BJP: The Janata is missing

By M J Akbar

Politicians can survive a great deal -plague (corruption charg-es), pestilence (electoral defeat), famine (not made a minister) -but very few survive a sense of humour. That may be one reason why there isn't much of it around. After all, if you want to laugh at others all the time you have to also laugh at yourself some of the time, which is difficult to reconcile with ego. There is a very thin line between cracking a joke and becoming a joke. Lalu Prasad Yadav, for instance, is now expected to entertain at very public meeting and at many private ones. He succeeds because he does have the sense to laugh occasionally at himself, although he takes care never to joke about corruption just in case the boomerang effect gets him squarely on the nose. When a joke falls flat it takes the joker down with it.

The just removed BJP President, Venkaiah Naidu, never quite got his jokes right. He fashioned an image as the bluff, hearty, alliterative leader who could demolish deathly demons with devastating daring you see the point. Bad alliteration is like the flu. You catch it easily and it lays you down. Naidu was always shooting off some homily or other about those opposed to the BJP, and since his relationship with the English language was at best quaint, the combination was often hopelessly funny for all the wrong reasons. He overdid himself during the press conferences in the general elections. Correspondents are too polite to snicker in front of the high and mightly, but behind his back was another story. The slippage on the credibility graph was significant.

This may, in the history books, end up as a very minor reason for the BJP's troubles this year, but when the going is bad everything adds up. A more important reason could lie in another verbal statistic. The BJP has a large research division. It should put together a term to find out just how many times the party president used the words "poverty" or "poor" and compare it to other words in his repertoire. Even a rudimentary analysis would prove that the BJP had slipped to its Jana Sangh roots and returned to a middle class political culture. It might be of interest to the party, as it struggles once again to find a road map, that communalism and communism emerge from the same concept: commune. In theory, both communalism and communism accept the rationale of conflict. But whereas the first seeks to advance its cause through the demonisation of the minorities, the second seeks to expand its base through a challenge to the rich. This is what makes the first ephemeral and the second sustainable.

The BJP rose in the late 1980s because L K Advani struck a chord with the poor. He did not do so with an economic agenda, but a religious one. He took the Ram temple construction movement into the villages, where the party had insufficient presence, and to women, whom the party had never wooed. The strength of an emotional upsurge can at best be limited, and much of the steam exhausted itself with the destruction of the Babri mosque. But Advani had something else to offer his party: a rational analysis of weaknesses and strengths when opportunity presented itself at the end of the 1990s. The BJP leadership took the unsentimental view that if it wanted power in Delhi then it could only be through partnerships. This meant that it would have to cede space in parliamentary calculus, and withdraw from the confrontational heart of its ideological compulsions. This was not without internal pain, for there were always the Murli Manohar Joshis to push the envelope at inconvenient moments. However, it was implicit that both concessions were temporary. Neither did the party have any qualms about exploiting crass communalism, as for instance in Gujarat.

One faction, offered shelter in the Vajpayee wing, did begin to believe after 1999 that power would diffuse the original ideology, but it was a minority (pun intended). Very adroitly, Atal Bihari Vajpayee used Pakistan, an antithesis of the BJP, to redefine the thesis of his years in power. It was not another political game. He genuinely believed in peace with Pakistan, and sustained that belief through the Kargil war, the turmoil of terrorism and the expensive failure of Agra.

When push came to shove, as in Gujarat, the Atalities had to retreat. Power, however, provided this faction with sufficient cover, and the prospect of continued power made it complacent. Defeat has marginalised the Atalites to the point where the Maharashtra election campaign scheduled only one Vajpayee meeting, and that too in the company of Bal Thackeray. Nor is Vajpayee the only ''traitor" to the hardliners. Narendra Modi has greeted Advani's return as party present with deafening silence. It is pertinent to note that Advani is a sitting MP from the capital of Gujarat. Equations have changed in Modi's calculations. Two years ago, he needed Advani. Today, he believes that Advani needs him.

Pramod Mahajan, belligerent in victory but astute in defeat, has made a very perceptive point in one of his mea culpa interviews offered to the media as part of the atonement process. He learnt to play bridge, he says, while under arrest during the Emergency. One of the basic rules of the game is "When in doubt, lead a trump''. The BJP, he explained, has pulled out its trump card, Advani since it is trapped once again in the uncertainties of the 1980s.

