee himself and his government backtracked.
With even the CPI(M)’s partners in the Left Front opposed to the
manner in which land was sought to be acquired, the state government
had to take a conciliatory position and said that land would not be
acquired until a proper policy of compensation, rehabilitation and
resettlement was in place.
To what extent all this would help revive the fortunes of the
Trinamool Congress remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Congress leaders
in New Delhi continue to urge her to return to the folds of the parent
party but she has demurred—her hesitation may have a lot to do with local
compulsions and the fact that a large section of the Congress leadership
in West Bengal would stand to get marginalised should the Trinamool
Congress and the Congress become a single political outfit.
 Regional Parties 349

Asom Gana Parishad: Co-opted Rebels

Assam is by far the most populous of the seven states, or ‘seven sisters’,
of the north-eastern part of India (excluding Sikkim). The north-east
is separated from the rest of the country by a narrow ‘chicken’s neck’
in West Bengal, but more than the geographical separation, the people
of north-east India have for long felt alienated from the country’s
mainstream. Questions relating to sub-nationalism and regional
identity, illegal immigration and violent separatist movements have
dominated the political discourse surrounding Assam and the north-
east for more than half a century.
Till December 1985, nine out of the 10 individuals who served
as Chief Ministers of Assam belonged to the Congress party; the
exception was Golap Chandra Borbora of the Janata Party who was
Chief Minister between March 1978 and September 1979. From the
late-1970s, a series of agitations against the state government as well
as the Union government spearheaded by the All Assam Students’
Union (AASU) paralysed the working of Assam for long periods.
President’s rule was imposed in the state on no less than three
occasions in December 1979, June 1981 and March 1982. In the 1980
general elections, polls were not conducted in 12 out of the 14 Lok
Sabha constituencies in the state. In December 1985, nearly one year
after the 1984 general elections had taken place, the voters of Assam
exercised their franchise. Again in 1989, the Lok Sabha elections did
not take place in Assam.
Until recently, many political observers believed that national
parties like the Congress and BJP had lost most of their influence in
Assam. The 13th general elections in 1999, however, proved such a
perception wrong. Not only did the electoral fortunes of the Congress
revive, the BJP too performed better than it ever had in the state. The
outcome of the 12th and the 13th general elections delivered rude
shocks to the former student leaders of AASU who had gone on to
form the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) after the 1985 accord with the
Rajiv Gandhi government in New Delhi and had come to power in the
state. During both the 1998 and 1999 elections, the AGP could not win a
single Lok Sabha seat in Assam. The Congress, as already mentioned, had
played a dominant role in the state. It was only in the 1985 Lok Sabha
350 DIVIDED WE STAND

elections in Assam that the vote share of the Congress dipped below
the 45 per cent mark. Between 1985 and 1991, the share of the
Congress in the total votes polled in the state went up from below
24 per cent to over 28 per cent in both the Lok Sabha and assembly
elections. Thus, the improved performance of the Congress in the
subsequent general elections was not entirely surprising.
What was unexpected was the emergence of the BJP as a major
opposition party to the Congress. Since the 1980s, the BJP started
recording its presence in Assam. Within the party, individuals like
L.K. Advani and former general secretary K.N. Govindacharya could
sense that the state would one day become a fertile ground for the BJP’s
brand of Hindutva politics. Assam has a long international border
with Bangladesh which has been traditionally difficult to police. Even
if the BJP was branded a communal party by its political opponents,
a substantial section of the upper-caste Hindus in Assam had been
wary of the BJP. This section saw the party as one that was supported
by Marwari traders: the alien ‘exploiters’ of the people of Assam.
Initially, the BJP was perceived to be soft on Hindu immigrants and
hard on Muslim immigrants. This policy did not, however, elicit the
sympathies of those sections of the ruling elite in the state who were
more fearful of the alleged domination of Bengalis (both Hindus and
Muslims) in Assam. The apprehension that the original inhabitants of
Assam could become a ‘minority’ in their own state and that their own
culture and tradition would be submerged by waves of immigration
fashioned the reactions of many sections of Assamese society (from
the peasantry to the middle and upper classes) which supported the
AASU-led agitation against ‘foreigners’ in the state in the late 1970s
and early 1980s.
By the time the Assam accord was thrashed out in 1985, large
sections had become completely disillusioned with the Congress.
Following an all-party meeting convened when Rajiv Gandhi was
Prime Minister, Parliament passed the Illegal Migrants (Determination
by Tribunal) Act or the IMDT Act. The accord was aimed at
disenfranchising illegal immigrants who had settled in Assam in the
period between 1965 and 1971, the year in which Bangladesh became
an independent nation-state. After the erstwhile AASU leaders
formed the AGP, which came to power in 1985, many in Assam
 Regional Parties 351

believed the accord would be fully implemented. The AGP was also
expected to try and resolve the problems of unemployment and lack
of industrial development in the state, issues which the party’s leaders
had themselves raised as student leaders.
It did not take very long for the realisation to sink in that the process
of detecting and deporting illegal immigrants was easier said than
done. The biggest ‘constraint’ of the Act was that the onus of
proving that a person was a foreigner rested with those who made
the complaint (a provision that was later struck down by the Supreme
Court). Much to the dissatisfaction of the AGP, the party’s leaders
realised that the state government as well as its supporters would at
best be able to identify a few hundred thousand ‘illegal immigrants’
and that it would be next to impossible to deport even these individuals
to Bangladesh. Not only was the AGP government unable to tackle
the issue of ‘foreigners’ effectively, the party’s leaders proved to be as
inefficient, corrupt and fractious as those belonging to the Congress.
Far from setting up employment generation schemes, the erstwhile
students’ leaders fell out with one another, the first and perhaps most
significant being the parting of ways between Chief Minister Prafulla
Kumar Mahanta and his one-time associate-turned-bitter-rival, the
late Bhrigu Kumar Phukan.
As the AGP weakened, the Congress was able to return to power
in the May–June 1991 elections winning 66 out of the 126 seats
in the state assembly. In the same election, the AGP’s vote share
nearly halved from 35 per cent in 1985 to under 18 per cent in 1991;
the number of the party’s MLAs shrank from 65 to 19. Unhappy
with the AGP’s poor track record in power, sections within the
party started breaking off and one radical group formed the United
Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which proclaimed the need for a
violent secessionist movement. The ULFA claimed that the only way
the problems of Assam could be resolved was if the state ceded from
the Indian Union.
Taking a cue from the first AASU-led agitation and the rise of the
ULFA, militant groups were formed by sections of other important
tribal groups in Assam, the Bodos and the Karbis. The ULFA attracted,
and continues to attract, considerable notoriety because it is running
a ‘parallel’ administration in large parts of Assam by levying ‘taxes’
352 DIVIDED WE STAND

and eliminating ‘collaborators’. The ULFA and its sympathisers have

been responsible for innumerable hit-and-run killings in remote areas
of Assam and many government officials and owners of tea gardens
had no alternative but to pay the ‘dues’ demanded by the militants to
‘protect’ themselves and their family members. The problem reached
such a stage that the Mahanta government in 1997 even accused
officials employed by Tata Tea, which is part of one of the biggest
corporate groups in the country, of collaborating with militants by
arranging for the medical expenses incurred by their supporters in
Mumbai hospitals.
The electoral debacle of 1991 seemed to convince the AGP
that it would be unwise to confront the Congress entirely on its
own. Thus, by the time the 1996 assembly elections took place,
the AGP had cobbled together an alliance that included the left, in
particular the CPI. The strategy worked with the AGP-led alliance
returning to power. The AGP itself won 59 seats, a little short of
a majority, against 19 seats in 1991 and 65 in 1985. The Congress
was reduced to 34 seats against 66 in 1991 and 25 in 1985, while the
BJP, which had 10 seats in the outgoing assembly, managed to win
only four seats this time round. The 1996 assembly elections saw a
sizeable section of the minority Muslim community voting for the
first time for AGP candidates—as many as 10 Muslim MLAs were
elected to the assembly on AGP tickets against 12 Muslim MLAs
belonging to the Congress.
The alliance between the AGP and the left meant that when the
United Front was being formed in New Delhi in May 1996, it was
a foregone conclusion that it would be a part of the UF. The AGP
formally remained with the UF right up to the 1999 Lok Sabha
elections. However, there was evident strain within the Front, with the
left parties in Assam refusing to back the AGP in the 1999 elections,
accusing the party of having a tacit understanding with the BJP against
the Congress. The AGP repeatedly denied the existence of any such
unwritten pact, but it was a widely held perception that it fielded weak
candidates in some Lok Sabha constituencies to let the BJP emerge as
the main challenger to the Congress in these constituencies.
In 1999, the BJP managed to win two of the state’s 14 Lok
Sabha seats—the prestigious Guwahati seat and Nowgong. Bijoya
Chakraborty, who won from Guwahati, went on to become a Minister
 Regional Parties 353

in the Vajpayee government. AGP chief Mahanta’s remark that ‘one

of our own’ had become a minister confirmed the perception that
the AGP and the BJP had come closer together. (Chakraborty was
AGP MP in the Rajya Sabha between 1986 and 1992.) Whereas the
BJP’s vote share had jumped from less than 0.4 per cent in the 1985
Lok Sabha elections to 33 per cent in the 1999 elections, the AGP’s
share of the total votes cast had crashed from 27.2 per cent in 1996 to
12.7 per cent in 1998 and less than 12 per cent by 1999.
In 2000, Advani complimented Mahanta for his handling of the
situation after ULFA militants attacked Hindi-speaking settlers in
Assam. And while there were murmurs of dissent within the AGP
about the party’s growing proximity to the BJP, it was not until as
late as April 2001 that the AGP formally became a part of the NDA
on the eve of the assembly elections in the state. By then, the Muslim
minority in Assam had become alienated from the AGP because
(among other things) of the party’s demand to scrap the IMDT Act
and because it had come close to the BJP. The AGP–BJP electoral
alliance, however, proved to be a political disaster for the erstwhile
student leaders of AASU who had been easily co-opted by the
establishment thanks to their evident love for all the pomp and pelf
that came with being in power.
Prime Minister Vajpayee and Advani campaigned for the AGP in
Assam. In the run-up to the elections, Vajpayee made a controversial
statement that the Union government would consider providing work
permits to illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. But this statement
evidently did not have much of an impact on the electorate of Assam,
nor did the accusation by the BJP that the Congress was hand-in-glove
with ULFA militants. While both the BJP and the AGP harped on
the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, the statistics issued
by the Census Commission of India indicated that for the first time
in a century, the rate of growth of population in Assam (at around
1.6 per cent per year between 1991 and 2001) was lower than the
average rate of growth of the population in the country as a whole
(roughly 1.8 per cent per annum). The demand for the repeal of
the IMDT Act turned out to be a less emotive issue than had been
presumed by the AGP and the BJP.
The 2001 assembly elections saw the AGP obtaining only 20 seats
in the 126-member assembly against the 59 seats it had held in the
354 DIVIDED WE STAND

outgoing assembly. The Congress obtained a majority on its own

with 71 seats, more than double the 34 seats it had won in the 1996
assembly elections. On May 18 that year, Tarun Gogoi became the
new Chief Minister of Assam.
Dramatic developments in December 2003 were expected to have a
bearing on the fortunes of not just the AGP, but also the BJP and the
Congress in Assam. In that month, the Royal Army of Bhutan, which
shares a border with Assam, launched a massive offensive against
ULFA camps located in Bhutan. The operation was quite successful
in closing down the camps and in flushing out some important ULFA
leaders. New Delhi was quite obviously pleased at this development
and repeatedly tried to drive home the point that other neighbours like
Bangladesh and Pakistan should follow the example set by Bhutan.
The significance of this development was that the BJP would
obviously try to take credit for New Delhi’s success in persuading
Bhutan to cooperate. If the ULFA’s ability to operate in Assam was
seriously affected, the BJP would try to derive political mileage from
the fact that its government was instrumental in solving a problem that
successive Congress and AGP governments had been unable to tackle.
However, that was not to be. The Indian government claimed that
the ULFA had regrouped and strengthened its bases in Bangladesh
from where it continued to strike in Assam, most often targeting
non-Assamese migrant workers from places like Bihar and Jharkhand
rather than Bangladeshi or Bengali migrants.
By the time of the 2006 assembly elections, the situation seemed
ripe for the opposition to cash in on anti-incumbency sentiments
against the Gogoi government. A split in the AGP, however, helped
the Congress. The number of seats held by the Congress in the
assembly came down from 71 to 53 and its vote share shrunk by
nearly 8.5 per cent. Yet, the party was able to form the government by
cobbling up a majority with the support of 12 members belonging to
the Bodoland People’s Progressive Front (Hargrama faction) or the
BPPF(H) and independent MLAs, including Congress rebels.
The official AGP, now led by Brindaban Goswami went along
with the left, and won 24 seats, while the AGP (Progressive)
headed by former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was all
but wiped out with Mahanta only managing to win one out of the
two seats he contested.
 Regional Parties 355

With the Supreme Court of India repealing the controversial

IMDT Act in September 2005, the Manmohan Singh government
moved quickly before the 2006 elections to amend the Foreigners
Act to ensure that the Muslim community in Assam would not
be completely alienated. The move evidently worked, although
the Muslims in the state did vote tactically in certain areas. A new
political outfit called the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF),
comprising Muslim organisations and led by the wealthy businessman
Badruddin Ajmal, made its presence felt for the first time by winning
10 seats in the assembly.
At one stage it had appeared as if Ajmal and the AUDF would play
king-maker in Assam, but incumbent Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi
did not need their support and instead went along with the BPPF(H).
Nevertheless, the significance of the AUDF making its presence felt
in Assam’s political scenario may be gauged from the fact that it won
10 seats out of the 69 it had contested whereas the BJP won the same
number of seats in the state assembly after contesting no less than
125 seats, or all but one.
Over the course of its brief history, the AGP has tried to stick it
out on its own in Assam politics, has flirted with the left—which was
totally opposed to the AASU movement—and then with the BJP. A
priori, an alliance with the BJP seemed the most viable, since the two
parties share a common base—both deriving their support essentially
from within the Asom community. Ironically, this is the strategy that
proved the least fruitful. Where the AGP goes from here remains
to be seen. What is certain though is that a party that arose out of
a movement projecting itself as a challenge to mainstream politics
has today become completely co-opted in that same mainstream.
There is little to distinguish the AGP factions of today from any other
party in the state, though stands on individual issues may differ from
party to party.

National Conference: Keeping New Delhi Happy

The history of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference, more
commonly known as the National Conference, is quite intimately
and inextricably linked with the history of the state itself and it is not
surprising that the NC today is quite radically different in character
356 DIVIDED WE STAND

from the one that was founded by Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah

in 1939. Jammu & Kashmir is at the core of India’s tensions with
Pakistan and hence has attracted considerable international attention.
Moreover, the politics of Jammu & Kashmir is intimately linked
to the question of how the state’s relationship with the rest of India
is to be defined.
When India gained independence from British rule in August
1947, Jammu & Kashmir was not a part of the territory agreed
upon as part of the new Indian Union. Like other princely states,
Jammu & Kashmir too subsequently joined the Union. The process
of its integration into India, however, was quite different from
other princely states. To begin with, J&K was unique among the
princely states in the fact that a Hindu king ruled it though the vast
majority of his subjects were Muslims. Also, unlike in most other
princely states, the king, Maharaja Hari Singh, had not decided to join
either India or Pakistan.
Things changed dramatically in October that year, when Pakistan
first prevented the movement of essential supplies to J&K and
then actively encouraged armed tribesmen to enter Kashmir. Hari
Singh, apprehensive of Pakistan’s intentions, sought India’s help in
countering the offensive. The Indian government made it clear that it
would come to Hari Singh’s defence only if he were willing to join the
Indian Union. On October 26, 1947, Hari Singh, with little choice in
the matter, signed the instrument of accession, which was no different
from those signed by almost 500 other erstwhile rulers of princely
states. The very next day, Indian troops arrived in Kashmir to combat
the Pakistani troops that had come in on the heels of the tribesmen.
On January 1, 1948, Prime Minister Nehru declared a unilateral
ceasefire and India filed a complaint with the United Nations against
Pakistan for invading Kashmir. At this point, Pakistan occupied about
two-fifths of the original area of J&K while India was in control of the
remaining three-fifths. Over the next 55 years, that has not substantially
changed, though the Line of Control has been marginally altered in
the course of the two wars—1965 and 1971—India and Pakistan have
fought since then. United Nations resolutions pending since 1948
have made no difference to the situation on the ground or been able to
make India and Pakistan reach a final settlement on the Kashmir issue.
 Regional Parties 357

The partitioning of Kashmir may not have been accompanied by

the kind of violence and bloodshed that was witnessed in Punjab,
or, to a lesser extent, Bengal, but it continues to rankle much more
than the splitting up of these two states. This is not surprising. Both in
Punjab and in Bengal, the partition was along communal lines. Thus,
the phenomenon of families being separated by international borders
is not quite as widespread in Kashmir, where Kashmiri Muslims
inhabit both sides of the border. Also, of course, from the Pakistani
point of view, J&K remains the most obvious challenge to the ‘two
nation theory’ (the theory which held that Muslims and Hindus in
India were two separate nations, on the basis of which the Mulsim
League demanded partition and got it).
This perhaps explains more than anything else why Kashmir’s
relationship with India—or with Pakistan—remains a live political
issue. This is the context that has defined the politics of the NC and
indeed of other parties in the Kashmir region of J&K. The NC from
the very beginning, therefore, has sought to strike an aggressively
pro-autonomy posture while also distancing itself from those
demanding secession of J&K from India. In fact, till 1969, Sheikh
Abdullah had led a formation called the Plebiscite Front which
continued to demand a plebiscite to determine the will of the people of
the state—whether they wanted to stay with India or not—that Nehru
had offered at the UN. India continued to argue that a plebiscite could
not be held as long as Pakistan occupied part of the territory.
It was only after the ‘Kashmir Accord’ was reached between
Sheikh Abdullah and Indira Gandhi in 1975 that the former gave up
the demand for a plebiscite, disbanded the Plebiscite Front and
rejoined the NC. This was to be the beginning of an era of cosy
relationships between the NC and whichever party happened to be
in power in New Delhi. The NC continued to pay lip service to the
state’s autonomy, but did not really put up any resistance to J&K
being treated like any other state in India.
Periodically, under pressure from competing groups in Kashmir,
the NC has gone through the motions of demanding that the
relationship between the state and New Delhi should go back to
the pre-1953 arrangement, when J&K had its own prime minister,
constitution and flag and New Delhi’s writ ran in the state only in
358 DIVIDED WE STAND

matters of finance, defence and communications. In fact, right up

till 1965, J&K continued to have a prime minister and a president
instead of a chief minister and a governor. However, this has been
perceived as mere posturing not just in New Delhi, but also in
Kashmir itself.
To return to the NC’s penchant for staying on the right side of the
government of India, what had only been a matter of practice from
1975 to 1998 was elevated to the status of principle when Dr. Farooq
Abdullah, who was then Chief Minister of J&K and the president of
the NC, declared that the NC would always support the government
in New Delhi. He sought to justify this ‘principle’ on two grounds,
one applicable not just to J&K and the other specific to his state.
He argued that those who ran governments in India’s smaller states
had no option but to build bridges with the party in power at the
centre, since they were heavily dependent on the Union government
for financial assistance. Further, he added, in the specific case of
J&K, the menace of terrorism made it imperative that Srinagar and
New Delhi pull along well.
Critics of the NC view the process of its ‘co-option’ rather
differently. They point out that J&K is the recipient of generous
transfers of funds. In per capita terms, the residents of J&K have
received more money from New Delhi than people living in any other
state in India barring one, that is Arunachal Pradesh. Yet, ironically,
the people of J&K as well as its politicians complain—and rightly so—
that the state remains economically underdeveloped and dependent
on a few industries such as tourism, handicrafts and horticulture. The
NC’s critics, therefore, claim that the bulk of the money that comes
to the state gets siphoned off by the ruling elite—including politicians
and bureaucrats. Thus, local politicians have a vested interest in
maintaining cordial relations with whoever is in power in New Delhi
to ensure that the flow of funds does not abate.
But, if the NC ran such a thoroughly corrupt administration, what
explains the fact that it managed to remain the dominant political
party in J&K and repeatedly came back to power, till it was deposed
by an alliance of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s People’s Democratic
Party and the Congress in the October 2002 elections? Part of the
explanation lies in the early history of NC rule in J&K. Arguably
 Regional Parties 359

the most crucial step taken by the NC in these early years was the
implementation in 1950 of some of the most radical land reforms
ever seen in India. This step meant that lakhs of ordinary peasants,
who had till that stage been working on people’s lands, became the
owners of the land they tilled. This certainly contributed to the NC
acquiring a sizeable popular base.
The NC’s hold on power, however, hasn’t always remained
secure for such laudable reasons. Few today dispute the fact that
the NC had—particularly in the 1980s—been a major beneficiary of
systematically rigged elections in the states. In fact, most commentators
on Kashmir acknowledge that rigged elections have been a major—
perhaps even the single-most important—factor in alienating large
sections of the people of Kashmir and making them disillusioned with
Indian democracy. Governments in New Delhi and pliant Election
Commissions either connived in this subversion of the electoral process
or at least looked the other way. The reason seems to have been the
belief that the NC was the only political party that could keep J&K
with India and that allowing its rivals in Kashmir to come to power
would have strengthened the secessionists.
Even the 1996 elections, which were held after a prolonged spell
of President’s rule in J&K, were widely perceived as rigged with
widespread allegations of Indian security forces coercing voters to
vote and in some cases to vote for the NC. The official figures suggest
that almost 54 per cent of eligible voters voted in these elections. But
groups like the All Party Hurriyat Conference—a united front of
motley groups including some demanding azadi (freedom) and others
in favour of joining Pakistan—insist that these are highly exaggerated
figures and that barely 10 per cent of the electorate actually voted.
Many would also argue that it was precisely because the 2002
elections were widely recognised as being by and large free and fair that
the NC finally lost power. Whether or not that is entirely true, it threw
up a new coalition in Srinagar—the PDP-Congress coalition. Whether
the PDP is able to redefine the politics of Kashmir or—like the NC—
discredits itself as another pet of New Delhi remains to be seen.
What changed was the NC’s relationship with New Delhi. In July
2003, NC President Omar Abdullah announced that his party was
pulling out of the NDA and its government. Omar admitted that the
360 DIVIDED WE STAND

decision was long overdue and that the NC should have exited from
the NDA when the communal carnage in Gujarat was on. He publicly
apologised for the NC’s silence during that period and was also candid
enough to admit that instead of being seen as a party representing
Kashmir in New Delhi, the NC had over time come to be perceived
in the Valley as New Delhi’s representative in the state.
What explained the dramatic shift in the NC’s attitude towards
those in power in the national capital? Omar Abdullah and his party
would have liked people to believe that it was a genuine case of
introspection leading to correction. What many believed, however,
was that there was a rather more mundane explanation for the parting
of ways between the NC and the Vajpayee government. According
to those who held this view, the NC had been trying to persuade
the BJP to accept Dr. Farooq Abdullah as the NDA’s candidate for
Vice President of India or—failing that—to make him a minister in
the Vajpayee cabinet. It is when these attempts came a cropper that
the NC suddenly discovered the evils of the BJP, argue the cynics.
Whatever the real reasons for the NC’s leaving the NDA, there is
little doubt that the decision was welcomed both by people in the
Kashmir Valley and by Opposition parties. Rallies addressed by
Omar Abdullah in the days immediately following his announcement
reportedly drew huge crowds and he was also soon attending
Opposition conclaves.
Being in opposition has apparently helped the NC. In fact, it
can be argued that while incumbency carries a load in any state in
India, the burden is particularly heavy in J&K. All parties in the
Kashmir Valley have to pronounce themselves in favour of the
state’s autonomy from the Centre, against human rights violations
by security forces and for a ‘healing touch’ towards militants. The
disadvantage the party governing the state has is that it must at the
same time not go overboard on these issues and annoy New Delhi.
Those in Opposition, on the other hand, have no such compulsions.
This was a major factor working in favour of the PDP when it was
out of power and seems to have benefited the NC after it lost power
in the 2002 assembly elections.
The PDP was clearly very aware of the fact that the NC was
sounding more radical and pro-Kashmiri than itself. Even while in
power in the state, therefore, it tried to maintain a somewhat radical
 Regional Parties 361

stance. A good illustration of this point was provided in early 2007.

The PDP, which was the junior partner in the coalition government
headed by Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress, insisted that the Union
government should ‘demilitarise’ the Kashmir Valley, that is, it should
pull out troops stationed in the Valley to combat militants. New Delhi
insisted that demilitarisation would not be possible till such time as
infiltration of militants from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir came to a
complete halt. At the time of writing, in September 2007, speculation
continued on whether the controversy would ultimately take its toll
on the Congress-PDP alliance or the latter would be content with
having portrayed itself as more sensitive to Kashmiri concerns.

Shiromani Akali Dal: Comfortable in Coalitions

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)—or rather one of its predecessors,
the Akali Party—has the distinction of having led the first non-
Congress government ever to be formed in independent India. That
was the government headed by Gian Singh Rarewala formed in
April 1952 in the erstwhile PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab States
Union). Rarewala was himself not a member of the Akali Party at the
time, but an independent MLA. The Akalis, however, were the single-
largest group in the United Front headed by Rarewala. The Congress
had emerged as the largest party in the 60-member PEPSU assembly
after the 1951 elections, but with 26 MLAs was just short of the
halfway mark. The Akalis, who had won 19 seats, cobbled together
the United Front with the help of independent MLAs and the CPI.
Ironically, Rarewala was to later join the Congress in 1956 and become
a minister in Pratap Singh Kairon’s cabinet in 1957, before again
joining the Akalis in 1969, who had by now renamed themselves the
Shiromani Akali Dal.
From that historic beginning in 1951 to date, the Akalis have
periodically participated in coalitions, both in Punjab and in New
Delhi, and have maintained a consistently anti-Congress stance.
The Akalis did not start as a political party or even a political
movement. On the contrary, the SAD traces its origins to an
organisation set up primarily for religious reform within the Sikh
community. This forerunner of today’s SAD was the Gurudwara
Sewak Dal, formed in December 1920 to raise and train volunteers
362 DIVIDED WE STAND

for what came to be known as the Gurudwara Reform Movement.

The primary objective of the movement was to break the stranglehold
of the mahants (priests) on gurudwaras since they had acquired a
reputation for corruption and misuse of their position for personal
gratification. The Gurudwara Sewak Dal was renamed the Akali Dal
in 1921 and SAD the following year.
Though it started primarily as a religious reform organisation,
SAD even in its early days had sections that felt it needed to play a
larger role—whether in India’s struggle for independence or in the
revolts of the peasantry. The embryo of a political party thus existed
even in those early days. As it has evolved, the SAD has remained not
only a party almost solely of Sikhs, but one that provides expression
to Sikh consciousness in all aspects of society, not just religion. It is
important to recognise also that despite being a party with an explicitly
Sikh character, the SAD has never been perceived as a communal
organisation or one that discriminates against non-Sikhs in matters
of state. Its secular credentials have never seriously been in doubt,
though it was not till as late as 1995 that the party permitted non-
Sikhs to become members.
Because of the part-religious, part-political character of the SAD,
Akali politics has traditionally revolved round more than one power
centre, unlike with most other Indian parties. The party president,
the leader of the legislative wing and the head of the Shiromani
Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC)—a body that is
ostensibly purely religious and responsible for the management of
gurudwaras—have all been part of the same loose organisation, but
on occasions at loggerheads with one another. It has been said of
the Akalis that they tend to unite when out of power, but resort to
factional feuds when in power.
There is merit in this apparently sweeping statement given the
number of occasions on which governments in Punjab led by the Akali
Dal have fallen because of internal strife. For instance, between March
1967 and March 1970, the state had three different chief ministers—
all from the Akali Dal—and a brief spell of President’s Rule in
between. Again, when Surjit Singh Barnala became Chief Minister in
September 1985, he lasted less than two years before he was pulled
down by intra-party fights leading to the imposition of President’s rule
in May 1987, which continued for nearly five years till February 1992.
 Regional Parties 363

This was to become the longest spell of President’s Rule in the state,
since it also coincided with the period when Sikh militancy was
at its peak.
Interestingly, one man has been involved in each of these episodes
of factional fighting, either as the incumbent chief minister facing
dissidence or as the man leading the revolt against the chief minister.
He is Prakash Singh Badal, who has proved to be the greatest survivor
in Punjab politics, having served as Chief Minister of the state on
four occasions. The fact that these occasions have been as far apart
as 1970, 1977, 1997 and 2007 is a testimony to Badal’s tenacity through
the ups and downs of electoral politics.
Badal is arguably also the man primarily responsible for the Akali
Dal being perceived as the natural party of the Jat Sikh peasantry in
Punjab. This is no small achievement considering that till the 1960s,
the SAD was a party largely under the leadership of urban Sikhs and
the Sikh farmers by and large voted for the Congress in elections to the
state assembly and Parliament. Of course, the process of the farmers
moving out of the Congress fold has been a general phenomenon in
north India and not just in Punjab, but Badal’s aggressive championing
of issues that appealed to the farmers—like free power, higher support
prices and subsidised fertilisers—certainly helped hasten the process
and ensured that farmers disillusioned with the Congress gravitated
towards the SAD.
The events of the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s further
alienated large sections of Sikhs—and not just those in rural areas—
from the Congress. In retrospect it can be said that the Congress paid
the price for trying to be too clever by half. The rise of militancy in
Punjab might have happened even without the Congress covertly
playing along, but there is little doubt that Giani Zail Singh, who
was Chief Minister from March 1972 to June 1977 and later became
President of India, tacitly encouraged the growth of leaders like Jarnail
Singh Bhindranwale. The idea apparently was that Bhindranwale,
with his militant espousal of the Sikh cause, would provide an
alternative centre of power in Sikh politics and hence reduce the
Akali Dal’s support base. The growing clout of Bhindranwale could
also be expected to heighten tensions within the Akali Dal, between
the faction led by Badal and the one led by Gurcharan Singh Tohra
and Jagdev Singh Talwandi.
364 DIVIDED WE STAND

The plan worked up to a point. Bhindranwale did rapidly become a

cult figure in Sikh politics. Akali leaders were clearly apprehensive of
losing many of their supporters to him, but finding it hard to match
his militant rhetoric, which was increasingly acquiring secessionist
tones. The more moderate Akali stance—which was to demand greater
autonomy for Punjab and indeed all states—did not quite have the
same appeal. The problem, however, was that having tacitly supported
Bhindranwale while he took on the Akalis, Zail Singh and his mentor
Indira Gandhi found that they could not put the genie back into the
bottle once he had served his purpose.
By the beginning of the 1980s, Bhindranwale was no longer just a
leader of a relatively insignificant group called the Damdami Taksal.
He had acquired the halo of a saint and was called Sant Jarnail Singh
Bhindranwale. He not only called upon Sikhs to take up arms against
the Indian state, he also preached the virtues of abstinence. His puritanical
and spartan lifestyle combined with his militant rhetoric proved the
perfect magnet for thousands of unemployed youth. Bhindranwale’s
group started gaining control over many important gurudwaras
in Punjab and the Akal Takht located in the Golden Temple complex
at Amritsar—said to be the holiest shrine of the Sikhs—became the
de-facto headquarters of Bhindranwale and his supporters.
By 1984, the Akal Takht was a hotbed of militant activity and a place
where huge quantities of arms were stocked. In June that year, Indira
Gandhi took a step that few—including Bhindranwale—believed she
would dare take. On June 6, 1984, the Indian army stormed the Akal
Takht using tanks and infantry to flush out Bhindranwale and his men.
Bhindranwale died in the fighting, as did many of his men, but the
army could not achieve its objective without inflicting considerable
damage on the Akal Takht. The incident shocked even those Sikhs
who had no love lost for Bhindranwale. Their holiest shrine, they felt,
had been desecrated by Indira. The government tried in vain to argue
that it was really Bhindranwale who had desecrated the Akal Takht
by using a place of worship as a base for subversive activities.
What followed was Indira Gandhi’s assassination which in turn
sparked off one of the worst communal genocides India has ever
witnessed. The repercussions for the Congress were severe, both
in Punjab and in Delhi. In Delhi, large sections of the Sikhs had
 Regional Parties 365

traditionally been Congress voters and in fact the only Sikh political
leaders in Delhi were in the Congress. Following the storming of
the Akal Takht, however, the community switched en masse to the
BJP, a fact that decisively changed the electoral arithmetic in the
national capital. The Congress had to wait till 1999 before it could
outdo the BJP in elections in Delhi, whether for the Lok Sabha, the
assembly or the local bodies.
Similarly, in the 1985 elections in Punjab after 1984, the Akali Dal
romped home to victory. Again, as with the BJP in Delhi, this was
not so much because of its popularity as on account of the Akalis
becoming the only credible alternative to the Congress. The Akalis,
despite the victory, were in disarray in the state. Throughout the period
of militancy, the Akalis had been marginalised in Punjab, unable to
decide whether they should adopt a stance sympathetic to the militants
or take a firm position against them. Whatever little political resistance
was being offered to the militants came from smaller parties like the
CPI, whose leader Satpal Dang was nationally recognised as one who
was bravely opposing militancy on the ground.
Just before the 1985 elections, however, the Akalis had made a
serious bid to get back into the thick of Punjab politics. The Congress,
now led by Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi, was desperately seeking ways
of dealing with the problem of militancy in Punjab. The Akalis were
equally looking for ways to remain relevant in the politics of the state.
The accord signed between Rajiv Gandhi and Sant Harcharan Singh
Longowal, the Akali Dal president, was a result of this convergence of
necessities between the two traditional rivals in Punjab politics. The
accord sought to convey the impression that it was addressing most
of the genuine concerns of Punjab and the Sikhs. Thus, it provided for
Chandigarh—which was a Union Territory that served as the capital
for both Punjab and neighbouring Haryana—to be transferred to
Punjab. It also stipulated that any river-water sharing arrangement
involving Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan would ensure that Punjab’s
farmers did not get less water than they were already getting.
The accord was denounced as a ‘surrender’ of Punjab’s interests
by the militants. The crucial question of autonomy of the state, they
pointed out, had not been adequately addressed. The Anandpur Sahib
Resolution—a document asking for greater autonomy, and which got
366 DIVIDED WE STAND

its name from the place at which the meeting in which it was adopted
was held—had, the hardliners argued, been effectively consigned to the
dust heap since the accord merely said that it would be ‘referred to the
Sarkaria Commission’ which was dealing with centre–state relations.
Longowal was assassinated in August 1985, even as the campaign
for the September 1985 assembly elections were on. The transfer of
Chandigarh to Punjab, which should have taken place on January 26,
1986 according to the Rajiv–Longowal accord never did take place.
The much-touted accord had effectively been buried within months
of it being signed. The militants could adopt a ‘we told you so’ attitude,
while the Akali Dal was left desperately trying to defend its ‘surrender’.
With the imposition of President’s rule in 1987, politics in Punjab
took a back seat and so did the Akali Dal. The confrontation between
the administration—in particular the police—and the militants took
centrestage. As so often happens in such situations, innocents were
often caught in the crossfire, literally and metaphorically. While the
police was cracking down on those suspected of being sympathetic to
the militants, the militants too were terrorising innocent people into
providing them shelter and money.
Ultimately, the militants gradually lost their ideological edge and
became increasingly seen as extortionists. As incidents of women
being molested and even raped by them grew, Sikh militancy in Punjab
lost its support base. Combined with strong arm tactics by the police,
led by K.P.S. Gill, this helped bring militancy under control by the
beginning of the 1990s.
When the P.V. Narasimha Rao government announced its decision
to hold elections to the state assembly in 1992, almost every party
except the Congress protested saying the situation on the ground was
hardly conducive to the conduct of a free and fair poll. True, militancy
had been considerably reduced from its peak, but it remained a serious
problem. Rao, however, got a pliant Election Commission to hold the
elections despite the protests. The Akali Dal boycotted the elections
and appealed to people not to participate in them. Whether because
of this appeal or because of fear, the turnout in the 1992 elections was
20 per cent, the lowest Punjab has ever witnessed. Despite this, the
political process in Punjab had unmistakably resumed.
 Regional Parties 367

The Akalis, who had been drifting aimlessly till this stage found
once again that they had been given an emotive issue by default.
Since the Congress was identified with the excesses of the police
during the militancy years, the Akalis were the obvious rallying
point for those demanding action against police officers who had
exceeded their brief and made innocents suffer. In the next elections
in 1997, therefore, it came as no surprise that the Akali Dal emerged
as a comfortable winner.
At this stage, the Akali Dal was still a constituent of the United
Front government in New Delhi. However, with the collapse of the
UF in 1998, the Akalis had to look for other options in Punjab. In
the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, therefore, the Akali Dal became the
first of the UF constituents to join the BJP-led alliance. The two
partners complemented each other remarkably well. While the Akali
Dal had a strong base in rural Punjab and among the Sikhs, the BJP
was almost entirely a party of the Hindus in Punjab’s urban centres.
Predictably, the alliance won the overwhelming majority of Punjab’s
13 Lok Sabha seats in 1998.
Since then, the Akali Dal has stuck to the NDA despite occasional
friction with the BJP. It has not managed to replicate the success of
1998, with the Congress winning nine of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in
1999 and then going on to win the state assembly elections in 2001.
This is not to suggest that the relationship between the two parties
has always been smooth. In fact, on one occasion in 2000, the Akali
Dal came close to snapping its ties with the NDA over the creation of
Uttaranchal (now Uttarakhand). The bone of contention was the
district of Udham Singh Nagar, in the ‘terai’ (foothills) region of Uttar
Pradesh, which was dominated by rich Sikh farmers who had settled in
what was once marshland but has now been transformed into a fertile
grain and sugarcane cultivating area. The Sikh farmers of Udham
Singh Nagar were averse to the idea of their district being made part
of Uttaranchal. The Akali Dal championed their cause, threatening
to withdraw support to the Vajpayee government unless the map of
Uttaranchal was redrawn to exclude Udham Singh Nagar. Eventually,
the matter was sorted out, but for a while the threat seemed serious.
Similarly, the Akali Dal was at the forefront in opposing moves
by New Delhi to hike fertiliser prices or keep the minimum support
368 DIVIDED WE STAND

prices for procurement of grain by official agencies in check. With

support from other ‘pro-farmer’ parties like Ajit Singh’s RLD and
Om Prakash Chautala’s INLD—it successively resisted such moves.
The most obvious instances were in 1998, when the then Finance
Minister Yashwant Sinha announced in his budget that urea prices
would be hiked, but had to beat a hasty retreat within days. Similarly,
Jaswant Singh tried in his budget of 2003–2004 to raise fertiliser prices
by barely 2–3 per cent. Once again, the Akali Dal together with other
parties was able to force a rollback.
Despite such periodic tensions, there was little reason to believe
that the BJP-Akali Dal tie-up would disintegrate. The Akali Dal had
a long history of coalition politics and was unlikely to overlook the
fact that the BJP remained a useful ally in taking on the Congress in
Punjab. More importantly, there was hardly any other party in Punjab
that could prove even a partial substitute for losing the BJP’s support
base. The CPI, which once had a reasonably strong base in the state,
is too emaciated a force to be a major ally and the BSP could not ally
with the Akalis since their support bases—the lower-caste Sikhs and
the Jat Sikhs, respectively—were at loggerheads with each other.
The outcome of the February 2007 assembly elections in Punjab
is only likely to cement the ties between the Akali Dal and the BJP.
The alliance of the two parties got a comfortable majority, winning
67 seats in the 117-member assembly, but unlike in the past the Akalis
did not have a majority on their own. While they had won 48 seats,
just seven more than in the 2002 elections, the BJP had increased
its tally from a mere three to 19. For the first time, therefore, the
Akalis were forming a government that would be dependent on
the BJP for its survival. The election results also made it obvious that the
slew of corruption cases initiated against Parkash Singh Badal and his
son Sukhbir by the Congress government headed by Amarinder Singh
had not impressed the electorate. Amarinder’s style of functioning,
perceived by some as ‘imperious’ and smacking of his royal lineage,
may also have added to the anti-incumbency sentiments and prevented
the Congress from fighting the elections as a cohesive force. (After
the elections, Amarinder’s arch rival in the party, former Chief
Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, became leader of the opposition in the
state assembly.)
 Regional Parties 369

INLD and RLD: Fathers and Sons

The names of both the Indian National Lok Dal led by Om Prakash
Chautala and the Rashtriya (or National) Lok Dal headed by
Ajit Singh would literally imply that the two political parties have a
‘national’ character. But the fact is that the INLD and the RLD, both
offshoots of the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD), are confined to specific
geographical areas—the INLD to Haryana and the RLD to western
Uttar Pradesh. Unlike the BLD that in its heyday in the 1970s had
a base almost through all of the Hindi heartland—from Haryana
to Bihar—the INLD and the RLD have not been able to expand
their political influence beyond areas where Jat farmers comprise a
substantial portion of the population. In fact, curiously, these two
political parties have relatively little influence over the Jat community
based in Rajasthan, which borders Haryana.
Another common factor binding these two parties is the fact that
their leaders are both sons of prominent political personalities—
Ajit Singh is the son of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan
Singh while Chautala’s father was Chaudhary Devi Lal, who served
as Deputy Prime Minister in V.P. Singh’s government in 1989–1990.
Yet another common aspect of the working of the INLD and the
RLD has been the utterly opportunistic manner in which they have
formed and broken alliances with other political parties.
Like their fathers, Ajit Singh and Chautala have relied primarily
on projecting themselves as champions of the interests of farmers to
garner votes, though Chautala also sought to project himself as a Chief
Minister who was rapidly modernising and industrialising Haryana.
Of the two, Chautala has been the more successful in taking over the
mantle from his father, while Ajit Singh’s stature as a leader has never
come close to matching his father’s. At the height of his popularity,
Charan Singh was not only the undisputed leader of the Jats of both
western UP and Haryana, but had also successfully cobbled together a
caste-based social coalition popularly referred to in Uttar Pradesh by
the acronym AJGAR, standing for Ahirs (Yadavs), Jats, Gujjars and
Rajputs. He had also emerged as a leader of the intermediate castes in
other parts of the Hindi heartland. In contrast, Ajit Singh has struggled
to even keep his hold over the Jats of western UP secure. So much
370 DIVIDED WE STAND

so that in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, he was himself defeated by

