It is possible to sympathise with the so-called National Democratic Alliance. Its constituents – the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Lok Dal – face not one but two cruel dilemmas. First their leaders have not been in agreement on how to respond to the Akali challenge in Punjab. While Chaudhri Charan Singh, with an eye on the Jat vote in Haryana and Rajasthan, has been opposed to any concession to the Akalis, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been worried lest Mrs. Gandhi’s tough stance towards them swing the Hindu vote in her favour and has, therefore, been holding her primarily responsible for the tragedy in Punjab. There has been a noticeable change in the tone of the BJP’s pronouncements since the assassination of Mr. Khanna, vice-president of the party’s Punjab unit, in Amritsar. But even now it has not taken the position that the Akalis must bear the blame for the reign of terror in the state and that a suspension, if not withdrawal, of the agitation is an essential condition for the restoration of normalcy there. Secondly, like other political leaders, they have no specific solution to offer. But what sense does it make for them to present a memorandum to the President calling for dismissal of the Union government, and worse, to launch, as the alliance proposes to do on May 3, an agitation to press the demand that Mrs. Gandhi “either meet the extremist challenge or quit”?
On the face of it, this would appear to be a wrong, indeed partisan, question on two counts. For one thing, no one can possibly claim that the administration in Punjab has displayed much skill and determination; the small number of arrests in connection with several hundred murders speaks for itself; we do not need further evidence to show that the state machinery has consistently fallen on its face. For another, agitations and memorandums are normal methods of drawing the government’s and the people’s attention to urgent issues. But there is another aspect to this problem. Which is that if the Akalis get strengthened in their conviction that Mrs. Gandhi’s position in the country as a whole is under attack and that she cannot bring the power of the Indian state to bear on them, they will become even more intransigent if that is at all possible. A great deal can be said in criticism of the way the Congress leadership, including the Prime Minister, has handled the affairs of Punjab since 1980 when the party returned to office both at the Centre and in the state. Some members of the leadership occupying very high offices can also be said to have built up Sant Bhindranwale, a more dangerous man than whom the country has not seen since 1947. But how does it help to recall all that? For only a Prime Minister assured of, and seen to be assured of, the support of the vast majority of people in the country can inspire the necessary respect and fear in the hearts of the extremists and their backers at home and abroad.