The mention of the Emergency, and the extraordinary compromise that the party made in 1977 when it merged its identity into the Janata Party. Three years of power led to seven years of doubt, until the mishandling of the Shah Bano crisis provided a route back to relevance. How many years of doubt will emerge from six years of power?

The nub is this : can Advani of the 2000s be the Advani of the 1980s? Or is Narendra Modi going to be the Next Big Thing? There is little doubt that Modi sees himself as the future of his party. He has positioned himself as the incorruptible soul of Hindutva, both ideologically and financially, untainted by the temptations of body, bank account or ideological compromise. He believes that he does not have to wait for more than a couple of years before the call comes, ironically, he needs the Manmohan Singh Government to last the course, so that he can campaign against both incumbency and "pseudo-secular-minority" rule. However, windows of opportunity in public life tend to be flirtatious. They beckon. But a sudden breeze can also shut them. Events change life more than intentions.

The tried and still trusted Advani has an obvious immediate challenge: how to energise the base that keeps slithering away. The Bharatiya Janta Party is still Bharatiya, and still a party, but the Janata has disappeared.

Politics is never static. If you do not grow, you slide; you do not remain stagnant. The base has two dimensions, the party and the electorate, and to an extent they are interdependent. It is obvious though that a party depends more on the voter than the voter does not a party. The Modis may not believe it, but the voter is not going to return through the brutal mechanism of communal riots. The spirit of democracy dies each time a Modi thrives.

A story from a favourite source might prove instructive. Hazrat Maulana Jalaludin Rumi is well known. But his father, Bahauddin Veled, was also a famous divine. Sultan Alauddin, rule of Qonya, once took the elder sage to his palace and fortress, and showed him the splendid new roof, walls and towers that had been built to protect the kingdom. Bahauddin Veled remarked to the Sultan: "You have raised an excellent defence against the hordes and horsemen of the enemy. But what protection have you built against the unseen arrows, the sighs and moans of the oppressed who live inside the kingdom? They can sweep whole worlds away to destruction. Strive to obtain the blessings of the poorest of your destruction.They are a stronghold compared to which the finest turrest and strongest castles are nothing."

Venkaiah Naidu concentrated on building castles, at least some of them in the air. Lal Krishna Advani needs to find those subjects.

Veerappan’s death

By R C Rajamani

Finally, the Veerappan drama has eneded. The dreaded forest brigand met with a predictable gory end, proving the adage that those who live by the sword must also die by the sword.

Veerappan's death is certainly a relief to society. But, politically, especially in the battle against terrorism, a Veerappan captured alive would have been more desirable.

With Veerappan's death, many political secrets are also dead, secrets that could give certain clues to his unchallenged jungle rule for over two decades. Though he was in the thick forests, he was yet not out of civilisation and had everything he required, from food to friends. When he could easily reach civilised society at will, how was it that excepting individuals like journalist Nakkeeran Gopal, none, not even the police or the army, could ever penetrate his hideout? Was he mightier than the Establishment with its entire wherewithal?

No, he was made to appear so, obviously with help from the world of politics. Except making educated guesses about the identity of his likely benefactors, who were also logically the brigand's beneficiaries, one shall never know the truth of it all. For, the onlyone who could have spilled the beans about the secret of his 25-year reign of plunder, kidnapping, extortion and cold-blooded killing, was Veerappan himself, now dead and not able to tell tales.

Veerappan's network extended far beyond the sleepy Satyamangalam forests on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border. Indeed, it extended to Sri Lanka in the south and Burma (Myanmar) in the north. Veerappan was believed to be part of the narcotics trade that originated in Burma and reportedly reached the banned terrorist outfit LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) in its stronghold in Jaffna in Sri Lanka, according to Dr Subramanian Swamy, India's former Commerce and Law Minister. The narcotics trade sustained both Veerappan and LTTE chief Velupillai Prabakharan, says Dr Swamy in his book on Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

What lends credibility to this is the fact that individuals having sympathy for LTTE had brokered truce between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Governments on the one hand and Veerappan on the other in negotiations for the release of hostages being held by the forest brigand at different times. This happened in the case of Kannada film actor Rajkumar who was kidnapped and kept in captivity for 108 days by Veerappan in the year 2000.

The long drawn out drama drew emissaries such as Nakeeran Gopal, the journalist, and Nedumaran who entered the scene during the final stages. Nedumaran, a prominent former Congress party leader, is a known LTTE sympathiser and was said to enjoy the confidence of Veerappan. The 108-day drama also revealed Veerappan's association with some banned Tamil extremist organisations that had forged links with LTTE to fight for a ‘separate land’ for the Tamils in India.