Som Pal from Baghpat, the constituency that had been his father’s
pocket borough and had elected Ajit Singh himself on four occasions
prior to 1989.
To be fair to Ajit Singh, the comparison with Chautala is perhaps
unduly harsh on him. Singh could legitimately argue that the number
of Lok Sabha constituencies in which the RLD has influence and a real
chance of winning is significantly larger than those in which the INLD
is a serious contender. The RLD can claim considerable influence
in at least 14 seats in UP, whereas the INLD cannot realistically lay
claim to any influence outside the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana.
While this is true to a great extent, unfortunately for Ajit Singh, the
14 constituencies in which his party wields influence are part of a state
that had 85 Lok Sabha seats before it was bifurcated and even today
has 80 seats. Thus, while the INLD has the ability to come to power
in Haryana, the RLD can at best hope to be a minor partner in any
alliance that rules Uttar Pradesh.
This could well explain the RLD’s periodic attempts to raise the
demand for a separate ‘Harit Pradesh’ (green state) to be carved out
of Uttar Pradesh, comprising 22 of the state’s western districts. This
demand was also raised by the INLD in the 2002 state assembly
elections, when it was trying to establish an independent presence in
UP, without much success. Though neither Chautala nor Singh can
seriously believe that they will make a serious impact in each other’s
territories, both sides keep up the apparent battle to inherit the legacy
of Charan Singh. This has given rise to animosity between the two,
which they have made no secret of.
Thus, for instance, when Ajit Singh—in one of his many flip-
flops—decided to join the NDA in 2001 after having contested the
1999 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Congress, Chautala
publicly threatened that he would quit the NDA if Ajit Singh were
made a member of Vajpayee’s cabinet. Eventually, when in July 2001
Ajit Singh became Union Agriculture Minister, Chautala was left
sulking. There was precious little he could do, apart from ‘clarifying’
that he had never questioned the Prime Minister’s prerogative to
appoint anyone he liked as a member of his cabinet.
 Regional Parties 371

However, in the February 2002 assembly elections in UP, Chautala

saw an opportunity to do some damage to the RLD’s prospects. He
put up candidates in more than 100 constituencies in western UP,
knowing full well that none of them had even a reasonable chance of
getting elected. The idea was to split the Jat vote in these constituencies,
thereby sabotaging the prospects of victory for some of the RLD’s
candidates. Throughout the campaign, Chautala also concentrated his
attack on Ajit Singh, accusing him of having betrayed the cause of
Harit Pradesh once he had secured a ministerial berth. The beneficiaries
of the rivalry between the INLD and the RLD—which were
both members of the NDA—turned out to be the SP and the BSP.
Chautala’s apparent indignation at Ajit Singh’s opportunism
was hypocritical to say the least. The Haryana leader has himself
shifted political allegiances with alacrity in an expedient manner. For
instance, the INLD had been a part of the United Front government
that was in power from June 1996 to February 1998. In the Lok Sabha
elections that followed, the party contested the polls as part of the UF
with its main rivals in Haryana being the Congress led by Bhajan Lal
and the Haryana Vikas Party (HVP) led by former Congress Chief
Minister, Bansi Lal, in alliance with the BJP. When the results were
announced, the INLD had won four out of the state’s 10 seats and
its ally the BSP (which was not part of the UF but had tied up with
the INLD in Haryana) had secured one seat. The BJP won two of
the remaining five seats, the Congress winning three. The HVP could
not win a single seat.
What followed was opportunism at its worst. Since the BJP-led
alliance had not secured a majority in the 543-member Lok Sabha,
it was left hunting for potential new allies. The constituents of the
UF, which had performed quite poorly in the 1998 elections, became
obvious targets. The INLD was just one of the many parties in the UF
which was wooed by the BJP to support its government in New Delhi.
Like the DMK, the TDP and the NC, the INLD too decided it wanted
a piece of the national cake. But that was not all. Having joined the BJP
at the national level, the INLD set about ensuring that the quid pro
quo was complete. In 1999, the BJP—which had partnered the HVP in
the 1996 assembly elections and joined the coalition government
in the state—withdrew its support to Chief Minister Bansi Lal,
372 DIVIDED WE STAND

precipitating the fall of his government. It then extended support

to Chautala to form the next government. The flimsy pretext of the
BJP being dissatisfied with the Bansi Lal government’s performance
fooled nobody.
Described in his official curriculum vitae as a ‘computer expert’
educated at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and the
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Ajit Singh had worked in
the American computer industry for 15 years before entering the
hurly-burly of politics in India’s Hindi heartland. Like Chautala, Ajit
Singh too has excelled at switching allegiances to be on the right side of
whoever happens to be in power in New Delhi. When the Janata Dal
was in power between 1989 and 1991, Singh was in the JD. When the
Narasimha Rao government was struggling to win a vote of confidence
in the Lok Sabha in 1994, Rao found Ajit Singh willing to bail him
out. The price the Jat leader extracted for his support in a time of
need was a berth in the Union Cabinet. In February 1995, Ajit Singh
became Cabinet Minister for Food in the Rao government. When
the UF came to power in 1996, Ajit Singh was again on the winning
side and was made a Cabinet Minister yet again. In 2001, he joined
the Vajpayee government, despite the fact that he had contested the
1999 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Congress. Again in 2003,
he extended support to Mulayam Singh’s government in UP in return
for some of his MLAs being made ministers.
Despite all these flip-flops—or perhaps because of them—Ajit
Singh has failed to outflank his bete noire in Uttar Pradesh politics,
Mulayam Singh Yadav. Until the fall of the V.P. Singh government
in November 1990, Ajit Singh had tried to better Mulayam Singh
Yadav while remaining in the same party, the Janata Dal. Since then,
he has been part of virtually every possible political formation or
combination. However, while he has remained a leader in only one
region of UP, Mulayam has grown in stature to become one of the
state’s most important leaders and even a national leader of sorts.
Chautala, who has been sworn in as Chief Minister of Haryana no
less than five times (in December 1989, July 1990, March 1991, July
1999 and March 2000), had a rather controversial first term as Chief
Minister that began on December 2, 1989, after his father Devi Lal
was designated Deputy Prime Minister in the V.P. Singh government.
 Regional Parties 373

At the time he was sworn in as Chief Minister, Chautala was a member

of the Rajya Sabha and he was required to win an assembly election.
He chose to contest a by-election in February 1990 from the Meham
constituency against a popular Congress candidate Anand Singh
Dangi (who was once Chautala’s colleague in the Congress but had
later become a bitter rival).
During the election, senior policemen who were stationed at
Mokhra Madina village claimed they were attacked by a mob that
included Dangi’s supporters. Subsequently, three persons died in
police firing and another was killed in a separate incident. The Meham
by-election was countermanded in the wake of allegations by Dangi
and others to the effect that state government officers and policemen
had rigged the polls to ensure Chautala’s victory. After elections were
conducted again, Chautala was declared the winner. A commission of
inquiry was later instituted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court
and criminal cases were registered against police officers present
during the Meham incident after Bhajan Lal of the Congress party
became Haryana’s Chief Minister in 1991. While neither Chautala
nor any Haryana police officer was formally indicted for what had
taken place, the stigma of the ‘mayhem in Meham’ remained with
him for many years.
Chautala’s attempts at portraying himself as a farmer leader
too have not always been successful. His most significant setback
in this regard came in 2002, when his erstwhile ally, Mahendar
Singh Tikait, the leader of the pro-farmer Bharatiya Kisan Union
(BKU), led an agitation against Chautala’s government in Haryana
on the issue of electricity dues. Tikait charged Chautala with going
back on his election promise of waiving all past arrears. With the state
government taking a tough stand, the agitation took a violent turn
resulting in policemen being taken hostage by farmers Thereafter, the
police fired on protesting farmers. While the issue died down, it dented
Chautala’s pro-farmer image to some extent. To his credit, however,
unlike Ajit Singh, Chautala did not remain content merely projecting
a uni-dimensional image of himself as a farmer leader. He assiduously
tried to project himself as a dynamic chief minister who was keen on
implementing economic reforms; one who was determined to make
Haryana one of the country’s most industrialised and technologically
advanced states.
374 DIVIDED WE STAND

Despite these attempts, Chautala’s government was perceived to be

extremely corrupt. Individuals close to the Chief Minister, including
his relatives, reportedly amassed fortunes through land deals, while
officials seen as honest and willing to tackle corruption were harassed.
Such a perception, along with the dent in his pro-farmer image
contributed to the INLD’s defeat in the assembly elections of 2005.
While the party’s vote share declined only marginally from 29.6 per
cent to 27 per cent, its tally of seats plummeted from 47 to 9 in a 90-
member assembly.
As for Ajit Singh, he quit the Vajpayee government in a huff in
May 2003 when he heard that he would be removed from his position
as Union Agriculture Minister and replaced by Rajnath Singh, former
BJP Chief Minister of UP. Soon thereafter, he met Congress President
Sonia Gandhi and Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh and said
he was willing to support them to topple the Mayawati government
regime in UP.
Ajit Singh asked his party’s 14 MLAs, including five ministers, to
resign from the state government and herded them away from the heat
of Lucknow to more pleasant climes, first to Pachmarhi and then to
Srinagar, so that they would not be ‘tempted’ to defect. As already
mentioned, the RLD did ultimately join a coalition led by Mulayam
to form the government in Lucknow. As the government neared the
end of its term in early 2007, Ajit Singh withdrew support to the
SP-led government. While the RLD claimed that it was doing so
because the government had been unfair to sugarcane farmers in
fixing the prices at which sugar mills buy cane and also because the
law and order situation in UP had deteriorated, few were convinced
by such claims. It was widely perceived as yet another instance of the
RLD supremo keeping all options open on the eve of an election so
that he could end up backing the winning horse. Ajit Singh continues
to remain a politician who has had at best modest electoral success,
but more than proportionate success in sharing power, whether in
Lucknow or in New Delhi.

Shiv Sena: Riding the Hindutva Tiger

It would be difficult to find any political leader of significance
anywhere in the world who openly praises Adolf Hitler for his
 Regional Parties 375

‘nationalism’. The founder leader of the Shiv Sena, a right-wing

political party with a base in Maharashtra, specifically Mumbai,
Balasaheb Thackeray (pronounced Thaak-re), former cartoonist, is
one person who remains unabashed and uninhibited in his adulation
for the German dictator.
The Shiv Sena, it is believed, was used by textile mill owners of
Mumbai to counter the left trade unions in the commercial capital
through the 1960s and 1970s. The Sena’s strident rhetoric against
‘outsiders’—people who were not natives of Maharashtra—and in
favour of ‘sons of the soil’ was a very useful tool in dividing the
workers, large sections of whom were migrants from states like Tamil
Nadu, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. The Sena in its early years
was also not averse to using brute force to break up strikes.
While the Sena cut its political teeth in the movement for including
the Dharwar and Belgaum districts of adjoining Karnataka in
Maharashtra, it is not surprising, therefore, that it first consolidated
its strength in the city of Mumbai and surrounding industrial areas
like Thane. Having tasted considerable success in breaking the back
of the left trade unions, it then went on to capture many of the unions
and hence establish a base for electoral conquests in the future.
The first major electoral success for the Shiv Sena—which uses a
snarling tiger as its party symbol—came when it won the Bombay
Municipal Corporation elections in 1968, barely two years after the
party formally came into existence on June 19, 1966. The Sena owed
its victory in part to dissension within the Congress, in particular to
the confrontation between the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee
(BPCC) and the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC).
The two Congress committees were bitterly opposed to each other
because of the contradictory stands they had taken on an extremely
emotive issue: the creation of the state of Maharashtra from the
erstwhile Bombay Presidency. While the BPCC, dominated by the
city’s industrial and trading elite, was against the idea of Bombay being
part of Maharashtra, the MPCC, which was dominated by the rural
elite of what is today western Maharashtra, had argued for Bombay
being part of the new state.
This conflict within the ranks of the Congress certainly helped the
Shiv Sena in the elections for the Bombay Municipal Corporation.
But, it wasn’t just a victory by default. The Sena’s virulent campaign
376 DIVIDED WE STAND

against the lungi walas—a disparaging sartorial term used to describe

those from the southern states of India—also played a significant
part. Migrants from the south, particularly from Tamil Nadu, had
a considerable share in white-collar jobs in Bombay and the Sena’s
demand that these jobs should go to native Maharashtrians found
an echo among the Maharashtrian middle class, given the context of
rising unemployment. The Sena chose to attack restaurants run by
south Indians to highlight its opposition to ‘outsiders’.
Despite this early success, the Sena remained essentially a party
confined to Mumbai and some neighbouring smaller industrial
towns till the mid-1980s. Through the late 1960s, the 1970s and the
early-1980s, the Sena experimented with various alliances, without
succeeding in making a major impact on the politics of Maharashtra.
According to Praveen Swamy (Frontline, May 26, 2001):

It is also instructive to note that opportunistic alliances have been

a second key element of Sena strategy. Many of its collaborators
have been improbable allies. It fought the 1973 Mumbai municipal
elections, for example, in alliance with the pro-Dalit Republican
Party of India, and then had its candidate elected as Mayor in a deal
with the Muslim League, the socialists, the Congress (O), and both
the BPCC and the MPCC; all these were wooed and in turn courted
the Sena. The only consistent element in Sena politics was its hostile
anti-communism, a project that had the gleeful support of both
factions of the Congress. Through the 1970s, Sena gangs repeatedly
attacked leading communist trade union leaders, and in 1973
were responsible for the murder of popular Parel MLA Krishna
Desai. It was only in 1984, with the Sena discredited as a criminal
mafia and in electoral decline, that Thackeray sought alliances
with the Hindu Right, first forming the Hindu Mahasangh, and
then allying with the BJP.

The period since 1984 has seen the Sena acquiring the image that
has now come to stay—as a rabidly anti-Muslim organisation and
one that believes in violence as a means of getting its point of view
accepted. Thus, the Shiv Sena proudly took credit for the fact that
its supporters actively participated in the demolition of the Babri
mosque. It has also been at the forefront of the campaign to oust
‘illegal’ Bangladeshi migrants from Mumbai and other parts of the
country. While the issue is ostensibly one of national sovereignty and
 Regional Parties 377

preserving the sanctity of international borders, the Sena’s interest

in it clearly stems from the fact that the Bangladeshi migrants also
happen to be Muslims.
For six years, between December 1995 and December 2001,
Thackeray had in fact been disenfranchised because he had been held
guilty of delivering speeches and writing articles that were considered
communally inflammatory. During the hearing of this criminal case
(which was upheld by the Supreme Court), there was a marked
contrast between Thackeray’s conciliatory attitude in court and his
public belligerence.
While the BJP–Shiv Sena government was in power in Maharashtra,
it spared no effort to prevent the smooth functioning of the Justice
B.N. Srikrishna commission of inquiry. The commission’s report
had categorically blamed the Sena for fomenting the violence that
had been largely targeted against Muslims, though it was also critical
of the failure of the state government to quickly contain the violence
that left over 1,000 killed and many more injured and rendered
homeless. At the time of the riots, the Maharashtra government was
headed by Congress Chief Minister Sudhakar Rao Naik, who was
not exactly on the best of terms with fellow Congress leader from
Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar (who was then Union Defence Minister
in the Narasimha Rao government).
The BJP-Sena government stalled the presentation of the
Srikrishna commission report in the state assembly for as long as it
possibly could. And not surprisingly, the state government headed by
Manohar Joshi (who went on to become Union Minister for Heavy
Industry and Public Enterprises and subsequently, Speaker of the
Lok Sabha) chose to reject the report’s findings and not accept most
of its recommendations that called for punitive legal action against
Sena supporters allegedly responsible for the communal carnage—the
likes of which had never been witnessed in Mumbai and did much to
tarnish the cosmopolitan image of a city that is considered by many
to be the bastion of capitalism in India.
In September–October 1999, during the state assembly elections—
which were held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections—the
Congress claimed during its campaign that it would properly
implement the recommendations of the Srikrishna commission if it
were voted to power. Eventually, the Congress came to power in the
378 DIVIDED WE STAND

state by forming a coalition government with the Nationalist Congress

Party. But this government, headed by Vilasrao Deshmukh, did
not do much to follow up its election campaign promises. At one
stage in July 2000 it appeared as if the Congress-NCP government
would initiate stern action against Thackeray when state Home
Minister Chhagan Bhujbal (a former Shiv Sainik himself who had
broken away from Thackeray) indicated that the police might arrest
his former mentor. (The non-implementation of the recommendations
of the Srikrishna Commission report remained a live political issue
till the time of writing in September 2007 with sections of the
Congress criticising the Vilasrao Deshmukh government in the state
for dragging its feet in redressing the grievances of those who had
suffered almost 15 years earlier).
As soon as Thackeray’s arrest seemed possible, the Shiv Sena
threatened that violence would rock Mumbai if he were arrested. In
New Delhi, the Shiv Sena ministers in the Union government—besides
Joshi, such ministers included Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers
Suresh Prabhu and Minister of State for Finance Balasaheb Vikhe
Patil—decided to resign from the government in protest and stayed
away from work for nearly a week demanding that Prime Minister
Vajpayee intervene to prevent Thackeray’s arrest in Mumbai.
What was eventually enacted was a damp squib, with Thackeray
being released within minutes of being ‘arrested’. Several observers
felt that the Congress-NCP government had simply lost its nerve
and sought a face-saving way out of the mess. Whether that is true
or not, this was not the first time that Thackeray had successfully
dared his opponents to arrest him. At the height of the communal
riots in December 1992–January 1993, when calls for Thackeray’s
arrest were mounting and the Naik government seemed to be toying
with the idea, the Sena had threatened that blood would flow on the
streets of Mumbai if Balasaheb were placed behind bars. Not only
was Thackeray not arrested, the Mumbai police actually went round
town announcing from loudspeakers mounted on police jeeps that
‘rumours’ about the impending arrest of the Shiv Sena chief were
false. The police later justified this action on the ground that it was
necessary to diffuse tension in the city to prevent the law and order
situation from getting completely out of hand.
There is a section of opinion that argues that Thackeray is just an
overgrown bully and that like all bullies he is essentially a coward.
 Regional Parties 379

Those who subscribe to this view point out that after the bomb blasts
of March 1993, including one very close to Thackeray’s residence and
another near the Sena headquarters, there was no further communal
violence in Mumbai. Hence, they argue, the state government
should have called Thackeray’s bluff and arrest him without fear of
the consequences. Whatever the merits of this hypothesis, it was not
put to the test.
Since 1984, the Sena and the BJP have remained affiliated to each
other and Sena supremo Thackeray has not found it necessary to go
along with any other political party, in contrast to the Sena’s fast
changing alliances in the past. The Sena, despite its ideological affinity
with the BJP, however, has not always supported the larger party.
It has periodically sought to distinguish itself as the more ‘radical’
of the Hindutva parties. Just as the BJP has time and again accused
the Congress of ‘appeasing minorities’, the Sena has been critical of
the BJP for its alleged appeasement of ‘secularists’. One of the more
obvious attempts by the Sena to portray itself as the more radical
Hindutva party was in 2002, when Thackeray grandly announced
that his party would form ‘suicide squads’ of Hindus to counter the
suicide squads of the Kashmiri militants. Not surprisingly, nothing
has since been heard of such Hindu suicide squads, but Thackeray
had derived the limited mileage that he sought.
The tensions within the Sena-BJP alliance in Maharashtra were
most evident after they lost power in 1999. In mid-2000, at a time
when Thackeray was besieged by criminal cases filed against him, BJP
leader Gopinath Munde (who was earlier Deputy Chief Minister in
the Manohar Joshi government and was the brother-in-law of the late
Pramod Mahajan) converted a public rally by the BJP into a Sena-
bashing session. He accused the Sena of being selective in its use of
Hindutva and claimed that the BJP was more faithful to the ideology,
sticking with it even through difficult times. Relations between the
two allies deteriorated quite sharply after this incident and the BJP
even suggested that it would contest elections for local bodies in
Maharashtra—held in September that year—without the Sena as a
partner. Bickering within the Sena-BJP alliance became so endemic
that there was even speculation on whether the BJP was attempting
to topple the Vilasrao Deshmukh government by forging an alliance
with the NCP rather than the Sena.
380 DIVIDED WE STAND

This, of course, did not happen, and the Sena and BJP soon mended
fences, but the alliance has never been free of tension and jockeying
for positions in the state. Not surprisingly, this had its impact on the
coalition in New Delhi as well, with the Sena often going public with
its criticism of the Vajpayee government on different issues. On several
occasions, for instance, Thackeray sought to rubbish the government’s
peace talks with Pakistan, arguing that the only way to settle the
India-Pakistan dispute was to teach Pakistan a military lesson by
forcibly occupying Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The Shiv Sena chief
even went to the extent of opposing cricket matches between the two
neighbouring countries. In January 1999, a relatively unknown Sena
supporter in the capital went as far as digging up the cricket pitch and
filling up the holes with oil in New Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium
in the middle of the night to prevent the test match that was scheduled
to start the following day. The Sena has also opposed performances
by Pakistani artistes like the popular ghazal singer Mehdi Hasan and
was also allegedly responsible for an attack on film star Dilip Kumar’s
residence after he was awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan—the highest
civilian award of the Government of Pakistan.
Another occasion on which the Sena openly attacked the Vajpayee
government was in early 2001, when editorials written by Thackeray
in the Saamna were scathing in their reference to Brajesh Mishra,
Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and the government’s
National Security Advisor. The editorials suggested what many
believed: that Mishra had acquired power way beyond what was
desirable and that his competence also left much to be desired. The
editorials came at a time when several in the media were already
questioning the ‘extra-constitutional’ nature of the clout wielded by
a coterie in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) led by Mishra and
including Nand Kishore Singh, a career bureaucrat who had retired
but was an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the PMO. Thackeray
also questioned the clout of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s foster son-in-
law Ranjan Bhattacharya. The attack on the PMO from one of the
BJP’s closest and biggest allies was particularly embarrassing because
of its timing.
Sanjay Nirupam, then a Sena MP perceived as being a young
firebrand who enjoyed the confidence of Thackeray, initiated another
of the periodic spats between the BJP and the Sena in 2002, when he
attacked Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie in Parliament for the
 Regional Parties 381

manner in which a public sector hotel, the Centaur Hotel at Juhu

near Mumbai’s international airport, had been privatised. Nirupam
joined the Opposition in attacking the government for irregularities
in the deal and even hinted that Shourie was personally involved in
the alleged irregularities and that the Minister had swung the deal
to favour an old friend, charges that Shourie denied. Ultimately, the
controversy died down, but it did underline once again that the BJP
could not take the Sena for granted.
Nirupam had on at least one other occasion in the past embarrassed
the Vajpayee government after the former Chairman of the Unit Trust
of India, P.S. Subramanyam, had been arrested by the CBI for alleged
financial misdemeanours. Nirupam created a furore when he released
documents that indicated that Ranjan Bhattacharya and N.K. Singh
had been calling Subramanyam frequently on his mobile telephone.
Singh later sought to justify the calls he had made to the disgraced
UTI Chairman by describing them as ‘routine’.
Nirupam ultimately left the Shiv Sena—Sainiks say he was
expelled, Nirupam himself claimed he resigned. The ostensible issue
was Nirupam’s discomfort with the strident stance adopted by the
Sena against people from Bihar and eastern UP in Mumbai. Nirupam
himself is from Bihar, perhaps the only Bihari leader the Sena has ever
had in Maharashtra. The immediate provocation for Nirupam and the
Sena parting ways was the former’s decision to raise in Parliament
the controversial allotment of equity shares in Reliance Infocomm—a
telecommunications service provider—to individuals close to former
Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan at extremely low prices.
Thackeray has not been averse to occasionally establishing that ‘he
is the boss’ in the relationship between the two pro-Hindutva parties.
For example, Suresh Prabhu, who had managed to earn a reputation
for himself as a dynamic Union Power Minister in a fairly short
period of time, was suddenly asked to put in his papers by the Sena
chief. Thackeray had ostensibly decided that Prabhu was needed for
party work in Maharashtra, though the political grapevine suggested
that the move was prompted by Thackeray’s feeling that Prabhu
was not doing enough for the Sena in the Union government.
Vajpayee and other senior BJP leaders were quite evidently upset at
Prabhu being pulled out of the government, but Thackeray not only
stuck to his decision, but also ensured that the man replacing Prabhu
in the power ministry would be another Sainik, Ananth Geethe.
382 DIVIDED WE STAND

The Sena’s ‘cultural policing’ has also proved an embarrassment

for the BJP on several occasions. For instance, the Sena decided to
‘enforce’ a self-proclaimed ban on the film Fire directed by Mira Nair
on the grounds that it depicted Indian women indulging in lesbianism,
which was apparently against Indian culture. Earlier, during the tenure
of the Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra, its Culture Minister,
Pramod Navalkar, a Sainik, had earned a dubious reputation for moral
policing, raving and ranting against young couples dating and pubs.
Despite all the embarrassment and the periodic friction, what has
kept the BJP firmly wedded to the Sena in Maharashtra for close
to two decades? Part of the reason of course lies in the fact that the
ideological affinity between the two parties is strong enough to offset
minor—or at times even major—irritants. But the bonding is not all
ideological. The BJP is also acutely aware of the fact that the Sena has
over the years acquired a strong base in a section of Maharashtrian
society that is electorally crucial—the upper-caste Marathas. The
Maratha community had traditionally been loyal to the Congress, and
the BJP—or its forerunner the BJS—had never succeeded in making
a dent in this section. The Sena, on the other hand, has managed to
woo large sections of the Marathas. In fact, studies have shown that
in Maharashtra today, the NCP and the Sena are the two parties that
contend for the bulk of the Maratha vote, with the Congress left to
mop up the crumbs. The OBCs constitute another section into which
the Sena has made significant inroads and the BJP has not. For the
BJP, therefore, the Sena serves as the ideal complement to its own
electoral base in the state.
In December 2003, however, there were signs that the BJP was
making a serious attempt to widen its options in Maharashtra by
roping in the NCP. Had the attempt succeeded, the BJP’s bargaining
position vis-à-vis the Shiv Sena would have dramatically improved.
Not only would the NCP have brought into the NDA’s kitty
additional Maratha votes, it would also have left the Congress on its
own. But this did not happen, with Pawar preferring to remain part
of the alliance with the Congress.
In the 2004 assembly elections in Maharashtra, the Sena lost more
support than its partner, the BJP. In the 288-member assembly, the
number of seats held by the Sena came down to 62 from 69 in 1999
 Regional Parties 383

whereas the number of seats held by the BJP decreased from 56 to 54.
It seemed as if some of the Thackeray charm was wearing a bit thin.
With Thackeray growing older, the issue of who would succeed
him as the leader of the Sena cropped up. For many years, it was
assumed that his nephew Raj, who some saw as a replica of Thackeray
in his younger days, would succeed him. Interestingly, the debate on
who would lead the Sena always remained centred around Thackeray’s
own family. The question was whether Raj should be preferred over
Thackeray’s own son Uddhav. Senior party leaders like Manohar Joshi
or Narayan Rane simply did not figure in this debate. For a party that
had raved and ranted about the ‘dynastic rule’ of the Nehru-Gandhi
family in the Congress, this was hypocritical to say the least.
Rane left the party in 2005—evidently convinced that he had no
future in the Sena—to join the Congress. His exit was a severe blow to
the Sena in Konkan, a part of the coastal region of the state where it had
traditionally been dominant. Not only did Rane himself leave the Sena,
he took along with him a group of MLAs. Most of them subsequently
successfully fought bye-elections on the Congress ticket.
The ego clashes within the Sena’s second generation leadership led
to another major setback after Thackeray announced that Uddhav
would succeed him as the Sena president. Raj quit the party in
January 2006 saying the Sena was being run by ‘petty clerks’ and
hence had fallen from its former glory, while asserting that his respect
for Thackeray senior had in no way diminished. What was evident
was that he could not accept Uddhav as his leader. Raj set up his
own political outfit, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Some
analysts predicted that Raj, who was undoubtedly more charismatic
than Uddhav, would be able to wean away a large section of Sena
supporters to his party.
The hypothesis was put to the test during the elections to municipal
bodies in Maharashtra in February 2007. The MNS did make an
impact and would perhaps have been a significant spoiler for the
Sena. Thankfully for Uddhav, however, the Congress and the NCP
did not contest the elections as an alliance. The resultant division in
the ‘secular’ vote meant that the Sena-BJP alliance did quite well,
retaining the prestigious Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation—the
richest municipal body in the country—though with fewer seats than
384 DIVIDED WE STAND

in the last elections. The alliance also performed well in Ulhasnagar

and Thane—both adjoining Mumbai—and in Nagpur and Nashik.
The election results may have postponed soul-searching in the
Sena on the viability of its future political strategy, but it would
be premature to see this as signalling a revival of the right-wing alliance
in Maharashtra. In the second quarter of 2007, relations between the
BJP and the Sena soured because the latter refused to oppose Pratibha
Patil’s candidature for the post of President of India on the ground
that she was from Maharashtra. The Sena refused to go along with
the BJP and the NDA in supporting Vice President Bhairon Singh
Shekhawat. A few months later, BJP-Sena relations were back on an
even keel following a meeting between Uddhav and Advani.

Nationalist Congress Party: Pawar Politics

Certain regional political parties were formed on the basis of specific
agendas—for instance, anti-Brahminism in the case of the DMK and
Assamese sub-nationalism in the case of the AGP—that lost their
relevance with the passage of time. The parties, however, continued to
exist if not thrive. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is perhaps
the most apt example of a political formation that was formed on
account of a specific issue, namely, the foreign origin of Congress
President Sonia Gandhi, that lost its relevance within a few years of
the party being born.
That the BJP-led NDA would make Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origin
a major issue was hardly surprising. What did surprise quite a few
was when, on the eve of the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, three Congress
leaders decided to part ways with the parent party on the issue of
whether it would be appropriate for a person of foreign origin to
hold the highest postion in the country’s government. What these
leaders insisted on was that the Congress should make it clear that
Sonia Gandhi would not become Prime Minister of India should the
party be in a position to form the government or head a coalition that
would form the government in New Delhi.
These three leaders, who went on to form the NCP, were Sharad
Pawar, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Union Defence
Minister in the Narasimha Rao Cabinet, and leader of the Opposition
 Regional Parties 385

in the 12th Lok Sabha; P.A. Sangma, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha
(the first tribal to hold the post); and Tariq Anwar, a long-standing
Lok Sabha MP from Katihar in Bihar. Their contention, in a letter
circulated among members of the Congress Working Committee, was
that no person of non-Indian origin should be entitled to hold the
posts of President, Vice President or Prime Minister of the country.
This dovetailed very well with the BJP’s strategy for the impending
13th general elections, in which the party made it clear it would raise
Sonia’s Italian origin as a major issue.
When Pawar, Sangma and Anwar made their position clear in an
internal party meeting, Sonia walked out in a huff saying she was
resigning from the post of Congress president. Then followed a public
spectacle when large numbers of Congress workers made clear who
their leader was—some even threatened to commit suicide if Sonia did
not withdraw her resignation. She eventually did. But the actions of
the threesome led by Pawar took many political observers by surprise
simply because Pawar had not merely been singing paens of praise for
Sonia just a short while earlier, he had even been personally urging
leaders of political parties to support Sonia’s candidature as Prime
Minister after the NDA government lost a vote of confidence on the
floor of the Lok Sabha by a single vote in April 1999.
Whereas the presence of three prominent political personalities
from different parts of the country apparently gave the NCP a
‘national’ character, what was evident was that the party really had
a significant presence in one state where Pawar came from, namely,
Maharashtra in western India, one of the country’s most industrialised
states. Like Pawar in Maharashtra, Sangma was the Congress’ most
important leader in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya, but the state
was too small to make much of a difference to the party at a national
level. Tariq Anwar was not quite as big a leader as either Pawar or
Sangma and the Congress had by then already been marginalised in
his state, Bihar. His exit, therefore, was unlikely to be very damaging
for the party.
The only issue of interest was just how much Pawar’s exit
would damage the Congress’ electoral fortunes in Maharashtra.
In the 1999 elections, the NCP did make an electoral impact in
Maharashtra. (Sangma too won from his constituency in Meghalaya.)
386 DIVIDED WE STAND

In Maharashtra, the NCP managed to win six of the state’s 48 Lok

Sabha seats, but severely damaged the Congress by splitting its
traditional support base across the state. Ironically, the NCP then
went on to form an uneasy alliance with the Congress to form the
state government after the assembly elections that were held at the
same time as the Lok Sabha polls.
The NCP’s alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra continued
even after the assembly’s term ended in 2004. In fact, this time round,
the two parties fought the assembly elections—as well as the Lok
Sabha polls—as allies. Following the defeat of the NDA in the Lok
Sabha elections, Pawar decided to extend support to the Congress to
form a government in New Delhi. What was significant was that this
happened at a time when Sonia was still perceived to be the person
most likely to head a Congress-led coalition government. Pawar’s
decision led to a split in the NCP with Sangma parting ways, saying
he could not be party to the NCP’s rasion d’etre being violated in
such a brazen manner. Sharad Pawar went on to become Agriculture
Minister in the UPA government.
The NCP has had a love-hate relationship with the Congress ever
since its inception. One reason could be that Pawar has perhaps felt
that the Congress did not give him his due while he was in the party.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s death, there was widespread speculation that
the responsibility of heading the party—and the government if the
Congress won in the 1991 elections—would devolve upon either
Pawar or Arjun Singh. Eventually, Narasimha Rao was brought out
of political hibernation to head the party and the government, perhaps
as a compromise between the supporters of Pawar and Arjun Singh.
Pawar’s ambitions continued to be thwarted even after the exit of
Rao, with first Sitaram Kesri and then Sonia Gandhi becoming party
president. Pawar’s contribution to the Congress’ electoral fortunes
was considerable. Not only was he clearly the most important leader
in one of the country’s biggest states, he was also seen as one of the
premier fund raisers for the Congress. After the formation of the
NCP, given the issue on which it was created, it was also obviously
never going to be easy for Pawar and Sonia Gandhi to be really
comfortable with each other.
 Regional Parties 387

Whatever be the real reasons for the uneasiness in the initial stages
of the Sonia-Pawar relationship, two developments in 2004 seemed to
add to the friction. The first of these was at the time of the elections for
the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The
two contenders were the incumbent Jagmohan Dalmiya—a Kolkata-
based businessman—and Pawar. To those not familiar with the world
of Indian cricket, it may sound strange that a political heavyweight
like Pawar should have been contesting elections to a sports body,
even if it was the richest in the country. However, cricket in India, as
indeed other sports, is run by politicians and politically-connected
bureaucrats and businessmen. If reports of the time are to be believed
Pawar expected Sonia to ask state governments run by the Congress
to urge their respective cricket associations to support Pawar’s
candidature. He also assumed that associations under the control of
the Union government—like the Railways, Services and Combined
Universities—would be given a similar hint, if not an informal
instruction. His hopes proved futile. Dalmiya scraped through, only
to lose the election to Pawar the following year. It appeared that this
time round, Sonia did not ignore Pawar’s request for support.
The Maharashtra assembly elections that year witnessed a strain
in the relations between the Congress and the NCP, this time on
account of Pawar’s own miscalculations. In the run-up to the elections,
presumably expecting that the NCP would obtain fewer seats in the
assembly than the Congress, Pawar ‘magnanimously’ offered the post
of Chief Minister to the Congress. The outcome of the elections took
Pawar by surprise—he had clearly underestimated his own party’s
potential. The NCP won 71 seats in the assembly against 69 by the
Congress. (In the 1999 elections, the Congress had held 75 seats
against 58 held by the NCP.) Pawar then suggested that the state’s
Chief Minister should belong to the larger partner in the alliance,
but that was clearly an afterthought. The Congress reminded him of
his pre-election assurance and Vilasrao Deshmukh of the Congress
became the head of the Maharashtra government.
The tussle between the NCP and the Congress for occupying a
larger political space in Maharashtra resulted in the opposition Shiv
Sena-BJP combine performing well in elections to municipal bodies
in the state in February 2007. It became clear that the so-called
388 DIVIDED WE STAND

‘secular’ alliance would have performed substantially better than it

did had there been understanding between the NCP and the Congress
on seat-sharing. This explains why Congressmen have sometimes
suggested that it would be best if Pawar returned to his parent
party, but the NCP chief himself has made it quite clear that he has
no such intentions.
There are also indications that, like many others in Indian politics,
Pawar is not averse to the idea of his offspring inheriting his political
legacy at an appropriate time. Pawar’s 37 year old daughter Supriya
Sule was made a Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra in 2006 in
what was seen by many as the first step in her gradual ascent up the
organisational ladder of the NCP.
 Chapter 7
Left Parties:
Barking and Biting

The four major left parties in Indian politics—the two communist

parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist
Party of India, together with the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP)
and the All India Forward Bloc—have arguably had more experience
with coalitions than any other political group in India. Not only
have these parties been running the state government in West Bengal
since 1977—a record by itself—they also have a similar formation in
Tripura and (with the exception of the Forward Bloc) in Kerala. It
is another matter that the left has not had quite the same degree of
success in either of these two states in comparison to West Bengal,
though the Left Front in Tripura has lost a state assembly election
only once since 1977.
The 2004 general elections saw the left becoming more powerful
than ever before in national politics with the four parties obtaining 61
seats in the Lok Sabha. Importantly, the Manmohan Singh government
formed by the Congress-led UPA coalition was completely dependent
on the ‘outside’ support extended by the four left parties for its very
survival in power. Not surprisingly, the influence of the left on decision-
making by the Union government—especially on economic policy
issues—became more pronounced than ever before. While the critics
of the communists claimed the left was exercising power without
responsibility since it was not part of the government, leaders of
the left argued that it was their influence that ensured that the UPA
government’s policies did not veer excessively to the right. At the same
time, the left constantly stated that in its opinion there was little to
differentiate between the economic policies of the Congress and the
BJP even if the former was not a ‘communal force’.
On occasions, the communists found that a ‘left’ section within the
Congress would be making common cause with them. Simultaneously,
390 DIVIDED WE STAND

there was a ‘role reversal’ of sorts with the Left Front government
in West Bengal being accused of following economic policies and
advocating ‘reforms’ of the kind that were no different from those
espoused by both the Congress and the BJP. The political opponents
of the communists accused them of hypocrisy and of following double
standards, ‘They speak one language in New Delhi and a different one
in Kolkata,’ was a familiar complaint against the left. ‘They wish to
exercise power without responsibility,’ was another.
What became increasingly apparent during the UPA government’s
tenure since May 2004 was that the left in general—and the CPI(M)
in particular—was not exactly the kind of ideologically monolithic,
disciplined and cadre-based political force that it was made out to be
by some. Divisions within the CPI(M), the largest left party in the
country, deepened on issues relating to privatisation of public sector
undertakings and acquisition of farm land for setting up industrial
ventures. Unlike in the past, political observers discerned distinct
factions within the CPI(M)—one so-called ‘liberal’ or ‘new left’ group
included the Chief Minister of West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
while the other group of ‘traditional hard-liners’ included individuals
like the Kerala Chief Minister S. Achuthanandan. Whether or not the
identification of specific leaders in the CPI(M) as belonging to one or
the other faction was correct, it would be futile to suggest that there
was no sharp cleavage within the party on economic policy issues.
While the CPI(M) officially denied the existence of divisions within
the party, one interpretation of why the CPI(M) started resembling
typical faction-ridden large political parties in India was that proximity
to power had made the party more ‘pragmatic’ and ‘ ideologically less
dogmatic’. In this sense, the CPI(M) had perceptibly become part of
the political ‘mainstream’ in the country.
The divisions within the left widened considerably after a series of
violent incidents at Singur and Nandigram relating to acquistion of
farm land for establishing industrial ventures that have been detailed
later in this chapter.

