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Dilip D'Souza

Remember The Revulsion!

Five years ago, we had a government in Delhi and a mosque in Ayodhya. A month ago, when I decided to spare Rediff my outpourings for a while, we had another government and no mosque in Ayodhya. Today, we have neither.

I don't say all this too lightly. After all, the government that resigned last week was formed by a coalition of parties sharing two feelings of disgust. One, for the vandalism we saw on our television sets that December 6th, stoked by one shifty party and its allies: vandalism that turned so quickly into looting, rioting and killing across the country. Two, for the other shifty party, in power then, that did not lift one bony finger, one pouting lip, one stockinged leg that peeks these days from the door of an Ambassador, to stop any of it: not the vandalism, not the looting, not the killing.

There were things wrong with the regimes of Deve Gowda and Gujral, yes. That disgust was not one of them. And if the UF government finally shut its doors and decided to recommend a return to the voters, I am glad it happened so close to five years since the day some of us felt that overwhelming nausea; when we woke up to the utter irresponsibility of the two largest parties in the land. I am glad, because we can remember and savour that nausea.

Yes, it's a good reminder, as we head into another round of voting, of exactly what brought this coalition together: revulsion with the way two whole groups of politicians disgraced themselves. So I'm not particularly dismayed by the prospect of elections. I'm growing to like revulsion. When it is deserved, and here it is mightily so, it can be a great force for the good.

As each December 6th rolls around, some of us meet and thrash out some way to remember That Day in 1992. I know, there are others who meet and thrash out entirely different ways to remember it: to them it was a "Victory Day" for India, after all. I've heard of other "Victory Days": they usually set off joyous, close-to-unanimous nation-wide celebrations. This one brought us looting and killing, misery to thousands of ordinary Indian families.

Now I've often wondered, in these five years, how hollow a "Victory" must be that brings misery in its wake. That wonder, that sadness, drove remembrances in years past. But now I'm tired of feeling sad. This time, I think I'll remember the disgust. I'm in an elections state of mind (forgive me, Billy Joel), and disgust is what shall sustain me.

What will it be, the Congress-flavoured disgust? Inextricably linked in my mind with the events of that day is the face of that man Narasimha Rao. His pussy-footing brand of leadership, when he should have been strong, led the country unerringly to the catastrophe the other gang fully wanted. (Riots and bombs sound like catastrophe to me. Don't know about those "Victory Day" types). It's not as if we had not been warned: this man was home minister, thus in charge of law and order, when law and order and about 3000 Sikhs were massacred in 1984. That episode should have told us what we know now: Rao has no particular fondness for preserving the peace.

And as we also know now, and as if December 6 1992 was not enough to tell us: he has no particular fondness for the law, either. Really, it is getting tiresome seeing that very same photograph each time: one dhoti-and-stocking-clad Rao calf placed decorously on the ground as its owner emerges from the back door of an Ambassador for yet another hearing of yet another case against the man. Each one sleazier than the next -- and I'm referring to the cases, not the calves. JMM, St Kitts, pickle payoffs, urea scam (remember that one?): the flesh -- mine, not the calves -- positively crawls in listing all of these. This was the man the Congress foisted on us for five long years, as prime minister.

Not that they had much choice. Not one of Rao's stable of ministers and fellow-partymen managed to stand up to him when it counted, to show some gumption, some initiative, some statesmanship that might have saved the situation. Not in 1992, not after. In the years since, they have left Rao to his lonely Ambassador drives, but shown us very little that might turn disgust into respect.

And the BJP-flavoured disgust? Several actors come to mind, but I think the one who stands firmest for his party's skullduggery is one K R Malkani, MP and -- as he is invariably called -- "party ideologue." He and his brethren spent months -- years -- roaming the country, urging us to "Chalo Ayodhya!" via speeches, posters and stickers in trains, seducing us with an alluring vision indeed: that destroying a mosque was the highest form of patriotic duty there could be.

But when the hundreds of thousands the brethren had gathered in Ayodhya finally did what their patriotism drove them to do, when they stormed the barricades and tore down the mosque, Malkani's tune suddenly went strangely off-key. He wondered in print about the greatest mystery of that wintry December day: that "we don't know who demolished the mosque." It's a riddle inside a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, he wrote, more eloquently than I can now recall. Perhaps some infiltrators from Pakistan were there that day and did the nasty deed? Ah, those menacing Pakistanis, that scheming enemy nation!

And ah, how quickly does patriotism turn to infiltration!

That's Malkani and the BJP at their best: not willing, not able, to stand up for either convictions or their consequences.

Not that we were ever spared the speeches about those convictions. "Ideology", "cadre-based", "disciplined", "principled": we are offered all these vaguely positive terms in the same virtuous breath the BJP mentions its own name. But quite apart from their other misdemeanours, when Kalyan Singh embarked on his minister-making orgy a month ago, it was suddenly noble to toss all those words out the temple door. Now it was time to be the "same as everybody else, for why should we follow principles when nobody else does?" (Not that they had before). Now the speeches are about how the BJP is as unabashedly devoid of scruples as the others in the great electoral market. Being unprincipled is the new virtue.

This December 6th, it's enough to make you gag. And that's what I mean about revulsion.

But as I said earlier, I'm growing to like it. Because it made me look twice at all this exalted talk of one-party stability, this dripping derision towards the "unholy" coalition we've had since June 1996. Ask yourself: what did we get from the one-party stability of Congress rule for so many years? Enough said. And what are we promised from the potential one-party stability of BJP rule? A temple, first and always (though K R Malkani will, no doubt, keep an eye out for those Pakistani infiltrators). Enough said, again.

Meanwhile, the smaller parties that joined hands to govern us, mindful of the need to produce results if only for electoral consumption, actually took care of some business. Some of it:

* We now have the prospect of the first election in our history in which AIR and Doordarshan will be neutral rather than the one-stop shop for government press releases. That's because, thanks to Gujral & Co, there's a Prasar Bharati Corporation that will run radio and television services autonomously. Not impressed? Think what a huge step it is for the government to give up control over the widest-reaching media in the land. Think why no previous government has had the guts to do it.

* There have been attempts to make peace with the pesky Western neighbour like we have not seen in years. That, even though we had the usual well-timed -- always when moves for peace are made -- firing across the border from both sides; even though the neighbour's government and judiciary are in a rare rumble.

* A new treaty covers the fractious water tangle between India and Bangladesh. Not trivial, because over the next decades, water promises to be the nastiest issue we will ever have faced.

A minority coalition government pulled off these and several other achievements precisely because it was in a minority. What we can do without is the complacent, self-righteous "stability" one of the two big parties, if given the reigns of government, are likely to put on the menu.

That leaves the final lesson for December 6: a coalition best reflects the enormous diversity -- economic, cultural, political -- in this country. Far better than any other option, it truly represents the kind of nation we are. Celebrates it, if you like.

And that's when disgust turns to optimism. Faint, small, but there. For another December 6th, it will do.

Dilip D'Souza