SOROOR AHMED discusses the changing phases of democracy in India and says that instead of parties it is now the alliances which are breaking and then re-emerging.
With the passing of each election the two main national parties in India, the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, are getting weaker and weaker. Their reliability on the respective alliances – the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – are increasing yet their leaders are not realising it. They both are paying for their big-brotherly attitude and not understanding their real limitations. They are unable to fathom as to where the real disease lies and are vainly thinking that they would expand themselves by fighting more and more seats alone.
Just on the eve of the election the decade-old ‘secular’ partner of the BJP, the Biju Janata Dal, deserted it. The arch-rival Congress is also facing the similar music as its most trusted ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, along with the Lok Janshakti Party, decided to contest separately in Bihar and Jharkhand. Though they still claim that they are in the UPA, the RJD and LJP took this drastic decision because of the insistence of the Congress leaders to contest more seats in these two states. In Bihar the initial formula floated was that the RJD would contest 22 seats (though it won 22 seats in 2004), the LJP 12 (it won four last time) and Congress six when it won only three seats last time. Though the RJD was making maximum sacrifice, the Congress refused to accept this formula and insisted on 16 and even 20 seats. In retaliation the RJD and LJP announced to contest 25 and 12 seats respectively leaving just three for the Congress. This compelled the Congress to decide to go it alone.
Similar was the case in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress did not fight the last election with the Samajwadi Party. In Maharashtra too the seat-sharing arrangement with the Nationalist Congress Party could be made after much bargaining. The Nationalist Congress Party managed to seek its own pound of flesh. However, in West Bengal the arrangement was, rather unexpectedly, smooth though the party had to deal with unpredictable Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress.
What is happening in India needs to be understood in proper perspective. Earlier, the parties used to split, re-unite, then break and again come up under a different umbrella. Congress has got split even in the pre-independence years. The party with Janata as a part of its name started witnessing this phenomenon after the 1977 election.
What has changed in India is that now instead of parties it is the alliances which are breaking and then re-emerging. This phenomenon started in 1989, a very significant year in the annals of the global history too. It was in this year that the Communist Soviet Union started disintegrating. The Communist movement started weakening and Communalist movement – in India under Lal Krishna Advani – started gaining ground. In 1984 it won two seats and in 1989 it bagged 88, thanks to the Ram Janambhoomi movement and a series of horrific riots.
It was because of the frequent disintegration and re-unification of alliances that we had two more elections in this period of two decades – 1989 and 2009. The post-1990 years saw the weakening of ideology and strengthening of personality. It is not that personality was not there before that. It was very much there, but even the personalities used to take refuge in some ideology. For example, the Congress split of 1969 was on the basis of personality, but immediately after that Indira Gandhi took shelter in the ideology of Socialism and even the Communist Party of India lent support to it. Coupled with personality, the ideology played a key role in helping Indira Gandhi overcome the then stalwarts like Morarji Desai, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, Kamraj, etc.
During the 21 months of Emergency Indira Gandhi relied on personality sans ideology. Though she got the Constitution amended and declared India a Sovereign Secular Socialist Democratic Republic, she had to pay the price in 1977 election.
The Congress continued to split with Congress for Democracy under Jagjiwan Ram coming up just at the fag end of Emergency. Then it split under the leadership of former Union Minister Yashwantrao Chavan and subsequently under the then Karnataka chief minister Devraj Urs. But it was the personality of Indira Gandhi, which finally helped her re-establish after 1980. But she was then a different lady, a bit away from the Socialist ideology.
The various Communist parties continued to split, most of the time in 1960s. But the basis of these break-ups were also ideology. Some followed the original philosophy of Marx, some others of Mao and some of Lenin and Marx and yet some others of Stalin.
It is not that the Sangh Parivar outfits did not split at all. Balraj Madhok was the precursor of present day Pravin Togadia, Ashok Singhal, etc. and followed his own even more extreme line.
Various Socialist parties got divided and united several times till the advent of Emergency, which forced them to take the cover under the banner of a single outfit called the Janata Party. Incidentally, the Jan Sangh – the BJP is its latest avatar – was also one of its constituents and the purpose of coming together was just to fight the totalitarianism and personality-cult of Indira Gandhi. The original idea of the Janata Party was that of a full-fledged party and not alliance though it survived for just over two years and a half.
The year 1989 provided the last opportunity for the national level political parties to show their mettle. It was only after that the culture of alliances took shape. The year saw the emergence of Janata Dal under V.P. Singh and also the BJP. Though the BJP came into existence in 1980 after the disintegration of the Janata Party the truth was that it managed to establish itself as a national party in 1989, when it won 88 seats against two in 1984. By 1996 the idea of alliances took complete shape. The BJP, which continued to gain grounds, became one of the leading constituents of one of the alliances. However, till then the Congress adopted go-it-alone polity. It was only in 2004 that it realised the importance of alliance. The BJP’s rise continued between 1989 and 1999.
The fall of ideology gave space to the rise of communalism, casteism and capitalism. If the Mandir movement consolidated religious extremism, Mandalisation of the society gave another twist. The Congress in 1991 tried to carve out its own space by introducing Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation. But it was the BJP, which later hijacked this plank too.
With a mix of ideology plus personality cult gone, the emergence of regional satraps was a natural corollary. So in the last two decades we have Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Pawar, Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, etc. The one state where the cocktail of personality and ideology both went together right from the beginning was Tamil Nadu – the first place where anti-Congressism took its root as early as 1920 under Justice Party of Periyar. After him Annadurai, Karunanidhi, M G Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa all had the quality to attract voters. But, of late the anti-Brahminism almost ceased to remain an idea and the Dravidian parties remained just personality-based.
Another experiment was successfully made for some years by noted film star and later chief minister, N T Rama Rao, in Andhra Pradesh in 1980s. His son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu carried his legacy for about a decade.
With the central all-encompassing ideology gradually disappearing – even the negative policy of Hindutva is not selling too much now – the national parties are unable to make any big penetration, even though they resort to personality of Nehru-Gandhi family – the BJP too is using Varun. In the absence the regional leaders have earned much greater clout. But they have their own limited objective, therefore, they have limited constituency too and they cannot break these barriers. The era of alliances – may be even three or four – coming up and breaking down have come to stay, at least for some time now.