∗∗∗

A key difference between Kerala and the other two states in which the
left is a major political force is the fact that the left-led front in Kerala
 Left Parties 391

includes parties that do not subscribe to a leftist ideology, which is

why it is called the Left Democratic Front (LDF), rather than merely
the Left Front. It is also a fact worth noting that neither West Bengal
nor Kerala or Tripura has ever had a single party government since the
left first came to power in each. In Kerala, this has meant that the
state has not had a single-party government since 1957, when
the E.M.S. Namboodiripad government became the first elected
communist government in the world. In Tripura, on the one occasion
that the left lost power, in 1988, it was a coalition of the Congress and
the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS)—a party with a base confined
largely to the tribals in the state—that formed the government under
Sudhir Ranjan Majumdar.
What is interesting is that this absence of single-party rule has not
been because no party has been able to win a majority of the seats in
the assembly. On the contrary, the CPI(M) has in every state assembly
election in West Bengal since 1977 won a comfortable majority on
its own. This holds true in Tripura too (barring 1988). Since the Left
Fronts in West Bengal and Tripura as also the LDF in Kerala have been
pre-poll alliances, it might seem only natural that the governments
formed after elections should be coalition governments, even if one
of the partners is able to muster a majority on its own. However, it
is not uncommon in Indian politics to find the dominant partner in a
pre-election alliance ultimately forming a single-party government if
it has a majority on its own in the state assembly. For instance, while
the TDP and the BJP fought the 1999 Andhra Pradesh assembly
elections as an alliance, the BJP was not invited to join the TDP
government headed by Chandrababu Naidu after the elections. The
same was true in Haryana, where the INLD-BJP pre-poll alliance
won comfortably, but the INLD formed the government on its own
since it had a majority. More recently, in 2001, the AIADMK in Tamil
Nadu had a pre-poll alliance with the Congress and the left parties for
the assembly election, but after the elections, formed the government
entirely on its own. The fact that the CPI(M) has not adopted this
attitude towards its junior partners in the Fronts in West Bengal and
Tripura suggests that its attitude towards coalitions is somewhat
different from most other parties in India.
This is also borne out by the fact that the Left Front in West Bengal
has lasted without a break ever since it was formed in 1977 and—more
392 DIVIDED WE STAND

importantly—that it is not merely an electoral alliance. The Front

also functions jointly as an opposition group within Parliament
and in various agitational activities throughout India. In particular,
the Left Front has coordinated protests against the economic
reforms programme launched in 1991 and sustained by successive
governments in New Delhi ever since. The coordination between
the left parties extends also to their mass organisations—thus the
student organisations affiliated to the various left parties periodically
organise joint rallies in New Delhi and in state capitals in support
of their demands. Similarly, rallies and demonstrations by the left
trade unions too have more often than not been a joint effort. Thus,
unlike almost all other coalitions in the Indian context, the Left Front
has functioned as a broad ideological coalition that is not limited to
electoral politics. The only other alliance that comes close to achieving
such unified functioning is the one between the Shiv Sena and the BJP
in Maharashtra. However, while the two partners do share a close
ideological affinity, their joint activities are kept to a minimum and
generally restricted to the electoral arena.
The different approach that the left parties have towards coalitions
and coalition politics is not really surprising, given the ideologies of
these parties, in particular the two communist parties. The CPI(M)
for instance, believes that its immediate task is the building of a
‘people’s democratic front’ to usher in people’s democracy—an
intermediate stage in the ultimate goal of building a socialist society.
This is something that is written into the party’s programme—a
document that lays down the long term vision of the CPI(M) as
distinct from election manifestoes, which espouse limited tactical
objectives applicable in a given situation. The party believes that for
people’s democracy to be built, a broad coalition of various classes
will have to be built against landlords and representatives of monopoly
capital—which are the classes the party characterises as the ruling
classes. Thus, the programme of the CPI(M) itself envisions the party
playing only a leading—or vanguard, to use Marxist jargon—role in
a broader coalition. With some differences on exactly which classes
constitute the ruling classes and hence what kind of coalition needs to
be built, the CPI too shares this understanding that it can only lead a
social coalition to bring about a revolution in India. Since both parties
 Left Parties 393

see themselves as representing the working classes, it follows from

their strategic vision that the coalition to be built with other classes
will involve parties that represent the interests of these classes.
Most of the writing on the left parties, in the mainstream media
and elsewhere, has tended to overlook this fact. As a result, it has not
been sufficiently highlighted that unlike the other parties in Indian
politics, the left has pursued coalitions as an objective rather than
merely accepting them as a necessary evil thrown up by a polity that
is increasingly getting fragmented. Thus, the political resolution
discussed and adopted at every congress (held roughly once in three
years) of the two communist parties invariably has a section on left
unity and on how much progress has been made towards cementing
this unity and towards broadening it to include forces outside the left
fold. In fact, the focus on building a ‘left and democratic’ coalition has
been such that recent party congresses of the CPI(M) have had to take
note of the fact that the party’s independent activities have tended to
be overshadowed by its joint efforts with other parties.
None of this is to suggest that the relationship between the various
partners in the Left Fronts in West Bengal and Tripura and the LDF
in Kerala has been free of acrimony. As with any other alliance, there
has been a fair amount of bickering, particularly by the junior partners
in the Fronts, who perceive the CPI(M) as acting like a ‘big brother’
and being insensitive to their concerns and interests. In West Bengal,
for instance, there have been occasions when the RSP and the Forward
Bloc have held out veiled and not-so-veiled threats of leaving the Left
Front if the CPI(M) did not desist from its ‘authoritarian’ ways. The
Forward Bloc, in fact, underwent a split in the early 1990s when one
section walked out of the party, accusing the other of subjugating
the party’s interests to those of the CPI(M). Typically, the bickering
between the partners has tended to peak around election time, when
the issue of which partner would contest from which constituency
heightens differences and raises tempers. Nevertheless, the friction
between the constituents of the Left Front has never seriously
threatened its survival.
At a national level, the fissures within the Left Front came to the
forefront like never before in April 1999 just after the second Vajpayee
394 DIVIDED WE STAND

government lost a vote of confidence and Congress President Sonia

Gandhi decided to stake a claim to form an alternative government.
Her efforts were scuttled largely because the Samajwadi Party chose
not to support her as a likely Prime Minister heading an anti-NDA
coalition. Together with the SP, two of the largest constituents of the
Left Front after the CPI(M) and the CPI decided to make common
cause with the SP—these were the Forward Bloc and the RSP. The
leaders of these two parties were evidently uncomfortable supporting a
government headed by Sonia Gandhi. Despite attempts by individuals
like Harkishen Singh Surjeet, general secretary of the CPI(M), to
persuade MPs and leaders of the Forward Bloc and the RSP to support
a Congress-led coalition headed by Sonia Gandhi, the two smaller
left parties stood their ground.
More than seven years later, the CPI(M) remained close to the SP
and the Rashtriya Janata Dal headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav unlike
the CPI. Whereas this had much to do with the CPI perceiving itself
to be stronger than the CPI(M) in the two northern Indian states of
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, in the run-up to the 2006 elections to the UP
assembly the SP maintained that it was only the CPI(M) that could
be counted on as its ally and that every other party was opposed to
it. Earlier, in May 2004, Surjeet had unsuccessfully tried to convince
the Congress that it should mend it fences with the SP by bringing
SP general secretary Amar Singh along with him as a ‘gate crasher’
to a party that had been organised by Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress never forgot the fact that the SP had not supported
Sonia Gandhi’s attempts to form a government in New Delhi in April
1999. And what was perhaps the biggest surprise of the 14th general
elections was that despite winning 39 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats
from UP, instead of being a ‘king maker’ the SP found that it was
nowhere on the national political map because the Congress-led UPA
preferred the ‘outside’ support of the 61 MPs belonging to the four left
parties instead of playing ball with the SP. (Ultimately, the SP ended
up extending support to the UPA without the latter asking for it and
withdrew support just before the 2007 UP assembly elections.)

∗∗∗
 Left Parties 395

Some would argue that the survival of the Left Fronts in West
Bengal and Tripura and the LDF in Kerala is entirely because of the
overwhelming dominance of the CPI(M) in all of them. The others
in the Fronts, they would argue, know that their political survival
depends on their remaining part of the Fronts and that they would be
committing political hara kiri by trying to contest on their own. There
is certainly an element of truth in this analysis. However, it would
be facile to explain the continued cohesion of the left purely in terms
of political pragmatism. To understand why, a look at the electoral
arithmetic of West Bengal or Kerala would suffice. While the Left
Front has had an uninterrupted period of 30 years in power in West
Bengal till 2007, the dominance of the Left Front in the state’s politics
is overstated by the number of seats that the Front has won in every
election after 1977.
If one were to look at just the number of seats won, the Left
Front has consistently won a two-thirds majority in the 294-member
assembly. However, if we take a look at the vote shares the picture
appears quite different. The most dramatic illustration is provided
by the 1987 assembly elections. The Left Front won in 242 of the
294 constituencies, with the CPI(M) alone winning 187 seats, while
the Congress won only 40 seats. In terms of vote share, however,
the Congress won 41.8 per cent of the votes against the CPI(M)’s
39.3 per cent, while the CPI, Forward Bloc and RSP put together
won 11.6 per cent of the votes. Had the CPI(M)’s partners in the
Front deserted it and joined the Congress instead, the result would
probably have been a sweep for the Congress-led alliance. This is even
more evident in the context of Kerala, where many state assembly
constituencies are often won or lost by a few hundred votes. The shift
of a single party, however minor, from one alliance to the other could
therefore decisively alter the verdict of the electorate. That the Left
Fronts and the LDF have more or less held firm despite this suggests
that ideological affinity between the partners has played at least as
important a role as political pragmatism.
Ideological affinity apart, the Left Fronts in West Bengal and
Tripura have consciously built an institutional mechanism to ensure
that the Front stays together and that there is a platform apart from
the state government in which the various constituents of the Front
396 DIVIDED WE STAND

have the opportunity to discuss issues and sort out differences between
themselves. This institutional mechanism is in the form of regular
meetings of representatives of the parties constituting the Front. It is
not a coincidence that the convenors of the Left Front have always
been individuals who are not part of the state government. As a
matter of deliberate policy, the distinction has always been maintained
between the Front per se and the government run by it. Typically, in
West Bengal, the secretary of the state unit of the CPI(M) has been
the convenor of the Front. At its inception, the convenor of the Front,
Promode Dasgupta—or PDG as he was popularly known—was
perceived as being as powerful as Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. Also as
a matter of conscious policy, PDG was projected as the first among
equals in party and Front matters, while Jyoti Basu was seen as the
undisputed leader of the government.
In more recent years, however, this separation between the Front
and the government in West Bengal has become somewhat blurred.
Whether this is because CPI(M) state secretaries after PDG did
not have quite the same stature as Jyoti Basu or because the state
government increasingly became the focus of the CPI(M)’s activities
in the state is a moot question. The answer, as often, probably lies
somewhere in between. What is more relevant to the larger national
context, however, is that this mechanism of a formal coordinating
body of a coalition was subsequently picked up by the United Front
when it came to power in New Delhi, then by the NDA and thereafter
by the UPA.
Prior to the UF, there had been five non-Congress coalition
governments formed in New Delhi. None of them had any formal
mechanism for discussion and policy formulation among the partners
of the coalition. The UF became the first union government in
which a party from the left—the CPI—joined the government. That
may well explain the fact that it was the first time a coordination
committee of the Front was formed. It was also the first time that
a coalition forming a Union government formally adopted a Com-
mon Minimum Programme acceptable to its constituents. The model
was later replicated by the NDA, which adopted a ‘national agenda
for governance’ and then the UPA, which thrashed out a National
Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) with the left. To the extent
 Left Parties 397

that formal mechanisms for consultations among partners and clearly

spelt out programmes for the government indicate a maturing of
coalition politics, the left can justifiably lay claim to having made
a significant contribution to the evolution of coalitions in India,
particularly at the national level.
Despite its success in setting a model for others to follow in terms of
what the BJP today calls ‘coalition dharma’, the left remained a fringe
player in national politics, unable to make its impact felt in terms of
influencing policy, till 2004. Since 1977, the left had supported five
governments in New Delhi before the UPA government —the ones
led by Morarji Desai (1977), Charan Singh (1979), V.P. Singh (1989),
H.D. Deve Gowda (1996) and I.K. Gujral (1997). One section of the
left—the CPI—was part of the last two of these governments. Yet, on
none of these occasions did the policy of the government make any
major concessions to the left. The impotence of the left in this respect
was most obvious during the tenure of the two UF governments in the
late 1990s. The left was avowedly against the processes of economic
liberalisation and globalisation launched by the previous Narasimha
Rao government. Yet, neither the Common Minimum Programme
of the UF nor the actions of its governments showed the slightest
concession to this position. On the contrary, P. Chidambaram, who
was Finance Minister in both the UF governments, was hailed as one
of the most enthusiastic liberalisers India has seen.
Ironically, on the one occasion on which the left was able to
stall a reform measure during the UF’s tenure, it was not because
Chidambaram or others in the government yielded to its persuasion; it
was the result of unexpected support from the main opposition party,
the BJP. This was when the Finance Minister was trying to push a bill
through Parliament to open up the insurance sector to private firms,
both Indian and foreign. Despite vehement opposition from the left,
including the CPI, which was part of the government, Chidambaram
decided to go ahead because he had obtained informal assurances
from both the BJP and the Congress that they would support the
bill. Ultimately the BJP reneged on its informal commitment to
Chidambaram, on the plea that the insurance sector should be opened
up in stages—allowing only the Indian private sector in during the
first stage.
398 DIVIDED WE STAND

The inability to influence policy—particularly economic policy—

was not inexplicable. It was a consequence of the fact that the left’s
support to governments in New Delhi, unlike its formation of
coalitions in the states, had been driven by political compulsion
rather than choice. Thus, the support extended by the CPI(M) to the
Janata Party governments of the late 1970s was a result of the desire
to prevent the ‘authoritarian’ Indira Gandhi and the Congress from
returning to power. Having identified the Congress as the biggest
enemy and recognising that the CPI(M) on its own was in no position
to counter the Congress, except in the three states of West Bengal,
Tripura and Kerala, the party had no choice but to support the Janata
Party governments. (The CPI at this stage was still of the opinion that
the Congress under Indira Gandhi should be supported since it was
fighting the right wing RSS.) Similarly, in 1989, it was the same desire
to keep the Congress—still seen as the main enemy—out of power
that forced the left to align itself with the V.P. Singh-led Janata Dal.
While the formation of the V.P. Singh government has often been
portrayed as an occasion on which the left and the right in Indian
politics came together to keep out the Congress, the reality is more
complex. The fact is that the left throughout the 1989 Lok Sabha
election campaign attacked both the Congress and the BJP, refused
to share a platform with the BJP, and repeatedly exhorted V.P. Singh
not to have any arrangement with the right-wing party. In states like
Bihar, where both the left and the BJP had some electoral presence,
they fought elections against each other. While both were aligned to
the Janata Dal, they were openly hostile to each other.
By the time of the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, the growing influence
of the BJP had convinced the left that it was at least as big an enemy as
the Congress. Hence, when the UF and its government were formed,
the left’s stated objective was to keep both the Congress and the BJP
out of power. On each of these occasions, the immediate political
objective was perceived as being of such overriding importance that
the left was prepared to sacrifice its economic agenda to achieve the
more urgent political goal. Since those running the government were
also aware of the overarching importance of the political objective for
the left, they knew only too well that the left’s ability to bargain in
terms of policy measures was limited if not totally absent.
 Left Parties 399

It was the same awareness of a lack of bargaining power in terms

of policy that ultimately led to the CPI(M)’s decision not to join the
UF government in 1989—a decision that was later famously described
as a ‘historic blunder’ by Jyoti Basu, the man who was the UF’s first
choice to become Prime Minister. It remains the only occasion on
which the representative of a party has been offered the post but had
to refuse because his own party voted against accepting the offer.
The decision was by no means easy. It was also not the unanimous
view of the party leadership. When the UF constituents suggested
that Jyoti Basu be made Prime Minister, the CPI(M)’s politbureau
decided by a thin majority not to accept the offer. The party’s central
committee—which under the party’s constitution is the highest
decision-making body between two party congresses—endorsed the
politbureau’s decision, again by a narrow margin, leaving the door
open for H.D. Deve Gowda to become the Prime Minister.
The decision continues to remain controversial with the CPI(M)’s
leadership and cadre divided on whether it was right or wrong. Those
in favour of the decision argue that the manner in which the UF
government functioned and the fact that it collapsed after barely two
years bears out the proposition that being party to it would have done
the CPI(M) no good. Those against the decision argue that Jyoti Basu
as Prime Minister could have run a much more successful government
than either Deve Gowda or Gujral and that the CPI(M) would have
been able to significantly influence policy. Even in a worst-case
scenario, they add, the party would at least have acquired a national
profile and could have broken out of its image of being confined
largely to three states. While the debate has not been clinched, it
increasingly looks likely that the CPI(M) will not repeat its ‘historic
blunder’, given another chance. Whether such a chance will be available
in the foreseeable future is, of course, another matter.
Since the formation of the UPA government in May 2004, the left
has been able to exert more influence on economic policy in New
Delhi than ever before. One obvious reason for this is the fact that
without the 61 MPs of the left the UPA would not be able to command
a majority in the Lok Sabha. But that’s not all. There have been
occasions in the past—during the governments headed by V.P. Singh,
Deve Gowda and Gujral—when the left’s support was crucial. What
400 DIVIDED WE STAND

seems to have changed is that the left for the first time is explicitly
stating that it will not underwrite the stability of the government.

∗∗∗

If there is one issue that has troubled the left parties—in particular
the two communist parties—more than any other throughout their
history, it has been their inability to make their presence felt in the
Hindi heartland: the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya
Pradesh. Not only are these states electorally crucial (between them,
before each was bifurcated in 2000, they accounted for 179 of the Lok
Sabha’s 543 seats), any political movement would have to recognise
that it cannot acquire a truly all-India character without having a
foothold in the Indo-Gangetic plains, which have dominated the
politics of the country.
Between the two communist parties, the CPI has over the years
had a stronger base in the Hindi heartland than the CPI(M), which
is by far the more dominant of the two communist parties in most
other parts of the country. Yet, even at its best, the CPI has had only
a modest influence in Bihar, present-day Jharkhand and Uttarakhand,
a marginal presence in Uttar Pradesh and not even a token presence in
Madhya Pradesh or present-day Chhattisgarh. For the CPI(M) too,
Bihar has presented more reason for hope than any of the other parts
of this region, though its strength in each of the states has consistently
been much less than the CPI’s.
Interestingly, the weakness of the left parties in the electoral arena
in the Hindi belt does not necessarily extend to their mass organisations.
The CPI-affiliated All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and
the CPI(M)-affiliated Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), for
instance, are among the strongest unions in this region, as indeed in the
rest of the country. Yet, the same workers who opt for these unions
are quite reluctant to extend their support to the electoral battle when
it comes to bargaining for their economic rights.
One of the reasons most commonly cited for the failure of the CPI
and the CPI(M) to make a breakthrough in the Hindi belt has been
the inability of the communists to fully comprehend and come to
terms with the caste phenomenon. With their emphasis on class, this
 Left Parties 401

view would suggest that the communists have simply not recognised
that caste is a much stronger motivating force in the Hindi belt and
a decidedly better platform for political mobilisation. This is a view
that is not merely confined to outsiders analysing the communist
movement. The late Indrajit Gupta, one of the foremost leaders of the
CPI for over four decades, shared this view. In a personal interview a
few months before he died, Gupta ‘admitted’ that the left had seriously
underestimated the influence of the caste system in Indian politics in
general and in the Hindi belt in particular. This, he felt, was one of the
key reasons for the left’s failure to grow beyond the narrow confines
of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.
Gupta said:

Exploitation of one caste by another was never a big factor in our

minds. But in a Hindu society, I find this is the dominant thing…
much more than class. We have a working class in the big industrial
centres where we were the dominant force among the workers,
particularly at the trade union level. Big strikes were taking place.
We were leading those strikes. But when it came to elections, the
same worker who was carrying a red flag on his shoulders in order
to get a higher salary or a bonus…would look towards his own
caste…. This disrupted the unity of the class completely. But I don’t
think the communists, the Marxists in this country paid sufficient
attention or made a proper study of this phenomenon…. This thing
[caste] is so deeply rooted in our psyche, this Manusmriti, this
Chaturvarna, to get out of it will take a thousand years.

There is indeed some merit in the argument that the communist

parties have failed to understand the importance of caste in the Hindi
heartland or have at least underestimated its hold on the people.
However, to see this as the sole or even the main reason for the failure
of the left to make inroads in this region might be to oversimplify
a complex reality. There could be other historical reasons for the
weakness of the left in this region. For instance, it is the Hindi belt
in which the ‘socialist’ parties have traditionally had a significant
presence. Thus, if one considers the left of centre space in Indian
politics, it might with some justification be argued that while the
communist parties faced little or no challenge for this space in the
southern states and in West Bengal and Tripura, they had to face
402 DIVIDED WE STAND

the challenge of the Samajwadis in the Hindi heartland. Leaders like

Ram Manohar Lohia and Acharya Narendra Dev were definitely
a formidable challenge. Of course, it is also true that Samajwadi
politics right from its inception has had caste overtones and this
could be a factor in its gaining greater success than the politics of the
communist parties.
Another factor in the weakness of the left could be the manner in
which the two major splits in the communist movement took place
in 1964 and 1967. When a section of the CPI broke away in 1964
to form the CPI(M), in most other parts of the country the bulk of
the undivided party’s support base and some of the key figures in
its middle-level leadership were part of the breakaway faction. As
history subsequently proved, it was the breakaway CPI(M) which
was to become the more dynamic of the two communist parties and
the one that would grow faster, while the parent CPI was clearly on
a downhill slope. The fact that most of the communist leadership in
states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remained with the CPI may also,
therefore, have contributed to the gradual demise of the mainstream
left parties in this region.
Once again, when the CPI(M) in turn split in 1967, with the
breakaway group forming the CPI(ML), which was to lead what
came to be known as the Naxalite movement, the Hindi heartland
again saw a larger proportion of the cadre and leadership joining
the CPI(ML) than in many other parts of the country. Thus, both
in 1964 and in 1967, the CPI(M) was at the losing end of the split
in the Hindi heartland. To what extent this has had an effect on the
growth of the communist parties as a whole in the Hindi region is a
moot question.
As later events have shown, the CPI in Bihar—and to a lesser
extent in UP—was soon beset with caste-based factionalism (ironical
considering that the party has been accused of not understanding caste
as a phenomenon) and hence became easy prey for the likes of Lalu
Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav when they emerged as caste-based
leaders in their own right. Both in Bihar and in UP, the CPI was split
by the two Yadav chieftains, with a section joining the SP in Uttar
Pradesh and the then Janata Dal in Bihar. The desertion of Mitrasen
Yadav in UP was particularly embarrassing for the party since it had
always been proud of the fact that he (as a CPI leader) had managed
 Left Parties 403

to win the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which included Ayodhya, at the
peak of the BJP–VHP movement for the construction of the Ram
temple. The CPI(M) too has not been entirely free of caste-based
factionalism in Bihar, though the virus may be less virulent than in
the CPI.
In the context of the weakness of the left in the Hindi heartland,
it must also be recognised that while the mainstream left parties
may have failed to make much headway, the extreme left has had a
consistent—and growing—strength in rural Bihar and Jharkhand, not
to mention Chhattisgarh. This has happened despite repeated splits
and mergers in the CPI(ML) since it was formed in 1967. Briefly,
in the late 1980s and early-1990s, it appeared that the ultra-left in
Bihar could even emerge as a credible electoral force, when the Indian
People’s Front (IPF) made significant inroads in some districts of
central Bihar. However, it turned out to be a false promise and the IPF,
which metamorphosed into the CPI(ML)-Liberation, subsequently
lost steam. As with the CPI, it also had to face the embarrassment of
some of its elected representatives switching to Lalu’s RJD.
Outside the electoral arena, however, the extreme left has signifi-
cantly expanded its influence in central Bihar and in Jharkhand, through
groups like the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the
People’s War Group (PWG). These groups now merged to join the
CPI(Maoist) are able to strike at police stations and other symbols of
state authority with impressive regularity, and in parts of Jharkhand
and Chhattisgarh in particular their writ seems to run at least as much
as the elected government’s. The extent of their influence is such that
political commentators and intelligence sources have on more than
one occasion pointed out that all the way from Nepal in the north
through Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgrah, to Telengana in northern
Andhra Pradesh and even the eastern extremities of Maharashtra, there
is a huge swathe of land—often described as the ‘red corridor’—that
faces a ‘Maoist menace’.
The growth of the extreme left could also provide some pointers
to why the more moderate sections of the left have been unable to
make serious headway beyond the states of West Bengal, Kerala and
Tripura. Arguably one major factor has been the tendency of the left
to ‘tail’ one of the established parties in each state in order to defeat
whichever party it views as the biggest enemy in a given context. Thus,
404 DIVIDED WE STAND

the left has tailed one or the other of the Dravidian parties in Tamil
Nadu for most of the period since 1967, initially on the grounds that
defeating the Congress was the priority and in more recent years with
the objective of keeping the NDA at bay. Similar considerations have
meant that the left has latched on to the RJD in Bihar and the SP in
Uttar Pradesh, the Akali Dal in Punjab (before the Akalis joined the
NDA), and so on. As a result, any chance that the left might have
had of establishing its distinct identity, it can be convincingly argued,
has been lost. In fact, even where the left historically had a presence,
it lost out to regional parties. The most telling example of this is in
Andhra Pradesh. In the elections held in 1952, when the state was
part of the Madras Presidency, the undivided CPI had emerged as the
single largest party ahead of the Congress. Today, the two communist
parties put together would be hard-pressed to win more than a couple
of Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh on their own.

In Power in the States

The Left Front may have failed to make an impact on policy,
particularly economic policy, at the national level, even when it has
supported governments in New Delhi, but in the states where it
has been in power, it is a somewhat different story. While Tripura
being a small state, has escaped national attention more often than
not, the left’s successes in implementing at least parts of its agenda
in West Bengal and Kerala have often been commented upon. What
is particularly significant is that the ‘Kerala model’ of development,
initiated by the E.M.S. Namboodiripad government of 1957, has not
only been widely commented upon, it has by and large been adopted
by most governments that have followed in the state. Thus, the left has
influenced policy in Kerala not only when in power, but also when it
has been out of power. In West Bengal, of course, there is no way of
knowing whether this pattern would be repeated, since the left hasn’t
lost power since it first assumed office in 1977.
What is evident, however, is the fact that the left-led governments
in West Bengal and Kerala have been unable to clearly distinguish
themselves from ‘pro-reform’ state governments since the process of
 Left Parties 405

pro market economic reforms was initiated in India in 1991. While the
left has been a virulent critic of the liberalisation and globalisation
programme, its practice has not been markedly different from the
Congress government of S.M. Krishna in Karnataka or the TDP
government of Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh.
Like other state governments, those led by the left have also
sought to attract foreign investment and even privatised ailing state-
owned enterprises (though they have tried to couch privatisation as
‘partnership’ with the private sector). It is not surprising, therefore,
that most commentators see the left’s attack on economic reforms
either as part of a more general trend of parties being anti-reform
when they are in opposition and pro-reform when in office, or as a
case of serving vested interests like those of the trade unions. The left’s
response to such criticism has been to argue that state governments are
constrained in terms of economic policy by what New Delhi decides
and can only tinker at the margins. While this may be true to some
extent, it is not a position that the left has been able to successfully
present to commentators or to the public at large.
Prior to the reforms, on the other hand, the left was successful
in demarcating its economic agenda from those of others. This was
particularly true of the early years of left-led governments in Kerala
and West Bengal. The Namboodiripad governments of 1957 and
1967, for instance, initiated radical land reforms of the sort never
seen anywhere in India before, except in Jammu & Kashmir under
the National Conference. These governments were also responsible
for setting up what remains, to date, the only universal Public Dis-
tribution System (PDS) in the country.
A slight digression is necessary at this point to explain the
significance of this move. The responsibility for running the PDS in
India is shared jointly by the Union and State Governments. While
New Delhi is responsible for centralised procurement for the PDS
and for passing on the grain, sugar, etc. procured or obtained through
levies to the states, the states bear the responsibility of actually
distributing material under the PDS to the populace. As a result, the
actual coverage of the PDS varies widely across states. Kerala has
the distinction of being the only state with a PDS that reaches every
resident of the state. Also, Kerala’s PDS distributes through its chain
406 DIVIDED WE STAND

of fair price shops several items—like soap, detergent, etc.—that are

not part of the centrally determined list of items to be made available
under the PDS.
Kerala’s record in health care too is remarkable in comparison to
other states in India. The Human Development Report 2003 of the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) states: ‘The state
of Kerala, India, has health indicators similar to those of the United
States—despite a per capita income 99% lower and annual spending
on health of just $28 a person.’ By any yardstick, this is a considerable
achievement, particularly considering that Kerala is not even among
the most prosperous Indian states.
As already mentioned, the fact that the left has repeatedly lost and
regained power in Kerala has not undone the radical measures it has
taken while in office. The land reforms, which ensured the abolishing
of landlordism and the distribution of small land holdings to millions
of agricultural labourers who were till that stage landless are arguably
major factors in Kerala having significantly better social indicators
than any other Indian state. The land reforms and the universal nature
of the PDS also go some distance towards explaining the fact that
Kerala has significantly lower poverty ratios than many other states
with much higher per capita incomes.
In more recent years, the left in Kerala has also been at the forefront
of initiating genuine decentralisation of the planning process down to
the level of the village panchayat. Again, as with earlier radical measures
taken by the left in the state, decentralisation proved irreversible even
after the left lost power in the state assembly elections in 2001.
In West Bengal too, the Left Front to begin with followed an
economic policy that had elements quite distinct from the policies
that had been followed by earlier governments. In particular, the
very first Left Front government that came to power after the 1977
assembly elections initiated a radical programme called Operation
Barga that dramatically altered agrarian relations in rural West Bengal.
In essence, the scheme institutionalised the rights of sharecroppers
tilling land formally owned by others, often absentee landlords.
Such was the effect of this move in terms of empowering millions of
relatively poor farmers that the CPI(M)’s hold on the Bengal coun-
tryside has remained unshakeable to this day, over a quarter of a
 Left Parties 407

century after Operation Barga was launched. The same Left Front
government also initiated land reforms on a scale never before seen
in the eastern state.
The Left Front in West Bengal can also legitimately claim credit
for making panchayati raj a reality, more than in most other states
in India, though the extent of decentralisation may not quite match
up to what has been achieved in Kerala. Some of the left’s other pet
initiatives have been less successful. In particular, the attempt to make
Bangla the mandatory medium of instruction in primary education
proved a failure and public pressure from parents who felt that their
children were losing out to those educated in English-medium schools
in other states ultimately forced the government to abandon this plan
after having experimented with it for more than two decades.
Other key problem areas for the Left Front government in West
Bengal have been its perceived neglect of Kolkata and other major
urban centres as well as their inability to overcome the state’s image
of being prone to labour unrest. The net result is that the left, despite
ruling West Bengal for 30 years, remains much weaker in the towns
and cities than in the rural areas. The Left Front has consistently argued
that the ‘de-industrialisation’ of Bengal—the most industrialised of
India’s provinces when the country became independent—is a
consequence of the step-motherly treatment meted out to the state by
hostile governments in New Delhi, whether these governments have
been run by the Congress or by the BJP. For instance, they point out,
central public sector undertakings have stopped investing in the state.
Also, New Delhi has always fixed royalties on minerals at inordinately
low levels, thereby effectively subsidising the rest of the country at
the expense of mineral-rich states like West Bengal.
This is a complaint that other mineral-rich states like Bihar,
Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Orissa have
also echoed on several occasions. Similarly, they argue that a now-
defunct ‘freight equalisation’ scheme—under which coal and steel
were made available throughout the country at the same price from the
1960s and 1970s to the 1990s—undermined the locational advantages
that states with abundant coal, iron ore and limestone reserves would
otherwise have enjoyed.
408 DIVIDED WE STAND

There is certainly more than a grain of truth in these complaints.

However, it cannot seriously be denied that the major reason why
industries fled West Bengal through the 1970s and 1980s was political.
In the first half of the 1970s, the violent nature of politics in the state—
with the Congress, the CPI(M) and the Naxalites fighting each other
on the streets and in the villages—was enough to scare business away.
After the Left Front came to power in 1977, the violence gradually
abated, but replacing the old scare was a new one: the fear of labour
militancy backed by a state government favourably inclined towards
the unions. The phase of militant trade unionism in West Bengal dated
back to the 1960s and peaked between 1967 and 1969, the two years
which saw the formation of two United Front governments in the
state, both dominated by the CPI(M).
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the CPI(M) has consciously tried
to get out of this ‘image trap’. Leaders like Somnath Chatterjee have
periodically travelled abroad to try and woo investors, attempting
to convince them with facts and figures that labour unrest in West
Bengal is no worse than anywhere else in India. These attempts have
had, at best, limited success. However, after Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
replaced the octogenarian Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister in 2001, there
has been a perceptible improvement in the manner in which Indian
industry looks at West Bengal. The fact that the power situation in
the state is significantly better than it was in the 1970s has also helped.
Ironically, one of the key reasons why the power situation seems less
acute from the mid-1990s onwards is because de-industrialisation
meant that demand for power did not grow at the pace at which it
would otherwise have done.
A moot question is what effect the incidents at Singur and
Nandigram (detailed later in this chapter) will have on the manner
in which industrialists perceive the investment climate in the state.
Will they be impressed by the government’s zeal to attract private
investments and its commitment to doing whatever it takes to create a
conducive environment for business? Or, will they be apprehensive
about the potential for violent clashes that these incidents have
revealed and fear a return to the street-fighting days of the 1960s
and 1970s? Nobody can honestly claim to have an answer to these
questions today.
 Left Parties 409

The Left and the Congress:

A Love-Hate Relationship
Virtually right through the first five decades since the country became
independent, the left participated in coalition politics with the specific
purpose of keeping the Congress out of power, whether at the level
of the states or at the Union. What was described as ‘pathological’
anti-Congressism dominated the psyche of communist leaders simply
because these individuals looked at the Congress as representing the
interests of the big bourgeoisie and the capitalist class. The notable
exception was in the early 1970s, when the CPI had supported
Indira Gandhi’s government. The party was clearly impressed by her
‘socialist’ image, and even during the initial phase of the Emergency
period in 1975–1977, the CPI supported her regime although the bigger
CPI(M) remained steadfastly opposed to the Congress. Eventually, the
CPI agreed that its support to the Emergency had been a mistake.
Anti-Congress sentiments in the left remained strong even when
the CPI decided to participate in a Union government for the first
and (so far) only time, namely the United Front government headed
first by Deve Gowda and then Gujral. The CPI’s representative in
the government was one of its senior most and tallest leaders, Indrajit
Gupta, a veteran of Parliamentary debates. As a matter of fact, before
he became Union Minister for Home Affairs in the Deve Gowda
government, he was the senior most member of the Lok Sabha as a
result of which he served as pro-tem Speaker when the lower house
of Parliament assembled in May 1996 to elect P.A. Sangma (then of the
Congress) as Speaker. Despite Gupta’s long innings as a politician and
despite the fact that the UF government was dependent on support
from the Congress to remain in power, Gupta could not resist making
jibes against the Congress while he was Home Minister.
Gupta had stated that if the Congress decided to withdraw support
to the UF, they would offend the public at large and might provoke
people to throw chappals (slippers) at them (Congress leaders). Leaders
of the Congress, including its then president Sitaram Kesri, made no
secret of their deep displeasure at Gupta’s remarks. In one of his last
interviews to the present authors, Gupta confessed that his comments
were ‘indiscreet’. The Congress, it may be recalled, changed the first
410 DIVIDED WE STAND

Prime Minister in the UF government, Deve Gowda, within eight

months and replaced him with Gujral. The Congress then went on to
withdraw its support to his government roughly a year later.
After the BJP-led NDA government came to power in 1998, the
two communist parties and the left as a whole started coming closer
to the Congress. Although the two relatively small left parties,
the All India Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party,
went along with the Samajwadi Party in not supporting Sonia
Gandhi’s candidature as Prime Minister after the second Vajpayee
government lost a vote of confidence in April 1999, the left as an
ideological grouping was clear that the Congress was the ‘lesser evil’
when compared to the BJP. Whereas the left agreed that there was
little to distinguish between the economic policies followed by the two
largest political parties in the country, unlike the BJP the Congress
was not ‘communal’.
In the run-up to the 14th general elections, the left found itself in a
dilemma. While it would have liked to ensure that the anti-NDA vote
did not get divided, it did not want to push possible allies like the SP
and the NCP into the NDA camp by forcing them to choose between
the Congress and the NDA. As a result, it found itself becoming the
fulcrum of a non-Congress ‘secular’ platform. Even after the election
results were known and it became clear that the left had no option
but to support a Congress-led government, the left did not give up its
hopes of forming a ‘third front’ at some unspecified point of time in
the future. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat periodically kept
reiterating his party’s desire that such a front should emerge, while
insisting that it would have to be more than just an electoral alliance.
The SP, the AGP and the TDP were among the parties that at various
points responded to such overtures, but at the time of writing there
were no signs of any concrete movement in this direction.
In fact, developments in early 2007 could have dealt a major blow
to the left’s plans of building a third front. When, in February that
year the Congress was toying with the idea of dismissing the Mulayam
Singh government in UP under Article 356, the DMK initially
demurred, but then supported the Congress, though the party has
traditionally opposed the use of this provision in the Constitution
to dismiss state governments, having itself been a victim on more
 Left Parties 411

than one occasion. Since the DMK and the SP would both normally
have been potential allies in a third front, this development could be
a serious setback. Of course, cynics might argue that memories are a
luxury in politics and the SP and DMK will be quite willing to forget
such issues and come together if power seems to be within grasp.

∗∗∗

The Political-Organisational Report of the 18th Congress of the

CPI(M) held in April 2005 represents perhaps the clearest manifestation
of the mainstreaming of the party, at least as far as economic issues are
concerned. The report contained a section entitled: ‘On Certain Policy
Matters’, which spelt out in clear terms the stand that the CPI(M)
would take on issues like foreign direct investment, privatisation
and loans from multilateral lending institutions like the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The positions taken on FDI
and privatisation were a significant departure from the earlier stance
of the party.
On FDI, for instance, the report ‘recognised’ that the forces of
globalisation would make FDI inflows inevitable and that, therefore,
the best the CPI(M) could do was to strive for these inflows to be
‘regulated’ and directed towards serving the national interest. From
a party that had traditionally viewed all FDI as unwelcome, this was
quite a change. The party laid down three conditions that FDI must
fulfil for it to be welcome. It must, the report said, augment productive
capacities in the Indian economy; upgrade technology in the economy;
and generate employment.
On the issue of the public sector and privatisation too, the shift
from the earlier stance of no disinvestment under any circumstances
was marked. The report said public sector undertakings (PSUs) could
be broken up into four distinct categories: ‘(a) giant profit-making
units in the core and strategic sectors usually referred to as navaratnas
(or nine jewels); (b) medium size profit making public sector units;
(c) loss making but potentially viable units; and (d) unviable and/or
chronically loss making units.’ The first two categories, it insisted, must
remain in the public sector and ‘any erosion in their equity must be
resisted’. Interestingly, however, for the third and fourth categories
412 DIVIDED WE STAND

while ‘all efforts must be made for the revival of such units’, it
conceded that ‘if such efforts do not succeed, then other options may
be considered, including joint sector, or, in the final eventuality the
disposal of these units.’ The report added that, ‘under all circumstances,
the interests of the workers must be protected.’
As far as obtaining loans from multilateral financial institutions
like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian
Development Bank, the party stated that such loans may be taken
provided no conditions are imposed that go against the social and
economic policies of the government, in particular, no ‘structural
adjustment’ programmes of the kind advocated by the IMF and the
Bank would be acceptable.
These positions taken by the CPI(M) congress, the party’s highest
decision making authority, show quite clearly that contrary to the
perception of ‘pragmatism’ being driven by West Bengal Chief
Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the party as a whole has subtly
shifted its stance in recent years. This does not mean, of course,
that there is total unanimity on these questions, but it does indicate
the direction in which the CPI(M) has been moving and given its
dominance in the left front, the direction that left politics as a whole
can be seen as taking.
The CPI(M) congress was also notable for the candid admission
by the party of rampant factionalism within the party’s Kerala unit.
The Politburo elected at the end of the Congress had a vacancy, which
party general secretary Prakash Karat announced would be filled by
a person from Kerala later, since factionalism had made it impossible
to reach a consensus on a name at the party Congress itself. Leaks in
the media of the ostensibly confidential discussion among delegates at
the Congress revealed how leaders from Kerala had openly attacked
each other during the deliberations.
The factionalism was to be reflected in the build-up to the state
assembly elections in Kerala in May 2006. The popular mood in the
state seemed to be quite hostile to the incumbent (United Democratric
Front) government led by Oommen Chandy of the Congress. In the
Lok Sabha elections held two years earlier, the UDF had for the first
time failed to win even one of the 20 seats in the state. The Congress had
split down the middle with former Chief Minister K. Karunakaran,
 Left Parties 413

arguably the party’s most seasoned politician, having formed his

own outfit the Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran). The
Left Democratic Front (LDF) could not have asked for a more ideal
situation. Media reports also suggested that the left leader who was
best positioned to capture the popular mood was V.S. Achuthanandan,
an octogenarian CPI(M) leader who had a reputation for honesty and
for being a ‘hardliner’ on policy issues.
The problem for the CPI(M) was that Achuthanandan was the
leader of a faction that had been marginalised within the party’s state
unit, by state CPI(M) general secretary Pinarayi Vijayan. Unlike
Achuthanandan, Vijayan had faced allegations of corruption. On the
flip side, Achuthanandan was perceived as a loner within the party
organisation, unlike Vijayan who was seen as an adept organiser.
With weeks to go for the assembly elections, the CPI(M) state unit
was unwilling to project Achuthanandan as the chief ministerial
candidate. Speculation was rife that the Vijayan faction would instead
nominate Palloli Mohammad Kutty, the convenor of the LDF to head
the government if it won the elections. This led to unusual scenes of
public mobilisation demanding that Achuthanandan be nominated
for the top job, which ultimately prompted the party’s Politbureau
to intervene in favour of the octogenarian.
The outcome of the elections vindicated the decision. The LDF
won comfortably, bagging 98 seats in the 140-member assembly,
the scale of the victory being unprecedented. The LDF increased
its vote share by 5.65 per cent and its tally of seats by 59 from the
39 seats it won in 2001. On the other hand, the UDF suffered major
setbacks with seven of the cabinet ministers in the Oommen Chandy
government losing. A key ally of the Congress in the UDF, the
Indian Muslim League, too suffered major political losses with two-
thirds of its candidates losing the elections, including candidates who
stood from constituencies in the Malabar area that was considered
the party’s stronghold. The strength of the Indian Muslim League
in the assembly came down from 16 to seven. As for the Congress,
the main constituent of the UDF, it contested 77 seats but won only
24 against 62 in 2001.
The victory of the Achuthanandan-led LDF in Kerala meant that
the two major state governments led by the CPI(M) were evidently
414 DIVIDED WE STAND

swinging in different directions. At the same time as Bhattacharjee was

ushering in what was perceived as a more ‘liberal’ attitude towards
private and foreign capital in West Bengal, the Kerala government
imposed a state-wide ban on the sale of colas manufactured by
Coca-Cola and Pepsi following allegations that pesticide levels in
the beverages were higher than permitted. The Achuthanandan
government insisted that it was imposing the ban on health grounds
and in public interest. The order was immediately challenged by cola
manufacturers in the High Court, which lifted the ban in December
2006, but the state government appealed against the High Court order
in the Supreme Court.

