NEW DELHI — One of life’s minor pleasures is listening to Hindi film songs, even if the newer ones prefer an uncomplicated thud to a fine beat. A new song is screaming its way through the music channels, sung on screen by two Punjabi brothers, Sunny and Bobby, sons of the ageless Dharmendra. The song has words to accompany the thud; I cannot quite call them lyrics. But they open something like this:
Bobby (younger brother) to Sunny: Parahji, tusi top ho! (Brother, you are a cannon!) Sunny (in immediate response): Paape! Tusi India da hope ho! (Loved one, you are the hope of India!)
I have, over the years, heard more learned definitions of Indian nationalism, but could there be anything more earthy and forthright than this? The adoring younger brother finds the ultimate Punjabi accolade for his elder, and calls him a veritable cannon. (The song uses the soft t and it is top as in cannon, not as in the toy.) And what is the best that the elder brother can wish for his beloved sibling? That he becomes the hope of India.
When Sunny and Bobby were in their short pants (actually, they still are, but you know what I mean) they would not have sung this song.
The Punjabi might have been forgiven by those who wanted Khalistan, but not the sentiment. Twenty years ago, the Sikh was becoming the symbol of insurrection, and an Asiad in Delhi during the autumn of 1982 accelerated that process as the state, determined to enforce security, used counterproductive methods to impose it. Puss formed around the wound; India was in danger of getting septic. In the summer of 1984, the country looked septic. A darkness of fire, cloud, death, assassination and mass murder spread across the skies of India. Who dared to dream that Punjab would be at peace once more?
That was the biggest challenge before Rajiv Gandhi as he inherited power over an India on the edge. It goes without saying that the challenge had a personal, tragic dimension. For 15 years now it has been fashionable to dismiss Rajiv as a failure: Worse, a corrupt and immature failure. There were enough mistakes made by him to earn the censure of a historian — one need to think no further than Shah Bano, the mishandling of Bofors and the misjudgment in the 1987 Kashmir elections.
I must declare a personal bias in his favor; and a decade after his death it is possible to be objective. Rajiv was a wonderful human being and a much better prime minister than his contemporaries or his Bofors-stained reputation will allow. There are at least three outstanding achievements to his credit: The introduction of the computer and the upgradation of telecommunication infrastructure; the Assam accord and the Punjab accord. Peace in Punjab was his greatest legacy to his country. It took time and was extraordinarily difficult. He had to hold his nerve during periods of despondence, inertia and crisis, not the least of them being the second siege of the Golden Temple which he ended by taking personal charge of the counteroffensive, and which he neutralized without the loss of a single life in an atmosphere of relentless violence. His fellow architect of the Punjab accord, Sant Longowal, paid with his life not too long after the accord. India has been combating terrorism on a continuing basis far longer than any other country.
The key to Rajiv’s strategy in Punjab was the Akali Dal. The Akalis, inevitably, occupied the space between Delhi and the secessionists. Historically, they had led the demand for the formation of a Sikh-majority state. The secessionists wanted to extend this to a Sikh-majority country. The Akalis could have gone either way. Indifference, or simple brutality (always a prerogative of the state) could have as easily pushed them away in the festering climate on the 1980s. Rajiv’s method was simple: He drew the Akalis in by giving them power, and thereby a vested interest in the Indian Union.
You did not need to be an Albert Einstein to understand the dynamics of this barter, but you did need imagination and a commitment to India that was greater than commitment to your limited partisan interest. Rajiv worked within the framework of a vision for India. One consequence was the cynicism of those Congress party leaders who thought that sharing power, or, worse, conceding it, in the national interest was nothing but naiveté. Naturally, they dressed up their greed in appropriate phrases, the favorite being the exclusive right of the Congress to uphold the national interest. In their hands history would have traveled in a different direction.
A decade after Rajiv’s death, however, they are in charge of the Congress. This is all the more surprising, perhaps even shocking, since the Congress is under the leadership of Rajiv’s widow, Sonia. A combination of circumstances gave her the opportunity to play a positive part in the process that could — could is the only word that is possible to use; anything more optimistic would be misleading — lead to a resolution of the complex dilemmas in Jammu and Kashmir.
From the evidence of the first few days after the results were declared, Sonia has opted for short-range partisanship that will hurt the country of course but could also leave her own party’s credibility severely mauled. It is as if she is concerned only with the interests of the party that has made her its leader. She will choose to bother about India only if India chooses to make her its leader. The Congress is not the largest single party in the newly elected Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
That status remains with the National Conference. Farooq Abdullah has shown more wisdom after defeat than he did when in power. But that too is common. Power is a drug that induces various forms of hallucination; defeat is a slap that opens your eyes with a start. Farooq was right in all he said, including a post-office wish to play golf till he died. More crucially, he realized that credibility is more essential in public life than numbers, and for the moment he had lost credibility. He refused to buy or bait MLAs to cobble a majority. He was perfectly within his rights as well to demit office on the date on which the life of the last assembly expired. He was not obliged to give time to his opponents to settle contentious differences.
The Congress is the single largest party in the opposition, but that achievement is not totally what it seems. Jammu and Kashmir is a clearly divided state with three parts representing different ethnic majorities. In a similar sense the political culture of Punjab too was divided till Haryana was separated. The largest single party in the opposition to have emerged from the Muslim-majority Valley of Kashmir is not the Congress, but Mufti Muhammad Sayeed’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The chief minister of the state has always, and understandably, come from the Valley. If the Congress cannot understand this much then it has lost all sense of responsibility.
The manner in which the declared leader of the Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad, with full approval from Sonia, has behaved since winning 20 seats out of 87, is extraordinarily foolish and even malevolent. All he has concentrated on doing really is trying to purchase MLAs with money today and the offer of more to come once they become ministers or ministers’ henchmen. The stench of corruption now and loot later trails the Congress even before it has come to power in Srinagar. A party with 20 MLAs has been trying over more than its own number to get a majority. Each day a sort of tally is announced. A horse auction was never more garish.
To do this in any state would have been unethical enough. To do this in Kashmir at this moment is unforgivable. Sonia has lost more credibility in the last seven days than she gained in the last seven months.
It is not unreasonable for any political party to ask for support. But that support is sought on the basis of a program, or a policy line. No one in the Congress has offered any construct of what it hopes to do in power, apart from the standard offer of good governance. A leader of the Congress in Kashmir should have announced a course of political action, and a policy framework for regional economic development, talks with Delhi and its approach to negotiations with extremists and with Pakistan. We have not heard a word on issues.
Instead all we hear is special pleading, and see thin honey-laden smiles, as the Congress tries to add Jammu and Kashmir to its national body count. Making it her 15th state is more important to Sonia than forming a coalition government that can help calm the crisis in Kashmir. The Indian political class could lose, by its selfishness, what the Kashmiri people gained with their courage.
— 20 October 2002
