The Prime Minister is not known to act on the spur of the moment. It is, therefore, a reasonable inference that he has chosen to give a clean bill of health to the BJP Government in Madhya Pradesh and to publicly acknowledge its right to continue in office for a full five-year term of its mandate after a careful reflection.
The statement has embarrassed – as it was bound to – Congress(I) leaders in Madhya Pradesh who have been clamouring for the dismissal of the State Government. It must especially embarrass Mr Arjun Singh, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, since he has been leading this campaign. This fact lends itself to the interpretation that Mr Narasimha Rao has felt that Mr Arjun Singh has ‘grown’ too big for his boots and that it is necessary to cut him down to size.
Mr Arjun Singh has been cut down to size, though in view of his past ‘reputation’ it is difficult to say what his ‘appropriate size’ in public life should be. His denunciation of the BJP Government in his home State is not likely to carry much credibility in future. It is, however, far from certain that Mr Narasimha Rao has primarily been guided by this consideration. It may not be altogether fair to him to take it for granted that he has begun to see a potential rival in Arjun Singh. In any event, there are other possible calculations which could have – indeed must have – influenced his decision to acknowledge the BJP Government’s five-year mandate.
A great deal has been written about the Prime Minister’s preference for the politics of consensus, whereby unnecessary bitterness is taken out of the public discourse, even if agreements on specific issues of national importance such as the new economic policies are not possible. It is not necessary to go over this ground again, except to say that this political style required that he dissociate himself from his colleagues’ demand for the dismissal of the BJP Government and that this is precisely what he has done. But another point needs to be made at some length in this regard.
Mr Arjun Singh and his rivals for the Congress leadership in Madhya Pradesh, such as Mr Madhavrao Scindia and Mr VC Shukla, might or might not have caused much anxiety to the Chief Minister and his colleagues in Bhopal. But there can be no question that the Congress leaders have been undermining the Constitutional scheme for the governance of the country at a pretty critical stage in its life as an independent republic.
Folly of the first order
The damage Mrs Indira Gandhi inflicted on the Constitutional structure with her arbitrary ways could perhaps have been regarded as being manageable despite the rise of the terrorist menace in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, partly as a result of her actions in the two states. In the new international context arising out of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, however, it is a folly of the first order to think in terms of dismissing duly elected State governments unless they can be said to pose a danger to the country’s integrity. By no stretch of the imagination can the MP Government be put in that category.
I have not been a champion of ‘decentralisation’ per se because I have suspected that the infamous Communist theory of India being a multi-nation state lurks behind it. And the more I have reflected on the matter, the more I have confirmed my suspicion. But there are legitimate and practical limits to central authority in so large a country as ours. For New Delhi to believe that it is entitled to dismiss a State Government in possession of a majority in the legislature, or for someone to suggest that it possesses such powers just because Article 356 in the Constitution provides for it, is to exceed those limits. Mr Arjun Singh, Mr Scindia and the Shukla brothers have been guilty of doing so and needed to be ticked off
Ideally, Mr Jyoti Basu or some other non-BJP leader of stature should have done so. They should have dissociated themselves publicly from the demand for the dismissal of the MP Government. It is a pity that they failed to rise to the occasion clearly for partisan reasons, leaving the task to the Prime Minister himself.
It is now widely recognised – at least outside the Congress – that the Union Government has disregarded the Constitution in promulgating President’s rule in Nagaland in the absence of a report by the Governor that Constitutional arrangements have broken down in the State. Mr Narasimha Rao’s own role in this affair is not clear. Perhaps he did not apply his mind in this matter. Perhaps he allowed himself to be guided by his Home Minister. Perhaps he woke up to its implications after the deed was done. If that was in fact the case, it could be one additional factor behind his statement in respect of Madhya Pradesh. In plain terms, he could be trying to limit the damage caused by the arbitrary action in Nagaland.
Search for a new empress
The courts decide cases of contempt, and not legislatures, in a democracy. Moreover, the Janambhoomi-Masjid case – if the singular is permissible – has gone on for 40 long years. In the process, it has become so complicated that even trained lawyers must find it difficult to unravel it. It cannot possibly yield to a quick on the-spot inquiry by MPs who are not already fully conversant with its complexities as most of those visiting Ayodhya were not.
Returning to Mr Arjun Singh, there is another equally disturbing aspect of his politics which deserves attention. He was among the first to press for Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s election as the Congress President; he persisted in this enterprise even after Mrs Gandhi had firmly rejected the offer more than once, and his endorsement of the new economic policy at cabinet meetings did not dissuade him for quite some time from criticising it not so privately to journalists. There is more than a method in all this. Implicit in it is a yearning for a style of politics that Mrs Gandhi practised.
Mr Arjun Singh is too hard headed an individual to have been guided by sentiment when he proposed Mrs Sonia Gandhi for Congress leadership. And it would be petty minded to conclude that he was guided solely by the calculation that he would be the power behind the ‘dumb’ queen. So, the proper inference would be that like many other Congress ‘leaders’, Mr Arjun Singh was in search of a new ‘empress’, a role which Mrs Sonia Gandhi alone could fill in the given situation.
Perhaps he had not quite worked it out by then that the platform would need to be the same demagogic populism, symbolised first by nationalisation of banks and then by loan melas. But to his credit, he has been consistent in his belief system. He has been opposed to the new economic policy even if he now finds it discreet to keep quiet
Also, at the core of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s politics lay her claim (as a Prime Minister) to the right to dismiss State Governments belonging to Opposition parties. Mr Arjun Singh has been pressing for a similar claim on behalf of the present Government. Many other Congress members feel the same. Their clamour for the dismissal of the UP Government on the Ramjanambhoomi issue can leave little scope for doubt on this score, especially when the Home Minister too is willing to join it.
Apparently, they have learnt nothing either from our own bitter experience in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, or from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Mr Narasimha Rao will need to engage in a lot of damage-limitation and re-education in the weeks and months to come.
The Pioneer, 14 April 1992