∗∗∗

Elections to the West Bengal assembly were held at the same time
that Kerala was going to the polls. Unlike in Kerala, Chief Minister
Bhattacharjee in West Bengal was consciously projecting a ‘moderate’,
‘liberal’ and ‘new-left’ image, arguing that the state needed rapid
industrialisation and he would take whatever steps were necessary
to ensure this—including inviting foreign investors and Indian big
business to invest in the state.
Buddhadeb was trying to ensure a seventh successive term for the
Left Front in the state, a unique feat in Indian politics if not in the
world. The LF’s political opponents had traditionally accused the left
of ‘rigging’ elections through strong-arm tactics and intimidation of
voters. It was further argued that over the years, the Left had won
elections because its sympathisers control the local administration as
well as the police force. They were, therefore, very pleased when the
Election Commission announced the unusually elaborate measures it
would take to ensure that the polls would be truly free and fair. Not
only were elections in the state being conducted over five phases for
the first time, the EC effectively kept the state and local administration
out of all crucial poll-related activity.
The Left Front was livid at what it saw as an affront to Bengali
pride and ‘partisan’ behaviour by the EC. The communists and their
supporters had always claimed that they could not have manipulated
the outcome of the polls simply because the votes that have been
 Left Parties 415

cast against the left during seven successive assembly elections have
accounted for close to half of the total valid votes polled. While
accusing the EC of partisanship, the left also said the current elections
would decisively settle the ‘bogey’ of rigged elections in the state.
The confidence of the left was not misplaced. In the 2006 elections,
the vote share of the Left Front went up only marginally from 49.4 per
cent in 2001 to 50.2 per cent. However, given the way the first-past-
the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system works, the number of seats
held by the Left in the 294-member West Bengal assembly went up
impressively by 36 from 199 to 235.
One major reason for this was that the anti-Left vote was more
splintered than in 2001. That year, the Trinamool Congress led by
Mamata Banerjee had ditched the BJP and the NDA, and cobbled
up an alliance with its parent, the Congress. The combine obtained
39.3 per cent of the total votes cast in West Bengal. The Trinamool
ended up with 60 seats in the assembly and the Congress with 26
(plus three independent candidates supported by it). This time round,
the Trinamool stuck with the BJP—which does not have much of a
support base in the state—ending up with 28.9 per cent of the vote and
29 assembly seats; the Congress won 21 seats with two independent
legislators supporting it.
The media projected the outcome of the elections as a major victory
for the new-left policies of the Chief Minister, but a closer analysis
of the elections suggests this is an incorrect reading of the mandate.
In Kolkata, for instance, where Buddhadeb’s liberal posture was
supposed to have won over the middle class—traditionally hostile to
the left—the Trinamool managed to retain much of its support base,
while the left hardly increased its vote share (from 42.3 per cent to
42.5 per cent).
Bhattacharjee himself, however, seemed to view the victory as a
vote for his policy of rapid industrialisation. On the day the election
results were declared, he announced that the Tata group, one of
India’s largest business houses, had decided to set up a small-car
manufacturing factory at Singur in Hooghly district of West Bengal.
The project that the Chief Minister announced with such pride was
to become a millstone around his neck within months. Another
project, a proposed chemicals hub at a special economic zone (SEZ)
416 DIVIDED WE STAND

in Nandigram in East Midnapur district near Haldia port to be set

up by Indonesia’s Salem group, had already raised hackles within the
Left Front when Buddhadeb had first talked about it during a visit
to Singapore in September 2005. This too was to come back to haunt
the Chief Minister and his party.
The proposed project of Tata Motors at Singur envisaged the
manufacture of a ‘people’s car’ that would cost Rs 100,000 each. The
direct investment that was proposed was roughly Rs 1,000 crore (later,
enhanced by Rs 500 crore) but it was argued that this investment
would bring about additional investments in ancillary units. The car
manufacturing plant together with the ancillary units was to come up
in a complex spread over nearly 1,000 acres of land. Singur had been
chosen by the Tata group over alternative sites because of its proximity
to Kolkata (located 40 km away), its port and its airport.
The problem began when the West Bengal government started
acquiring land for the project. It first claimed that over 95 per cent
of the landowners had ‘voluntarily’ agreed to sell their land to the
government. (In India, every state has a land acquistion act under
which the state government can forcibly acquire land ostensibly for
‘public’ purposes under the ‘eminent domain’ legal principle.) The
West Bengal government claimed that not only were landowners
being compensated handsomely, even ‘registered’ share-croppers
(bargadars) would be compensated. It was also claimed that local
people would be trained so that they could be employed by the car
factory or its ancillary units.
Many residents of Singur were evidently dissatisfied with what
the state government was offering. Supporters of the Trinamool
Congress (which controlled the local panchayat) as well as extreme-
left Naxalite groups supported by social activists like Medha Patkar
and author Arundhati Roy (who have been associated with the
movement to rehabilitate the oustees of the Narmada dam project)
started a movement against the government acquiring more land. The
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government reacted by imposing Section
144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (that prevents more than four
people from assembling at a particular place) to prevent Trinamool
Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, Patkar and others from going
to Singur.
 Left Parties 417

On November 30, Trinamool MLAs vandalized the state assembly

on the issue of compensation to farmers whose land was being
acquired. What worsened the situation was, when, on December 2, the
police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters and physically
prevented them from occupying part of the area earmarked for the
car plant. Mamata went on a fast in Kolkata that attracted considerable
attention. Various political leaders from New Delhi, from former
Prime Minister V.P. Singh to BJP president Rajnath Singh and the
President of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, appealed to Mamata to give
up her fast which she eventually did after 25 days.
The state government’s reaction to the agitation in Singur was to
blame the agitation on sections of the right (Trinamool Congress
and the BJP) and the extreme left (the Naxalites) to oppose the Left
Front. But this line of argument was not convincing because many of
the CPI(M)’s partners in the Front, notably the CPI, the RSP and the
AIFB, were opposed to the manner in which the state government was
acquiring land. Supporters of the argument espoused by Bhattacharjee
and West Bengal Industry Minister Nirupam Sen argued that after
two decades of successful land reforms, agricultural productivity
in the state had plateaued—hence, what was required to create job
opportunities was investments in manufacturing industry, such as
the proposed Tata Motors plant. The government’s critics pointed
out that the very manner in which it had ‘forcibly’ acquired land and
prevented its opponents from even travelling to Singur smacked of an
‘authoritarian’ and ‘Stalinist’ attitude. The same left that had argued
in favour of a just and equitable policy of rehabilitating those ousted
on account of the establishment of large projects, was now acting in a
diametrically opposite manner. Academics and intellectuals who had
traditionally supported the left—such as historian Sumit Sarkar—were
most upset at the state government’s stance.
What made matters worse for the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
government was what happened soon afterwards at Nandigram in East
Midnapur district. In this area, local villagers had begun organising
themselves under the banner of the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh
Committee (or a committee against land dispossession), when the
Haldia Development Authority headed by CPI(M) MP Lakshman
Seth ‘notified’ areas where land would be acquired for the proposed
418 DIVIDED WE STAND

SEZ to be set up by the Salem group. On January 3, 2007, the panchayat

office and the police station was ransacked in response to the land
acquisition notice. The same night, villagers in Nandigram dug up
roads and erected barriers to prevent any ‘outsider’ from entering
the area. All those who continued to support the CPI(M) were forced
to leave their homes. (At both Singur and Nandigram, women were
raped allegedly by supporters of their respective political opponents.)
On January 7, there was a clash between supporters of the CPI(M)
and those opposed to land acquistion resulting in seven people getting
killed. Thereafter, Chief Minister Bhattacharjee acknowledged that the
land acquisition notice should not have been sent and asked villagers
to ‘tear up’ the notice. At public rallies, Bhattacharjee continued to
justify the state government’s policy of acquiring agricultural land for
industry while stating no land would be forcibly acquired. He said
that if the people of Nandigram did not want an SEZ, the proposed
chemicals hub would come up elsewhere.
As the villagers of Nandigram continued with their ‘blockade’ and
prevented government officials from accessing the area, on March 14,
the state government decided to gather a police force to enter the area
(with the support of CPI(M) supporters). The government had clearly
underestimated the resistance that would be mounted. Like in Singur,
the police fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets—ostensibly because
they were fired on—before opening fire. At least 15 people died that
day. The event dominated national news for days, Parliament came
to a standstill and life in West Bengal was paralysed on account of
bandhs (or a general strike). The CPI(M) found it tough to justify
the state government’s actions. As constituents of the Left Front
threatened to ditch the CPI(M), Bhattacharjee and party bosses had
to soften their position and acknowledge that the police action at
Nandigram did more to damage the image of the party than any other
event had in the recent past.
The Singur and Nandigram incidents were more than just an
embarrassment for the West Bengal government or the state unit of the
CPI(M). The party had for several years been accused by its opponents
of indulging in doublespeak—of promoting economic reforms where
it ran state governments while taking strident positions against the
same reforms in New Delhi. However, it had never before faced such
 Left Parties 419

a role reversal—a CPI(M)-led government was perceived as going out

of its way to help big business and clamping down on the rights of
the poor, while parties like the Trinamool Congress and the Congress
were championing the cause of the ‘dispossessed’. As already stated,
relations between the left and the Congress reached breaking point
on the India–United States nuclear agreement in August 2007. For a
substantial section of the left, opposing American ‘imperialism’ was as
important as countering the communal politics of the Sangh Parivar.
The trajectory of left politics in recent years presents an apparent
paradox. On the one hand, the left would like to believe that it has
performed better than ever before in electoral terms because it has
taken a ‘principled’ position on a host of issues including economic
reforms. On the other hand, the left seems to be leaning towards a
more ‘pragmatic’ approach towards reforms on the grounds that the
prime duty of its state governments is to ‘alleviate’ the misery of the
common man. Many erstwhile sympathisers of the left see in this clear
signs of the communists turning increasingly into social democrats.
Will the left then succeed by ‘ceasing to be the left’, as some believe?
Or will the mainstreaming of the left mean that it starts increasingly
resembling other faction-ridden political parties in the country?
 Chapter 8
Friends in Need:
Pages from the Past

The present phase of coalition governments at the level of the Union

has thrown up a wide-ranging debate on what the nature of coalitions
must be and what characteristics they should have if they are to prove
long-lasting and stable. In particular, there have been suggestions that
coalitions formed before elections are likely to be more stable than
those cobbled together after the elections. Ideological cohesion within
the parties of a coalition has also been seen by many as a reasonable
guarantor of its longevity. Another proposition that has been put
forward is that ‘outside support’, that is, political parties supporting
a government on the floor of the legislature but not participating in it,
tends to be a destabilising factor. Finally, it has been suggested by the
BJP, among others, that if one constituent in a coalition is dominant
in terms of size, such a coalition would last longer than one in which
there are several small partners. It would be worth examining each
of these propositions in light of the actual experience with coalitions
in India.
In the context of the Union government in New Delhi, experiments
in coalitions began only in 1977 with the Janata Party government
headed by Morarji Desai; this was followed more than 12 years later
when the V.P. Singh government was sworn in 1989. However, in
the states, coalition governments have existed from the time the
very first elections were held in independent India in 1952. While
at first sight there may seem to be very little in common between
the manner in which coalitions in the states and those at the centre
have worked, there are nevertheless enough common features to
make a study of coalitions in the states a worthwhile exercise. The
early experiments with coalition politics in various states threw up
methods and results that were not very different from what we are
witnessing today at the centre. The fact that today there do exist some
 Friends in Need 421

stable coalition governments, notably in West Bengal, Tripura, Kerala

and Maharashtra, suggests that there has been a process of learning
which could be cut short at an all-India level if relevant lessons are
drawn from history. This chapter traces the experience of coalitions
at the level of the Union government and in the states. As will become
evident, many apparently obvious guarantors of stable coalitions have
not actually proved to be so.

Coalitions at the Centre

While the first real coalition at the level of the Union government
had to wait till 1977, three decades after independence, there was
already, in 1969, a government led by a Congress that no longer had a
majority in the lower house of Parliament. The situation arose thanks
to a split in the Congress, which, in turn, was the culmination of a
power struggle within the party, accelerated by the electoral setbacks
during the 4th general elections of 1967. In the elections, the Congress
was swept out of power in as many as nine states—Punjab, Haryana,
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Madras
and Kerala. The extent of the damage to the Congress’ hold over
political power was brought out in a telling comment which became
popular at the time: for the first time since independence, one could
travel from West Pakistan to East Pakistan (Amritsar to Calcutta)
without once entering a state ruled by the grand old party of the Indian
freedom movement.
The debacle aggravated factional fights within the Congress and
heightened tensions between powerful party organisers and Indira
Gandhi, the then Prime Minister. It also found expression in strong
disagreements over some radical economic policies advocated by her,
particularly by more conservative Congress leaders like Morarji Desai.
This ultimately led to a split in the Congress which robbed the party
of 62 Lok Sabha MPs, reducing it to a minority in November 1969.
For the first time, therefore, the ruling party in New Delhi did
not have a majority of Lok Sabha MPs. Indira Gandhi’s government,
however, survived because of the support extended to it by the DMK,
the Communist Party of India, the Akali Dal, the Muslim League and
some independents. Thus, this was also the first occasion when the
concept of ‘outside support’ was put into practice at the level of the
422 DIVIDED WE STAND

Union government, though, as we shall see later, similar experiments

had already been tried out in some states. The tenure of the minority
government came to an end in December 1970, when Indira Gandhi
herself chose to recommend dissolution of the Lok Sabha and the
holding of fresh elections. This too was unprecedented and the
4th Lok Sabha became the first to have not completed its full five-
year term.
If Indira Gandhi’s minority government between November
1969 and December 1970 is disregarded, the first real attempt at a
coalition government at the level of the Union was made in 1977 when
the Janata Party came to power. The party was itself a coalition of
several pre-poll allies who had come together on the issue of opposing
the Emergency.
The alliance that contested the March 1977 elections announced
by Indira Gandhi after she suddenly lifted the Emergency comprised
various political streams. In terms of its ideological moorings, the
alliance can be broken up into four broad streams—those who had
been in the Congress but had left the party at some point, the socialists,
the right-wing Bharatiya Jana Sangh (or today’s Bharatiya Janata
Party), and a section of the left, notably the CPI(M) and some other
smaller parties which, unlike the CPI, had consistently opposed the
imposition of the Emergency.
Within the group of former Congressmen were people like Jagjivan
Ram and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, who had been influential
leaders within the Congress but had quit shortly before the elections
on an anti-Emergency platform to form the Congress for Democracy
(CFD). Then there were those who had been part of the erstwhile
Congress (O), which was formed in 1969 when the Congress split
thanks to a struggle for supremacy between Indira Gandhi’s supporters
and others in the organisation. During the Emergency, many of these
leaders had been part of Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement. One of
these, Morarji Desai, ultimately emerged as the consensus choice to
head the Janata Party government. A third constituent from among
those who had once been within the Congress was the party led by
Charan Singh, who was to later replace Desai as Prime Minister. Singh
had, after quitting the Congress in 1967, floated his own party, the
Bharatiya Kranti Dal, later renamed the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD).
 Friends in Need 423

Charan Singh had cultivated the peasantry, notably the Jats of western
Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, as his political base.
Among the non-Congress streams within the anti-Emergency
alliance were the socialists— followers of Ram Manohar Lohia and
Acharya Narendra Dev—George Fernandes, Madhu Dandavate and
Madhu Limaye being among the more prominent leaders of this
group. Another was the BJS whose association with the RSS was to
become the bone of contention within the Janata Party leading to
the fall of its government. Finally, there was the CPI(M) and smaller
left parties. The Janata Party that was formed after the 1977 elections
and which assumed office was a coalescing of these various streams,
barring the left.
After a little over two years, the contradictions within the Janata
Party reached a climax with the non-Jana Sangh components of
what was essentially a coalition disguised as one party insisting that
those from the Jana Sangh must choose between loyalty to the RSS
and loyalty to the party. Ironically, the ‘dual membership’ issue as it
came to be known was raised most vehemently by leaders like George
Fernandes of the socialist stream, who are today among the staunchest
allies of the BJP. With the leaders of the Jana Sangh, among them
Atal Behari Vajpayee (who was External Affairs Minister in the Desai
Cabinet) and L.K. Advani (who was Information & Broadcasting
Minister) refusing to give up their allegiance to the RSS, the Janata
Party ultimately split and Morarji Desai’s government was reduced
to a minority in the Lok Sabha.
The Congress stepped in to prop up Charan Singh as Prime Minister,
with the left supporting him, but this proved to be India’s most
shortlived government, that is, till the 13-day Vajpayee government in
mid-1996. The Congress, which clearly sensed a rising tide of popular
support, thanks largely to what was perceived as a disappointing per-
formance by the Janata Party, decided to withdraw support to Charan
Singh. Having held the post between July 28, 1979 and January 14,
1980, Charan Singh remains the only Prime Minister in India never to
have faced Parliament, leave alone proving his government’s strength
on the floor of the Lok Sabha.
The first major attempt at a coalition at the centre thus came to an
end within two and a half years of its inception with the Janata Party
424 DIVIDED WE STAND

having disintegrated and the Congress sweeping back to power in

the general elections held in January 1980, making admirable tactical
use of skyrocketing onion prices and the popular disillusionment
with a government that was seen as being too busy settling internal
squabbles to govern. (Nearly two decades later, in November 1998, the
price of onions again became a major political issue which benefited
the Congress in assembly elections held in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
and Delhi.)
An interesting fact to be noted here is that despite the Janata Party
alliance being essentially anti-Congress and drawing sustenance from
diverse ideological groups, both the Prime Ministers thrown up by
the coalition were from among those who had earlier been with the
Congress. This was a pattern that was repeated in subsequent anti-
Congress coalitions too, which is why Vajpayee was seen as the first
truly non-Congress Indian Prime Minister. That former Congressmen
should have led anti-Congress coalition governments is perhaps not
as strange as it may seem, given the rainbow nature of these coalitions
(with right and left groups supporting them). Under the circumstances,
it is perhaps understandable that the only acceptable compromise
solutions would have to emanate from the centrist political space. Since
the Congress had a virtual monopoly of that space till the mid-1960s,
it is not surprising that the compromises needed to form coalitions
should have repeatedly been settled by placing former Congressmen
at the helm.
The next coalition government at the Union level (though in a strict
sense it was more a minority government supported by a coalition)
was formed in December 1989 by the Janata Dal led by V.P. Singh,
another former Congressman. In fact, Singh was Finance Minister and
then Defence Minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet till he fell out on the
issue of corruption in high places (including the scandals relating to
the purchase of Bofors guns and German submarines from HDW). He
went on to form the Jan Morcha, which later merged into the Janata
Dal. The Janata Dal experiment had one very interesting feature—
while both the BJP and the left extended support to it from outside,
there was no arrangement before or after the elections between these
two ‘props’ of the Janata Dal government. During the elections, the
Janata Dal had separate electoral understandings with both the BJP
and the left who contested against each other.
 Friends in Need 425

After the 1989 elections, the Congress emerged as the single-largest

party in the Lok Sabha but was short by over 75 seats of the required
majority. (As it has turned out, the 1989 elections were the first of
six successive general elections which have not yielded any one party
a majority in the Lok Sabha.) The Janata Dal, with its mutually
antagonistic allies, had a comfortable majority, but since neither of
its two allies was willing to share power with the other, it was left
to run the government on its own with ‘outside support’. Barring
the brief tenure of the Charan Singh government, this was the first
occasion when the ruling party on its own had less than one-third of
the Lok Sabha seats.
The V.P. Singh government proved short-lived, once again
thanks to a standoff with the BJP. The 10-month long tenure of this
government proved a truly eventful chapter in Indian political
history with major upheavals. The first of these was caused by the
government’s decision to implement the recommendations of the
Mandal Commission. With the anti-Mandal agitation having already
set the tone for tension between the BJP and the Janata Dal, it was
now the turn of the BJP to up the ante. It did so by launching the
Ayodhya movement.
The upper-caste Hindu outrage at the V.P. Singh government’s
decision to implement the Mandal Commission report was effectively
channelised by the BJP in the Ramjanambhoomi (birthplace of Rama)
agitation. Party President L.K. Advani led his famous rath yatra
across the country, and as communal clashes dotted the points on the
map through which it travelled, there were growing demands for the
government to stop its march. Posed against this was the BJP’s threat
that it would withdraw support if any such measure were undertaken.
Even as the Singh government pondered its options, the Janata Dal
governments in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh took strong measures. The
government of Bihar, headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav, arrested Advani
in Samastipur and stopped the progress of the rath to its ultimate
destination, Ayodhya. In Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Mulayam
Singh Yadav ordered a crackdown on those gathering in Ayodhya to
welcome Advani. What followed was police action in which several
died in firing and thousands were jailed.
The BJP then called for the dismissal of the Mulayam Singh Yadav
government in Uttar Pradesh, failing which it threatened to withdraw
support to Singh’s government in New Delhi. With Singh sticking
426 DIVIDED WE STAND

to his stand that he would rather lose power than compromise on

the issue of safeguarding secularism and the rule of law, the BJP
ultimately withdrew support and Singh lost a vote of confidence in
the Lok Sabha in November 1990. For the second time in a decade, an
attempt to form a non-Congress coalition government at the centre
had failed because of contradictions between the right-wing BJP and
the others.
As in 1979, the fall of the coalition government in November
1990 was followed by a breakaway group of the Janata Dal forming
a government with the outside support of the Congress. The group,
which called itself the Janata Dal (Samajwadi) and was led by another
former Congressman, Chandra Shekhar, had just 57 MPs in the Lok
Sabha, all the others supporting it from outside. The JD (S)—which was
to later split into the Samajwadi Janata Party led by Chandrashekhar
and the Samajwadi Party headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav—thus
became by far the smallest party to have headed a Union government.
As with Charan Singh, so also with Chandra Shekhar, the Congress
withdrew support within months on the flimsiest of pretexts. The
plea given was that the Prime Minister had ordered police surveillance
on Congress leaders including Rajiv Gandhi and thus betrayed their
trust, a charge that was never proved.
Shortlived as the tenure of the Chandra Shekhar government was,
the Congress found time to pressurise it into taking certain decisions
that were to have an impact on the future course of Indian politics.
One such decision was the dismissal of the state government of Tamil
Nadu headed by M. Karunanidhi of the DMK. While Karunanidhi’s
government was clearly dismissed to serve the interests of the
Congress and its ally in Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK, the ostensible
reason for the dismissal, under the much-abused Article 356 of the
Constitution, was the local government’s allegedly poor track record
in countering the activities of the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE). (The same plea was to be used seven years later in
1998 by the Congress to pull down another government in New Delhi,
that is, the United Front government headed by I.K. Gujral.)
The Governor of the state at that time, Surjit Singh Barnala, a
veteran Akali Dal leader and former Chief Minister of Punjab, refused
to play along with the wishes of the central government, preferring
 Friends in Need 427

to resign rather than submit a report that would suit the Chandra
Shekhar government’s gameplan. This cemented a relationship
between the DMK and the Akalis, both parties that have consistently
argued for a more federal structure in India. The relationship between
the two regional parties later proved useful to the BJP, but that’s a
different story.
The elections that followed in May–June 1991 again threw up a
minority government with the Congress failing to secure a majority
despite the sympathy generated for the party in the second half of the
polling after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination on May 21 after one round
of polling had taken place. The Congress government headed by
P.V. Narasimha Rao managed to last its full term and in fact secure a
majority in the Lok Sabha thanks to defections and parties switching
sides, one such switch becoming the subject of a case of alleged bribery
of MPs to vote for the government (which is detailed elsewhere).
After the May 1996 elections, which followed the end of Narasimha
Rao’s tenure, India saw four coalition governments come into being
and fall in less than three years. The first of these four coalition
governments was formed by the BJP in May 1996 and lasted just
13 days before the Prime Minister designate, Vajpayee, resigned after
it became clear that he would lose the vote of confidence. Unlike in
1998, the BJP was unable to win over a single major party to support
its government despite having been given the chance by the President
on the grounds that it was the single largest party in the Lok Sabha.
Its support was thus limited to its pre-poll allies like the Akali Dal in
Punjab and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.
This was followed by the United Front government headed by
H. D. Deve Gowda and supported by the Congress. The United Front
was a post-election formation and consisted of 13 parties, many of
which had alliances with some of the other constituents in individual
states while contesting against other constituents. The single largest
party in the Front was the Janata Dal with 44 Lok Sabha MPs, drawn
mainly from Bihar, Karnataka and Orissa. The second biggest was the
CPI(M). The other parties of the Left Front, the CPI, the RSP and
the Forward Bloc, were also constituents of the Front. Among the
others were several regional parties with bases in one state each like
428 DIVIDED WE STAND

the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, the Samajwadi

Party in Uttar Pradesh, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the Asom Gana
Parishad (AGP) in Assam, and the National Conference (NC) in
Jammu & Kashmir.
With the UF making it clear that it would support neither a BJP-led
nor a Congress-led government, nor even accept a sharing of power
with the Congress, the onus fell on the Congress to support a UF
government without participating in it, which it did. The CPI(M) too
stuck to its earlier stand of not participating in a government at the
centre, a stand which provoked heated debate within and outside the
party. While the RSP and the Forward Bloc also adopted a similar
stance, the CPI became the only constituent of the left to participate in
the government. The result was that the two largest supporting parties—
the Congress and the CPI(M)—were not part of the government.
There was, however, a distinction between the nature of support
being offered from ‘outside’ by the non-CPI left and the Congress.
While the former was not part of the government, it was part of the
United Front, which had institutions like the Steering Committee, the
Core Committee and the Coordination Committee to discuss issues
and provide direction to the government. This was another novel step
in coalition politics, the first time that parties joined a ruling coalition
with formal institutions, but stayed out of government. The Congress,
on the other hand, was neither in the government nor in the United
Front. Its support was, to that extent, more along the conventional
lines of outside support practised by the party on numerous occasions
in the states and at the centre in the past.
Given the nature of the United Front, it was hardly surprising
that there should be differences and in some cases even conflicts
of interests between the partners. In particular, inter-state disputes
were thorny, particularly the manner in which Karnataka and Tamil
Nadu were to share the Cauvery waters, which remained a hotly
contested question despite the government in both states being
run by UF constituents—the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Janata
Dal in Karnataka. Similarly, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka had
an ongoing dispute over the height of the Almatti dam that at one
stage looked like snowballing into a major problem for the UF with
 Friends in Need 429

the Janata Dal government of Karnataka and the TDP-led Andhra

Pradesh government at loggerheads. The fact that the Prime Minister
was, in both these cases, from one of the states involved could have
contributed to heightening hostility, but to the credit of Deve Gowda
and the UF it must be said that though the issues were not resolved,
they were not allowed to get out of hand either.
Predictably though, it was the Congress that was to queer the
pitch for the UF government, this time on an even flimsier pretext, as
detailed earlier. While Kesri’s explanation for pulling down the Deve
Gowda government clearly did not convince anybody, it provided
the basis for another Congress-supported UF government to assume
office. Inder Kumar Gujral thus came to head the third of four
successive coalitions, none of which lasted more than 13 months. As
we have seen, his government too was to be shortlived.
In the elections of February–March 1998 that followed, it was fairly
clear to analysts, voters and pollsters alike that any party getting a
majority in the Lok Sabha was a remote possibility. The result of that
very widely held perception was a significant step forward in coalition
politics in India. For the first time, the BJP decided to forge electoral
alliances with as many regional parties as possible in a bid to capture
power. Prior to these elections, both the BJP and the Congress had
preferred to contest the bulk of Lok Sabha seats on their own and
restrict alliances to a minimum in those states where they would
otherwise be at a clear disadvantage.
For the 1998 elections, the BJP secured tie-ups with as many as
13 big and small regional parties spread over 10 major Indian states,
which between them accounted for 373 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.
Its partners were the Akali Dal in Punjab, the Haryana Vikas Party in
Haryana, the Samata Party in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Trinamool
Congress in West Bengal, the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa, the Shiv Sena
in Maharashtra, the Lok Shakti in Karnataka, the TDP (Lakshmi
Parvathi) in Andhra Pradesh, and five parties in Tamil Nadu—the
AIADMK, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), the Marumalarchi
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress
(TRC) and the Janata Party. There were several factors that dictated
this coalition strategy from a party that had always been a proponent
430 DIVIDED WE STAND

of a unitary India and a strong centre, positions that would normally

be a restraint on any large-scale alliances with regional parties.
One major factor was the perception that no party would be able
to form a government on its own. Added to this was the BJP’s own
experience of its attempt to form a government which collapsed
within 13 days without any fresh allies emerging after the elections.
This helped in convincing the party that the only way of breaking
its isolation within the political class was to build alliances before
the elections rather than seeking them after the polls. A third factor
was the recognition that the party had acquired the image of being
confined to the north and west of the country and therefore not being
well-placed to run a government in New Delhi. The BJP knew it had
to shed this image of not being a pan-Indian party and could not do
so on its own.
A crucial fourth factor lay in the party’s electoral track record
in many of the states where it sought alliances. Of the nine states in
which it roped in regional partners, it had never won a single seat in
Tamil Nadu or Orissa, which between them have 60 seats in the Lok
Sabha. In West Bengal, which has 42 seats, it had not won a seat after
1952. In Andhra Pradesh, which also has 42 seats, it had only twice in
11 general elections won just one seat. In Punjab (14 seats), the party
had last won a seat in 1962. In Haryana (10 seats), after failing to
register a win in elections since 1977, it had won four seats in 1996
thanks to its tie-up with the HVP. In Karnataka, while the party had
registered its first wins in 1991 and increased the tally from four to six
in 1996, it was still a minor presence in a state that sends 28 MPs to
the Lok Sabha. Thus, the BJP faced the prospect of winning no more
than a handful of the 196 seats that these seven states have between
them if it chose to go alone in the polls.
In Bihar, while the BJP had a significant presence and could bank
on winning some seats on its own, the addition of the Samata Party’s
votes could prove decisive in a severely polarised state. Given the fact
that Bihar then had as many as 54 Lok Sabha seats, the alliance was
crucial to the BJP’s prospects of forming the next government. The
Samata Party’s contribution to its vote base in UP would, of course, be
very much less, but even a couple of extra MPs in a hung Parliament
 Friends in Need 431

could mean the difference between being in government and sitting

in Opposition. Indeed, the events as they unfolded proved the BJP’s
calculations right.
The BJP did emerge as the single largest party in the 12th Lok
Sabha, but with just 182 seats it was well short of the halfway mark
of 272. With its electoral allies, however, it had 258 seats, putting it
within striking distance of the target. Even so, that relatively small
distance appeared for about a week after the elections to be quite a
task. Ultimately, it took a break-up of the United Front on the issue
of whether or not a Congress government should be supported before
the BJP could breathe easy. After President K.R. Narayanan was
satisfied that the BJP, while still short of a majority, had the support
of more MPs than any other formation, he invited Vajpayee to form
the government and seek a vote of confidence. The rest, as they say,
is history.
The drama was, however, far from over. Even as the BJP and its
electoral allies met to chalk out a National Agenda for Governance
on the basis of which the government would be run, a block of
27 MPs from Tamil Nadu, led by the AIADMK, started bargaining
hard for ministerial berths and other concessions. The AIADMK
with its 18 MPs was the single largest ally of the BJP and commanded
the allegiance of four other smaller allies from the state who between
them had won another nine seats. This block delayed giving the letter
of support to the Vajpayee government that had been demanded
by the President to prima facie establish that it would have the
requisite numbers in the Lok Sabha. Another ally, the Trinamool
Congress, which had seven MPs, announced that it would support
the government but not participate in it. Ultimately two of the smaller
partners from Tamil Nadu, the MDMK and the PMK also took the
same stand. The jitters that these developments caused in the BJP
camp were somewhat eased by the indications from the National
Conference and the TDP that they would abstain in the crucial vote
of confidence. Another small party, which had contested the elections
against the BJP alliance in Haryana, the INLD, promised the support
of its four MPs to the Vajpayee government.
Even so, the numbers between the government and the Opposition
were finely balanced. That necessitated a tacit understanding between
432 DIVIDED WE STAND

the TDP and the government under which a TDP member was
elected as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha in return for which the 11
other TDP MPs ultimately voted in favour of the government in the
vote of confidence. Just how crucial the changed stances of the TDP,
the NC and the INLD (all of whom had opposed the BJP and the
Congress in the elections) were can be judged from the fact that the
vote of confidence was ultimately won by 275 votes to 263 with
the three NC members abstaining. Even at this early stage, one of
the BJP’s electoral allies, Subramaniam Swamy of the Janata Party,
had decided not to vote in favour of the government. The BJP in turn
had already jettisoned one of its allies, the TDP (Lakshmi Parvathi) in
Andhra Pradesh, clearly because of the extreme hostility between the
two TDPs. With Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP having 12 Lok Sabha
MPs and Lakshmi Parvathi’s party having drawn a blank, the choice
for the BJP was clear, even if cynical.
The alliance continued to appear unstable with one ally or the other
at frequent intervals threatening to withdraw support or ‘reconsider’
its support to the government if its demands were not met. While
the AIADMK has been projected by the BJP as the sole culprit in
this respect, the reality is that the independent MP Buta Singh was
the first to quit the alliance, followed by the INLD. The Akali Dal
at one stage in mid-1998, months after the government was formed,
had announced that it would reconsider its support to the government
if its demand for keeping Udham Singh Nagar out of the proposed
state of Uttaranchal was not met. The Trinamool Congress too at
various stages showed signs of unease and on one occasion pulled
out of the alliance coordination committee protesting that the Prime
Minister was not acting adequately on issues like the rise in prices of
essential commodities. The spectacle of senior ministers like George
Fernandes, Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan rushing around
from New Delhi to Chennai and Kolkata in a bid to placate angry
allies became a regular feature for most of the tenure of the second
Vajpayee government.
Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the government
fell when it did. The AIADMK had always been seen as being on the
verge of pulling out of the alliance and it finally did in April. While
the BJP has since attempted to portray this as the result of the party
 Friends in Need 433

and the government refusing to accept the AIADMK’s unreasonable

demands, the facts suggest a different story. Several ministerial
portfolios were widely believed to have been demanded by the
AIADMK and granted and several bureaucratic transfers and postings
were so convenient for Jayalalithaa that the obvious inferences were
drawn. If anything, the public perception is that the BJP was more
than willing to accommodate the AIADMK supremo’s whims till
she made one demand too many.
In the vote of confidence that followed the withdrawal of support
by the AIADMK, the rest of the BJP-led alliance held together despite
speculation that some of the allies, notably the Samata Party, the Biju
Janata Dal and the Akali Dal, may be heading for a split with factions
from these parties likely to move over to the Opposition camp.
Further, the BJP managed to win back the support of the INLD
reportedly on the assurance that some populist measures for farmers
would be adopted if the government stayed in the saddle. It also
found a new ally in the DMK, which could not countenance the
prospect of being on the same side as its rival, the AIADMK, and was
apprehensive that any future government with the AIADMK as a
partner may well dismiss its state government in Tamil Nadu.
Thus, the fourth successive coalition government in just over two
years met the same fate as the others before it, but in doing so ushered
in a fresh round of political realignments. The realignments continued
as the parties prepared for the polls. The most significant of these was
the decision of the TDP to drop the veneer of ‘equidistance’ from
the BJP and the Congress. It forged an alliance with the BJP for the
simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly polls, though it decided not to
formally join the NDA. The alliance worked to the benefit of both the
TDP and the BJP, the former winning 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in
the state and the latter improving its tally from five to seven seats. The
TDP on its own also obtained a majority in the state assembly. That
this performance was despite the Congress increasing its share of the
votes in the state is a pointer to the manner in which Chandrababu
Naidu understood the electoral arithmetic. Significantly, the TDP,
which emerged as the BJP’s single biggest partner in the 13th Lok
Sabha, chose not to join the government.
434 DIVIDED WE STAND

As in the case of the TDP in Andhra Pradesh, the DMK in Tamil

Nadu cemented a formal electoral alliance with the BJP and its other
allies. In the process, the tie-up between the DMK and the Tamil Maanila
Congress had to be given a quiet burial, with the latter refusing to go
along with the BJP. The TMC also made it clear that it would not be
part of any alliance headed by Jayalalithaa. Since the Congress and
the left parties in the state had already tied up with the AIADMK, the
TMC had no option but to forge a ‘third front’ which included other
smaller parties like the Puthizha Tamilagam (a party that appeals to
the dalits of the state) and the Samajwadi Party. This front predictably
failed to win any Lok Sabha seats.
Another significant political development took place in the Janata
Dal. The party split down the middle, with one section led by party
president Sharad Yadav choosing to join the NDA, while another
led by former Prime Minister Deve Gowda refused to do so. Most of
the senior leaders of the Janata Dal, including former Prime Minister
I.K. Gujral, Ram Vilas Paswan, who had been part of several Union
governments, and the then Karnataka Chief Minister J.H. Patel, were
part of the Sharad Yadav group in the JD. This group merged with the
Lok Shakti in Karnataka, headed by the late Rama Krishna Hegde,
former Karnataka Chief Minister and Union Commerce Minister,
and the Samata Party in Bihar, to form the Janata Dal (United). In effect,
the JD(U) included practically the entire Bihar unit of the Janata Dal
and a substantial section of the Karnataka unit, these being the only
states in which the JD had influence. The formation of the JD(U) was
yet another instance of the realignments that have periodically taken
place within those who originally formed the Janata Dal in 1989.
Both the Lok Shakti and the Samata Party were breakaway groups
from the JD. Thus, while the formation of the JD(U) was at one level
a consolidation of the Janata Dal, which had got scattered over time,
what was interesting was that this consolidation was now in favour
of the BJP rather than against it.
This consolidation certainly helped the NDA put up an impressive
performance in Bihar, where the coalition won 41 of the 54 Lok Sabha
seats. In Karnataka, on the other hand, the addition of Patel and his
supporters to the NDA bandwagon seems to have damaged rather than
helped the NDA’s prospects. While the BJP-led alliance had won
 Friends in Need 435

16 of the 28 seats in the state in the 1998 elections, the tally came
down to just 10 in 1999. Clearly, the anti-incumbency feeling against
Patel’s government had overshadowed any arithmetic advantage that
may have accrued to the NDA. In fact, this was not an unanticipated
situation. The BJP’s state unit had consistently and vehemently
opposed the proposed merger on the ground that the party would
lose one of its key campaign issues—the non performance of the Patel
government—on the eve of the assembly elections. The BJP’s central
leadership too saw the merit in this argument, but went on to add
that it had little choice in the matter, since the Samata Party and the
Lok Shakti had made it clear that they would brook no opposition
from the BJP to the formation of the JD(U). The central leadership,
therefore, prevailed on the state unit to accept Patel into the NDA
fold in the larger national interests of the coalition.
In Haryana too alliances changed rapidly in the build-up to the
13th general elections. The HVP, which was ruling the state with the
support of the BJP at the time of the vote of confidence in the Lok
Sabha, was very quickly jettisoned thereafter by the BJP. The BJP
withdrew support to the HVP government, precipitating its collapse
and instead joined hands with the INLD. The link with the INLD’s
position on the vote of confidence in Parliament was all too obvious.
The INLD had announced just two days before the crucial vote that
it would vote against the Vajpayee government and would prefer a
non-BJP, non-Congress Prime Minister like Deve Gowda, ostensibly
because he would promote the interests of farmers. By the time of
the actual vote, though, the INLD had switched its support to the
Vajpayee government. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that the BJP
soon thereafter supported Chautala’s claim to form the government
in Haryana. In the Lok Sabha elections that followed, the two parties
fought in alliance, while the HVP and the Congress fought separately
to the detriment of both. The results were a complete sweep of the
10 Lok Sabha seats from the state for the BJP-INLD alliance.
New allies, however, were not the only factor working in favour
of the BJP-led NDA in the build-up to the 1999 general elections.
An equally important development was a split within the Congress
when Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar were expelled and
436 DIVIDED WE STAND

formed their own party—the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

While this had little or no impact in most parts of the country, it did
radically alter political equations in Pawar’s home state of Maharashtra.
The NCP managed to win just six of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha seats,
but divided the traditional Congress votes sufficiently to allow the
BJP-Shiv Sena alliance to win 28 seats and reduce the Congress tally
to just 10. This was despite a considerable erosion in the BJP-Shiv
Sena alliance’s share of the vote which would have otherwise left the
alliance with just a handful of seats from Maharashtra.
The process of political realignments did not end with the 1999
Lok Sabha elections. As with other regional parties, in the case of the
NCP too the realities of state politics dictated the future course of
action. In the simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha elections in
Maharashtra, the Congress emerged as the single largest party with
75 MLAs in the 288-member assembly. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance
won 125 seats while the NCP obtained 58 seats. The NCP, despite its
professed opposition to Sonia Gandhi’s so-called ambition of holding
the post of the Prime Minister of India, realised that if it were to form
a government in Maharashtra, the only way out was an alliance with
the Congress. That is precisely what happened, but only after much
political drama which included attempts to woo the 12 independent
MLAs and those belonging to smaller parties like the Peasants and
Workers’ Party (PWP), the Republican Party of India (RPI), the JD(S),
the CPI(M) and the SP. Even government formation took inordinately
long on account of wrangling over ministerial positions.
The merger of the Lok Shakti with the JD(U) in Karnataka
also ran into some rough weather after Rama Krishna Hegde was
excluded from the Union Cabinet after having served in the second
Vajpayee government as Commerce Minister. Hegde later held
George Fernandes primarily responsible for his exclusion from the
Cabinet and expressed unhappiness that Fernandes and Vajpayee
had not shown a senior leader like him the courtesy of giving him
some inkling of his exclusion from the Cabinet. A bitter Hegde
claimed that Vajpayee looked a ‘picture of sadness’ when he met him.
‘It seemed he [Vajpayee] did something he should not have done,’
Hegde claimed.
 Friends in Need 437

It is worth noting that these internal wrangles within the JD(U)

were also influenced by the reality of state politics. The party had a
strength of 21 MPs in the Lok Sabha, of which 18 were from Bihar and
just three from Karnataka. The JD(U) was also a party with an unusually
high proportion of political heavyweights. As a result, there were at
least five obvious contenders for a Cabinet berth from the party—
Fernandes, Paswan, Sharad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Hegde. It was
obvious that Vajpayee could not afford to make them all Cabinet
ministers without risking resentment from other partners in the
alliance. At least one of these worthies would have to be dropped. The
fact that the axe ultimately fell on Hegde could have been determined
by political expediency: assembly elections were due in Bihar in
February 2000, whereas they had just been concluded in Karnataka,
Hegde’s home state. Any dissension within the ranks of the JD(U) in
Bihar could cost the NDA dear in the assembly elections, while the
immediate stakes were lower in Karnataka, where the alliance was now
in opposition to a Congress government with a comfortable majority.
(Six years later in 2006, Karnataka politics saw a set of unusual twists
and turns when the JD[Secular] led by Deve Gowda first opposed and
then supported the BJP to form the state government after ditching the
Congress. Deve Gowda first claimed that he was deeply saddened
that his son H.D. Kumaraswamy had tied up with the ‘communal’
BJP to become Chief Minister of Karnataka. Thereafter, in a blatantly
opportunistic move, former Prime Minister Deve Gowda supported
his son and blamed the Congress for the break-up of its alliance with
the JD(S)—once again, blood proved much thicker than political
ideology, just in case there were doubts on this score.)
In Jammu & Kashmir, the National Conference continued with its
transparently opportunist stance: it would fight elections on its own
without becoming part of any alliance, but would unconditionally
support New Delhi since the state depends heavily on the Union
government for support in countering secessionist militants. As in
1998, therefore, the NC in 1999 contested all the six seats in Jammu &
Kashmir, winning four of them, but had no compunctions in joining
the NDA government when it was formed. Omar Abdullah once again
became a junior minister in the third Vajpayee government. The NC
parted ways with the BJP and the NDA before the 2004 elections.
438 DIVIDED WE STAND

A common feature of all these realignments in Indian politics was

that they were responses to the compulsions of state politics. This
was true of the allies of the BJP—the TDP, the DMK, the JD(U)
and the INLD—each of which had been forced into joining hands
with the NDA to combat their respective principal opponents in
state politics—the Congress for the TDP in Andhra Pradesh and the
JD(U) in Karnataka, the AIADMK for the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the
RJD for the JD(U) in Bihar and the HVP for the INLD in Haryana.
This was equally true in the case of the NCP, which ultimately joined
the Congress in forming a government in Maharashtra. As already
stated, the DMK left the NDA to join the UPA before the 2004
elections and in 2007, the TDP distanced itself from the BJP, came
closer to the left and still believed in the significance of a ‘Third Front’
in Indian politics.

