Elbow room

You can never really recognise them when they are in opposition, sprawled across the moral high ground. It is only when they are in high office that you discover what they really intend to do. Opposition is the nesting spot of good intentions. Power is where, bit by bit, like a jigsaw puzzle coming into place, the real picture begins to emerge.

Rahul Gandhi, for instance, never suggested before the general elections that the first thing he would want, if in power, would be the dismissal of the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh. The break between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party did not come after the results; Congress leaders have been bitterly critical of Mulayam Singh for years. There is nothing wrong with that. They have every right to attack, and attempt to displace, the party that has usurped their space in the largest state since 1989. Fifteen years is a long time on the margins. The Congress also knows that it will never be able to make that substantial leap forward in the Lok Sabha until it can resurrect in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It was V.P. Singh, directly, and the BJP, indirectly, who enabled Mulayam Singh to capture UP and Laloo Prasad Yadav to take Bihar. Both the Yadavs have used power brilliantly to protect their electoral base, which mainly consists of an alliance between the Backwards and the Muslims. The Yadavs are with them because both are Yadavs and look after their own. Other Backwards castes joined them because of the implementation of the Mandal Commission report. The Muslims, who are emotive, reinforced Mulayam after he protected the Babri Masjid as chief minister from "kar sevaks" during one of the many peaks of the Ram Mandir movement: they still recall his vow that not a bird would be able to fly over the mosque as long as he was chief minister. Laloo got the Muslim vote when he arrested Lal Krishna Advani during the latter's rathyatra. The Congress, conversely, lost the Backwards because of its wobble on Mandal; and the Muslims because it presided over the construction of the foundation of the proposed temple to Lord Ram and the destruction of the mosque in 1992. As the last elections have proved, neither vote has returned to the Congress. In that vast catchment area of the Ganga and Jamuna, in the three states from the Himalayas in Uttar Pradesh to the Bay of Bengal via Bihar, the Congress has got less than 20 seats in this Parliament.

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It is perfectly logical therefore for Rahul Gandhi to confront Mulayam Singh Yadav. Presumably he can take on only one Yadav at a time; Laloo's turn will come later. (How much later we cannot say, but opportunities in politics often appear with dramatic suddenness.) But democratic political conflict is one thing. Demanding the dismissal of an elected government, and that too within a time limit of a month, is quite another. The reason offered is not too impressive. There is no evidence that "law and order" in Uttar Pradesh is any worse than it is in Bihar. But "law and order" was the favourite excuse of the Congress when it was powerful enough to dismiss chief ministers it did not like.

One sign of the growing maturity of Indian democracy is that Union governments no longer impose President's Rule in states when it suits them politically to do so. Any suggestion of this kind revives the nightmares of the 1960s and 1970s. That is one nightmare that should keep the Left awake. The Left, which effectively controls the majority that the present government commands, will check the Congress. But Rahul Gandhi did not do himself a favour by raising the spectre. A little forethought would have suggested that, even by the laws of pragmatism, it is always bad practice to raise a dubious demand that cannot be implemented. You get the blame without getting the benefit.

Moreover, Mulayam Singh and his lieutenant Amar Singh, have improved their mandate in Uttar Pradesh. It has been a long while since anyone has won 37 seats in the state. The BJP was routed in UP, but it was not the Congress which defeated its nemesis. The Samajwadi Party even picked up safe Congress seats like Sultanpur, next door to Amethi, and represented by Gandhi family loyalist Satish Sharma. The Congress of course has every right to withdraw support from the Mulayam Singh government in Lucknow, and if that can start a process by which the government collapses, so be it. But arbitrary dismissal would be undemocratic.

Is this the first taste of the Congress' return to power?

Every Prime Minister leaves the stamp of his personal convictions and attitudes on the culture of his government. Jawaharlal Nehru was the finest of them all. If Mahatma Gandhi led the generation that gave us our freedom, Nehru was the undisputed hero of the generation which proved that democracy was a non-negotiable foundation on which modern India would build its future. Nehru lived in an age when "Third World" leaders across the world exploited the first excuse they found to become dictators. The world would not have been surprised if Nehru had used his stature and credibility to do the same. The thought never occurred to him. As early as in the 1930s he mocked himself for any "Caesarean" temptations. Neither success, which was his fortune through the 1950s, nor failure, which was his destiny after the war in 1962, made him waver from an unshakeable commitment to democratic behaviour. His Cabinet was one of equals, even when others were not equal to him. His chief ministers were colleagues, not servants. No one was "his man"; they were all partymen who had arrived where they had because of their individual stature. There was no insecurity in the Congress at that time.

The pattern began to change in the muddied politics after the thin Congress victory in 1967 at the Centre, and the wholesale defeat of the Congress in the states the same year. The stupidity of the non-Congress parties helped and to an extent legitimised intervention by Delhi in state affairs. Mrs Gandhi's brilliant success in the 1971 general elections changed equations within the ruling Congress; the leader was now not the first of equals, but a supreme entity whose judgment was never questioned, and who was fed what she wanted to hear. This led to the tragedy of the Emergency, and it is to Indira Gandhi's credit that she understood that she had made a mistake and restored democracy to the country. However, the culture of power within the Congress had been affected fundamentally; and while the Congress functioned as a family, it did not function as a democratic family. This was true even after the tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi removed the family from the apex. P.V. Narasimha Rao was as authoritarian as Indira Gandhi had ever been, with this difference that while Indira Gandhi knew how to win elections, Rao did not.

Which model is Sonia Gandhi going to adopt: that of Jawaharlal Nehru, or of Indira Gandhi and Narasimha Rao? One can safely assert, without fear of contradiction, that if Dr. Manmohan Singh had been the only leader of the Congress government, he would have emulated Nehru. The fact is that Manmohan Singh is only a prime minister while Sonia Gandhi is in power, and it is the model that she follows that will define the culture of the party. She has been leader of the Congress for six years, and in power for less than six weeks. This is not enough time to define a pattern. But early signs suggest that her model is Indira Gandhi rather than Nehru. People are either "with us" or "against us” with little leeway provided for alternative space. Once again, this is the privilege of the Congress and its leadership. If that is the way they want to run the party and government, they have every right to do so.

The snag is that such an attitude works if, like Indira Gandhi, you can win a simple majority by yourself. It does not work in alliance politics, where elbow room has to be clearly defined. Elbows seem to have but a single edge. In politics they can be double-edged. When you want to elbow an enemy in the face, you have to be careful that you do not hit an ally in the ribs. Opposition is life in a free field, and everyone can run at arm's length from one another. Governance is taking positions in controlled space. You are recognised not by the smile on your face, but the nudge in your elbow.

MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age.