Sub kuchh luta ke hosh mein aaye to kya kiya...

It echoed and re-echoed in my mind when I saw Sonia Gandhi standing beside Sharad Pawar. The strained smile on their faces was more eloquent than any words they said. For 250 weeks the two have been on either side of an emotive, but important, line: the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi. Do they expect everything to be forgotten in the 10 weeks left for a general election? Leaders might find it convenient to forgive; the voter does not forget.

Five years ago, Sonia Gandhi hounded Sharad Pawar out of the Congress because he suggested that the Indian voter would be apprehensive about her inability to communicate, and wonder why she lived in India for 16 years after her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi but could not find time to acquire an Indian passport. It was never a question of religion. Their Christian faith does not make George Fernandes or P.A. Sangma or A.K. Antony unacceptable.

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For five years the primary purpose of the Congress has not been to remove the government, but to make Sonia Gandhi Prime Minister. There is a subtle but vital difference between the two objectives. It is the difference between Opposition politics and Coterie politics. After 250 weeks of seeking the first objective, the Congress has kept aside 10 weeks for the second objective.

The problem is not the wish, but wish fulfilment. Sonia Gandhi believes that a fudge will work. Privately she has assured Sharad Pawar and other Opposition parties like the DMK and the CPI(M) that she will not be a candidate for Prime Minister. Publicly, Congress spokespersons are under instructions to say that such questions will be dealt with after the elections. I hear that the principal spokesman, S. Jaipal Reddy, was pulled up because he insisted that Sonia Gandhi was still the only leader the Congress would accept as Prime Minister. You cannot blame Jaipal Reddy: this is the line he has been plugging ever since he was given the honour of speaking on behalf of the party. (Jaipal, whose friendship I can claim, is not a natural Congressman; he is intelligent but not a sophist. In fact, he remains one of the most brilliant stars of his generation. Ever since he has become a Congress spokesman, his brain has been mortgaged to his tongue, rather than the other way around: I know the feeling and sympathise.) Even after humiliation in the last Assembly elections, all Congress leaders sent to television studios insisted that their belief in Sonia Gandhi was non-negotiable. Sonia Gandhi herself left no doubts on this score, while those closest to her, like Ambika Soni, were vociferous. As late as in December, she was saying that the BJP seemed scared of a "mere woman". It is a somersault to now suggest that a "mere woman" is scared of the BJP.

There is no need for others to be discreet. As his colleague P.A. Sangma correctly points out, Sharad Pawar cannot accept Sonia Gandhi as any alternative coalition's leader without compromising on his party's basic Constitution. Democratic politics does not provide space for "private" assurances on public policy. This is why Pawar has said that any Secular Front against the NDA must accept the principle of collective leadership.

It was the question of leadership that prevented the formation of such a Secular Front at least a year, or even two years ago. If you want to be a Front, and Secular, what better opportunity could come your way than the Gujarat Assembly elections after the riots? There is reason to believe, after analysis of the vote, that such an alliance would have defeated Narendra Modi, and reshaped the swell of Indian politics. But Sonia Gandhi spurned all suggestions of an alliance and mounted a soft-Hindutva plank. It was only after the results of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh that the fantasy began to evaporate.

The key question now is: Has everything been lost, or is reversal possible? Is it Sab kuchh luta ke or merely Bahut kuchh luta ke? The very idea of unity has brought a spring to the Congress step, but before taking a leap, a few facts need to be placed in perspective.

Two years ago, the Congress would have been the central glue of such a Secular Front, because it was still a closed fist: the hollow within had not been exposed. Today, the Congress will be isolated if it contests alone, and squeezed if it opts for an alliance. The Left has been Sonia Gandhi's most loyal ally, but it will not concede a single seat to the Congress in Bengal, Kerala or Tripura. What the Left does elsewhere does not much matter.

In Bihar Laloo Yadav will give unto Congress banter, and keep unto himself all the seats. The Congress share, out of 40, will be in single digits. In UP, Mayawati bargains like a moneylender: whatever she gives will be at high interest. The DMK has fewer problems, because the Congress is already marginalised in Tamil Nadu. Congress will get a better deal in Maharashtra, but that is a bit of a Barmecide's feast: neither Congress nor Sharad Pawar will be able to retain the number of seats that they have in the present Lok Sabha. Every Congress ally will be expansive with words and miserly with seats.

True alliances are built not in drawing rooms, but on the streets, when party workers mobilise for a common cause. One of the curious facts about the Congress is that it has not taken up, in any significant manner, a single issue in the last five years. Statements by nominated spokespersons from television studios have replaced the politics of the street; it has become an air-conditioned party. On the two issues central to the BJP campaign in the coming elections, peace with Pakistan and prosperity in India, it has had very little to say. There is no alternative economic policy that has been articulated. And on a subject as important as Pakistan, there is dead silence.

And so Congress space continues to ebb on the electoral map, leaving pools of resentment where the party once had a candidate. The party recedes, stage by stage, state by state. A wit might suggest that it is headed for the shrink, but there is nothing funny about this development. Indian democracy needs the interplay of two national parties, even if their presence is not effectively nationwide. The Congress needs internal strength far more than external support. Sharad Pawar should be inside the party, discussing strategy with outsiders, rather than outside discussing options with Congress. If the Congress is run on traditional lines of rotating presidents and a muscular working committee, all the bits and pieces that have fallen off over the years will return. A political party is a collective, not a fiefdom.

The sight of a leader, who once waited for the world to call on her, flitting about from home to home is indicative of disarray. But once again, what would have been effective a year ago, seems desperation 10 weeks before the polls. Against such disarray, the BJP enters this election with only one problem: the cockiness of those of its second-generation leaders who are beginning to behave as if they have already won.

The BJP has dismounted from the Ayodhya rathyatra, and climbed on to the Vajpayee chariot. The wheels of the Vajpayee chariot are not a temple and a mosque, but economics and peace. It is a formidable vehicle, driven by a leader at the top of the popularity charts. The positive response to the Pakistan initiative proves that Vajpayee is correct in his belief that while conflict might get votes, peace can reap a much higher dividend. His biggest problem might be complacency: he needs to restrain his party from getting too clever by half with leaders like Jayalalitha.

As Talat Mahmood also pointed out, albeit mournfully, there are two kinds of fire. There are the ummeed ke chiragh: the lamps of hope must never go out in the Congress. Alas, their dilemma might be better summed up in a line that Jaipal Reddy, who is from Andhra Pradesh and will therefore be familiar with Urdu, the language of the old Nizam state, will understand: Khud hi laga ke aag tamashai ban gaye... It is difficult to translate the nuances of Urdu into English, but let me give it a try: We have become spectators of a fire we ourselves lit.

MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age.