Coalitions in the States

Despite the popular notion that coalition governments are a
phenomenon of recent vintage in India, and that even in the states
they do not date further back than the 4th general elections in 1967,
the fact is that the first coalition government in India was formed as
a result of the first-ever round of general elections held in 1952. That
government was the one headed by the Akali Dal in what was then
PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab States’ Union) and covered some
parts of the existing states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
In two other states, Madras (comprising most of today’s Tamil Nadu,
the Rayalaseema and coastal parts of Andhra Pradesh and the Malabar
region of north Kerala) and Travancore-Cochin (South Kerala and
parts of today’s Tamil Nadu), the Congress formed governments with
the support of minor parties after it failed to win a majority of seats
in the assemblies in the 1952 elections.
In both these states, communist-led coalitions formed before the
elections had emerged as the largest blocks in the assembly, though
the Congress was the single largest party. While the Congress under
Jawaharlal Nehru was quite content to allow the Akalis to form the
government in PEPSU, it was determined not to allow the communists
to come to power in any state. The reasons for this were not purely
 Friends in Need 439

whimsical. The CPI in the 1952 general elections had emerged as the
most potent opposition force, constituting the largest non-Congress
group in both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. In addition, the
CPI-led alliance was the single largest block in the two southern
states of Madras and Travancore–Cochin, as we have seen, and similar
alliances were the major opposition in Hyderabad and West Bengal,
while Tripura, which did not then have a legislature, had elected
communist MPs from both its constituencies. Thus, unlike the Akali
Dal, which was restricted to what is today Punjab, the CPI posed a
threat to Congress dominance in large parts of south and east India.
In what over the years became the norm, the Congress was invited
by the Raj Pramukh (as the Governor was designated) in Travancore–
Cochin and the Governor in Madras to form the government, on
the ground that it was the single-largest party despite being in a
minority. In Madras, the Congress was able to win the support of
smaller caste-based groups and the Indian Union Muslim League. But,
it had to accept one of their demands and before it could do so the
new-found allies insisted that they would support the Congress only
if C. Rajagopalachari, the first Indian to become Governor General
of India, headed the government. Since Rajaji, as he is better known,
was not a member of the state legislature, he was nominated to the
Legislative Council by the Governor, thus setting another dubious
precedent. That the Congress should have stooped so low even in
those early days, which are still seen by many as the era of principled
politics, is explained by one of Rajaji’s statements spelling out his
priorities in no uncertain terms. He said, ‘Communists are my enemy
number one, I fight them from A to Z.’
Having successfully formed the government, the Congress then
used it to consolidate its position in Madras. Rajaji had to quit
within two years of becoming Chief Minister to be replaced by
K. Kamaraj, another prominent Congress leader. However, a
significant development in the interim ultimately consolidated the hold
of the Congress on the Madras assembly. This was the carving out of
the Telugu districts of the province to form a separate state (Andhra
Pradesh) in 1953. Since these districts had elected large numbers of
communists, their exit significantly reduced the communist strength
in what remained of Madras, and thus helped the Congress.
440 DIVIDED WE STAND

What is more, even in the newly created Andhra Pradesh, the

Congress was able to woo many of the non-communist groups
in the CPI alliance to its side, including the leader of the alliance,
T. Prakasam of the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP). As a result,
in the mid-term elections in the Andhra province that were held in
1955, the Congress was able to lead a non-communist coalition to a
resounding victory. Within the short span of time between the first
general elections and the second in 1957, therefore, the CPI was
considerably reduced in strength in both parts of the erstwhile Madras
province and the Congress correspondingly strengthened.
In Travancore–Cochin, A.J. John became the Congress Chief
Minister in 1952 and won over several small opposition groups to
support his government. Among these was the Tamil Nadu Congress
of South Travancore, a party championing the cause of the Tamil
speaking ethnic majority in the southern parts of the province.
E.M.S. Namboodiripad, the communist leader who was to later
become the first elected communist head of a government in a
Parliamentary democracy, had this to say about the alliances forged
by John in Travancore–Cochin and Rajaji in Madras in his book, The
Communist Party in Kerala, Six Decades of Struggle and Advance,
‘The new combinations led by John and Rajagopalachari were, in other
words, the forerunners of the anti-communist combination that was
to appear in Kerala in a short time.’ He also observed that Rajaji’s
attitude towards the communists ‘was enthusiastically taken up by
the Christian clergy in Travancore–Cochin, who organised the first
anti-communist front in the country.’
Despite his attempts at consolidation, however, John lasted less
than two years with factional and caste-based fights within his own
party and the alliance forcing the dissolution of the assembly after the
Tamil Nadu Congress withdrew support, reducing his government
to a minority. This forced a mid-term election in 1954 in which
the Congress was reduced to a minority and, unlike in 1952, the
Opposition alliance had a clear majority in the assembly, despite the
Catholic church for the first time openly campaigning and warning
people against the ‘danger of communism’. This alliance consisted of
the Left Front (the communists, the Revolutionary Socialist Party
and the Kerala Socialist Party), the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) and
the Tamil Nadu Congress.
 Friends in Need 441

It was clear, therefore, that the Opposition alliance would be called

upon to form the government. The Congress had other ideas. It
made an offer to the PSP leader Pattom Thanu Pillai. If the PSP was
ready to form a single party government, the Congress suggested, it
would be willing to support the government without sharing power.
The PSP accepted the offer, breaking the electoral pact. Thus, with
just 19 members in an assembly of over a hundred, the PSP formed
the government. Ironically, as the largest of the parties that was
not in the government, the Congress was officially recognised as
the ‘Opposition’. Within months, the PSP was split at the all-India
level with the creation of the Socialist Party by Ram Manohar
Lohia, which led to the split of the PSP in Travancore–Cochin too.
The predictable result was the replacement of the ‘single party’ PSP
government by a Congress-led government with the support of the
Tamil Nadu Congress.
Against this backdrop came a significant development in 1956
which prepared the ground for the election of a communist-led
government a year later. This was the creation of the state of Kerala
as part of the country-wide exercise in creating new linguistically
homogenous states. The new state of Kerala consisted of most of
Travancore–Cochin and the Malabar districts of Madras. The addition
of Malabar to Travancore–Cochin came as a shot in the arm for the
CPI and a jolt for the Congress. In the 1952 elections, the Congress
had won just four of the 30 seats in this region while the CPI–KMPP
alliance had won close to half the seats.
Historic as it was, therefore, the communist victory of 1957
in Kerala did not come as a surprise. The CPI on its own won
60 of the 126 assembly seats and with the support of many of the
14 independents elected was able to form a government headed by
Namboodiripad in April 1957. In just over two years, however, this
state government was to become the first of many victims over the
years of Congress rule in New Delhi. On July 31, 1959, President
Rajendra Prasad, acting on the advice of Nehru’s Cabinet, dismissed
the state government despite its having a majority in the assembly,
ostensibly because it had lost the support of the people. The move
is widely believed to have been the handiwork of Indira Gandhi and
a precursor to the strong-arm tactics she herself adopted after she
became Prime Minister.
442 DIVIDED WE STAND

In the mid-term elections that followed in February 1960, the

Congress managed to cobble together an alliance with the PSP and
the Muslim League (which it had described as a ‘dead horse’ in the
previous elections) and get caste organisations like the Nair Service
Society to back its alliance. The results were a resounding victory
for the anti-CPI alliance, but the price paid by the Congress was
reinstating the PSP’s Pillai as Chief Minister. This was despite the
fact that the Congress had 63 seats in the 126-member assembly while
the PSP had just 20 MLAs. Kerala to date has not seen a single party
government (barring the first minority PSP government). Coalitions
have become the norm, but unlike the early experiments of the 1950s
and 1960s, they are now more stable and most state governments
last their full term. The coalitions too, which had seen repeated
realignments, have now crystalised with the CPI(M)-led Left and
Democratic Front on one side of the divide and the Congress-led
United Democratic Front on the other.
The first major wave of coalitions in the states came in 1967, when
the Congress lost power in nine states, in some as a result of electoral
defeats and in others because of defections from its own ranks. Those
who replaced it were different in each of the states, but in each case it
was an anti-Congress coalition that came to the fore, except in Tamil
Nadu, where the DMK won an absolute majority in the assembly on
its own and the Congress, as events proved, was never again to form
a government in the state.
In Punjab, the various factions of the Akali Dal were the backbone of
the coalition, headed by Gurnam Singh of the Sant Fateh Singh group.
In Bihar, a Samyukta Vidhayak Dal—which translates as the combined
legislators’ group/party and was used as common nomenclature for
the anti-Congress coalitions of 1967 in other parts of the Hindi belt
too—was formed by the Socialist Party, the PSP, the Jana Sangh,
the BKD, the Jan Kranti Dal (JKD) and the CPI. Mahamaya Prasad
Singh of the JKD, which later merged with the BKD, was Bihar’s first
non-Congress Chief Minister. In West Bengal two opposition fronts,
one led by the CPI(M) and the other by the Bangla Congress came
together to form a United Front government led by Ajoy Mukherjee.
In Kerala, a United Front headed by Namboodiripad assumed office.
In Orissa, the Swatantra Party, largely comprised of members of
 Friends in Need 443

the royal families of erstwhile princely states, joined hands with the
Jana Congress, a breakaway group of the Congress headed by Hare
Krishna Mahatab. R.N. Singh Deo of the Swatantra Party headed
the coalition government.
In Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, the Congress
initially formed the state governments, but was deposed from power
within periods ranging from a week in Haryana to four months in
Madhya Pradesh with defections from the Congress helping the
Opposition alliance to come to power. In Haryana, the Congress had
won a comfortable majority in the elections (48 out of 81 seats) but
Chief Minister Bhagwat Dayal Sharma lasted barely a week before a
big chunk of dissidents from the party led by Rao Birender Singh left
and joined the Opposition. A United Front government was formed
with Singh as the Chief Minister. In Uttar Pradesh, while the Congress
failed to win a majority, it emerged as the single-largest party in the
assembly and was therefore invited by the governor to form the
government despite a well-publicised tussle for leadership between
Chander Bhanu Gupta and Charan Singh. Gupta’s government lasted
for just three weeks and fell when Charan Singh with his followers
formed the Bharatiya Kranti Dal and joined the Opposition ranks.
The Opposition SVD alliance came to power with Charan Singh
as the Chief Minister in April 1967.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress government led by D.P. Mishra
was pulled down after four months following defections from the
party. Among those who left the Congress and declared support to
the Jana Sangh was Rajmata Vijay Raje Scindia of Gwalior. An SVD
ministry, led by G.N. Singh and including Congress defectors, the
Jana Sangh, the PSP and the Socialist Party, came to power.
Ironically, the trend of defections that had helped topple the
Congress from many of these states soon worked in favour of the
party with all the non-Congress state governments proving extremely
unstable. In a little over a year the governments of Namboodiripad
and C.N. Annadurai in Tamil Nadu were all that remained of the
first major wave of non-Congress coalition governments. While in
Madhya Pradesh the Congress had regained power with the support
of defectors from the SVD, in Bihar, West Bengal and Punjab the
Congress supported those who split the Opposition coalition’s ranks.
444 DIVIDED WE STAND

Ultimately even these did not last and President’s rule was declared
in most of these states, bringing India’s first major flirtation with
coalitions to a dismal end. Subhash C. Kashyap, former Secretary
General of the Lok Sabha, has calculated in his book, The Politics of
Power: Defections and State Politics in India, that while 542 legislators
had defected in all the Indian states in the decade 1957–67, the number
of defectors in a single year after the 1967 elections alone was 438.
The fickle and unstable nature of coalitions in the state continued
for the next decade till the CPI(M)-led Left Front came to power in
West Bengal and Tripura in 1977. In the interim, West Bengal itself
had seen a second aborted attempt at a United Front government.
Other states like Bihar, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh had seen repeated
attempts at forging coalition governments suffer the same fate.
The attempts at forging a Samajwadi Party–Bahujan Samaj Party–
Left coalition in Uttar Pradesh in the early 1990s did not last and
the BSP’s successive attempts at coalitions with the BJP too proved
shortlived. In Bihar, the seemingly secure alliance between Lalu Prasad
Yadav’s government and the left was shattered after Yadav’s own party
at the time (the Janata Dal) demanded his resignation for corruption
charges and the left supported the demand. As a result, the newly
created RJD of Lalu Yadav fought the 1998 Lok Sabha elections on
a different platform from the Janata Dal and the left parties. By the
time of the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, however, the left had veered
around to the view that there was no option but to support the RJD–
Congress alliance. Ultimately, though, while the CPI(M) joined this
alliance, the CPI went it alone after differences with the RJD on seat-
sharing within the alliance.
The CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal, however, has stood
the test of time, surviving intact and holding on to power since 1977.
In Tripura too, the Left Front has remained united even when it lost
power, as in 1988. In Kerala, the LDF in its new form, in which it
has shed the Indian National Muslim League and acquired the CPI
as a stable partner, has remained more or less unchanged for about a
decade-and-a-half now, whether in power or in the Opposition. One
major factor in the stable composition of all these alliances is the fact
that the left has remained united in its practice, even when there have
been public disagreements over specific policies or tactics.
 Friends in Need 445

Another stable coalition to have emerged is that of the Shiv Sena

and the BJP in Maharashtra. There have been differences within the
alliance, particularly on issues relating to power sharing, with the BJP
harbouring the resentment that the Shiv Sena acts like a big brother
in state politics and the Sena accusing the BJP of adopting a similar
attitude in national politics, but the two partners have not yet parted
ways and do not seem likely to for the moment.

Conclusion
To return to the propositions that we said we would examine, it is
quite clear that alliances made before the polls are not necessarily
more stable than those that are struck after them. The Janata Party
and Janata Dal experiments at the centre and several attempts in the
states (like the Communist-PSP alliance in Travancore in the mid-
1950s) severely undermine this proposition. Nor does experience
bear out the contention that those who participate in governments
are more reliable allies than those who support them from outside.
The AIADMK was a part of the Vajpayee government as were the
two factions of the Janata Party that ultimately fell apart in 1979.
Instances of partners in government switching sides are numerous
in state politics, particularly after the 1967 elections. Again, the size
of the dominant partner in a coalition does not seem to provide
any guarantees to its longevity (as is evident from the collapse of the
V.P. Singh government in 1990).
The one proposition that seems to have been borne out by history
is that ideological cohesion helps a coalition stay together. The Left
Front governments as well as the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance are strong
evidence of this. There is, however, a caveat to be added here. Mere
unity of purpose in opposing a common enemy is not to be confused
with ideological cohesion. Whether it was the anti-Congress combines
of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s or the anti-BJP combines of
recent years, the existence of the common enemy has proved a weak
cementing force.
It would also be simplistic to view mere pronouncements of a
common agenda as evidence of ideological cohesion. Whether it was
the Common Minimum Programme of the United Front, the National
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Agenda for Governance of the second Vajpayee government, or the

National Common Minimum Programme between the UPA and
the left, these documents could not and cannot by themselves hold
coalitions together. This can be put down to the fact that the documents
contained little more than pious statements of intent, which would be
hard for anyone to oppose, while leaving out contentious issues on
which many of the partners had radically differing views.
The fact that many states have lived with coalition governments for
decades indicates that the notion of the electorate getting disgusted
with coalitions may be wishful thinking. This notion suffers from the
limitation that it treats coalitions among political parties as an isolated
phenomenon. The reality, however, is that in most states the current
era of coalitions is only a reflection of the social churning that is taking
place. As previously suppressed sections of the people seek to assert
themselves, the correlation of forces is constantly changing.
However, the experience of the states does suggest that coalitions
of political expediency could over time be replaced by those with an
ideological cohesion. Therein lies hope, not of an end to the era of
coalitions, but of the beginning of a phase of more meaningful and
consensual coalitions.
 Chapter 9
Friends in Deed:
Governance and Stability

Have political coalitions led to better governance in India? This is not

an easy question to answer, for the picture is complex. Everybody
has her or his definition of what constitutes good governance, which
would include a slew of issues or a wish list. One such list could run
like this: lower incidence of corruption, greater transparency and
accountability on the part of politicians and bureaucrats with fewer
discretionary powers for them, greater federalism in the polity and
economy, better distribution of the benefits of economic growth
among the weaker sections and empowerment of those social sections
which were less privileged in the country’s caste-based society. The
list would go on to include removal of the factors responsible for the
world’s largest population of the poor and illiterate living in India.
In this chapter, we look at whether coalition governments have
been able to reduce corruption in the country. The answer to this
question is, ‘Perhaps, but we are not sure’. The second question is
whether coalition governments have brought about a greater degree
of federalism (or de-centralisation) in India’s polity and economy.
The answer to this question is an unequivocal ‘Yes’.
Some would argue that the fragmentation of the polity and the
existence of coalition governments have brought about a slow and
gradual process of cleansing. The fact that coalitions by their very
nature involve a sharing of power between constituents makes it more
difficult for any one constituent to misuse discretionary powers, this
school of thought contends. Others would argue equally convincingly
that the incidence of scams and scandals would continue to rise as
politicians and bureaucrats scramble to make a fast buck in a situation
in which instability convinces them that the loaves and fishes of office
may be available only for a short period. Businessmen too may want
to make the most of periods when politicians favourably inclined
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towards them are in office. While both arguments have some merit,
the issue cannot be settled through theoretical discussions. The answer
to this conundrum will have to emerge from actual experience and
empirical evidence. Clearly, there is not enough evidence yet to reach
any definite conclusions. However, there are some pointers to the
shape of things to come.
Sections of the judiciary, the media and non-governmental
organisations have responded in the last decade or so to the public
revulsion against corruption and have become increasingly activist.
Some of the high and mighty, including former Prime Minister
Narasimha Rao, former Union Minister Sukh Ram, former Chief
Ministers Lalu Prasad Yadav and J. Jayalalithaa, among others, have
faced corruption charges in court and a few have even spent time
behind bars. Predictably, all these individuals claimed that the criminal
charges against them were ‘politically motivated’. In December 2006,
Shibu Soren, former Union Minister for Coal, became the first serving
Union Minister who was jailed on charges of having allegedly conspired
to murder his former private secretary who, in turn, had claimed that
Soren had not given him ‘enough’ of the funds obtained during the
‘JMM’ bribery case detailed later in this chapter—Soren was released
from jail nine months later after he was acquitted by a higher court.
The last four Prime Ministers of India who headed coalition
governments, Manmohan Singh, Atal Behari Vajpayee, I.K. Gujral
and H.D. Deve Gowda, would all claim that the governments they
headed have been relatively free of corruption. If the number of
scams that surfaced during the tenure of different Prime Ministers
is any yardstick, such a claim from Vajpayee or Manmohan might
appear a little thin. Deve Gowda and Gujaral, on the other hand, can
justifiably argue that no major scandals emerged during their tenure.
The same claim can justifiably also be made by V.P. Singh who was
Prime Minister in 1989–90. In marked contrast are the regimes of
all Congress Prime Ministers with the exception of Lal Bahadur
Shastri (1964–66).
There were, of course, charges of corruption levelled against
particular ministers in the Janata Party government headed by
Morarji Desai (1977–79) and the brief period thereafter when Charan
Singh became Prime Minister in 1979–80. But there is no doubt that
corruption struck deep roots in the Indian polity during successive
regimes of Congress Prime Ministers when a single party dominated
 Friends in Deed 449

Parliament. From the tenure of Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–64) to those of

Indira Gandhi (1966–77 and 1980–84) and Rajiv Gandhi (1984–89), the
country’s polity arguably became more and more corrupt over time.
One of the important reasons why the Congress under Rajiv
Gandhi lost the 1989 general elections was the general perception
among large sections of the electorate that he was corrupt. This
perception was, of course, assiduously propagated by Rajiv Gandhi’s
estranged Finance Minister and Defence Minister V.P. Singh. While
he highlighted the instances of alleged kickbacks paid by Swedish
armaments producer Bofors and German submarine manufacturer
HDW to persons close to Rajiv Gandhi during his election campaign
in 1989, Singh himself was projected by the media as the new ‘Mr
Clean’ (a term that was ironically first used in India to describe Rajiv
Gandhi in his first few months as Prime Minister) who would clean
up the country’s corrupt system of the sleaze associated with raising
political ‘donations’. During the year he was Finance Minister in Rajiv
Gandhi’s government, V.P. Singh’s hand-picked officials carried out
raids on many of India’s leading industrialists, some of whom were
arrested for violating foreign exchange and taxation laws.
It can be argued that since most coalition governments in India have
been unstable, the shorter tenures of such governments have ensured
that there has been a big scramble among influential functionaries
to make as much money as possible through underhand means in
the shortest possible time. An example of this phenomenon was
witnessed during the short-lived government of Chandra Shekhar
who became Prime Minister after the fall of V.P. Singh’s government
in November 1990. Barely four months later, the Congress headed by
Rajiv Gandhi withdrew support to this government. Chandra Shekhar
resigned in early March 1991 and served in a caretaker capacity till the
general elections were conducted later that year in May–June. During
this period, there was a flurry of accusations of corruption against
government ministers.
In the last few months of the Chandra Shekhar regime, the
President R. Venkataraman had to repeatedly intervene to ensure
that the government did not award major contracts or enter into
large financial obligations. So widespread was the perception of this
government being corrupt that when Chandra Shekhar’s Samajwadi
Janata Party put up posters in the next elections saying, ‘chaar
mahine, banaam chaalis saal’ (four months versus forty years) in an
450 DIVIDED WE STAND

obvious attempt to compare the government’s ‘achievements’ in four

months with the Congress’ ‘failures’ over four decades, the slogan
was mischievously interpreted to mean that the functionaries of the
Chandra Shekhar government had made as much money in four
months as Congressmen had in forty years.
The five-year regime of P.V. Narasimha Rao (1991–96) was a period
marked by a phenomenal rise in allegations of corruption being aired
against people in high places. Scandal after scandal, including the
country’s biggest financial fraud related to trading in securities and
involving stockbrokers like Harshad Mehta hit newspaper headlines
month after month. No Indian Prime Minister has been personally
accused of as many charges of corruption as Narasimha Rao was.
Mehta had even alleged in an affidavit in February 1993 that he had
personally delivered a large suitcase containing Rs 67 lakh in currency
notes to the Prime Minister’s residence in November 1991, as part of a
‘donation’ of Rs 1 crore to him. Mehta aired this allegation at a press
conference in Mumbai in mid-June 1993. A month later, the ‘minority’
government led by Narasimha Rao faced a confidence motion in
Parliament and the manner in which the vote was won became the
subject of another scandal that led to a legal tangle in which allegations
were levelled that particular MPs had been bribed to vote in favour
of the government.
The phenomenon of ‘judicial activism’ became a prominent feature
of public life in India during Narasimha Rao’s government. After May
1996, the relatively weak Union governments that followed were all
coalitions and the judiciary continued to assert itself to check acts of
political corruption and abuse of power by the executive. The media
too has played its role in exposing corruption. Even if coalition
governments have been more transparent because of their very nature,
coalition politics could have spawned new forms of corruption
relating to opportunistic alliances.
Stories of ‘bribes for votes’ of MPs and ‘horse-trading’—a peculi-
arly Indian term for engineering defections of political representatives—
have been an integral part of India’s political folklore since time
immemorial. But it has always been a far more difficult task to
prosecute and prove criminal charges against politicians in courts of
law. Many politicians have been able to get away without punishment
 Friends in Deed 451

for their misdemeanours even when strong circumstantial evidence has

existed. The law-enforcing agencies, including the country’s premier
police investigation body, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI),
have a rather poor track record in successfully prosecuting errant
politicians on charges of corruption. The fact that the CBI nonetheless
has greater credibility than other police departments is because it has
more often filed charges against politicians and other powerful people
than has the police (controlled by state governments).
Still, it can be confidently asserted that more politicians have
been arrested—even if for short periods—in recent years than in
the past and there is greater public awareness today of the nexus
between politicians and criminals. At least two prominent former
Chief Ministers, Lalu Prasad Yadav and J. Jayalalithaa, have had to
spend time behind bars. Former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was
hauled up by a junior judge in the third quarter of 1996 and asked to
personally appear and testify before a court of law in a cheating case
involving an expatriate pickle-making businessman Lakubhai Pathak
who had claimed that he had paid a sum of US$ 100,000 in 1983 to
an acquaintance of Narasimha Rao, ‘godman’ Chandra Swami, for a
government contract which never materialised. The court, of course,
had to be relocated from Tis Hazari in north Delhi to the Union
government’s conference venue Vigyan Bhavan in the central part
of the capital where ‘adequate’ security arrangements befitting such
‘dignitaries’ could be provided. More than eight years later, Rao was
acquitted by the Delhi high court.
A more far-reaching legal dispute involving Narasimha Rao was
what came to be known as the ‘JMM’ bribery case. Rao had in July
1993 managed to convert the ‘minority’ character of his government
to a ‘majority’ one thanks to the support of a batch of MPs, including
four members of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). The allegation
against Rao was that he and his associates paid bribes to these MPs
to induce them to vote in favour of a government that they had been
opposed to till that stage.
Narasimha Rao clearly did not want to head a ‘minority’ govern-
ment. Cynical as he evidently was, the way out was an amoral one, if
the allegations are true. It was in the belief that every individual—be he
a representative of the people or someone else—had a price for which
452 DIVIDED WE STAND

he could be purchased. This was hardly the first time that defections
or splits in political parties were being engineered, but Narasimha
Rao probably thought he would be able to get away with it. And get
away he did, for he managed to last his full term as Prime Minister.
But the scar that this episode left on the body politic of the country
may not have healed if successor governments had not been coalitions
and hence, necessarily had to act in a far more transparent manner.
Yet, the compulsions of coalition politics also saw politicians who
had abused each other for years for their alleged acts of corruption,
quietly burying the hatchet and striking opportunistic alliances to
share power.
If Narasimha Rao survived five years as Prime Minister despite
a host of corruption charges being levelled against him by his
opponents, some of his erstwhile ministerial colleagues like former
Communications Minister Sukh Ram managed to switch sides and
align themselves with the BJP. Jayalalithaa, who claimed that the slew
of corruption cases instituted against her by the DMK government
were politically motivated, has changed her political partners
periodically, from the Congress to the BJP, back to the Congress,
and at the time of writing in September 2007, had become part of the
UNPA ‘Third Front’. The BJP had for decades claimed that it was
the ‘cleanest’ political party in the country, but the compulsions of
coalition politics evidently compelled its leadership to strike various
kinds of alliances with individuals and parties it had earlier opposed
on the ground that they were tainted.
Corruption in India is, to a great extent, a consequence of the
highly discretionary system of bureaucratic and political control over
public finances, which provides the opportunity and means for illegal
rent-seeking. But, an important motive for corruption in public life,
which goes beyond individual greed, is the illegal manner in which
election campaigns are funded. The Election Commission has laid
down spending limits for candidates of political parties fighting local
as well as national elections. Though these limits have gone up in
recent years, many have argued that these are still unrealistically low.
At one stage, it had been calculated that the official limit on spending
would not be sufficient for a candidate to mail an ordinary postcard
to each eligible voter in his or her Lok Sabha constituency. This is
 Friends in Deed 453

particularly true for large Lok Sabha constituencies like Outer Delhi,
which has an electorate of over three million.
The contrary view, articulated among others by the late Indrajit
Gupta of the CPI, is that such huge sums are not really required to
conduct an effective election campaign for a few weeks. Any observer
of the Indian political scene would vouch for the fact that much of
the money spent on election campaigns is not ‘legitimate’. A fair
proportion is used for inducements like free country liquor, blankets,
clothing and so on, distributed among the poorer sections within a
constituency. Clearly, these are not accounted for in the expenditure
statements that candidates have to submit to the Election Commission.
There is a point of view that suggests that coalition politics, because
of its unstable nature, could reduce the amount of black money used in
election campaigns. The argument runs as follows. Most of the illegal
funds deployed by politicians for their election campaigns have to be
raised from industrialists, traders and dishonest bureaucrats. Even if
one assumes conservatively that Rs 3 crore is used in each Lok Sabha
constituency by all the candidates put together, this would require
over Rs 1,500 crore to be raised for each general election. Clearly,
such a huge sum of money cannot be easily raised if elections are held
at frequent intervals. At a meeting of the Confederation of Indian
Industry organised after the Vajpayee government lost a vote of
confidence in the Lok Sabha on April 17, 1999, prominent industrialist
and Rajya Sabha MP Rahul Bajaj made this amply clear by publicly
stating that politicians should not realistically expect donations
from industry to fight elections every year. The instability that has
characterised most coalition governments in India could thus have an
unexpected but positive fallout by reducing the role of black money
in election campaigns.
However, there is a counter-argument which runs like this. If an
MP or a minister is of the view that elections would most likely be held
frequently and party finances may be strained, he might well be
tempted to make as much money as possible while in office. Hence,
frequent elections may not in fact reduce the quantum of black money
in politics, but merely change the manner in which it is raised—
through individuals rather than through parties.
While there are a variety of factors which are responsible for
the high incidence of corruption in India, in the context of coalition
454 DIVIDED WE STAND

politics what can be stated is that political compulsions have resulted

in the BJP seeking and finding allies among politicians tainted by
corruption charges. The party’s association with Sukh Ram and
Jayalalithaa is evidence of this fact. Still, one needs to emphasise what
was stated at the beginning of this chapter: a coalition government
is almost always likely to be more transparent than a government
dominated by a single party and thus, less corrupt. It is not as if there
are no corrupt individuals in coalition governments: this would be
an utterly ridiculous proposition. But the fact is that the system of
internal checks and balances that is integral to coalitions generally
ensures greater accountability and hence, diminishes somewhat the
scope for corruption.
India’s value system is complex and there are no absolute standards
of morality, not in traditional texts nor in real life. People distinguish
between the more corrupt and the less corrupt, the corrupt and
efficient person and one who is both corrupt and inefficient. A typical
expression of this sentiment would be that a particular person receives
bribes and does not do the ‘work’—such an individual is ‘worse’ than
the one who has to be bribed to work. It is also not uncommon to hear
people suggest that a corrupt person who works is better than an honest
one who does not.
A person who is perceived to be corrupt by others can be voted
to power by his constituents because he is seen to be responsive to
their aspirations. Examples of such politicians abound in India: former
Railway Minister the late A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury, the late
Kalpnath Rai, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Sukh Ram and Jayalalithaa, to name
just a few. This phenomenon may not be directly related to coalition
politics. Yet, in the new era of coalition politics in India, even if sections
of the electorate are rejecting politicians who are considered ‘non-
performing’, the same voters are willing to be more tolerant towards
corrupt politicians who are seen to be doing ‘something’ for their
supporters, even if that ‘something’ may be the assertion of a social
identity if not creation of jobs and implementation of welfare projects.
This is a reflection of the sense of alienation that four decades of stable
governments have engendered among large sections of the population.
While the impact of coalition governments on the extent and
nature of corruption in public life may be debatable, there is little
doubt that federalism in Indian politics has been strengthened by the
 Friends in Deed 455

composition of the last few governments. The tenure of the United

Front government between June 1996 and February 1998 set the trend.
For the first time in the country’s political history, chief ministers
of small and big states across the country were formally and overtly
very much part of the decision-making process in New Delhi. The
Inter-State Council, for instance, had become virtually defunct during
Narasimha Rao’s five-year regime and the UF made much of the fact
that it was reviving this institution. The UF also had a formal panel of
its chief ministers, who periodically met to chalk out the government’s
agenda and discuss contentious issues.
In the past, the Union government had often been accused of
ignoring the aspirations of different states and regions. Centre–state
economic relations were often under a lot of strain with regional
leaders blaming New Delhi for being parsimonious in allocating and
releasing funds to states. The Union government, in turn, would
blame states for being profligate. These tensions, which would come
to the fore at least once a year when the Planning Commission would
finalise the annual plans of different states, subsided to a great extent
during the UF government. The government’s supporters would claim
that for the first time in independent India, chief ministers of states
across the length and breadth of the country would participate in
formulating and shaping the entire nation’s economic policies. While
there is some basis to this claim, what complicated matters was the
internal dissension among the constituents of the United Front over
economic policies.
The NDA too had a coordination committee of its allies, although
this body was seen as being less effective than the institutions of the
UF in influencing the government’s policies. Formal institutional
arrangements are, however, not a necessary or a sufficient condition
for greater representation being given to states in the political process
and in economic decision-making. The attitude of the leadership
also matters. The tenure of the NDA confirmed the feeling that the
growing importance of chief ministers and other ‘regional’ leaders was
not a passing phenomenon that began and ended with the UF’s brief
stint in power. During the UF’s tenure, Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra
Pradesh), Farooq Abdullah (Jammu & Kashmir), M. Karunanidhi
(Tamil Nadu), Jyoti Basu (West Bengal), E.K. Nayanar (Kerala),
456 DIVIDED WE STAND

J.H. Patel (Karnataka), Dasarat Deb (Tripura), Prafulla Kumar

Mahanta (Assam), and Lalu Prasad (Bihar) were Chief Ministers who
all played an important role in national politics.
During the second Vajpayee government, besides Naidu and
Abdullah who aligned with the BJP, influential CMs included
Kalyan Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Prakash Singh Badal (Punjab), Bansi
Lal (Haryana), and Manohar Joshi (Maharashtra). Other influential
regional leaders included Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Mamata Banerjee
(West Bengal), Naveen Patnaik (Orissa), Rama Krishna Hegde
(Karnataka), Balasaheb Thackeray (Maharashtra) and others. In the
third Vajpayee government, the list changed somewhat. Karunanidhi
replaced Jayalalithaa while Chautala replaced Bansi Lal. In the UPA
government, Karunanidhi, Lalu Prasad, Sharad Pawar, Ram Vilas
Paswan, Shibu Soren and Ambubani Ramadoss (of the PMK) were
among the regional heavyweights who wielded considerable influence.
Despite the changes in personalities in different Union governments,
what remained constant was the crucial role being played by leaders
from many states in running the coalition.
So-called regional satraps, chief ministers or opposition leaders
of particular states, are evidently exerting a greater influence on the
working of the Union government in New Delhi in more ways than
one. Historians could argue that the immediate post-independence
period, specifically the tenure of Jawaharlal Nehru, saw regional
leaders playing a crucial role in the formulation of various national
policies. This trend declined both during Indira Gandhi’s and Rajiv
Gandhi’s terms as Prime Minister. There are examples galore of
how chief ministers were whimsically changed because of a diktat
from Delhi. From May 1996 onwards, the trend of state leaders not
being consulted by the Union government in policy formulation got
reversed thanks to coalition governments.
The loosening of the reins of the unitary Indian state has certainly
helped regional satraps gain greater access to power in New Delhi.
At the same time, though, it has also strengthened long standing
demands for the creation of new states from existing ones. This has
created a rather piquant situation. While the dominant partner in the
NDA coalition, the BJP, conceded some of these demands in the belief
that it would be able to win popular support in the areas that would
 Friends in Deed 457

constitute the new states, regional leaders were less than enthusiastic
about such proposals since they believed the formation of new states
would erode their political influence.
The Vajpayee government successfully carved out three new
states: Uttaranchal (later called Uttarakhand) on November 9, 2000,
Jharkhand on November 15 the same year, and Chhattisgarh on
November 1. More interesting than the reactions from within these
states were the apprehensions expressed by a key ally of the BJP, the
TDP. The party opposed the creation of new states on the ground that
this could trigger off similar demands elsewhere in the country—a fear
that was well-founded since there has been a long standing demand to
carve out Telengana from Andhra Pradesh. Similar demands for the
creation of Vidharba from Maharashtra, Bodoland from Assam and
Gorkhaland from West Bengal are enough reason for other regional
leaders also to be sceptical. Advani had sought to reassure the TDP
on this count and Vajpayee too made public statements asserting that
no further proposals for new states would be considered, but the TDP
remained at variance with the BJP’s stance on this issue.
In the past, the war with China in 1962 and the wars with Pakistan in
1965 and 1971 had resulted in Congress governments tilting the polity
in favour of a relatively strong centre, a trend towards centralisation
that culminated in the Emergency. Thereafter, although Rajiv Gandhi
headed a Congress government with a three-fourths majority in the
lower house of Parliament from December 1984 for a period of five
years, the Indian polity never became more centralised than it was
during the Emergency. On the contrary, the forces at the periphery
appear to have gained ground at the expense of those in favour of a
stronger Union government. So much so that the BJP, once among the
most vehement advocates of a unitary India and a ‘strong centre’, has
now come to accept that coalitions are necessary to govern a country
as large and as heterogeneous as India.
The past trend towards centralisation and concentration of power
had also resulted in politicians from UP acquiring almost unquestioned
dominance over national politics. Since power lay largely in the hands
of the Prime Minister and since most Prime Ministers came from
UP because of its sheer size, other states had relatively little say in
458 DIVIDED WE STAND

influencing politics in New Delhi. K.M. Pannikar, in his dissenting

note to the report of the States’ Reorganisation Commission, had
voiced fears of ‘the dominance of Uttar Pradesh in all-India matters’.
For at least three decades after Pannikar made these remarks in 1955,
expression of such sentiments were not uncommon.
Barring Morarji Desai’s tenure as Prime Minister in 1977–78, till
June 1991, all Indian Prime Ministers had originated from Uttar
Pradesh: Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi,
Charan Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar.
Thereafter, of course, the next three Prime Ministers came from
outside Uttar Pradesh: P.V. Narasimha Rao from Andhra Pradesh,
H.D. Deve Gowda from Karnataka and I.K. Gujral from (undivided)
Punjab. Once again, the next Prime Minister Vajpayee, was from UP.
Nevertheless, the trend towards decentralisation of power meant that
his tenure did not mark a return to the days when UP dominated
national politics. Manmohan Singh, who followed Vajpayeee as Prime
Minister, was also not from UP.
The point to note is that even as the Indian polity gets increasingly
fragmented, sub-national and regional movements based on language
would continue to exert themselves from time to time. Having agreed
to the formation of Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, the
Vajpayee government had to cope with renewed demands for the
formation of Vidharba (out of Maharashtra), Telengana (out of
Andhra Pradesh), Kodagu (out of Karnataka), besides Ladakh and
Leh (out of Jammu & Kashmir). The list could well become longer
as the years go by. For instance, sections of the population of the
Cachar and Karbi Anglong regions of Assam (which had been given
the option of remaining with Assam or joining Meghalaya in 1972)
want their own state. The UPA government too faced pressure from
the Telengana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) to form a separate state and when
the government dragged its feet on the issue, the TRS became the first
constituent of the UPA to break away from it in 2006.
Linguistic and cultural considerations have mattered—and will
continue to matter—much more than administrative or economic
factors as India’s internal boundaries are redrawn. There are at least
33 languages in India spoken by more than a million people each.
If linguistic considerations are to once again determine the redrawing
 Friends in Deed 459

of state boundaries, can an arbitrary line be drawn which says, ‘So

far and no further’? What is more, it is important to remember that
none of the three new states were formed for linguistic reasons; all
of them being part of Hindi-speaking areas, though there are many
different local dialects. A larger number of states may in itself not be
an undesirable phenomenon, particularly if, like coalition politics, it
reflects the diversity of the country.
It can be argued with some conviction that most demands for new
states in India are in fact expressions of a feeling of alienation or of
being exploited by a strong Union government and of being denied the
right to determine their own destinies. Given this context, a question
logically follows: is a coalition government likely to aggravate such
feelings or assuage them? There is reason to believe that coalition gov-
ernments are more likely to be in tune with the aspirations of smaller
social and ethnic groups and hence be able to instil a greater sense of
belonging to the Union while retaining their distinctive identities.
During Jawaharlal Nehru’s tenure as Prime Minister, there were
no formal arrangements of the kind that have come up during the
tenure of the recent coalition governments. Yet, Nehru certainly
involved leaders from different regions—C. Rajagopalachari from
Tamil Nadu, Atulya Ghosh from West Bengal or Biju Patnaik from
Orissa—in governing the country, arguably much more than any
other Congress Prime Minister did. Therefore, if smaller states are
to be periodically created and these are not to unleash divisive forces,
then it is imperative that coalition arrangements at the level of the
Union government are sufficiently responsive to local aspirations. In
the recent political discourse in the country, much has been made of
the distinction between coalition governments dominated by a single
party and those in which no single party dwarfs the others. It can be
contended that the second kind of coalition government (the one in
which no party is dominant) is more likely to accommodate diverse
identities and interests.
The survival of India as a Union of states is in itself an amazing
account of the art and science of political reconciliation and accom-
modation. As coalitions dominate the composition of the Union
government, it is perhaps time to turn an old adage on its head:
Divided we stand.
 Chapter 10
Economic Policies:
Pulls and Pressures

Economic policies pursued by coalition governments should

presumably be different from those devised by governments that are
led by, or comprise, a single political party. A coalition government
by definition includes a number of political parties or groups, big and
small; therefore economic policies of such a government should under
most circumstances not only reflect the diversity and heterogeneity
of their combination, but also be the outcome of a consensus among
the constituents. But this has not always been the case in India.
A claim is often made that currently there is considerable consensus
among contending political parties in India on the broad direction
of economic policies that have been followed by various Union
governments since June 1991 when economic reforms were introduced
by the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh in the Narasimha Rao
government. This claim is, however, difficult to substantiate. There
was in the NDA government—and there continues to be in the UPA
government as well—quite a lot of disagreement and confusion on
the thrust and tenor of economic policy issues. Part of the chaos is a
result of deep-rooted ideological differences that have existed (and
continue to exist) among the disparate constituents of the NDA, the
UPA and the parties supporting the latter and some of it is a direct
consequence of the compulsions of coalition politics.
There is considerable evidence of the pulls and pressures of coalition
politics on economic decision-making. One instance was the indecision
on increasing the then officially administered prices of petroleum
products in 1998-99. Whereas the United Front government had
dilly-dallied and agonised for months over such a decision in 1997,
the second Vajpayee government too succumbed to pressure from
NDA partners not to hike the prices of petroleum products between
March 1998 and April 1999. Eventually, just before the BJP-led NDA
 Economic Policies 461

coalition was sworn in to power in October 1999—exactly a day after

the last round of polling—the then caretaker government of Vajpayee
hiked the politically-sensitive price of diesel by a whopping 40 per
cent in the face of a sharp rise in world oil prices.
The left has time and again succeeded in exerting pressure on
the UPA government to either not increase the prices of diesel and
petrol or to bring prices down depending on the manner in which
international prices of crude oil have moved. The left repeatedly urged
the Ministry of Finance to cut excise and customs duties on imported
crude and, on occasion, the government obliged. Pressure from the
left—as well as sections in the Congress—ensured that the government
never increased retail prices of subsidised kerosene and rarely inceased
prices of liquefied petroleum gas used mainly for cooking, which
is also subsidised. If the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas had
had its way, the government would have allowed public sector oil
companies to raise prices of these petroleum products.
There has been a gradual convergence of political opinion on
many economic issues cutting across party lines—with the exception
of sections of the left—notwithstanding the fact that this consensus
among opposing parties and formations has periodically broken down
and keeps breaking down on particular issues. Within the largest
political parties in the country, the Congress and the BJP, there has
been internal divergence of opinion on economic policy issues.
The two major political formations that are opposed to the broad
direction of the economic reforms followed by both the Congress-led
and the BJP-led governments in New Delhi and not just the details
are the left, comprising mainly the two communist parties, and the
Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an offshoot of the RSS. Both have
had to compromise on economic policy issues because of over-riding
political compulsions. While the left may not have liked the direction
of economic policy formulated by the United Front government,
it could not threaten to withdraw from the UF coalition since that
would have meant helping either the BJP or the Congress. A similar
TINA factor constrained the SJM in its opposition to the policies
followed by the BJP-led NDA government. Thus, the ideological
pulls and pressures on economic policy issues have often taken place—
and continue to take place—within political parties and their
ideological fraternities rather than merely among them.
462 DIVIDED WE STAND