The Rajkumar episode perhaps revealed the calculated brain that Veerappan carried during his life, lived in danger and dread. Veerappan, knew the priceless value of his hostage. From day one, he knew he could never harm Rajkumar. He knew that would have unleashed a terrible backlash against thousands of Tamils living in Karnataka, especially its capital Bangalore. To the sandalwood smuggler and poacher of pachyderm, the soft-spoken and gentle actor was like the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs. At the end of the harrowing crisis, it was not clear if Veerappan had extracted any "golden egg". But surmises put the ransom money at an astronomical sum, ranging from hundreds of millions to one billion Rupees.

Once she returned to power in June 2001, Jayalalithaa galvanised the Special Task Force to nab the brigand. She gave STF more arms, greater power and a measure of autonomy to achieve its mission that was successfully completed on October 18. Jayalalithaa deserves praise for her bold and firm stand. Kudos to the STF, headed by Tamil Nadu's Additional Director General of Police, K Vijay Kumar.

But, how Veerappan was allowed to acquire an invincibility that is incredible, seen in the light of the power and might that are at the disposal of the State administration, is the million dollar question, now destined to remain unanswered for ever, unless in the most unlikely event of some beneficiary or benefactor or the slain outlaw deciding to bare it all.

How Verrappan, the villain in the drama, was allowed to build an empire of his own inside the thick Satyamangalam forests on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border reads like a fairy tale.

Born into a poor Tamil family with two brothers and a sister in Chengampadi village on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border, Veerappan, as a kid, used to roam around the jungle, grazing cows. At the age of 10, his uncle Sevi Gounder, whom Veerappan regarded as his guru, initiated Veerappan into killing elephants. When trade in ivory was banned, Veerappan switched over to successfully smuggling sandalwood. Though arrested and jailed a few times since 1972, Veerappan always managed to escape, making it difficult to believe that he did not enjoy political and police patronage. His record of slaughtering about 2000 elephants for lucrative smuggling of ivory and his cold-blooded murder of forest and police officials all went to establish a clear link between him and those in authorities.

Though he never went to school formally, he claimed to have learnt to read and write Tamil when he was 20. A regular listener of radio, including the BBC, he was also said to read magazines and books. Some of the books that he carried along included Ramayana, Mahabharata, biographies of MGR (the late film star-politician M G Ramachandran. Who became the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1977) and the LTTE supremo Pirabhakaran. Deeply religious, Veerappan always began his day after a bath with prayers. Though he hunted animals and birds for food, he never killed a peacock as it is considered to be the ‘vahana’ (vehicle) of his favourite God, Murugan.

But by the year 2000, Veerappan had become a somewhat tired man, fatigued by the very nature of living as a fugitive of society. He was willing to surrender under the condition of total amnesty. This was considered a sign of weakness with the ageing Veerappan at last tired of being on the run. But amnesty was refused.

Veerappan was almost forgotten till the surprise kidnapping of the Kannada film super star, Rajkumar. "Villain kidnaps Hero’, ran an evocative headline in a national daily. He then decided to play ‘protector’ of 60 million Tamils and even dropped names such as ‘Che Guevera’, with affected knowledge. He wanted to be treated as a political dissident, perhaps a Tamil extremist with a cause. He had even demanded that Tamil should be declared a classical language and a film made on him. Incidentally, quite unconnected with his demand, the federal Government had recently declared Tamil a classical language!) One can be certain that some Bollywood or Kollywood producer will make a film on the forest brigand sooner than later, again quite unconnected with the slain outlaw's demand.

What was shocking was that even after the Rajkumar episode, Veerappan was allowed to have a free reign as he kidnapped and killed popular Karnataka politician and former minister H Nagappa.

Veerappan's strength lay in the support he got from both outside and inside the forest. It came about mainly because of the lop-sided developmental policies followed by Governments after India's Independence. The tribal people suddenly lost right over their own forestland. They found to their utter dismay that many of their day-to-day activities were declared illegal. With an apathetic administration doing its will, the emerging social tension, flowing from loss of livelihood and no alternative jobs in sight, naturally bred the likes of Veerappan, first in the role of modern-day-Robinhoods but later plain plunderers of public wealth.

PTI Feature