It can, therefore, be argued that instead of a genuine consensus

on economic policy issues what is often witnessed is an illusion of
consensus. This is on account of the fact that there are a number of
similarities between the economic policy prescriptions espoused by the
BJP and the Congress. Both parties now apparently reject the ‘socialist’
policies that were put in place in the 1950s by Jawaharlal Nehru—
although, of late, there are signs that the economic programme of the
Congress, or more precisely its rhetoric, is veering leftwards with the
party reviving the ‘garibi hatao’ (banish poverty) slogan that was used
by Indira Gandhi during the early-1970s. Both the Congress and the
BJP today argue in favour of a more ‘market friendly’ policy package.
It is a separate matter altogether that Nehru himself had advocated a
‘mixed’ economy for India, one that he saw as incorporating the best
elements of both capitalism and socialism.
In practice, what happened was arguably a mix of the worst of both
systems. Successive Congress governments (before the Narasimha Rao
regime) set up an excessively bureaucratic economic system that stifled
entrepreneurship and private initiative on the one hand and failed to
provide primary education and basic health-care to the majority of
Indians, on the other. While the rest of the world generally perceived
Nehru to have tilted in favour of the Soviet Union and his economic
policies to be socialist in character, his critics at home argued that
he pandered to the interests of big business and thus encouraged
capitalist practices.
What muddied the waters further was the spurious differentiation
that was drawn between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ sectors in
the country. Virtually throughout the first half century after India
became politically independent, public sector corporations served as
the personal fiefdoms of politicians and bureaucrats in power—the
state thus became the ‘private’ property of the privileged few. At the
same time, private corporate groups prospered thanks to a generous
infusion of funds from government-controlled banks and financial
institutions. Thus, the losses of the public sector got translated into the
profits of the private sector and, more often than not, the gap between
the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ became obliterated insofar as economic policies
were concerned.
 Economic Policies 463

While the BJP and the Congress today both loudly proclaim the
virtues of economic liberalisation in public, there are in fact deep
differences of opinion within both political parties on the direction
and pace of economic reforms. What compounded the confusion
is that when the BJP was the single largest constituent of the NDA
coalition, as the largest Opposition party the Congress felt invariably
obliged to criticise the NDA government’s economic policies
even if these were not substantially different from the policies that
were pursued by the earlier Congress government headed by
Narasimha Rao. The roles got reversed when the UPA came to power
and the BJP became the largest opposition party.
The fact of a political party opposing another’s policies for ‘the
sake of opposition’ is also illustrated by the turnaround in the BJP’s
swadeshi rhetoric. Before the party came to power in March 1998, it
had asserted that the economic reforms process had until then not been
sufficiently pro-Indian. The BJP’s slogan used to be, ‘reforming the
reforms’, and the party argued that reforms had been overly sensitive
to the needs of foreign investors and had not provided a level playing
field for Indian industry. The BJP, the party’s pre-election manifesto
had proclaimed, would aim at an India ‘built by Indians, for Indians’.
Almost a decade later, most economic analysts would agree that the
NDA government’s economic policy thrust was not substantially
different from what a Congress government would have followed.
While the manifestation of the ‘India for Indians’ view of the
reforms was evident in the first budget of the NDA government
presented by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in June 1998 (Sinha
imposed an across the board hike of 8 per cent on all customs duties
that was, subsequently reduced to 4 per cent), the same budget also
reflected the compelling need for the government to assuage foreign
investors to counter the impact of the economic sanctions imposed
on India as a result of the nuclear tests conducted in May.
Within a year, the situation had changed radically. Swadeshi
was no longer the flavour of the month in the BJP. After the return
of the BJP-led NDA to power in October 1999, the government
pushed through the bill to allow entry of the private sector—Indian
and foreign—into the insurance business. The BJP had resisted a
similar bill in 1997, proposed by Chidambaram, on the grounds that
464 DIVIDED WE STAND

the insurance business should be opened up initially only to private

Indian firms. In 1999, it was not as if there were no sections within
the Sangh Parivar which were opposed to the insurance bill. The SJM
and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the trade union affiliate of the
BJP, continued to have reservations. Yet, since 1997, the balance of
power within the Sangh Parivar had clearly shifted in favour of the
pro-reforms section.
Just as Sinha’s first budget during the NDA government was
derided by the reformists, his second budget (of February 1999) was
hailed as one of the most ‘pro-reform’ budgets. For the first time, a
Finance Minister had openly announced the government’s intention to
privatise public sector undertakings, not just disinvest shares in them.
Sinha’s budget speech also spoke of a ‘second wave of reforms’. After
he had to ‘roll back’ many of the proposals contained in his first budget,
Sinha was severely criticised for bowing to populist pressures.
But this was not the only time Sinha bowed to pressure. He
had to once again roll back his budget proposals in 2002 following
strident criticism from his own colleagues in the BJP. Even the fact
that his party lost the municipal elections in Delhi in March 2002 was
attributed to the Finance Minister’s anti-middle-class budget. The
then vice president of the BJP, the late Sahib Singh Verma, put in his
papers. Subsequently, there was tremendous pressure on Sinha from
his party compatriots at the Goa meeting of the BJP’s national excutive
in April 2002. Newspapers reported that there were vicious attacks
on Sinha at the meeting. Earlier, he had rolled back half the proposed
increase in the price of cooking gas. It was claimed that the Finance
Minister and his officials tried very hard to preserve the ‘integrity’ of
his budget. However, he was reportedly overruled by the then Prime
Minister Vajpayee himself.
Budget proposals, as Sinha often stated, are not meant to be static.
He claimed he had merely responded to ‘public opinion’. But there
were a few questions that remained unanswered. What prevented
the Finance Minister from eliciting the opinion of the people at large
during the series of pre-budget consultations he had with, among
others, representatives of industry, the small-scale sector, trade unions,
 Economic Policies 465

farmers and economists? What stopped Sinha from seeking the views
of his own party stalwarts, not to mention the BJP’s allies in the NDA?
Did he think he would be able to get away with a ‘tough’ budget
without the support of his colleagues in the Union Cabinet and the
Council of Ministers?
In a coalition government, decision-makers from the largest party
should seek and find an area of consensus among the ideologically
disparate constituents of the coalition. The rollback drama showed
that the NDA clearly had a long way to go before it learnt the dharma
of coalition politics.
The RSS and the SJM had been critical of some of the government’s
economic advisers who had held important positions in earlier
Congress governments: individuals like N.K. Singh and Montek Singh
Ahluwalia. During a public function organised by the SJM, George
Fernandes (who was yet to be reinducted as Defence Minister at that
juncture) flayed a report on employment that had been prepared by an
official panel headed by Ahluwalia. Fernandes said the report should
have been prepared in six months; instead it took two and a half years.
Saying there was little in the recommendations of the report that
would help create 10 million new jobs each year, Fernandes went on to
derogatorily describe Ahluwalia as an ‘acolyte of the World Bank’.
Though certain leaders of the RSS and the SJM were privately
unhappy about the actions taken by the then Finance Minister Sinha
to check a fall in the value of the Unit Scheme of 1964 (US-64) run
by the country’s oldest and largest mutual funds organisation, the
government-controlled Unit Trust of India, they did not openly
express their disagreement. However, others known to be close
to the RSS were far less restrained in their attacks on the Finance
Minister. Consider, for instance, an article written by management
expert Bharat Jhunjhunwala that was published by the Indian Express
(August 1, 2001). RSS chief Sudarshan had earlier extolled the virtues
of Jhunjhunwala and suggested that it should be individuals like him
who should be advising the government on economic policy issues
rather than unnamed ‘rootless wonders’. (Despite his influence,
Sudarshan’s advice was not heeded, at least not in this instance.)
466 DIVIDED WE STAND

In the article, Jhunjhunwala lamented that the BJP in power had

not behaved very differently from the Congress. He wrote:

Any bureaucrat or minister can subvert governance to favour his

near and dear ones and yet claim that he is clean. The BJP has
continued with this ignoble tradition… the income tax department
had issued notices to Mauritius-based FIIs [foreign institutional
investors] seeking to deny them benefits of the Double Taxation
Avoidance Treaty with that country because their head offices were
located in USA or other countries. The Finance Minister intervened
and instructed that a certificate of registration issued by the
government of Mauritius was adequate and final proof of the FII’s
domicile and asked the income tax department to withdraw their
notices. The Finance Minister’s bahu [daughter-in-law] was one
beneficiary of the minister’s intervention. Yet, this was considered
clean because the Finance Minister had disclosed his interest to the
Prime Minister. Whether the decision was taken in the interests of
the country or the bahu can never be answered….

Jhunjhunwala was hardly the only RSS sympathiser who attacked

a top functionary of the Vajpayee government. Into this category fell
former Chief Minister of Delhi Madan Lal Khurana and former BJP
general secretary K.N. Govindacharya. Both were very critical of
what they alleged were the Vajpayee government’s moves to bend
over backwards to accommodate the interests of the World Trade
Organisation. Both were to be subsequently eased out of the party.
Even as the BMS, the SJM and, to a lesser extent, the RSS fretted
and cribbed about the Vajpayee government’s economic policies,
these organisations stopped short of doing anything drastic that could
have the potential of destabilising the government. Simultaneously,
the BMS joined hands with trade unions close to the Congress
and the communist parties on specific issues—for instance, on the
issue of opposing the government’s move to allow foreign firms to
hold 26 per cent equity in companies manufacturing goods for the
defence services.
During the 1980s, under the influence of individuals like Nanaji
Deshmukh, the BJP used to claim that the party believed in what it
called ‘Gandhian socialism’. In 1991, after Manmohan Singh initiated
his policies of economic liberalisation, there were quite a few BJP
 Economic Policies 467

leaders who argued that the Congress had ‘hijacked’ its economic
agenda. Even as the confusion on economic policy issues continued in
the BJP, the situation was not very different in the Congress. The same
party that had earlier championed the cause of privatisation and had
begun the sale of shares of PSUs found itself in a curious position in
which it opposed the manner in which Bharat Aluminium Company
(BALCO) was privatised.
That the Congress too was far from united on the composition of
economic reforms was evident during meetings to review the party’s
poor performance in the 1999 elections. The divide between the pro
and anti-reform groups became all too evident when several senior
leaders including the late Rajesh Pilot and Arjun Singh targetted
Manmohan Singh for allegedly giving the party an anti-poor image.
The reforms ushered in during Singh’s tenure from 1991 to 1996, they
argued, had given the party the image of being concerned only with
promoting the economic interests of the elite, while ignoring the
concerns of the poor. Manmohan Singh predictably offered to resign
from his position as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha
and counter-attacked by asking why these leaders had chosen to
remain silent for so many years. However, Sonia Gandhi ‘persuaded’
Manmohan Singh, who has a squeaky clean image, to desist from
any such drastic step. Ironically, Arjun Singh went on to hold
the important position of Union Minister for Human Resources
Development in the Manmohan Singh government.
Within the Congress, a debate continued about whether India’s
grand old party had lost much of its political support base because its
policies of economic liberalisation were perceived by the electorate to
be pro-rich. In a country where one out of four individuals still lives
on less than one US dollar a day, policies that are not seen to be helping
the poor can never ensure support for a political party, whatever be its
true ideological complexion. When in opposition, the Congress could
afford to speak in different voices. The BJP has not been dissimilar
while opposing the Congress. When in power, however, both these
parties have espoused economic policies that were by and large similar,
although there are certain important differences.
For instance, the Congress-led UPA rejected the previous NDA
government’s policy of privatising profit-making PSUs after a hue
468 DIVIDED WE STAND

and cry was raised over the manner in which former Disinvestment
Minister Arun Shourie rushed through the privatisation of various
government-owned properties, including petrochemicals manufacturer
Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL)—now part of
the Reliance group—and the two Centaur Hotels in Mumbai. The
opposition to the NDA’s disinvestment plans also picked up after
the Supreme Court ruled in September 2003 that the government
could not privatise two major public sector oil companies, Hindustan
Petroleum Corporation Limited and Bharat Petroleum Corporation
Limited, without parliamentary approval.
Apart from differences within political parties, another reason why
the economic policies followed by coalition governments have not
been significantly different from those followed during single-party
rule is simply because such governments—before the NDA and the
UPA governments—had not been around long enough to radically
alter the broad direction and content of economic policy. Even when
attempts were made to change direction, these were not followed
through sufficiently as, till 1999, no coalition government had been
able to present more than two successive Union budgets leave alone
see through their implementation. The budget in India is used as an
annual event that is not a mere presentation of the country’s accounts,
but an occasion for governments to propagate, shape and highlight
their economic policies.
There are a variety of reasons which explain why the economic
policies followed by coalition governments are not very different from
those followed by single party governments. One explanation comes
from sociologist M.N. Panini who has argued that the emergence of
backward caste politics could have a direct bearing on economic policy
(see Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar, edited by M.N. Srinivas,
Penguin, 1997). The crux of Panini’s argument is that since parties that
project themselves as champions of the backward castes have focused
on job reservations in government as a key element of their strategy,
they must have a vested interest in the perpetuation of an economy in
which the state continues to play a dominant role. To the extent that
economic liberalisation seeks to do exactly the opposite—namely,
to reduce the role of the state and enhance the role of markets—the
OBCs would tend to be opposed to it. Conversely, the upper castes,
 Economic Policies 469

who see reservations as eroding their strength in the government,

will tend to support liberalisation. This is because liberalisation
encourages free competition and free competition in turn benefits
those who are already endowed with skills and resources, in this case
the upper castes.
While the argument is difficult to refute in theory, the actual politics
of the OBC-dominated parties has not quite matched this theory.
H.D. Deve Gowda and Chandrababu Naidu are obvious examples
of leaders espousing the cause of OBCs who are also liberalisers.
One reason for this rift between precept and practice could be that
these parties are dominated by the most privileged among the OBCs.
Hence, the sections that are in the leadership of these parties are not
as underprivileged in terms of existing resources and skills as might
be presumed. Another factor could be that while liberalisation may
in the long run reduce discretionary controls and hence the ability of
those in power to ‘milk the system’, in the short run this may not be
the case. Some left economists, for instance, have argued that the
economic reforms, far from reducing the scope for corruption,
have only increased it while centralising discretionary powers (the
proverbial single-window clearance for projects). Also, since the
reforms entail the entry of the private sector into areas hitherto
monopolised by the government, these areas can now yield ‘kickbacks’
that they would not have earlier.
A third important reason for the OBC-dominated parties not
being as virulently anti-reforms as might be expected could be that
most of these are as yet young parties. During their short lives,
they have concentrated on building a political programme and
have had little time to formulate a coherent long-term economic
strategy. Their positions on economic policy, therefore, have varied
from issue to issue and have been dictated largely by short-term
political expediency.
While coalition governments have sought to change economic
policy priorities, these attempts have met with mixed success.
Moreover, the proposition that coalitions have not been able to
significantly change the course of economic policies in India does
not run contrary to whatever one perceives to be the relationship
between political uncertainty and economic development. It seems
470 DIVIDED WE STAND

logical that uncertainty of any kind, including political uncertainty,

is not good for economic development. There are others who would,
on the contrary, argue that a period of economic adversity spurs the
political leadership to take tough decisions that it may not otherwise
take. True, the period of coalition governments in India has witnessed
considerable political uncertainty. But it is far from clear that political
instability has been bad for the economy. But more on that later.
The first non-Congress government in New Delhi in 1977 was
headed by Morarji Desai, who had earlier broken away from the
Congress headed by Indira Gandhi on account of a large number of
differences, not the least among them being differences on economic
policy issues. Morarji Desai was never enamoured of Indira Gandhi’s
socialist rhetoric and the ushering in of ostensibly radical land reform
programmes, among other things. But the Janata Party government
headed by Desai was not substantially different from its Congress
predecessors insofar as economic policies were concerned, with a few
notable exceptions of course.
While Desai was considered to be conservative and pro-capitalist in
his economic ideology and outlook, the government he headed became
better known for its ‘leftist’ stance. As Union Industry Minister, the
‘socialist’ George Fernandes, created a sensation when he told two
of the world’s biggest multinational corporations, Coca-Cola and
IBM (once International Business Machines), that they should wind
up their operations in the country unless they reduced their equity
holdings in their Indian affiliates to less than 40 per cent under the
provisions of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. Fernandes also
actively advocated a ‘small is beautiful’ industrial policy and the
Union government enlarged the list of items whose production was
‘reserved’ for small-scale industrial units. The same Fernandes who
had compared sections of businessmen to vermin, however, also
pushed through a controversial technical collaboration agreement
between German multinational Siemens and India’s government-
owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), which is one of
Asia’s largest manufacturers of power equipment. This agreement was
considered by many to be against the interests of BHEL.
Despite Fernandes’ positions on various economic issues, the
Janata Party government headed by Morarji Desai is not remembered
 Economic Policies 471

for having radically changed India’s economic policies. If anything,

there was considerable continuity in the policies followed despite the
personal predilections of Morarji Desai and his Industry Minister.
The Charan Singh government that followed Desai’s government was
avowedly pro-farmer. Charan Singh considered himself a leader of
the country’s farmers, although his support base was largely confined
to the agriculturally prosperous districts of northern India, especially
western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. His shortlived government could
do little or nothing to influence the Union government’s economic
policies, including its policies for the agricultural sector.
The second phase of non-Congress governments at the Union level
started in December 1989 after the National Front government led
by V.P. Singh came to power. Earlier, as Finance Minister in Rajiv
Gandhi’s government, V.P. Singh had pursued what many saw as a
carrot-and-stick economic policy of sorts. On the one hand, he slashed
direct tax rates, including personal income tax rates, arguing that
the high income tax rates were effectively dissuading compliance
among tax-payers and, in fact, encouraging more and more people
to evade taxes. This apparently had the ‘Laffer curve’ effect of
increasing revenue collections while bringing down the propensity of
tax-payers to evade paying personal income tax. (Briefly, the Laffer
curve effect is economic jargon that means a reduction in direct tax
rates encourages more people to pay taxes, which, in turn, results in
the tax net widening and revenue collections going up.)
This reduction in income tax rates would not have worked in
isolation. V.P. Singh probably would not have been half as successful
in raising revenues had it not been for his unstated policy of
conducting raids against rich and powerful individuals accused of
tax evasion. For a while, it seemed that lowly and often ill-paid tax
officials had suddenly discovered a new-found confidence to book
affluent and influential industrialists and sometimes even send them
to jail for brief periods. The problem was that India’s cumbersome
and time-consuming legal system would ensure that many of those
accused would be released on bail while litigation would continue and
the process of prosecution would drag on for years. The other problem
was that over zealous officials sometimes took vicarious pleasure in
humiliating and harassing well-to-do entrepreneurs and traders on
the ostensible plea that the law was above no individual.
472 DIVIDED WE STAND

During V.P. Singh’s brief tenure as Prime Minister, veteran socialist

from Maharashtra, the late Madhu Dandavate, served as Union
Finance Minister. In the February 1990 budget, Dandavate sought to
impart a leftward shift to the government’s economic policies—taxes
on affluent sections were upped and public sector enterprises were
sought to be strengthened.
But well before the financial year was over, in November 1990,
the V.P. Singh government was toppled and a Congress-supported
minority government headed by Chandra Shekhar was installed in its
place. A then little-known former bureaucrat from Bihar, Yashwant
Sinha, became the new Finance Minister, a post he was to hold again
more than seven years later in March 1998. The Chandra Shekhar
government was very keen on presenting the Union budget, but the
Congress under Rajiv Gandhi was adamant that the government
should only present a vote-on-account and not a full-fledged budget.
Since the Chandra Shekhar government was totally dependent
on Congress support for its survival, it reluctantly agreed and in
February 1991, Sinha presented a bland statement of accounts without
any policy pronouncements.
The reason for the Congress not agreeing to the government
presenting a full budget became evident less than a week after the vote-
on-account was placed in Parliament. On March 4, 1991, the Congress
suddenly decided to withdraw support to the Chandra Shekhar
government apparently because a couple of policemen from Haryana
were conducting a surveillance operation outside the residence of
Rajiv Gandhi. This was also the time when international confidence
in the Indian economy was on the verge of a collapse. Non-resident
Indians panicked and began withdrawing their hard currency deposits
from Indian banks. As the foreign exchange reserves dipped and the
country’s balance of payments started deteriorating, the caretaker
government with Sinha as Finance Minister realised, much to its
dismay, that there was a real danger of the country defaulting on
its external financial obligations. For the first time in independent
India’s history, the Union government pawned a part of the official
gold reserves.
This decision predictably raised a huge hue and cry. Indians,
more than citizens of almost any other country, are crazy about the
 Economic Policies 473

yellow metal and the government’s action sent out alarm signals to the
public at large. Here was a caretaker minority government selling the
country’s most precious wealth to keep its head above water. Congress
leaders like former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee roundly
criticised the government (which the party had been supporting just
a few weeks earlier) for mismanaging the economy. Even Manmohan
Singh, who had by then become Economic Adviser to the Prime
Minister in Chandra Shekhar’s government after the completion of his
tenure as Secretary General of the Geneva-based South Commission,
realised there were few options before the government to stave off a
balance of payments crisis.
Even as the country was on the verge of defaulting on its external
financial obligations, India went in for the 10th general elections in
May 1991. By the time the P.V. Narasimha Rao government came to
power the following month, the country’s hard currency reserves had
plunged to an unprecedented low and, at one stage, were equivalent
to barely two weeks’ import requirements. Inflation was also running
at a high level by Indian standards of around 12 per cent (it reached a
peak of 17 per cent later that year in September). This was, of course,
the annual rate of inflation as measured by the official wholesale price
index; the actual increase in retail prices to the consumer as measured
by various consumer price indices was much higher.
Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, holding a political position
for the first time after a long and illustrious career as an academic
and a bureaucrat—he had headed the Planning Commission and
the Reserve Bank of India—knew from the outset that he would
have to act and act fast to avert an impending economic disaster. He
first drastically devalued the Indian currency in two stages in early
July—this was the first time since 1966 that the rupee was officially
devalued by the government. With an eye towards obtaining a hefty
‘structural adjustment loan’ from the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), Manmohan Singh’s first Union budget presented in July,
dramatically altered the direction of India’s economic policy regime.
He slashed customs duties thereby reducing the protection given to
domestic industry, while at the same time he sought to do away with
the industrial licensing system and other controls on industry and
trade. (More than a decade and a half later, former Finance Minister
474 DIVIDED WE STAND

of West Bengal Ashok Mitra alleged in a book that Manmohan

Singh was appointed as Finance Minister at Washington’s behest, a
charge that was never substantiated though it created a political stir
in early-2007.)
The 13-day government of Atal Behari Vajpayee in May 1996
took one major economic decision during its all-too-brief tenure: the
decision to offer a counter-guarantee to Enron Power Corporation of
the US, which was the first foreign company to set up a power project
in the country at Dabhol near the west coast in Maharashtra.
Even as it became clear that the first Vajpayee government would
not last for any length of time, the United Front had come together to
arrive at a Common Minimum Programme which formed the basis of
the formation of the country’s first coalition government of its kind
headed by H.D. Deve Gowda. The UF government received ‘outside’
support from the second and third largest political parties after the
BJP, namely, the Congress and the CPI(M). While the Congress did
not exert much influence in shaping the UF government’s economic
polices, the CPI(M) did manage to do so because of its presence
in various committees set up to coordinate the activities of the 13
constituents of the government.
The Finance Minister in the UF government was the savvy
lawyer–politician Palaniappan Chidambaram from the Tamil Maanila
Congress. Chidambaram had served in two Congress governments
under Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao. In the Rao government,
Chidambaram had served as Union Commerce Minister. He was
considered to be an enthusiastic liberaliser, an admirer of Manmohan
Singh’s economic policies (though on occasions he is said to have
crossed swords with Singh at Cabinet meetings). As the man chiefly
responsible for drafting the UF’s CMP, it was not surprising that
Chidambaram imbued it with a pro-reform stance.
It was inevitable that Chidambaram’s economic ideology (and
the policies that stemmed from it) would be opposed by the CPI
in the UF government and by the CPI(M) in the coordination and
steering committees. This was precisely what happened, although the
differences of opinion never reached a head or caused a major crisis of
governance. As pointed out earlier, one major reason for this was the
dearth of options open to the left. However much the left may have
 Economic Policies 475

disagreed with the economic policy framework of the UF government,

it could not do very much more than express its reservations. Having
reached the conclusion that keeping the BJP and the Congress out of
power was top priority, the left could not have actually withdrawn
from the UF.
The most apparent evidence of the differences within the UF
government on economic policy issues was the inordinate delay in
arriving at a decision to hike the prices of petroleum products. For
weeks on end, the committees attached to the UF government debated
and deliberated on the issue and repeatedly failed to arrive at any
decision. It had become obvious that the government’s finances would
become difficult to manage if the losses on the ‘oil pool account’ of the
Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas continued to mount.
The UF government realised it had been saddled with an unpopular
decision that had become inevitable since the previous Congress
government had failed to increase the administered prices of different
petroleum products (because it believed that such a move would
alienate the party from large sections of voters). The UF government
did eventually bite the bullet, but only after considerable heartburn.
To those opposed to the UF, the government’s procrastination was
evidence of the inefficient manner in which a coalition government
worked. As far as the UF government’s supporters were concerned,
the government had responded to popular sentiments and had
extensively debated the pros and cons of the decision before it was
taken. Another occasion on which Chidambaram’s differences with
the left led to a standoff was when he tried to push through legislation
allowing private Indian and foreign firms to enter the insurance
business (but more on that later).
The first budget of the UF government presented by Chidambaram
on July 26, 1996 appeared to many to continue along the path
laid out by Manmohan Singh. The process of reduction of import
duties and de-bureaucratisation was sought to be continued. The
government set up the Disinvestment Commission headed by senior
bureaucrat G.V. Ramakrishna, who had earlier headed the official
watchdog body for the country’s capital markets, the Securities and
Exchange Board of India (SEBI). At one stage, Chidambaram stated
that the government would ‘invariably’ accept the Disinvestment
476 DIVIDED WE STAND

Commission’s recommendations. Later, however, the Commission

found that it had been reduced to an advisory body that would only
recommend the modalities of disinvesting the equity shares of specific
public sector enterprises and not one which would be responsible
for implementing and monitoring the entire process of divesting the
government’s stake in these corporations. Chidambaram’s second
budget, presented at the end of February 1997, was hailed by sections
of the media as a ‘dream budget’ for it sought to reduce the incidence
of income tax on individuals and companies while at the same time
projecting an increase in revenue collections.
A month later, political upheavals ensured that the dream budget
would soon turn into a nightmare. Congress President Sitaram Kesri
pulled the rug from under Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and had
him replaced by I.K. Gujral. At one stage, in April 1997, it appeared
that the budget would not be approved by Parliament but the crisis
was averted. More than a year later, Chidambaram was to state that
political uncertainty—and the toppling of two UF governments by
the Congress—was responsible for destroying the confidence of
investors as well as consumers, resulting in the projections contained
in his budget going completely awry. He had assumed that the fiscal
deficit as a proportion of the country’s gross domestic product
(GDP) would be contained at 4.5 per cent, but the actual figure by
the end of the year worked out to more than 6 per cent. To be fair
to Chidambaram, however, his predecessors and successors had
also not been particularly successful in containing the fiscal deficit
to the levels projected at the time when the budget proposals were
announced. Another important reason why the UF government’s
budget calculations went haywire was the decision to accept many
of the recommendations of the 5th Central Pay Commission, which
recommended increases in the salaries and remuneration paid to
government employees.
After Vajpayee became Prime Minister for the second time in
March 1998, it was widely reported that he wanted Jaswant Singh
to be the Finance Minister in his Cabinet. (Singh, who had served as
Finance Minister during the first Vajpayee government in June 1996,
had lost the elections from Chittorgarh in Rajasthan.) However,
leaders of the RSS were not particularly happy with Vajpayee’s
 Economic Policies 477

choice and ‘persuaded’ him to select Sinha for the position. Sinha had
the unenviable task before him of preventing the growth rate of the
country’s economy, segments of which were slipping into recession,
from slowing down further. Sinha sought to define his plans to kick-
start the Indian economy through a series of rather vague statements-
of-intent that payed ritual obeisance to the Vajpayee government’s
National Agenda for Governance. The agenda, like the President’s
address to Parliament spelling out the government’s priorities, was full
of pious pronouncements that were not just unexceptional and non-
controversial, but predictably couched in the rhetoric of ‘consensus’
politics. The Finance Minister said the regular budget to be presented
later would ‘seek to impart the necessary stimulus to agriculture
and industry, restore dynamism to exports, encourage larger flows
of foreign investment...take decisive initiatives to improve the state
of the infrastructure, strengthen the financial system...’. He said the
‘inherent strength of our economy...has enabled us to hold our heads
high and not succumb to the economic gales that have been sweeping
through the Asian region.’
Meanwhile, within the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar, a tussle
was underway about what should be the government’s economic
policy thrust, with the swadeshi group on one side and the ‘liberal’
group on the other. The BJP, which had earlier sworn by Gandhian
socialism, became critical of the Rao regime’s economic policies on
the ground that the economy had been exposed to international
competition too quickly. Before the May 1996 general elections, the
BJP would often say what India needed was technology for computer
chips and not potato chips. In this regard, the BJP and some of its allies
like the Samata Party (headed by George Fernandes who insists that
he continues to vociferously espouse the cause of socialism) appeared
to be speaking the same language as the two main communist parties.
A large section of opinion within all these otherwise diverse political
parties argued in favour of a slow, selective and cautious opening up
of the Indian economy to international competition.
The pro-swadeshi argument that emerged in the mid-1990s
could be summarised thus: The Congress government headed by
P.V. Narasimha Rao with Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister had,
since the middle of 1991, rolled out the red carpet for foreign concerns
478 DIVIDED WE STAND

and lowered import duties under pressure from multilateral funding

agencies like the IMF. Since the bulk of the biggest Indian corporations,
whether privately owned or controlled by the state, were midgets by
world standards and needed government support (if not protection)
to survive, leave alone prosper, domestic companies were severely
handicapped. The argument further ran that governments the world
over offer more than a modicum of support to local entrepreneurs,
that the same developed countries which shout the loudest about
free trade in global fora are the very nations which protect inefficient
industries at home on account of the political influence wielded by
home-grown industrialists and workers’ unions.
There is a slightly more sophisticated variant of the pro-swadeshi
argument, which draws on the analogy of the need for the mai-baap
sarkar (literally, the mother-father government) to protect ‘infant’
industries from foreign competition. But what happens when the
infant fails to grow up, to mature and then go into the big, bad world
outside to make his or her living? What do parents do with their
pampered, overgrown brats? Do they throw them to the wolves and
hope for the best? Or should they adopt a more humane approach
towards their spoilt offspring?
Those in favour of expediting the pace of external liberalisation
of the economy contend that Indian industry has been protected too
much and for too long. The fact that domestic capitalists were shielded
from competition by the government’s policies of encouraging import
substitution at any cost, including building high tariff walls, resulted
in consumers getting a raw deal. Thus, while corporate profits soared
and official revenues remained buoyant, the least-organised segment
of the economy, the consumers, had no choice but to make do with
over-priced, shoddy products and sub-standard services.
Proponents of both points of view marshal reams of facts and
figures to bolster their contentions. And, there is more than an element
of truth in the arguments put forward both by the supporters as well
as the critics of swadeshi.
Nobody would dissuade international capital from flowing into
infrastructure projects, be these roads, bridges, ports or airports,
particularly if such inflows also involve access to technology not
available within the country. Yet it is also true that these are the very
 Economic Policies 479

projects that are not inherently profitable, that is, unless the risks are
heavily underwritten by the government. At the same time, no Indian
politician worth his salt can oppose foreign or multinational investors
in today’s situation, so long as new jobs are created. (For example,
the longest-serving Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, a communist, had
repeatedly urged multinationals to invest in his state of West Bengal,
a practice that his successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has continued
with greater vehemence.) Yet, the debate on whether India can afford
to adopt a selective approach towards foreign investments and keep
such inflows out of particular areas, notably, consumer goods, is far
from over. The chances are that whichever government is in power
would hum and haw, move back and forth, while not excessively
antagonising either local corporate bigwigs or representatives of
multinational concerns.
Addressing his first formal meeting with corporate captains at the
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)
in March 1998, Finance Minister Sinha said low public investments in
infrastructure had contributed to the economic slowdown even as he
warned of ‘hard decisions’ to arrest the downturn in his forthcoming
budget. At the meeting, Sinha recalled how his decision to mortgage
the country’s gold stocks in 1991 had saved the government from
defaulting on its external financial obligations, even though it
made him personally unpopular. Before his parleys with domestic
industrialists, Sinha had spoken in Washington and London, where
he sought to assuage apprehensions that his government’s policy of
swadeshi was protectionist and would dissuade foreign investors
from coming to the country. Addressing representatives of the World
Bank and the IMF, Sinha again attempted to allay fears that populist
spending by his government would increase budgetary deficits.
Vajpayee too went on record stating that swadeshi did not mean ‘we
don’t value direct foreign investment’. Speaking for the first time to
industrialists in his capacity as Prime Minister in April 1998, Vajpayee
told the annual session of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)
that he had ‘inherited a weak, deficit-ridden economy, but I’m not
complaining’. While stating that ‘we cannot afford to play politics with
the nation’s economy any more,’ the Prime Minister argued that the
steps taken to free the economy since 1991 had not been backed by
checks and balances. The social sectors of the economy as well as the
480 DIVIDED WE STAND

infrastructure had not improved. While outlining a 90-day agenda for

action (which, as subsequent events showed, was not implemented),
Vajpayee sought to explain what he meant when he claimed that there
was an urgent need to ‘reform the reforms process’.
He said industry had three main complaints against the government—
it felt the government was responsible for avoidable delays in setting
up projects, that the government took too much and provided too
little, and that the government was in areas of business ‘it had no busi-
ness’ to be in. The Prime Minister went on to enumerate the three
main complaints the government had about industry. He said industry
did not share the government’s social responsibilities and that it
preached the virtues of transparency to the government but did not
itself operate in a transparent manner, nor did it fulfil its obligations
to workers and consumers. Finally, industrialists wanted competition
but not in the industries they were in. Vajpayee then identified the
three complaints ordinary citizens of the country had against both
industry and government. First, most people believed that government
and business are hand-in-glove helping each other, the rest be damned.
Secondly, it was perceived that both industry and government did not
care about the real needs of the people. Finally, it was felt that there
were two sets of the laws in the country, one for ordinary people and
the other for politicians and industrialists.
Perceptive as these observations were, the track record of the Vajpayee
government as far as economic policy went was quite different. A
little over two weeks after the government conducted nuclear tests at
Pokhran, on the first day of June 1998, Sinha presented the budget for
1998–99 that came to be derogatorily known as the ‘rollback’ budget.
Never in the last half-century of independent India had any Union
Finance Minister changed his own budget proposals as quickly and as
drastically as Yashwant Sinha did in the first fortnight of the month.
It seemed the maiden budget of the new government was jinxed.
Sinha announced two major changes in his budget proposals in less
than 24 hours. The first was the reduction in the prices of petrol from
what had been stated by the Ministry of Petroleum. The second was
the decision to halve the increase in the administered price of urea
fertiliser. Then, 10 days later, the Finance Minister completely rolled
back urea prices and at the same time, halved the proposed increase
 Economic Policies 481

in customs tariffs covering roughly one-third of the country’s total

imports. He also withdrew the witholding tax on foreign borrowings
by Indian corporates.
The lobbying to make the changes in the budget came from various
quarters, including industry associations, but the greatest pressure
to roll back urea prices came from the BJP’s own allies, notably
the Shiromani Akali Dal of Punjab (the state which accounts for the
lion’s share of the country’s total consumption of urea). Jayalalithaa
was equally adamant about opposing any hike in urea prices. Thus,
Sinha’s hopes of redressing the growing imbalance in the pattern of
usage of fertiliser (among the three principal groups of nutrients)
in India, which had worsened on account of imperfect methods of
pricing and distribution of subsidies, remained a pipedream.
By September 1998, the dissensions within the BJP and the
Sangh Parivar over the government’s economic policies appeared
to be coming to a head. The criticism of the Vajpayee government’s
economic policies by the SJM became extremely strident, thereby
embarrassing the BJP and its supporters no end. BJP spokespersons
sought to distance the party from the SJM’s position and argued that
even in the past some of the views expressed by the SJM were different
from those of the BJP. At the same time, late BJP spokesperson
K.L. Sharma told journalists that the BJP-led government would
seriously consider the opinions of the SJM.
The SJM was also peeved at the then Industry Minister, the late
Sikandar Bakht’s ‘sudden’ proposal that 100 per cent foreign-owned
companies be allowed to manufacture cigarettes and tobacco products.
The SJM argued that instead of encouraging such companies, the
government should be discouraging smoking. On this issue, the SJM
received support from former Mizoram Governor, Rajya Sabha MP
Swaraj Kaushal, who also happens to be the husband of Sushma
Swaraj, a Minister in Vajpayee’s cabinet. Kaushal had stated that the
decision to allow foreign firms to produce cigarettes ‘defies the logic
of swadeshi and was contrary to the BJP’s stated policy of encouraging
foreign investment only in ‘core’ areas like infrastructure. The SJM
also pointed out that while the government was encouraging the
manufacture of ‘sinful’ products, it had ‘succumbed’ to business
lobbies by ‘banning’ the production of common non-iodised salt.
482 DIVIDED WE STAND

Manch spokesperson P. Muralidhar Rao said iodised salt was required

only in areas where goitre is endemic and that common salt produced
from sea water had certain properties that iodised salt did not possess.
The SJM even claimed that it would launch a new ‘salt satyagraha’
on this issue.
The SJM also opposed the BJP-led government on other issues
like the move to allow foreign equity in private companies wanting
to enter the insurance business, ‘needless’ counter-guarantees given
by the Union government to foreign-funded power projects and the
Bakht-brokered deal to resolve a dispute between the government and
Japan’s Suzuki Motor Company on appointing the chief executive
of Maruti Udyog Limited. The two, the Union government and
Suzuki, were equal partners in the car manufacturing joint venture.
Then, the SJM attacked the then Commerce Minister Ramakrishna
Hegde’s foreign trade policies, specifically the shifting of 380 items
to the open general licence (OGL) list of imports and 140 items to
the special import licence (SIL) list. These decisions were described
as a sell-out to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Much of the
SJM’s strategy is credited to Gurumurthy, a diminutive Chennai-
based accountant and journalist turned economic ideologue. He is
publicly very critical of the consequences of economic globalisation
and opposed to the unfettered entry of multinational corporations.
Gurumurthy was quoted by Outlook magazine as saying he would
even start a campaign against western-style toilets.
As part of the Sangh Parivar, the SJM was clearly in a predicament
because the BJP-led government had not really gone back on the
economic reforms policies followed by previous governments. The
BJP argued that it could not implement its own economic agenda
since it was part of a coalition and had to go strictly by the National
Agenda for Governance.
Towards the end of 1998, the BJP and the Sangh Parivar were racked
with internal dissension on the issue of allowing foreign companies
to enter the insurance business in the country. Insurance was the last
segment of India’s financial sector that remained barred to foreigners.
On October 22, 1998, a high-powered group of ministers led by
Vajpayee confidante Jaswant Singh (who was then Deputy Chairman
of the Planning Commission) arrived at a ‘unanimous’ decision
 Economic Policies 483

that foreign companies (including foreign institutional investors, non-

resident Indians and overseas corporate bodies controlled by them)
would be allowed to hold up to 26 per cent of the equity capital of
privately-controlled insurance companies in the country. This was
an important recommendation of a committee of Parliamentarians
headed by Congress MP Murli Deora. A day before the group
of ministers met, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said at a seminar
on infrastructure that new legislation would be introduced in the
coming (winter) session of Parliament in late November 1998 to
set up and empower a statutory Insurance Regulatory & Development
Authority (IRDA) to oversee the removal of the government’s monopoly
on the insurance business.
A section within the government was clearly of the view that
in the situation which prevailed after the nuclear tests, a ‘positive
signal’ should be sent to foreign investors by allowing them to enter
the insurance business. Besides, it was argued that India needed to
mobilise long-term funds for infrastructure projects. The Indian
government, first under Jawaharlal Nehru and then under Indira
Gandhi, had nationalised the life insurance business in 1956 and
the general insurance business in 1972. Foreign firms were allowed
to operate in very restricted areas like shipping re-insurance. The
proposed IRDA bill was aimed at not merely allowing the regulatory
authority to issue licences to new players from the private corporate
sector but also to lay down stringent guidelines for them. The
government had also intended simultaneously to introduce bills to
amend the Acts of Parliament that govern the working of two giant,
monolithic, state-owned organisations, namely, the Life Insurance
Corporation (LIC) and the General Insurance Corporation (GIC)
which has four subsidiaries: Oriental Insurance, National Insurance,
New India Assurance and United India Insurance.
In 1994, an official committee (set up during the Narasimha Rao
government and headed by the former Governor of the Reserve Bank
of India R.N. Malhotra) had recommended that the government
allow private firms to compete with these state-owned monopolies
after the establishment of a suitably empowered regulatory authority.
Thereafter, all successive governments dilly-dallied on the question
of opening up the country’s insurance business to competition
484 DIVIDED WE STAND

from private firms. In February 1997, P. Chidambaram, as Finance

Minister in the centre-left United Front government, had allowed
private companies to offer health insurance policies for the first time.
In August 1997, the government headed by I.K. Gujral had moved
the IRDA bill in Parliament but it was withdrawn after strident
opposition, not only from the left parties (which were supporting
the UF government then) but also from the BJP which made it clear
that it would not be adopted. At that time, the BJP said that it was
not averse to Indian companies entering the insurance business but
was not favourably inclined towards foreign companies getting into
this industry. On June 1, 1998, Finance Minister Sinha proposed in
his budget speech that private domestic insurance concerns be allowed
to enter this hitherto exclusive preserve of the government, leaving
open the question of whether (and to what extent) international
insurance companies could enter the fray.
By November 1998, differences in the Sangh Parivar over the
issue of allowing foreign investment in insurance had reached a
climax. RSS and SJM leader Dattopant Thengadi castigated Finance
Minister Sinha at a public meeting and derogatorily dubbed him
‘incompetent’ and ‘useless’. (There was more than a touch of irony
in what Thengadi said, because it was the RSS leader K.S. Sudarshan
who had reportedly persuaded Vajpayee to make Sinha the Finance
Minister instead of Jaswant Singh who was Vajpayee’s first choice for
the post.) In early December, during a heated session of Parliament,
arch political opponents from the left and the right came together
to oppose the Insurance Bill causing considerable embarrassment to
the government since, by then, the Union Cabinet had resolved to
allow foreign companies to hold up to 26 per cent shares in Indian
insurance companies.
At one stage it even appeared that BJP president Kushabhau
Thakre might oppose the government’s decision. He and other party
functionaries had pointed out that when the UF government sought
to introduce a similar bill in Parliament in August 1997, the BJP
had staunchly opposed it. During a party meeting, Vajpayee had to
publicly tell the then Youth and Sports Affairs Minister Uma Bharti
(who had opposed the government decision on insurance) to shut
up and not interrupt him. Following hectic parleys, the BJP finally
 Economic Policies 485

presented a united face; Vajpayee’s view had apparently prevailed and

the hardliners marginalised. But, by then, the damage had already been
done. Though the Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority
Bill was moved by the government, it could not be passed by both
houses of Parliament and had to be shelved. The government had
hoped to get the Bill adopted during the 1999 budget session, but it
fell before this could happen. The bill was finally adopted by both
houses of Parliament in the winter session of 1999 with the BJP and the
Congress coming together. It was the first major economic decision
taken by the third Vajpayee government.
Even as the government’s decision to privatise the insurance
industry and open it to foreign investors was facing resistance in 1998,
the BJP-led coalition moved more cautiously to amend the country’s
patent laws to bring these in line with the norms laid down by the
WTO. As in the case of the IRDA Bill, the government referred a bill
to amend the Indian Patents Act of 1970 to a Parliamentary committee.
In December, the Vajpayee government decided that it would try
and convert the bill into law after the main Opposition party, the
Congress, stated that it would support the amendment to the patent
laws, subject to certain minor changes being incorporated. It was,
after all, the Congress government under P.V. Narasimha Rao that
had initiated policies in mid-1991 to open up India’s economy and
on the last day of 1992, the country had formally become a member
of the WTO and had signed the agreement on TRIPS (trade related
intellectual property rights).
India’s laws on patents had allowed the patenting of manufacturing
processes, not products, especially products like food, pharmaceuticals
and agro-chemicals. As per WTO rules, India has to introduce product
patents by 2005. Those in favour of the amended patent laws argued
that these would attract new investments in companies producing
pharmaceuticals and pesticides. The opposition to changing the
country’s patent laws came from farmers and social activists who
argued that the new laws would not only lead to a sharp rise in the
prices of medicines, but also cripple thousands of indigenously-owned
small pharmaceutical concerns. With the Congress and the BJP united
on the issue, the amendments went through in the Rajya Sabha in
the December 1998 winter session. The government was, however,
not able to present the bill in the Lok Sabha. At one stage, the then
486 DIVIDED WE STAND

Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Madan Lal Khurana had claimed

that the presentation of the bill was delayed because the requisite
approval of President K.R. Narayanan was late in coming, but a sharp
rejoinder from the President resulted in the Minister hastily eating
his words. The Patents Bill was eventually passed in the next session
of Parliament, which was the budget session of 1999.
As has been already stated, there were contradictions galore as
far as the thrust of economic policies were concerned not only in
the ruling party but within the principal opposition party as well.
Not everybody in the Congress was equally enthusiastic about the
Bill to amend the laws on patents. While one section comprising
individuals like former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh (who is
often described as the chief architect of the economic liberalisation
programme) was in favour of the bill, other Congress leaders argued
that the party should not create an impression that it was supporting
the fragile coalition government led by Prime Minister Vajpayee. The
pro-change group in the Congress won the internal tussle. By this
time, the Congress under Sonia Gandhi was trying to project itself
as a rejuvenated political party and had become increasingly strident
in its criticism of the economic policies of the Vajpayee government.
‘Prices are rising, unemployment is rising...all this leads to an ominous
situation,’ the President of the Congress told party faithfuls at a
meeting held in New Delhi. Boosting the morale of the Congress
was an opinion poll predicting a clear win for the Congress if general
elections were to take place.
In the aftermath of the February 1998 Lahore Declaration signed
between Vajpayee and Pakistan Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, it was
the turn of the Finance Minister to show that he too could deliver.
Sinha’s second budget, presented in February 1999, earned quite a few
compliments even from his political opponents for simplifying the excise
duty regime. He was able to walk a tightrope by keeping at bay both
the hardliners within the Sangh Parivar (namely, the SJM) as well as the
gang of liberalisers. More importantly, Sinha also paid lip service to the
cause of a ‘second wave’ of reforms and promised that he intended to
downsize the bureaucracy. One major component of the second wave
of reforms was the government’s decision not merely to disinvest its
equity in public sector firms, but to privatise some of them.
 Economic Policies 487

Privatisation of this sort, however, ultimately took place only in

2000, when Hindustan Lever, the Indian arm of the MNC Unilever,
bought a majority stake in Modern Food Industries, a public sector
unit making bread and other food products. Subsequently, there
were a few other ‘strategic sales’ of PSUs to private firms, including
the sale of BALCO, Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (IPCL)
and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). However, each of
these sales was surrounded by controversy and the government’s
privatisation programme did not really take off, with the privatisation of
oil sector PSUs in particular coming to a grinding halt. To begin with,
two major oil sector PSUs—Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd
(HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL)—could
not be privatised because of dissensions within the government. By
the time the government did reach a compromise on the issue among
its feuding ministers, it was overtaken by developments. Hearing a
public interest petition, the Supreme Court ruled that HPCL and
BPCL could not be privatised without obtaining the prior approval
of Parliament, since these companies had been created under Acts of
Parliament by nationalising the assets of foreign-owned oil companies
in the 1970s.
The fact is that privatisation is a dirty word in the lexicon of many
of India’s politicians, union leaders and opinion makers. These
sections were brought up to believe not only in the virtues of a socialist
economy in which the public sector would attain the ‘commanding
heights’ of the economy, but also in the merits of the government
acting as the model employer. Many people in India are unsure
about the benefits that would accrue from Margaret Thatcher-style
privatisation. At one level, a large section of the intelligentsia is
clear that the country’s political leadership and its bureaucracy must
not continue to run a host of loss-making ventures which own hotels
and manufacture products ranging from bread and bicycles to
automotive tyres and watches. Put differently, it is widely perceived
(at least within the middle class) that the government has no business
to be in such businesses, especially since the Indian state is doing a
pretty bad job of providing what it should be providing—primary
education and basic health care, among other services.
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Having said this, the next question which arises is what needs to
be done to close down, sell (transfer managerial control) or rehabilitate
chronically ill public sector undertakings (PSUs) humanely while
keeping in mind the interests of workers and the overall economic
environment of a country in which large numbers are unemployed
or underemployed. This is indeed the crux of the problem. As stated
earlier, in 1996, the UF government had set up a Disinvestment
Commission which, over a two and a half year period, recommended
a slew of measures to tone up the functioning of over 40 PSUs.
However, the UF government as well as the BJP-led government were
rather sluggish in acting on the Commission’s recommendations.
The NDA government failed to convince many about the efficacy
of privatisation as a means of reviving the country’s bloated and
inefficient public sector enterprises. The fact that the disinvestment
strategy pursued had concentrated largely on profitable PSUs
certainly did not help. These companies are in dominant positions
in their respective markets, have a high profile and thus, their
shares are quoted at reasonably attractive rates. There were a number
of problems with this strategy. While it was easy to sell the shares of
profit-making PSUs, such sales could only be one-time events and
did not address the problems of chronic loss-making PSUs. Besides,
the government used the proceeds of privatisation/divestment to
bridge the budget deficit. Such a policy was, to use a phrase coined
by British Labour leader Jim Callaghan in referring to Margaret
Thatcher’s policies of privatisation, akin to selling family silver to
pay the butler. Towards the end of his ministerial tenure, Shourie
did decide to set up a National Investment Fund in which the proceeds
of divestment would be placed for use in the social sector—the fund
was subsequently operationalised when Chidambaram became
Finance Minister in the UPA government, and, as stated earlier, the
UPA government made the erstwhile Ministry of Disinvestment a
division of the Finance Ministry.
There was a gap between rhetoric and practice on other aspects
of reforms as well. For instance, after the government ostensibly
dismantled the administered pricing mechanism (APM) for petroleum
products on April 1, 2002, Petroleum Minister Ram Naik ‘persuaded’
the public sector oil companies led by the Indian Oil Corporation
(IOC) to not increase petrol prices for three months despite a sharp
 Economic Policies 489

and sudden increase in international prices of crude oil from around

$ 20 a barrel to over $ 27 a barrel. As a result, the oil PSUs incurred a
huge loss of around Rs 200 crore per month, while privately-owned
oil refining companies (including Reliance Petroleum) continued
to receive prices for their products that were benchmarked to
international rates.
The Vajpayee government’s privatisation programme became
particularly controversial after Arun Shourie took over as Union
Minister for Disinvestment in August 2000. Shourie is a Minister with
a difference. For one, he had a reputation of being absolutely clean.
He also worked with amazing zeal. But in the process, Shourie also
painted himself into a corner. He became the favourite whipping boy
of many of his Cabinet colleagues and his ideological compatriots in
the BJP, not to mention his allies in the NDA coalition. A former
economist with the World Bank, erstwhile editor of the Indian Express
chain of newspapers, and the winner of the 1982 Ramon Magsaysay
Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts,
Shourie was declared ‘Business Leader of the Year’ by the Economic
Times, India’s largest circulated financial daily. Business magazines
regularly published his photograph on their covers.
Despite such impressive credentials, why did Shourie fail to forge
a consensus about the need for big-ticket privatisation? Why did
he find himself so isolated and why was he unable to convince his
own government’s ministers and supporters of the need to hand
over managerial control of PSUs to private entrepreneurs? Shourie’s
privatisation programme was placed in cold storage not on account
of his political opponents in the Congress or among the communist
parties. His own colleagues in the Vajpayee government and his
friends in the RSS proved to be the biggest enemies of his grandiose
plans of privatisation. Other sections of the Sangh Parivar like the SJM
and the trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh also expressed their
staunch opposition to Shourie’s privatisation policies.
It appeared as if Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Ram Naik
did not want his Ministry to lose control over HPCL and BPCL,
the second and third largest oil refining and distribution companies
in the country. Both companies are also profitable. Nor did the then
Coal and Mines Minister Uma Bharti seem happy with the manner in
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which the Ministry of Disinvestment sought to privatise the Orissa-

based National Aluminium Company (NALCO). The entire political
class in this eastern state—including the ruling Biju Janata Dal and
its rival, the Congress—came together to oppose the privatisation
of NALCO. The privatisation of NALCO, the world’s lowest-cost
aluminium manufacturer, was also opposed on the ground that the
timing would be inopportune since international aluminium prices
were at their lowest in the last five years.
It should be noted that both Ram Naik and Uma Bharti belonged
to the BJP at that time though Uma Bharti was later expelled
from the BJP. The same story was repeated in the case of Fertilisers
and Chemicals Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa (belonging to
the Shiromani Akali Dal) and National Fertilisers Limited. After
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VNSL)—once India’s monopoly
international telecommunications service provider—was privatised
and management control handed over to the Tata group, the then high-
profile BJP Minister for Communications and Information Technology
Pramod Mahajan opposed the decision of VSNL’s new private owners
to transfer a large chunk of money to a Tata group company. Yet,
curiously, none of these ministers ever publicly said they were
opposed to privatisation. They merely contended they were opposed
to the methodology of privatisation adopted by Shourie’s ministry.
Besides Petroleum Minister Naik, the move to privatise HPCL
and BPCL was staunchly opposed by Defence Minister George
Fernandes. He had earlier written a letter to Prime Minister Vajpayee
calling for a mid-course correction in the government’s privatisation
policy. Besides concurring with Naik that the petroleum sector
was strategically important—India currently imports roughly
three-fourths of its requirement of crude oil—Fernandes also said
privatisation should not result in public monopolies being replaced
by private monopolies.
All monopolies are bad but a private monopoly is certainly worse
than a public one. After all, bureaucrats can be transferred and
politicians have to get re-elected. However, a private promoter and his
children’s children can stay put for years on end and be accountable
to no one. An example was the way in which the Reliance group took
over the management of Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited
(IPCL) in May 2002. After privatisation, the combined Reliance–
IPCL conglomerate currently controls between 80 and 90 per cent
 Economic Policies 491

of the Indian market for a wide range of petrochemical products. (It

seems strange to recall that in the mid-1980s, as editor of the Indian
Express, Shourie had written a series of articles that were scathing in
their criticism of Reliance and the Ambani family that controlled India’s
largest private corporate group—the industrial empire founded by
Dhirubhai Ambani got bifurcated between his two sons Mukesh and
Anil, after a series of acrimonious disputes.)
In early January 2003, the DMK, then a part of the NDA, issued a
strongly worded resolution against the Vajpayee government’s policy
of privatisation and its alleged attempts to subvert the socialistic
character of the country’s Constitution. Political observers felt that the
DMK’s statement had been prompted by the attempts made by its arch
political rival in the state, the AIADMK, to come close to the BJP and
the NDA. (However, the DMK was to reiterate its strong opposition
to privatisation when it later became a part of the UPA government
and Chidambaram wanted to divest part of the government’s stake
in Neyveli Lignite Corporation.)
After its fifth national conference held in Hyderabad in the first
week of January 2003, the SJM issued a resolution criticising virtually
every aspect of the Vajpayee government’s privatisation programme
although the RSS-affiliated outfit maintained that it was not against
disinvestment in principle. Stating that it had serious reservations
over the procedures being adopted by the government towards the
PSUs being sought to be disinvested, the SJM said it ‘is convinced
that disinvestment should not be the first option, but the last one,
after all other alternatives have been exhausted’. It suggested that
the government deal with PSUs on a case-by-case basis by following
a sequence of logical steps that included de-bureaucratisation and
corporatisation, diagnosis of problems and their solutions, strategic
sale, valuation and share disposal.
Meanwhile, in January that year, the BJP’s cell dealing with
scheduled castes urged the party leadership to protect the interests
of dalits who would be denied ‘reserved’ jobs after the management
of particular PSUs passed into the hands of private promoters. At
the meeting of the national executive of the BJP Scheduled Castes’
Morcha, it was pointed out that the new owners of privatised
PSUs would no longer feel obliged to fill up posts reserved for SCs
as well as STs. A number of the dalit leaders of the BJP said during
492 DIVIDED WE STAND

the meeting that the underprivileged sections of Indian society were

the worst affected by the changes brought about by the so-called
economic reforms policies of the government. What was significant
in this context was the noise made by the UPA government on the
need for private enterprises to recruit more individuals belonging to
the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes while refraining from
making such recruitment legally mandatory (as has been detailed
earlier in the book).
All over the world, privatisation has proved to be controversial. In
India, it has become one of the most contentious and divisive issues
that has confronted the NDA government led by Vajpayee as well as
the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh.
Changing labour laws is another area in which there were conflicting
viewpoints in the Vajpayee government. The BMS is a leading
trade union organisation and its representatives contend that it is
‘independent’ of the BJP. In the same breath, BMS leaders concede
that they have close ideological affinity with the RSS. In February
1999, less than a year after Vajpayee had been sworn in as Prime
Minister for the second time, speaking at a national convention of the
trade union, BMS founder and veteran RSS leader, the late Dattopant
Thengadi had used unusually harsh language when he described
Finance Minister Sinha as an anarth mantri (literally, a minister who
causes chaos) instead of arth mantri (or a minister who handles the
economy). The octogenarian Thengadi did not stop there. In April
2001, the BMS founder again attacked Sinha in public, this time during
a rally held at New Delhi’s Ram Lila grounds. On this occasion, the
Finance Minister was accused of being a ‘criminal’ for encroaching
on the territorial preserve of the then Labour Minister, Satyanarain
Jatiya, who also happens to be a BMS leader.
The provocation for the uncharitable remark was a reference in
Sinha’s speech on the last day of February announcing the proposals
for the Union budget for 2001–02. The Finance Minister had stated
that the government wanted to remove certain ‘rigidities’ in the
country’s labour laws by amending the Industrial Disputes Act to
enable industrial establishments employing up to 1,000 employees
to retrench workers without obtaining the prior permission of
the appropriate government authority. The law as it stands grants
 Economic Policies 493

such a facility only to industrial organisations employing up to 100

workers. Sinha also mentioned the need to change the laws pertaining
to contract labourers.
Thengadi’s outburst reportedly upset Sinha so much that he
threatened to resign. The Finance Minister was, however, persuaded
not to put in his papers after various leaders of the RSS and the BJP
(including the then party president K. Jana Krishnamurthy) distanced
themselves from Thengadi’s views and told him not to take the BMS
leader’s remarks seriously. Though the BMS leader’s views were
described as ‘his own’, the trade union body never formally disowned
Thengadi’s remarks. What happened instead was that Labour Minister
Jatiya was removed from his post. This decision was widely interpreted
by the media as having been taken because Jatiya was perceived to
be opposing the ‘reform’ of the country’s labour laws. In his book,
Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer (Penguin/Viking, 2007), Sinha
regretted he did not get an opportunity to explain his government’s
position in this regard due to Thengadi’s demise.
The Cabinet sought to approve a bill to amend the Industrial
Disputes Act on the eve of the presentation of the Union budget for
2002–03 on the last day of February 2002, presumably to enable the
Finance Minister to state that he had been able to fulfil the promise
contained in his budget speech made a year ealier. That was, however,
not to take place. Strong opposition to the move from many of Sinha’s
colleagues in the Cabinet ensured that the Industrial Disputes Act
was not amended. (The UPA government has not even touched
this issue knowing well the heat it would generate, especially among
the left parties.)
The pulls and pressures within the NDA were evident again after
Sinha’s fifth budget was presented on February 28, 2002. History was
repeated a fortnight later when Sinha had to again rollback his budget
proposals. While he had announced a Rs 40 hike in the price of a
cylinder of cooking gas, he had to halve the increase following intense
pressure from the BJP’s allies in the NDA coalition. Some of Sinha’s
colleagues in the BJP were openly unhappy with his proposals to
increase the incidence of income tax on the middle-class and his
decision to pare the interest rates on small savings schemes run by
the government. Former Delhi Chief Minister and former BJP vice
president the late Sahib Singh Verma resigned his post as BJP vice
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president after his party received a drubbing in the capital’s municipal

corporation elections. Verma had publicly blamed Sinha for having
antagonised middle-class tax payers by his budget proposals.
Subsequently, there was tremendous pressure on Sinha from his
party compatriots at the BJP’s Goa conclave. Newspapers reported
that there were vicious attacks on Sinha at the party’s national executive
meeting. It was claimed that the Finance Minister and his officials tried
very hard to preserve the ‘integrity’ of his budget, However, he was
reportedly overruled by the Prime Minister himself. On April 26,
2002, Sinha removed the service tax on life insurance. He relaxed
the provisions of Section 88 of the Income Tax Act to provide relief
to tax payers with annual assessable incomes varying between Rs 1.5
lakh and Rs 5 lakh. He also helped the middle-class by partially
restoring the manner in which income from dividends and mutual
funds were taxed. These moves benefitted around one-seventh of the
28 million income tax assessees in the country. The Finance Minister
also reduced the excise duty rates on certain textile processes as well as
products used by the middle-class, notably, umbrellas and bicycles.
Sinha claimed that the changes in the budget proposals would
result in the national exchequer losing an amount in the region of
Rs 2,850 crore. He was able to ‘save face’ because the reduction of the
administered interest rates on small savings schemes was not reversed,
nor was the new ‘security’ surcharge on income tax. The face-savers,
however, could not help Sinha keep his job. Later that year, Vajpayee
reshuffled his Cabinet and Sinha was shunted out to the External
Affairs Ministry, while Jaswant Singh, Vajpayee’s first choice for the
job, finally became Finance Minister once again.
One of the first decisions taken by Jaswant Singh was to switch
the portfolios of the two junior ministers (Ministers of State) in his
ministry. This decision had to be reversed following a complaint
by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. The ‘rollback’ phenomenon
had also afflicted Singh. Also, like Sinha, Singh unsuccessfully tried
to persuade Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma to bring down the
interest rate on employees’ provident fund deposits.
Jaswant Singh was an officer in the army before joining the BJP. He
had served as Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission and Foreign
Minister. In his second stint as Finance Minister—the first was in the
short-lived Vajpayee government in May 1996—his first Union budget
 Economic Policies 495

was described as a populist one. One of his first public statements as

Finance Minister was that he would try and place grain in the stomach
of the indigent and money in the purse of the housewife (‘garib ke
pet me dana, grihani ke batua me ana’). Singh adopted a distinctly
more populist stance than Sinha had. In particular, the middle-
class was clearly targeted as a section that needed to be wooed back
to the BJP’s fold. How much of this was because of differences
between Singh’s and Sinha’s economic strategy is a moot question,
given the fact that Singh’s sops to the electorate all came at a time
when important elections, including the 14th general elections, were
round the corner.
The 2003–04 budget—like all budgets before it—was certainly
political. Nevertheless, it did contain some unpopular decisions.
Though he repeatedly assured everybody that there would be no
rolling back of his unpopular decisions, the new Finance Minister’s
arm was twisted by his own colleagues in government. In his budget
speech, Jaswant Singh had said that in view of the likely increase in
the prices of naphtha and gas—in view of the hike in the prices of
all petroleum products in the run-up to the Iraq war—he wished to
‘at least’ contain the fertiliser subsidy bill. He, therefore, proposed
that the issue price of urea be raised by a ‘modest’ amount of Rs 12
per 50 kg bag. The proposed increase in the administered prices of
di-ammonium phosphate and muriate of potash was Rs 10 per 50 kg
bag. This move was widely opposed by influential members of Singh’s
own government. Barely a fortnight after the presentation of the
budget, on March 11, the Finance Minister announced in Parliament
that he was withdrawing his proposal to increase fertiliser prices. The
rollback virus had struck again.
Finance Minister Singh was eager to implement a new value added
tax (VAT) regime that was considered to be far superior to the sales tax
system that existed in the country. In his February 28, 2003, budget
speech, he said the ‘coming year would be historic’ with states switching
over to a VAT system. ‘The central government has been a partner
with the states, in the highest tradition of cooperative federalism, in
this path-breaking reform,’ he stated. Less than two months later,
Jaswant Singh was singing a different tune. On April 24, he told the
Lok Sabha: ‘A poorly implemented VAT won’t work. Therefore,
VAT cannot be implemented unless all states adopt it together.’
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What happened was that the Finance Minister could not go ahead
with these tax reforms not so much on account of opposition from
representatives of rival political parties, but because of staunch
resistance from some of his own colleagues in the BJP (like Madan
Lal Khurana). These BJP politicians took up cudgels on behalf of
sections of traders who were against the implementation of VAT, an
important reason being that the new system, it was felt, would check
widespread tax evasion. Sections within the BJP also apprehended
that VAT could result in an inflationary spurt in the short run that
could spoil the party’s electoral aspirations later in the year in states
like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Chhattisgarh. The BJP’s
political opponents have in the past derogatorily described it as a
‘party of traders’. Chidambaram as Finance Minister in the UPA
government was later able to gradually persuade almost all the 28 state
governments and the legislatures of two Union territories to implement
VAT after extensive consultations—a committee headed by West
Bengal Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta did much of the groundwork
in this regard.
The Finance Minister’s intentions were also opposed by another
of his Cabinet colleagues, Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma. At a
time when almost all interest rates in the country were ruling at their
lowest levels in nominal terms in three decades, the board of trustees
of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) staunchly
resisted a lowering of the interest rate on deposits from a level of
9.5 per cent per annum to 8 per cent. The EPFO has over 30 million
industrial workers as its members. Now it may have made good
economic sense to pare the interest rate on such deposits, but such a
move would certainly not have pleased the workers and their leaders
in the trade unions—particularly not at a time when job opportunities
in the organised sector were growing at barely 1 per cent per annum
and the ranks of the unemployed were swelling.
On May 31, 2003, after a considerable amount of haggling, the
government lowered the EPF interest rate by 0.5 per cent to 9 per cent
for that financial year. In order to sugar coat the bitter pill and not
convey an impression that the government was against the interests
of the working class, the central board of trustees of the EPFO
agreed to pay a bonus of 0.5 per cent. This bonus, ostensibly paid
to celebrate the golden jubilee of the EPFO, meant that the effective
 Economic Policies 497

rate of interest on deposits during the fiscal year would remain at

9.5 per cent. Among the biggest opponents to the move to cut the
interest rate of EPF deposits were not just the left trade unions, but
also representatives of the BMS.
(The issue of reduction in the interest rate on EPF deposits remains
a contentious issue between the left and the UPA government. The
former believes the government should, if necessary, subsidise the
EPFO to ensure that workers are provided a form of social security.
Those opposed to an increase in the EPF interest rate argue that an
‘artifically high’ interest rate on such deposits distorts the overall
interest rate structure in the economy. Moreover, only a small section
of the overall labour force in the country gains from higher interest
rates since workers in the ‘organised’ sector comprise less than ten
per cent of India’s total workforce.)
What was not officially admitted by spokespersons of the NDA
government during the first half of 2003 was that populism had
become the order of the day and that no decision would be taken
that could offend any interest group or lobby in view of the state
assembly elections scheduled to take place later in the year, as also
the forthcoming general elections. Deputy Prime Minister Advani
acknowledged in a newspaper interview that ‘the pace of reforms has
been affected’ and that this is ‘an experience other democracies have
gone through’. ‘Everything that is economically correct may not be
electorally popular,’ Advani observed, adding that changes in labour
laws ‘will be slow’ (Business Standard, June 2, 2003).
There were problems galore as far as the economy was concerned.
Job opportunities were not expanding fast enough, the inflation rate
had picked up and regional imbalances had widened. These issues
were all politically sensitive and were being used by the Opposition
to beat the government with. In such a scenario, the powers-that-were
preferred inaction rather than risk acting decisively and offending one
section of the population or the other.
It has often been argued that on account of a growing political
consensus on many economic policy issues, the overall direction
of economic reforms would not change even if there be political
uncertainty or upheavals. Even if this is the case, what is apparent
is that the momentum of economic reforms can never be sustained
498 DIVIDED WE STAND

without political consensus. Thus, in the absence of such a consensus,

any government will find it extremely tough to open the country’s
doors wider to foreign investment, significantly lower interest rates
on deposits in the employees’ provident fund or privatise profit-
making PSUs.
The point worth emphasising is that while it is all very well to talk
about the need for sustaining the pace of economic reforms, this
objective cannot be realised until and unless there is a broad-based
political consensus within and outside the government to achieve such
a goal. That consensus still eludes India.
One of the most obvious manifestations of the failure of the NDA
government’s economic policies was the growth of a ‘food mountain’
at a time when several states faced drought and even starvation deaths.
The Food Corporation of India had around 60 million tonnes of
foodgrain in its godowns in the middle of 2002. This was three and
a half times the ‘minimum buffer norm’ of 17 million tonnes. The
explanation for this problem of plenty lay in the fact that the Union
government had been procuring increasingly higher quantities of
wheat and rice—especially from—Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh,
and Andhra Pradesh—by regularly increasing the minimum support
prices paid to farmers. It was no coincidence that four of the BJP’s
crucial allies in the NDA were major political parties in these
regions—the Akali Dal, the INLD, the RLD and the TDP. More
importantly, the support base of the SAD, the INLD and the RLD
is predominantly among farmers.
Within two years of the UPA government coming to power, the
‘mountain’ of wheat had depleted on account of, among other reasons,
exports and low procurement by government agencies because of
a reduction in output. Consequently, in 2006, India imported 5.5
million tones of wheat (mainly from Australia) at a time when world
wheat prices had firmed up. In March 2007, the government increased
the minimum support price for procurement of wheat by Rs 100 a
quintal (100 kilogrammes) to Rs 850 a quintal—the landed price of
imported wheat was around Rs 300 a quintal higher. The issue of imports
of wheat remained a politically controversial issue right through 2007.
The BJP as well as the left criticised the UPA government for allegedly
paying Australian farmers prices that were ‘twice as high’ as the prices
paid to Indian farmers. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar
justified the imports of wheat on the plea that they were needed to
 Economic Policies 499

ensure the country’s ‘food security’ and pleaded helplessness about

the high wheat prices that were prevailing in world markets. In late
2006, the country also experienced shortages of pulses, wheat, fruits
and vegetables resulting in their prices going up sharply. Inflation, as
measured by the official wholesale price index, came close to 7 per cent
in January 2007 while various consumer price indices rose by nearly
10 per cent over the previous year. Since high food prices affect the
poor more than the rich, this kind of inflation directly translates itself
into popular discontent. The electoral defeat of the Congress party in
Uttarakhand and Punjab in February 2007 was attributed in part to high
prices—as a matter of fact, Sonia Gandhi herself acknowledged that
this was so at a party session to analyse the outcome of the assembly
elections in the two north Indian states.
There was considerable concern about mounting inflation and
‘overheating’ of the Indian economy that had grown at over 9 per cent
per year, two years in a row for the first time—also for the first time
since 1947, the country’s GDP had increased by an average of 8.5 per
cent a year over a four-year period. The UPA government announced
a slew of measures to contain inflation that included tightening money
supply, hardening interest rates, stopping forward trading in wheat
and rice, curbing exports and reducing customs duties on imports.
But much of the damage had already been done.
The food economy is only one example of the kinds of compromises
that a coalition government has to make merely to ensure its survival.
But these compromises often extracted a heavy toll on the exchequer.
Economic commentators like Prem Shankar Jha contend that with
coalition governments becoming a ‘permanent feature’ of governance
in India, the capacity of the government to impose short-term
sacrifices on the people for long-term benefits has disappeared. In
his book, A Jobless Future: Political Causes of Economic Crisis (Rupa,
2002), Jha has remarked:

The starting point for reviving the economy, making future growth
sustainable, reversing the decline of employment in the organised
sector and averting the threat of de-industrialisation is to admit
that the 1991 [economic] reforms [initiated by Manmohan Singh,
the then Finance Minister in the P. V. Narasimha Rao government]
have failed. They have failed because they were left incomplete. This
incompleteness is preventing India from becoming a beneficiary of
globalisation and turning it into one of its victims... .
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To return to the economic policies of the UPA government, it

became evident from the first budget that was presented in July 2004
by the government (Chidambaram’s third as Finance Minister, the
first two during the United Front governments in 1996 and 1997)
that the influence of the left on important economic policies would
be pronounced. With the financial year having begun in April,
Chidambaram’s budget was more of a holding operation than
anything else. He announced a personal income tax relief that was
welcomed by the middle class—barely 3 per cent of India’s population
pays personal income tax. More significantly, the budget imposed a
2 per cent cess on all central taxes to fund the government’s primary
and secondary education programmes.
In his next budget presented in February 2005, Chidambaram
further rationalised the personal income tax regime with the intention
of improving revenue collections. The Finance Minister said during
a press conference after the presentation of the budget that he could
not accept the fact that only 80,000 persons in the country officially
declared an annual assessable income in excess of one million rupees.
He added that his new tax proposals would widen the income tax net.
Collections certainly improved over the following two years, enabling
Chidambaram to adhere to targets of fiscal deficit and revenue
deficit as a proportion of GDP that had been laid down in the Fiscal
Responsibility and Budget Management Act that was notified soon
after the UPA government came to power. The 2005 budget was
more noteworthy for the new taxes it imposed on transactions in
securities, on large withdrawals of cash from banks and on fringe
benefits given to employees of corporate bodies. Also significant was
the government’s move to kick off the National Rural Employment
Guarantee scheme (detailed earlier).
In the next two budgets presented by Chidambaram in February
2006 and February 2007, the left-of-centre stance of the UPA
government continued. In his speeches, considerable emphasis
was laid on what the government was doing for farmers and for
rural development, agriculture, irrigation, proving drinking water,
education, heath-care and the physical infrastructure, like roads
and electricity. In 2007, Chidambaram added a 1 per cent cess to
fund higher education—essentially to provide funds to colleges and
universities to increase the number of seats so that the promised
 Economic Policies 501

27 per cent quota for OBCs could be implemented. Chidambaram also

imposed taxes on the booming information technology sector which
had been somewhat of a ‘holy cow’ in the era of economic reforms.
As Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav became the toast of the
glitterati for the financial turnaround of the Indian Railways—much
of it due to the overall buoyancy in the economy, higher loading of
freight and a surge in exports of iron ore to China.
On the issue of increasing the foreign direct investment (FDI) limits
in sectors like insurance, aviation and mining, Chidambaram could
not have his way because of the strident opposition of the left. He
did, however, succeed in hiking the FDI limits applicable to private
telecommunications firms from 49 per cent to 74 per cent against
the wishes of the left and a section of the domestic telecom industry.
On another important area, however, the UPA government—in
this case, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce headed by Kamal
Nath—had to accede to the demands of the left parties: this related
to amendments in India’s patent law that have a major impact on
the pharmaceutical industry and the price of medicines, which have
traditionally been among the lowest in the world in India. Kamal
Nath also found himself caught in a controversy when he tried to
open up the retail sector—India has more shopkeepers as a proportion
of its population than any other country in the world—to foreign
investment. FDI in the retail trade was in theory opened up only to a
limited extent—single brand outlets, for instance, were allowed as were
wholesale (cash-and-carry) operations in which the foreign investor
does not directly deal with the consumer. However, international
retail giants like Walmart entered India by tying up with local business
groups, in this case the Bharti group, one of India’s biggest private
telecom service providers. The ‘backdoor’ entry of Walmart triggered
a debate on the impact that FDI in retail could have on India’s millions
of small shopowners and hawkers. Sonia Gandhi wrote a letter
to the Prime Minister suggesting that the impact be studied before
the laws were relaxed.
A move by Kamal Nath’s ministry that turned out to be even more
contentious was the policy on special economic zones (SEZs). Under
this policy, the government approved hundreds of SEZs all over the
country, though many of these were simply existing export processing
zones and free trade zones, some set up as early as the 1960s, being
502 DIVIDED WE STAND

reclassified as SEZs. What made SEZs really controversial was the fact
these typically would involve acquisition of large tracts of land—in
many cases fertile farmland. It became evident very soon that issues
like the compensation that should be paid to farmers in such cases
as well as rehabilitation and retraining those who had lost their land
and their livelihoods would not be easy to resolve.
Even before the Singur and Nandigram incidents (detailed in
the chapter on Left Parties) attracted national attention, during a
conclave of Congress chief ministers held in Nainital in September
2006, Sonia Gandhi cautioned the government against acquiring
farmland for setting up SEZs. Industrialisation, she said, should not
jeopardise the country’s agricultural prospects. This prompted Kamal
Nath’s ministry to immediately dash off letters to all chief ministers,
advising them that they should not acquire fertile farmland for SEZs.
Subsequently, he stated that land for establishment of SEZs should
not be acquired by state governments but by the promoters of the
SEZs themselves. The hue and cry over the SEZs policy resulted in
the government deciding to work out a comprehensive rehabilitation
policy for those whose land would be acquired.
In the past, the establishment of free trade zones or export processing
zones had not created a controversy because these were government
owned—such zones were not very different from industrial estates set
up by state governments except that tax laws applicable to these areas
were different making them ‘foreign territories’ within the country
for the purpose of levying taxes. Moreover, unlike in the past, in the
proposed new SEZs, generous tax concessions were granted not only
to those who promoted the manufacturing or service ventures but to
real-estate developers as well. Many of the proposed SEZs were to be
set up by information technology firms that apprehended that they
would be denied tax breaks after 2009 under the existing tax regime.
Apart from those whose land and livelihoods were to be taken
away, it was not just the left or the BJP that opposed the new policy on
SEZs. Even neo-liberal economists argued against the establishment
of hundreds of SEZs. They pointed out that there would be nothing
special about these ‘special’ economic zones unlike the few in China
that had been set up over vast tracts of land near already-developed
industrial cities like Hongkong and Shanghai. While the Reserve
 Economic Policies 503

Bank of India directed banks to loan funds to projects in SEZs at

interest rates that were applicable to commercial real estate ventures,
the chief economist of the IMF Raghuram Rajan apprehended that
the new SEZs would not create new industries and employment
opportunities but merely divert existing jobs to new locations.
Finance Minister Chidambaram was particularly upset that the
government would stand to lose huge amounts of tax revenues without
major gains to the economy. Academicians sympathetic to the left,
such as historian Sumit Sarkar, described SEZs as ‘special exploitation
zones’ and said these would result in the ‘biggest land grab in Indian
history’. The difference, Sarkar added, was that unlike land-grab
movements of the poor that had been witnessed in India, this time
round land was being taken by the rich from the poor. In the final
analysis, the SEZs were perceived as ‘enclaves of prosperity in a sea
of deprivation’ that would widen the already-wide regional economic
imbalances in the country.

∗∗∗

To return to the question raised in the early part of this chapter, has
the period of political instability that followed the May 1996 elections,
and which also coincided with the phase of coalition governments in
New Delhi, been good or bad for the Indian economy? In a paper
entitled ‘Electoral Cycles and Economic Policies of Governments of
India’ by Kausik Chaudhuri and Sugato Dasgupta (India Development
Report 2002, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research,
Oxford University Press), it has been indicated that more investments
take place when coalition governments are in power. One reason why
this happens is because various regional interests are held together by
‘generous distribution of infrastructure projects’.
Economist Surjit S. Bhalla wrote in the week before Yashwant
Sinha presented his second budget on February 27, 1999:

Political instability does not matter. The conventional wisdom

is that political wisdom is bad for the economy. In its survey of
investment houses in mid-July [1998], ‘Asia Pacific Consensus
Forecasts’ reported that the most unfavourable factor affecting the
504 DIVIDED WE STAND

economic prospects of India was ‘political uncertainty’ followed by

international sanctions [after the nuclear tests of May 1998] and the
Asian crisis. There is a different, more compelling view. Political
instability is actually good for economic reform. The contention
is that lack of political dominance means that politicians in power
will make the extra reform in order to fight for marginal votes in a
future election. And if political stability is present, the politicians
are unlikely to make an effort because of their inherent ‘short-
sightedness’, or complacency.

Bhalla cites what he calls six ‘pieces of evidence’ to support his claim
that economic reforms occur when there is political instability and
do not occur when there is stability.

The first example is from late 1984 when Rajiv Gandhi assumed his
dynastic post with 415 seats or more than three-fourths majority….
Mr. Gandhi had talked of reforms and expectations were high.
The rapidity with which the prospect of reforms disappeared
can only be compared with the speed with which a BMW zooms
towards 60 mph—or the speed with which Mr Gandhi reduced his
party’s seats to less than half in late 1989 (197 seats in a 543 seat
parliament). Second, the Narasimha Rao–Manmohan Singh
reforms were undertaken by a minority government and amidst
considerable political and economic uncertainty in 1991. Third,
once Narasimha Rao got comfortable with a majority in Parliament
(political stability) the reforms stopped. Fourth, the United Front
government undertook significant reforms with the political
disadvantages of two Prime Ministers in eighteen months….

Bhalla goes on to list the reforms made by the UF government:

reduction in the maximum rate of personal taxes to only 30 per cent,
rationalising of petroleum products pricing, movement towards
privatisation (albeit painfully slow), beginning of deregulation of
interest rates and movement towards capital account convertibility
by easing gold imports. The fifth example is the change in the BJP’s
position on spiralling onion prices before and after the November
1998 assembly elections. Before the elections, the party was
complacent but not after it was roundly defeated in Delhi, Rajasthan
 Economic Policies 505

and Madhya Pradesh. Bhalla, who runs his own consulting unit, went
on to extol the virtues of the Vajpayee government in his sixth and
final example.

After the defeat [in the assembly elections], the BJP has been a
changed economic and political animal, The Jekyll–Hyde reality of
the BJP is now exposed, and exposed by reform [Jekyll] elements
within the BJP. There is a liberal outlook on both political and
economic matters. The Hyde wing of the BJP is still there, is still
vocal, but it is being relegated to the sidelines. It is contended that
this radical change for the better was precipitated by the impending
ouster of the BJP—i.e. increased instability makes for good political
and economic policy. Since December 1 [1998], the BJP has moved
considerably forward on economic reforms—the beginnings of a cut
in interest rates, the heightened concern with government borrowings
and the fiscal deficit, introduction of reforms on insurance
and the conviction that large-scale privatisation is needed are all
hallmarks of a ‘new’ BJP…. When the history of BJP rule is written,
it is likely that 1998 will be remembered as the year of the great
BJP divide—and as the beginning of its avatar as a liberal reform
party. The fringe elements of the BJP (lumpen elements who would
like to take India back to the authoritarian, inquisition, sixteenth
century political era and to leftist, protectionist, swadeshi economic
policies) are being sidelined—they have nowhere to go. Why
this was not realised earlier by the BJP is a mystery—though it must
be said that the party caught on to the reality in less than a year.

These views can be countered since at the heart of the issue is what
constitutes ‘real’ economic reforms. Bhalla’s praise for the BJP’s
heightened concern for high government borrowings or high deficits
may have been premature. No politician would agree entirely with
the thesis that governments act only when pushed to the corner, that
political instability would invariably lead to economic reforms. Some
amount of instability may be good for keeping those in power on their
toes and preventing them from becoming complacent.
How much political instability—or how little—is desirable is a far
more difficult question to answer. As is evident, mere talk of reform is
not enough. If these reforms are not perceived to be improving the lot
of the majority of Indians, the electorate would throw out those who
506 DIVIDED WE STAND

initiated them. Witness the humiliating defeat that was suffered by

the Congress party in the May 1996 elections or by the NDA eight
years later in 2004. Even if nearly one-third of India’s population
remains functionally illiterate and even if at least one out of four
Indians lives below the poverty line (whichever way one may choose
to define it), the electorate of the country has shown time and again
that it is capable of taking mature, considered decisions regarding those
who claim to represent it.
Economist Deepak Nayyar and political scientist Pranab Bardhan
(Democracy in India, edited by Nirja Gopal Jayal, Oxford University
Press) have argued that the current political climate is not favourable
for the kind of reforms being ushered in. Their arguments are not of
the usual ‘instability is bad for reforms’ or ‘populism versus reforms’
variety. They make a rather more substantive point. Nayyar points
out that the economics of markets excludes those without the requisite
entitlements, whereas democracy seeks to include. This, he says, is
the ‘essence of the tension between the economics of markets and
the politics of democracy’. He goes on to say that the economic
reforms programme introduced in 1991 ‘was simply not related to
the institutional framework of political democracy’. ‘It was, therefore,
neither shaped by political processes nor rooted in social formations,
which could have provided constituencies in polity and society.’ As a
result, he goes on to add: ‘In the sphere of economics, the old consensus
has broken down while a new consensus has not emerged.’
Bardhan points out that the shift of political power from the
centre to the states in recent years has been accompanied by a
shift of power towards the intermediate and lower castes. This, he
argues, means that the earlier practice by which economic decision-
making was institutionally insulated, is getting eroded. The concern
for group equity and group rights—as against individual rights—
runs counter to the market philosophy and hence creates a context
which is not favourable for reforms aimed at making the economy
market-friendly.
In conclusion, the three broad propositions on the relationship
between coalition governments and economic policies mentioned at
the beginning of this chapter, bear reiteration.
First, there has been no obvious or clear-cut pattern in the
relationship in India thus far. The performance of the country’s
 Economic Policies 507

economy has not been noticeably different under different coalition

governments from what it has been when single party governments
have ruled India. Nor has the economic policy framework been
significantly different.
Second, coalition governments have not been able to change
certain structural imbalances in the economy: for instance, regional
imbalances in economic development between the west and the east,
the north and the south. Western India has done better than eastern
India, the south has moved ahead much faster than the north in many
respects. Has the presence of coalition governments made much of a
difference in redressing these regional disparities in development? Not
really. Certainly not as yet. While political parties have apparently
come closer together on issues of economic ideology, the so-called
‘consensus’ on economic reforms has periodically broken down on
crucial questions. Such questions relate to privatisation or revival
of ailing PSUs as well as the speed at which the economy should be
‘globalised’ or exposed to international competition. Thus, even as
parties have appeared to come closer to one another on economic policy
issues, there is considerable internal dissension on economic policy
issues within the the BJP and the Congress.
Finally, unlike Japan or Italy where the nitty-gritty of economic
decision-making may not change that much with each new coalition
government, in a developing country like India, politics has
dominated—and will continue to exert influence over—every minor
economic decision, from the price at which the Food Corporation
of India should procure grain to the question of whether export of
onions should be allowed at any given point in time.
 Chapter 11
Looking Ahead

How long will the era of coalition politics continue in India? Is it

never going to be possible for a single party, be it the BJP or the
Congress, to dominate the country’s polity? The answer to the latter
question is relatively easy: it seems unlikely in the foreseeable future.
The answer to the first question is a more difficult one. Is India then
heading towards a two-party system? Certainly not in a hurry, if it
is at all doing so. The country may remain multi-polar for quite a
while. If anything, the polity could get even further fragmented in
the immediate future. Will India then get accustomed to a polity where
two broad coalitions dominate?
So what is ‘new’ about the era of coalition politics in India? The
Congress ruled the country for more than four and a half decades
because it had the character of a coalition. Under Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, the party was a unique non-violent force
against colonial rule and it represented almost all sections of society
when India became politically independent in 1947. For the next
20 years, the coalition character of the Congress remained more or less
intact. The umbrella nature of the Congress was first seriously
challenged in 1967, but the manifestation of the symptom was largely
restricted to state assemblies. A decade later, the Congress lost
Parliamentary elections for the first time in independent India. With
the benefit of hindsight we can now see that the process of a single
party coalition giving way to more explicit coalitional arrangements
had already begun.
It could be argued that but for two dramatic assassinations—Indira
Gandhi’s in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi’s in 1991—the decline of the
Congress’ electoral fortunes would already have reached an advanced
stage as early as the second half of the 1980s. Perhaps the ‘new’ era of
coalition politics in India would have started well before it ultimately
did. Since there can be no counter-factual arguments to this hypothesis,
 Looking Ahead 509

it might seem that it really does not matter whether we accept it or not.
That is not quite true. If the elections of 1984 and 1991 are recognised
as ones in which the Congress performed much better than it would
have if no dramatic events had influenced them, the picture one gets
is of a party that has been on a more or less steady decline since as
far back as 1967 (remember the 1972 general elections were soon
after an India–Pakistan war in which Indira Gandhi could bask in
the glory of having contributed to the break-up of Pakistan, pushing
domestic issues into the background). The elections of 1980–81 then
become the only general elections since 1967 in which the Congress
has come to power without the assistance of issues either extraneous
to domestic politics (though one can quarrel with the description of
an India–Pakistan war as being extraneous to Indian politics) or with
cathartic events like the assassination of a Prime Minister.
Such a perspective must also mean that the decline in the fortunes
of the Congress is not the result of mismanagement by one leader
or the other, but has a more lasting structural basis. The foibles of
individual leaders may have contributed to the process, perhaps even
hastened it, but they cannot be held solely responsible for the decay.
A question that arises from such an understanding would be whether
the process is peculiar to the Congress or is more generic in nature.
Could it be the case that the very model of a coalition within a single
party has become unviable? The evidence certainly seems to suggest
that this is the case.
Whether one sees the Mandal-Kamandal standoff as a cause of the
fragmentation of the polity or as its consequence, what is undisputable
today is that many parts of the country—in particular the Hindi
heartland—are experiencing a sharpening of divisions within society,
whether on the basis of caste, religion or ethnicity. It is difficult to
see any party being able to hold together groups with such hostility
towards each other for very long. A case in point was the BJP’s
attempt at forging a coalition between the upper-castes represented
by leaders like Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra and the intermediate
castes represented by Kalyan Singh.
There are empirical reasons as well for foreseeing a reasonably
long period of coalition politics in India. Historically, Parliamentary
510 DIVIDED WE STAND

elections in India have by and large delivered fairly decisive mandates

in each state. It is another matter that since each state may have voted
decisively for one or the other of two contending fronts or parties, the
aggregate result may have thrown up an uncertain verdict. In 1996, for
instance, the Janata Dal and its allies swept states like Bihar, Karnataka
and Tamil Nadu. The BJP and its allies had unquestioned dominance
in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The
Congress and its allies secured equally decisive verdicts in Andhra
Pradesh, Orissa and the north-eastern states. The net result was a
hung Parliament with the single largest party, the BJP, getting less
than one-fourth of the total number of Lok Sabha seats. This pattern
of decisive state-level verdicts has begun to change. Uttar Pradesh
no longer yields any one victor in Lok Sabha polls, nor do states like
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh always give
clear mandates.
As for the much talked about bipolarity of the Indian polity, as we
have already shown in such great detail, it is more wishful thinking
than actual fact. In our earlier book that was published in March 2004,
we had written:

Here’s a thought that might have seemed shocking till not very long
ago, but can by no means be ruled out any longer. We could in the
near future, perhaps as early as the 14th general elections in 2004,
have a Lok Sabha in which the BJP and the Congress put together
cannot muster a majority. This may or may not happen, but it does
not seem impossible as it once would have.

The 14th general elections saw the Congress and the BJP together
obtaining just 11 seats more than the half-way mark of 272 seats. This
trend is likely to continue. Few would be surprised if the two largest
political parties in India fail to together win more than half the 543
seats in the Lok Sabha in the 15th general elections. Whether it’s at
the level of state assembly elections or polls to panchayat bodies, the
top two candidates usually obtain around three-fourths of the total
votes cast. But this ‘bipolarity’ at a local level, when aggregated across
28 states and seven union territories across the country, translates into
a complex kaleidoscope of coalitions and shifting political formations
at an all-India level.
 Looking Ahead 511

There’s a more difficult question to answer in the context of

coalition politics: Will coalition governments necessarily remain
unstable? That’s a much tougher prediction to make. As the old saying
goes, a week is a long time in politics. The proposition may be
particularly true for the new, highly fluid and unpredictable phase that
politics in the world’s largest democracy is currently going through.
What can be said though is that the sooner parties recognise that
ideological affinity is the best guarantor of the longevity of alliances,
the shorter will be the period of unstable governments.
Why are we not gripped by despondency at the thought of coalitions
continuing to rule India in the foreseeable future? Given the con-
ventional wisdom that coalitions tend to slow down decision-making
and make official policy a prisoner of conflicting claims, it might seem
that a future dominated by coalitions is quite a depressing scenario.
But then, are these not the same ‘problems’ that are mentioned when
democracies are compared with dictatorial regimes? That is no
coincidence. Indeed, the reason why we are not alarmed by the thought
that coalitions could be here to stay is precisely because they could
make a major contribution to deepening and strengthening Indian
democracy. If they have arisen because large sections of the people
of India felt excluded from the process of development, they will
survive only if they are able to reverse that exclusion. It is possible,
of course, that the era of coalitions will make electoral politics more
cynical, sectarian and opportunistic, but we are optimistic that the same
groundswell of popular discontentment that rejected earlier regimes
for not being responsive enough will prevent such a denouement, at
least in the medium to long term.
The burden of expectations that coalition governments will have to
bear is by no means small. At least one out of four Indians is steeped
in poverty. That’s one-fourth of nearly 1.2 billion people, almost
equal to the population of the United States. More than two-thirds of
India’s population live on less than two US dollars a day. Almost
half the population of India is denied basic education and health care.
Nearly two-thirds of the country’s girl children do not receive any
education worth the name. Yet, India’s institutions of higher learning,
like the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes
of Management, produce students who have made their mark the
512 DIVIDED WE STAND

world over. India entered the new millennium with nearly one-third
of the world’s computer engineers and a quarter of the world’s
undernourished. Academic Shiv Visvanathan comments that the
problem with many of India’s institutions of higher learning are that
these have become transformed into intellectual assembly lines of the
world, clearing houses for ideas, both good and bad, which the world
gratefully accepts or summarily rejects.
There is a similar stark contrast in the area of health care. Nobody
seriously disputes that the country’s health care system needs drastic
overhauling. The government used to spend more per head during the
1950s and 1960s than it does at present. The governments of India’s
less developed and smaller neighbouring countries have better health
care facilities than large parts of the country (especially the north).
Only Kerala has a health care system that is comparable to that in
the US. On the other hand, there is no dearth of Indian doctors who
have made it big in the US, while the British National Health Service
is dominated by Indian doctors. Surely there is nothing basically
wrong with the quality of education provided in the country’s medical
colleges. India’s pharmaceuticals manufacturing industry is one of
the few industries which is bigger than its counterpart in China. Yet
the fact is that the Indian pharma industry produces and sells huge
quantities of the kinds of drugs we don’t really need: cough and cold
mixtures and digestive aids are two examples. Many drugs banned in
most countries of the world are freely sold in India—there is even a
plethora of what doctors call ‘irrational’ formulations. While Indian
companies export bulk drugs all over the world and some have
expanded the frontiers of medical science with their research, the
average Indian has no access to health care worth the name.
There is no dearth of such examples of the gulf between the
achievements and possessions of India’s elite and the poverty of
resources among the rest. It is not without reason that India is seen as
a land of amazing contrasts and contradictions. More often than not,
this fact is stated with a sense of pride. It is time we recognised that
those on the wrong side of these contrasts see the situation rather
differently. Unlike in the past, they are no longer willing to lament
their fate. They have chosen to express themselves and in the process
 Looking Ahead 513

the Indian polity has got fragmented like never before. But the bene-
ficiaries of this process—the small regional or caste-based parties—
would take their support base for granted at their own peril.
The programme of economic reforms has used the disillusionment
with the Nehruvian model of development as its moral justification.
Ironically, however, whatever little consensus exists on the contours
of the reform package is restricted to those who were not the worst
sufferers of the controlled economy—the middle-class and those
at the highest rungs of the economic ladder. As one descends that
ladder, the consensus is replaced by scepticism if not suspicion, which
explains why anti-reform measures are still labelled ‘populist’. The
scepticism is not without basis. The have-nots have seen this same
elite sell them the Nehruvian dream. They are understandably not
too keen to trust the elite today when it tells them that the reforms
will usher in a better tomorrow.
The exclusion, of course, is not only in the economic sphere. Almost
one-third of the country’s citizens still suffer social discrimination on
account of the caste system 60 years after Independence. The people
of this country are divided along every conceivable line: class, religion,
language, region, race, and overlapping all of these, the caste system.
Unless India’s inequalities in terms of social and economic classes
narrow considerably, the country will not be able to ‘develop’ or
move ahead in the international arena, certainly not fast enough.
It might seem difficult to sustain the people’s faith in a democracy
that repeatedly fails to deliver even basic human needs to them.
Conversely, many of the non-economic divisions in Indian society
would conceivably become less oppressive and perhaps gradually
disappear if the economic divide is reduced.
That then is the challenge facing coalition governments of the
future. It is certainly a huge challenge. Coalitions, however, are
arguably better equipped to face up to the challenge than any single
party in India at the moment.
 Index

Abdullah, Farooq, 65, 146, 211, 358, 360, Bahuguna, Hemvati Nandan, 422
455 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), 40, 59, 114,
Acharya Dharmendra, 189 119, 135, 211, 241, 244, 263, 286, 444
Acharya Giriraj Kishore, 179 coalition situations and, 254
Achuthanandan, S., 390, 413 fund collection by Mayawati, 252
Advani, L.K., 51, 66, 73, 78, 140, 157–59, rise of, 244
165, 167, 181, 184, 187, 189–90, 194, victory in 2007, 245
196, 201, 203, 233 Bajaj, Rahul, 453
Bharat Suraksha Yatra, 235 Bajpai, Liladhar, 230–31
as BJP president, 158, 348 Bakht, Sikandar, 96, 204, 481
and Jinnah murder case, 233 Balayogi, G.M.C., 132, 206, 211, 305
NDA government and, 497 Banerjee, Mamata, 120, 198, 205, 226,
public image as Hindutva hawk, 235 288–90, 294, 337, 339–48, 415–16, 456
rath yatra, 184, 202, 233, 302 Bardhan, A.B., 83, 89
views on Jinnah, 157, 234 Basu, Jyoti, 58, 125, 137, 342, 396, 399,
Agnihotri, Bhishma Kumar, 172–73 408, 455, 479
Ahluwalia, Montek Singh, 87, 465 Basu, Tapan, 180
Aiyer, Mani Shankar, 90, 103 Besant, Annie, 150, 181
Ambedkar, B.R., 107, 165, 265 Bhabha, C.H., 107
Andhra Pradesh Bhagwat, Niloufer, 209
assembly elections, 2004, 79, 391 Bhagwat, Vishnu, 136, 208–9, 294, 322
Bhalla, Surjit S., 503–4
and TDP, 56, 58, 64, 114, 241, 305,
Bharadwaj, H.R., 140
428, 429, 434, 437
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
Ansari, Abdul Hamid, 46
Graham Staines murder and, 174
Antony, A.K., 143–44
and Ayodhya issue, 51–52, 160, 236–
Anwar, Tariq, 54, 384–85, 435–36, 138
39
Article 370 of the Constitution, 65, 85,
Bharat Uday Yatra, 74–75
186
BHEL privatising issue, 89–91
Azad, Ghulam Nabi, 143, 147, 222, 361
BJP-BSP tie-up, 165
communal riots in Mumbai and bomb
Babri Masjid demolition in December blasts, 174
1992 December 1995 judgement of Consti-
and BJP government, 203, 226, 256 tutional bench of apex court and,
impact on elections, 111 188
and muslim support, 119 divisions within, 157
Bachchan, Amitabh, 259 economic policies of, 191
Bachchan, Jaya, 93 saffronisation of education, 167
Badal, Prakash Singh, 363, 368, 456 CBSE books, 170
 Index 515

historical research, 168 Lalu Prasad Yadav as Chief Minister

ICSSR and, 169 of, 269
NCERT books, 168–69 politics in, 268, 280
Vidya Bharati textbooks, 170–71 President’s rule and, 73–74, 267
election manifesto aspects of, 186 Rabri Devi government, 273–75
factional infighting within, 192 and RJD, 60, 114, 280, 404
in Gujarat BJP, 193 Samyukta Vidhayak Dal government,
Gujarat Hindu-Muslim riots, 51 267
and Gujarat riots, 40, 161, 238, 294 BJP-led NDA coalition government
‘hard Hindutva’ strategy, 157 in 1999, 47–48, 460–61
Himachal Pradesh assembly elections agreement on TRIPS, 485
of February 2003, 197 allies of, 40, 48, 56, 113–14, 167
‘India Shining’ campaign, 73, 75, 105, annual rate of inflation, 473
156 and anti-incumbency sentiments, 58
American mole and image of, 159 budget for, 476
Mahajan’s death impact on, 159 CAG report on India Shining cam-
and ‘Modi magic,’ 162 paign, 73
new states creation by, 456–57 campaign against Pratibha Patil, 45
Pandya’s killing in Gujarat, 194 confusion and chaos in, 85
pragmatism and, 223 country’s gross domestic product
public pronouncements and, 189 (GDP), 476
and reservation, 174–76 economic policy issues, 461–62, 468
and RSS, 52, 156 economy liberalisation, 478
rules for government employees and, 1998 elections, 62
173 ‘feel-good factor’ phrase, 73
Sangh Parivar’s ‘hidden agenda’ and, first budget of, 463
160 Indian companies and insurance busi-
Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra, 68, ness, 484
142 ‘India Shining’ campaign, 42
Tehelka incident in March 2001, 198 internal contradictions, 40
14th general elections, 41, 53, 74, 81, IRDA Bill, 485
107, 109, 118, 142, 156, 167, 232, and Kargil effect, 55–56
309, 394, 410, 495, 510 mutual funds organisation, 465
and tribals, 71, 177 nuclear tests and, 463
Union budget and financial crisis, 212 party image in 1999–2002, 49
Vajpayee government and political performance of constituents in state
advisors, 172–73 assemblies, 48
Vajpayee vs. Advani, 190 petroleum products prices, 460–61
view on coalition, 109 privatisation of public sector, 487–88
whisper campaign, 212 results of December 2003 assembly
Bharti, Uma, 158–59, 167, 181, 203 elections, 52–53
Bhattacharjee, Buddhadeb, 58, 342, 348, revenue collections, 471
390, 412, 416–17 rift with allies, 50–51
Bihar selection of India’s President, 44–45
Advani’s jail and, 270 SJM opposition, 481–82
and Janata Dal split, 272 special economic zones (SEZs),
JD(U)-BJP alliance, 269 501–3
516 DIVIDED WE STAND

structural imbalances in economy, Congress-led, 39

507 in the context of economy, 70
swadeshi policy of, 479 impact on attitude of Congress
13th Lok Sabha elections, 53–54 leaders, 41
13th Lok Sabha elections (See also influencing factors, 67–70
Elections) and party majority in Lok Sabha, 40
14th Lok Sabha elections, 72 (See also phenomenon of ‘outside’ support, 67
Elections) at states, 438–44
in Uttaranchal, 50 Congress for Democracy (CFD), 422
in Uttar Pradesh, 50, 59 Congress-led coalition government (See
value added tax (VAT) regime, also Elections)
495–96 alliances in Tamil Nadu and Bihar, 42
victories in state assembly elections, appointments to institutions, 84
50–51 candidature for post of Vice President,
victory of BJP in December 2003 45–46
elections, 41 crisis with left party, 46–47, 83, 89–90
Blair, Tony, 189 disinvestments programme, 90–91
Bose, Subhash Chandra, 181 financial crunch during 14th Lok
Bush, George W., 102, 154, 189, 217 Sabha elctions, 74
impact on the attitude of Congress
Central Board of Secondary Education leaders, 41
(CBSE), 170 with left parties, 42
Centre for Advocacy and Research manifesto for 14th Lok Sabha elec-
(CFAR), 77 tions, 83
Centre for the Study of Developing ‘office-of-profit’ controversy, 93
Societies (CSDS), 55 pre-election alliances, 41–42
Chandra, Bipan, 171 pressures of on economic decision-
Chandra, Naresh, 192 making, 85–89
Chandra Shekhar government and quota issues, 94–95
corruption, 118, 449–50 reforms, 84–85
Chandra Swami, 203 selection of India’s President, 43–44
Chatterjee, Somnath, 408 and state assembly elections, 42–43
Chaudhary, Amarsinh, 144 13th general elections, 54–55
Chautala, Om Prakash, 44, 76, 205, during 14th Lok Sabha elections,
210–11 76–77
Chidambaram, Palaniappan, 85, 87, 104, Congress Working Committee (CWC),
474 138
Chowdhury, A.B.A. Ghani Khan, 109– Corruption and politics, 71
10, 454 CPI(M), 58
Coalition government, 39 (See also All India Trade Union Congress
Elections) (AITUC), 400
BJP-led NDA, 40 in Bihar, 402
at Centre, 424–37 Centre of Indian Trade Unions
Congress split, 421 (CITU), 400
contradictions within Janata Party, division of, 402
423–24 in Kerala, 391
‘compulsions of coalition politics,’ leadership of, 399
93–96 and Naxalites fighting, 408
 Index 517

in northern states, 394 issue related to candidature of

socialist society, 392 Sonia Gandhi, 54
and UF government, 398–99 mushrooming of regional parties,
65–66
Dandavate, Madhu, 423 seats won by BJP-NDA alliances,
Deb, Dasarat, 456 56–57
Deoras, Balasaheb, 229 trends, 53–54
Desai, Morarji, 117, 201, 420 voter turnout, 57
Deshmukh, C.D., 106 14th Lok Sabha elections
Deshmukh, Vilasrao, 378, 379, 387 anti-incumbancy factor, 80
Devi, Rabri, 272 bigwigs in different parties, 75–76
Dev, Narendra, 423 coalition of Congress, 80–81
Dhawan, R.K., 143 Congress coalitions, 76–77
Dhumal, Prem Kumar, 197 election campaigns, 74–75, 77–78
Dixit, Sheila, 143 Indo-US relations, 101–3
Dreze, Jean, 91 issues with tainted ministers, 82
Durai, M. Thambi, 207 Lucknow incident, 78
Dutta, Pradip, 180 pressures of coalition politics on
economic decision-making,
Elections 85–91
anti-incumbency sentiments, in elec-
projections, 72, 77, 78
tions, 57–58, 60–62, 80
replacement of governors and
anti-Sikh riot impacts on, 111
lieutenant governors, 96–101
April–May 2004 Lok Sabha elections
results, 79, 111, 142
results, 120
vote share of Congress and its
February 2002 assembly elections
allies, 80
results, 120
Nehru–Gandhi family name magic
1st general elections held in inde-
in, 110
pendent India, 199
2007 state assembly elections, 104
history of
BJS and, 198–99 state assembly elections of December
Charan Singh’s government, 201 2002, 144
Janata Party government, 201 Embree, Ainslee T., 184
Narasimha Rao government, 203 E.M.S. Namboodiripad government,
and Pakistan war, 200 391
Rajiv Gandhi and ‘sympathy wave,’
202 Fernandes, George, 88, 136, 184, 205, 208,
rise of Indira Gandhi, 200 278–79, 281–82, 288–96, 423, 432,
1st and 4th general elections, 199 436, 465, 470, 490
V.P. Singh’s minority coalition Baroda Dynamite Case, 201
government, 202 Tehelka episode, 198
J&K election in October 2002 and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) issues,
People’s Democratic Party (PDP), 85–86
145 Fotedar, M.L., 143
11th Lok Sabha elections, 62
13th Lok Sabha elections, 64 Gamang, Giridhar, 211
anti-incumbency trend, 57–58 Gandhi, Indira, 150, 161, 200–201, 231,
division of votes, 59 357, 364, 398, 421–22, 441, 449, 458,
infiltration issues, 54–56 462, 470, 483, 503
518 DIVIDED WE STAND

assassination, 118, 121 Ghosh, Atulya, 459

‘garibi hatao’ slogan and, 148 Godse, Nathuram, 178, 180
and nuclear tests, 200 Gogoi, Tarun, 143
re-election from Medak (Andhra Golwalkar, M.S., 178, 182
Pradesh), 117–18 Goswami, Brindaban, 44
rise of, 200 Govindacharya, K.N., 158, 177, 227
6th Lok Sabha elections, 201 Gowda, H.D. Deve, 62, 101, 118, 125,
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 178, 193, 204, 209
229, 508 Gujral, Inder Kumar, 62, 127
Gandhi, Nemi Chand, 203 Gupta, Indrajit, 401
Gandhi, Rahul, 141 Gupta, Ram Prakash, 59, 164, 196, 213
Gandhi, Rajiv, 63, 131, 149–50, 186, Gurumurthy, Swaminthan, 187
202, 220
assassination of, 119, 122 Hasan, Nurul, 168
Bofors scandal and, 139–40 Hedgewar, Keshavrao Baliram, 170,
Pirabhakaran, Velupillai and, 220 178, 182
and popularity charts, 116 Hegde, Krishna Rama, 205
Gandhi, Sanjay, 200–201 Henry Hyde Act, 2006, 46
Gandhi, Sonia, 46, 54, 77, 81, 91, 148, 162, Hindi-speaking ‘cow belt,’ 129
210–12, 215 Hindutva campaign of Sangh Parivar,
All India Congress Committee (AICC) 144
on April 6, 1998, 130–32
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, 219
aversion to politics, 149
Human Development Report 2003, 406
Bofors scandal and, 139–40, 149
Hussain, Shahnawaz, 185
candidature as Prime Minister, 108
Chairperson of National Advisory
India coalition politics
Council (NAC), 151
bipolarity of Indian polity, 510
entry into election campaign and
black money in election campaigns
organisation, 130
and, 453
and fluency in Hindi/any other Indian
‘bribes for votes’ of MPs and ‘horse-
language, 150–51
trading,’ 450
at Guwahati conclave of Congress
chief ministers, 106 caste differences and, 509
letter of resignation as post of party Chandra Shekhar government and
President, 138–39 corruption, 449–50
non-Indian origin of, 138 discretionary system of bureaucratic
Pachmarhi session, 133–35 and political control, 452
in public rally at Mumbai’s Shivaji economic reforms, 512–13
Park, 109 and health care systems, 512
‘Q’ issue and, 140 poverty and, 511
slogan ‘Congress Ka Haath Aam power decentralisation of, 457–58
Aadmi Ke Saath’ and, 150 process of cleansing, 447
at ‘tea party’ given by Dr. Swamy, public awareness, 451
136 P.V. Narasimha Rao government and
as third most powerful woman in corruption, 450
world, 152 single party and corruption, 448
13th Lok Sabha elections, 150 social discrimination, 513
Gehlot, Ashok, 143 tenure of NDA, 455
 Index 519

umbrella nature of Congress, 113, United Front and, 125

508 vichar manthan shivir in June 2003,
and value system, 454 at Shimla, 108
voters tolerance for corrupt pol- vote share of, 115
iticians, 454 Indian Petrochemicals Corporation
Indian Council for Historical Research Limited, 83
(ICHR), 168 Indian politics Uttar Pradesh importance,
Indian Council for Social Science Re- 118
search (ICSSR), 169 India-US
Indian Institute of Advanced Study, nuclear agreement and political
169 impacts, 46
Indian National Congress (INC) relations between, 101–3
appointment of Vaghela as Gujarat INLD-BJP pre-poll alliance, 391
Congress Chief, impact on, 144
coalition politics and, 107 Jagjivan, Ram, 422
Congress-NCP coalition in Maha- Jain, Milap Chand, 127
rashtra, 142 Jain, Nemi Chand (Chandra Swami),
and CPI(M), 409 203
December 2003 state assembly elec- Jaitley, Arun, 158, 162, 219
tions and, 109 Jaitly, Jaya, 198, 220
decline in Hindi heartland, 122 Janata Dal (JD) government and Mandal
decline of, 111 Commission report, 195
1996 elections and, 124 Janata Party government, 201
electoral performance of, 110 Jayalalithaa, J., 44, 136, 198, 206–7, 210
emergence as largest political party, Jha, Prem Shankar, 499
106 Jhunjhunwala, Bharat, 465–66
en masse resignations, 139 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali, 157
fall of Vajpayee government and, 138 Jogi, Ajit, 143
and Gujarat election results, 145 Joshi, Murli Manohar, 159, 167–68, 171,
Hindutva campaign of Sangh Parivar 188, 190
and, 144 Justice Srikrishna commission report,
internal politics of, 123 174
J&K election in October 2002 and,
145 Kalam, A.P.J. Abdul, 43
Kashmir Valley violence and, 146 Karat, Prakash, 47
Kesari role in Congress-supported Karunanidhi, M., 455
UF government, 127–28 Kaushal, Swaraj, 201
Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, 118 ‘Kerala model’ of development, 404
at meeting with chiefs of party’s state Kesri, Sitaram, 126
units, 137–38 Khurana, Madan Lal, 157, 206
November 1998 elections, 135 Koda, Madhu, 100
Political-Organisational Report of, Kothari, Rajni, 113
411 Kripalani, Sucheta, 265
power after 1991 elections, 116 Krishnamurthy, T.S., 73
‘Q’ issue and, 140 Krishna, S.M., 143, 144
share of popular vote with BJP, 117 Kumar, Ajit, 208
single party coalition and, 112–15 Kumaramangalam, Rangarajan P., 230
support to SP, 121 Kumaraswamy, H.D., 101
520 DIVIDED WE STAND

Kumar, Meira, 95 Mukul, Akshay, 168

Kumar, Nitish, 61–62, 205, 288–90, 297, Munda, Arjun, 100
346, 437 Munshi, Priya Ranjan Das, 92
Kumar, R.K., 207 Musharraf, Pervez, 216
Kumar, Shanta, 197 Muttaiah, R., 207

Lal, Bansi, 205, 223, 456 Naidu, Chandrababu, 44, 64, 132, 204,
Lal, Devi, 201 206, 223, 455
Lal, K.S., 168 Naidu, Venkaiah M., 158, 189, 190
Lalla Ram, 181 Naik, Ram, 488
Laxman, Bangaru, 198 Nanda, Gulzari Lal, 117
Left-led governments Narain, Raj, 201
in Kerala, 404–5 Narayanan, K.R., 128, 212
in West Bengal, 404–5 Narayanan, M.G.S., 170
Liberhan Commission, 234, 239 Narayan, Jayaprakash, 200
Limaye, Madhu, 423 Nariman, Fali, 219
Lohia, Ram Manohar, 150, 423 Nath, Kamal, 92
Lyngdoh, Michael James, 142, 162 National Advisory Council (NAC), 82
National Common Minimum Programme
Mahajan, Pramod, 79, 150, 158–59 (NCMP), 83
Mahanta, Prafulla Kumar, 456 National Council for Educational Re-
Maharashtra Control of Organised search and Training (NCERT), 168
Crime Act (MCOCA), 219 National Rural Employment Guarantee
Maintenance of Internal Securituy Act Act, 152
(MISA), 233 Nayanar, E.K., 455–56
Malhotra, Vijay Kumar, 152 Nayyar, Deepak, 506
Malkani, K.R., 178 Nayyar, Kuldip, 154
Mandal Commission’s report, 175 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 150, 200, 225
Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), 403 Nehru, Motilal, 150
Marandi, Babulal, 44
Mathai, John, 106 Operation Barga, 406
Mayawati, 77, 164–67, 165–66, 211, Oza, Narendrakumar Yatinbahi, 144
263–66, 286, 298, 308, 327, 374
and birthdays celeberations, 265 Panchajanya, 170
BSP’s vote bank, 253 Pandya, Haren, 193–94
and Lok Sabha seat, 265 Panini, M.N., 468
and support to Raja Bhaiyya in 2003, Parrikar, Manohar, 99, 458
254 Paswan, Ram Vilas, 42, 48, 60–61, 270,
as UP Chief Minister, 261, 264 277–80, 296–99, 434, 437, 456
and upper caste communities, 258 Patel, Atma Ram, 192–93
Mehta, Suresh, 192 Patel, J.H., 456
Mishra, Brajesh, 172 Patel, Keshubhai, 192–94
Mishra, Kailashpati, 194 Patel, Vallabbhai, 181
Modi, Narendra, 51, 144, 158, 161–62, 181, Patil, Pratibha, 44
193–94, 345 Patil, Shivraj, 43, 96, 147
Mookerjee, Prasad Shyama, 106, 178, Patkar, Medha, 416
225 Patnaik, Biju, 205
Mukherjee, Pranab, 43 Patnaik, Naveen, 52, 205
 Index 521

Paul Volcker Committee report, 103 Left Front government in West

Pawar, Sharad, 54, 95, 108 Bengal, 391, 407
People’s War Group (PWG), 403 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Pilot, Rajesh, 467 (LTTE) of Sri Lanka, 220
Pirabhakaran, Velupillai, 220 Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), 60, 81
Political Parties Lok Shakti by late Rama Krishna
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Hegde, 205
Kazhagam (AIADMK), 40, 44, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra
67, 77, 98, 114, 123, 136, 142, Kazhagam (MDMK), 44, 81, 220
205–7, 210, 224, 243–44, 297, 302, MDMK (Marumalarchi DMK/DMK
310–31, 491 for resurgence) by Vaiko, 205
All India Forward Bloc, 211 National Democratic Alliance, 213
anti-NDA front, 108 Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)
Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), 44, 58 (See Nationalist Congress Party
Bajrang Dal, 181, 184, 186, 214, 217–18, [NCP])
336 Non-political organisation, BAMCEF,
Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), 107, 156, 263
169, 178, 225, 225 293, 422 opinion polls, for 14th general elec-
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (See tions, 72
Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]) Orissa and Biju Janata Dal, 114
Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD), 369, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), 81
422–23
PMK (Pattali Makkal Katchi) by
Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS),
Dalit Ezhilmalai, 205
191, 464, 489
Punjab and Akalis, 114
Biju Janata Dal (BJD), 52, 205
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), 42, 60–61,
Communist Party of India (Marxist),
80, 85
389
Rashtriya Janata Party (RJP), 144,
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
193
(DMK), 80, 310–31
Republican Party of India, 81
Gujarat BJP, 192
Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP),
physical violence inside assembly,
211, 389
192
and President’s rule in Gujarat, Samajwadi Party (SP), 44, 93
193 coalition situations and, 254
prominent leader in, 193 rise of, 244
Haryana Vikas Party by Bansi Lal, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), 186,
205 205
Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), Sikkim Democratic Front, 133
44 Tamil Manila Congress (TMC), 123
Indian Union Muslim League, 81 Tamil Nadu and DMK/AIADMK,
Janata Dal (United) (JD[U]), 56 114, 123
Janata Party of Dr. Subramaniam Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress by K.
Swamy, 205 Ramamurthi, 205
Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Telugu Desam Party (TDP), 44, 48,
81, 176, 451 80, 204
Kerala Congress (Joseph), 81 Trinamool Congress
Kerala Congress (Mani), 44 and 1998 elections, 120
Left Democratic Front (LDF), 391 West Bengal, 205
522 DIVIDED WE STAND

United National Progressive Alliance Regional parties, 240–44

(UNPA), 44 Right to Information (RTI) Act, 84, 92
United Nations Development Pro- Rithambara Sadhvi, 181
gramme (UNDP), 406 RJD and Muslims and Yadavs support,
Prevention of Crime Act (POCA), 219 114
Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), Rodrigues, Fillipe, 100
85 Roy, Arundhati, 416
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance
(POTO), 218 Saikia, Hiteshwar, 154
Privatisations, under NCMP, 83 Sakshi Maharaj, 195–96
Public Distribution System (PDS) in
Samajwadi Janata Party by Chandra
country, 405
Shekhar, 246
Sangh Parivar
Quota issues and UPA governement,
and plurality of Hinduism, 187
94–95
and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, 191
Rai, Kalpnath, 454 Sangma, Purno A., 54, 108, 138, 206
Rai, Kusum, 195 Sarkar, Sumit, 180
Rajagopalachari, C., 459 Sarkar, Tanika, 180
Raj Babbar, 259 Sayeed, Mufti Mohammad, 145, 222
Rajeshwar, T., 100 Scindia, Madhavrao, 225
Rajput, J.S., 169 Sengupta, Nellie, 150
Ramadoss, Ambubani, 456 Sen, Nirupam, 417
Ramakrishna Paramahansa, 181 Sen, Sambuddha, 180
Ramamurthi, K., 205–7 Sharif, Nawaz, 208, 210
Ramdas, L., 209 Sharma, P. Devendra, 229
Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, 163 Sharma, Shankar Dayal, 125
Ram, Kanshi, 263 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 113
Ram, Sukh, 224, 454 Shekhawat, Bhairon Singh, 44, 170
Rao, Nandamuri Taraka Rama, 300 Shinde, Sushil Kumar, 43
Rao, P.V. Narasimha, 39, 113, 186, 191, Shiv Sena, 205
202–3, 224 Shourie, Arun, 468
and corruption charges, 450–51 Singh, Ajit, 59
economic liberalisation policies, 124 Singhal, Ashok, 187
1996 elections and, 124 Singh, Amar, 255
government fall of, 123 Singh, Arjun, 43, 143, 170
The Insider fictionalised autobiog-
Singh, Bhagat, 181–82
raphy, 123
Singh, Buta, 61, 98, 100
‘JMM’ bribery case, 451–52
Singh, Charan, 117, 175, 201
and urea scam, 126
Singh, Digvijay, 143, 147
licence-control raj on Indian industry,
Singh, Harinder, 209–10
124
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 178–83 Singh, Jaswant, 157, 159, 167, 204, 216
Rastogi, Gopal Krishna, 168 Singh, Kalyan, 59, 164, 170, 175, 194–97
Rastogi’s controversial autobiography, expulsion, from party, 196–97
169 Parliamentary elections of 1999 and,
Razi, Syed Sibtey, 100 195
Reddy, S. Jaipal, 109 popularity in UP, 194
 Index 523

Rashtriya Kranti Party (RKP), 197 Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act
UP state government as head, 195 (TADA), 218
Singh, Karan, 43 Thackeray, Bal, 142, 174, 494
Singh, Kishore Nand, 172 Thakre, Kushabhau, 191–92
Singh, Manmohan, 46, 81, 87, 92, 96, 102, Thakur, C.P., 229
118, 191, 222 Thakur, Karpoori, 267
and academic excellence, 152–53 Thapar, Romila, 171
Indian economy liberalisation and, Tharoor, Shashi, 129
152 Thengadi, Dattopant, 191
management job of Indian economy, Thomas, P.C., 44
153 Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS),
nuclear tests and, 154 391
relationship with Pakistan, 155
Singh, Nand Kishore, 172 Upadhyay, Deen Dayal, 186
Singh, Natwar, 103 Uttar Pradesh (UP) politics, 244
Singh, Pratap Raghuraj, 166, 221 Janata party spilt, 246–47
Singh, Raghuraj Pratap (Raja Bhaiyya), Mayawati`s house arrest, 251
166 OBC votes, 247
Singh, Rajendra, 170 rift between SP and BSP, 251–52
Singh, Rajnath, 59, 158, 164–65, 175, 194, rise of caste-based parties in, 245
196 and Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj
Singh, V.P., 125, 184, 195, 202
Party, 114
Sinha, Yashwant, 157, 191, 207, 464
SP-BSP alliance, 248–49
Sister Nivedita, 181
Uttarakhand agitation, 250
Sondhi, Lal Manohar, 169
Soni, Ambika, 143
Vaghela, Shankarsingh, 144, 162, 192
Sorabjee, Sodi, 163
Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 129, 192–93, 225
Soren, Shibu, 82, 100, 272, 448, 456,
and General Pervez Musharraf meet-
Special Operations Group (SOG) of J&K
ing at Agra, 216
police, 221
government, 136–37
Srikrishna Commisssion, 377, 378
in 2001, 142
Students’ Islamic Movement of India
(SIMI), 217 AIADMK support and, 297
Sudarshan, K.S., 169–70 in April 1999 fall of, 275
Surjeet, Harkishen Singh, 394 attacks on Christian community
Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), 187, in Gujarat, 208
461 attitude towards Muslims, 228
Swami Vivekananda, 181 and Bhagwat case, 209
Swamy Subramaniam, 205, 210 and Deve Gowda support, 211
Swaraj, Sushma, 81, 147, 158, 201 economic policies of, 486
fall of, 138
Tamil Nadu and political scenario, and friends in RSS, 489
310–31 June 1998, Sinha’s budget for
Tandon, Lalji, 78, 194, 197 1998–99, 480
Tariq Anwar, 54 and Kargil war, 212
Telengana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), 81, and labour laws, 492
458 and L.K. Advani, 233
524 DIVIDED WE STAND

NDA and, 86, 304 and UN Human Rights Commission

new states creation, 367 meeting in Geneva in 1993, 226
nuclear tests and, 207 views on Ayodhya issue, 228
power in New Delhi, 189 Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), 177
privatisation programme and, Verma, J.S., 188
489–91 Verma, Sahib Singh, 464
second term, 121 Vijayan, Pinarayi, 413
and September 11 attack, 217 Vijay, Tarun, 170
support withdrawal by Jayalalithaa, Vikas Manch, 44
136 Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), 52
vote of confidence, 211
‘historic’ trip by road to Lahore in West Bengal government and landowners,
February 1999, 210 416
and Liladhar Bajpai, 231
line of moderation, 213 Yadav, Lalu Prasad, 42, 60, 77, 118, 202,
Musings from Kumarakom, 213 269, 282–88, 454
Padma Vibhushan award, 225–26 Yadav, Mulayam Singh, 44, 77, 108,
and Quit India Movement, 229 166–67, 211, 257
‘the right man in the wrong party,’ government, 256
image, 227 kanya vidya dhan yojana, 259
 About the Authors

PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA has been a journalist since 1977.

His works cuts across different media—print, radio, television, the
internet and documentary films—in three languages, English, Bengali
and Hindi. He has worked full time with Business India, Business
World, The Telegraph, India Today, The Pioneer and the TV18-CNBC
television channel (for which he anchored a daily discussion and
interview based programme for nearly six years). He has directed a
number of documentary films, including one on the impact of television
on Indian society ‘Idiot Box or Window of Hope’, one entitled
‘Grabbing Eyeballs: What’s Unethical About Television News in
India’ and another five-part series on the resource curse of India’s
main coal mining region ‘Hot As Hell: A Profile of Dhanbad’. He
teaches at various educational institutions, spoken and acted as a
consultant on subjects related to his areas of interest—India’s polity,
its economy and media. He headed an educational institution, the
School of Convergence as its director for six years. He is currently
an independent media practitioner and commentator.

SHANKAR RAGHURAMAN has been a journalist since 1986.

He worked with the Press Trust of India (the country’s largest news
agency), The Pioneer, TVI television channel and The Economic
Times (India’s most widely circulated financial daily). He is currently
Senior Editor, The Times of India, the largest circulated English daily
in India and the world. His main areas of interest are Indian politics,
macroeconomics and sports. He is a regular panelist and commentator
on television programmes on current affairs.