My column - Today’s (11-6-2023)Pioneer (Delhi edition) 09.06.23, From KSR desk to column area, Pioneer ••• Will all opposition parties coalesce into a formidable anti-BJP front? -K.S. Radha Krishnan

My column - Today’s (11-6-2023)Pioneer (Delhi edition)

09.06.23, From KSR desk to column area,

Pioneer

•••

Will all opposition parties coalesce  

into a formidable anti-BJP front?

-K.S. Radha Krishnan 

—————————————————————-

     

The recent Karnataka Assembly election results have proved a shot in the arm for the Congress starved of power at Centre for the past nine years. The party put on cloud nine is now hoping to encore the Karnataka victory in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh too.  Besides, the Karnataka message that the BJP ruling the country for the past nine years has lost what is touted as its invincibility has also inspired all regional parties to take the initiative to cobble together a front that will turn an anti-dote to the BJP in the 2024 parliamentary elections. But knitting together a viable opposition seems hardly a cakewalk.  

Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (U) supremo Nitish Kumar has set the ball rolling, trying to bring together all opposition leaders under one umbrella to discuss and flesh out plans to put up a formidable opposition front to the BJP. 

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Telangana Chief Minister  K. Chandrasekhar Rao (Bharat Rashtra Samiti) and other non-BJP CMs  such as Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan (CPM), Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K.Stalin (DMK), Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah (Congress) seem interested in rubbing the ruling BJP the wrong way and making their common foe Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to use the Shakespearean lingo, feel that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” (King Henry IV- Part 2).

Originally scheduled for June 12, 2023 in Patna, the meeting that Nitish Kumar plans has now been pushed back.  He insists on the leaders, not their representatives, turning up at the roadshow of opposition and also roping in Congress as the main actor in the extravaganza.  But Rahul and his mother Sonia Gandhi being away abroad, Congress president Malligarjun Kharge wants the meeting to be put off and hence June 23 has been fixed for the event. 

Meanwhile former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and president of National Conference Farooq Abdullah met former Prime Minister and JD (S) president Deve Gowda in Bangalore on June 7, 2023. The meeting has aroused speculations of an opposition front move.  Abdullah, though, said the meeting did not have political significance. 

The efforts to build up a forceful and viable opposition battalion seem not headed for fulsome fruition. Right now opposition leaders are divided on the question of leadership of the front proposed and pursued with perseverance. Leaders like Mamata, Chandrasekhar Rao etc. take the proposal that projects the Congress as the shepherd of the flock with a pinch of salt. Moreover, in some states the Congress is an opposition party to the ruling part which has thrown in its lot with the anti-Modi camp. For instance, in Kerala it is the Congress vs CPM. In West Bengal it is Trinamool Congress vs Congress vs CPM and in Tripura it is CPM vs Congress. 

For Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YSR Jagan Mohan Reddy, the Congress is obviously a bête noire.  The YSR Congress led by Jagan Mohan Reddy and TDP by Chandrababu Naidu, though at loggerheads with each other, are united in that they both support the BJP. So, their participation in the anti-BJP moves is ruled out. 

Sharad Pawar, once a Congress dissident leader, who set up his own Nationalist Congress Party in 1999, has expressed his support to the move to galvanize opposition to the BJP.  However, he is yet to publicize what he has up his sleeves. 

The Apna Dal (S) in Uttar Pradesh, the Akali Dal in Punjab and the AIADMK cannot be expected to rally behind the leaders out to build up a strong opposition as they have thrown in their lot with the BJP.  

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik being non-committal over the matter may not jump on the anti-BJP bandwagon. 

Similarly Delhi CM and national convener of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Aravind Kejriwal and the president of Samajwadi Party Akhilesh Yadav will not likely support the Congress-led anti-BJP opposition. Their past experiences with the Congress are anything but inspiring and exhilarating.  In fact, there had been wars of words between the Congress and AAP and between the Congress and the SP.

So the writing on the wall is clear for the unity of the non-BJP leaders.  It is said that a few leaders are toying with the idea of an opposition front sans Congress.

Anyway it all feels like a repeat of the various anti-establishment initiatives taken in the long period before the advent of the millennium.  A feeling of déjà vu hangs over the political environment now. 

Cong. vs. Communists

It is well-known that it was the Congress, led by Nehru and later by Indira Gandhi, which monopolized power in the country. In the 1950s, the all-powerful Congress ensured that no other party emerged as a challenge to it.  Hence it cracked down on parties such as Communist Party of India, PSP-SSP (Socialist) and Akhi Bharat Hindu Mahasabha.

In fact, a few Communist and Socialist leaders who rubbed the Congress the wrong way were sweating out during the freedom struggle under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.  So, in order to placate the Socialists, the then Prime Minister Nehru brought the resolution on the country’s socialist pattern at the 70th session of the All-India Congress Committee in 1955.  

Later, Nehru, in a move pleasing to the Communists, formulated his economic policy marked by features of the Russian communism.  

How Cong imperialism was challenged

Back in the early 1970s the vociferous slogan of ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’ marked the nationwide Congress invincibility narrative and ‘TINA’ (There Is No Alternative) factor.  The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was following in letter and spirit the Machiavellian political theory (‘The Prince’) that instructs a wise ruler to decide when to be beastly and when to be human, depending on the circumstances.  Even as the Congress looked like Goliath, there emerged some Davids, of course. 

In the 1970s, the Nava Nirman movement set up by Jayaprakash Narayan and J B Kripalani (Nitish Kumar,  Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan sprang from this movement) started gaining foothold more in North India, bringing together all Indira-baiters including Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram, Charan Singh, Vajpayee,  Advani, Madhu Dandavate, George Fernandes, Raj Narain and others. Thus was born a hodge-podge of parties including Congress (O), Socialist Party of India, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Lok Dal and so on. The amalgam was named Janata Party that swept the supposedly invincible Congress out of power and captured power in 1977. The coalition was supported by the DMK and the CPM. 

The main catalysts in their success were the notorious Emergency Indira Gandhi imposed on the country in 1975 and her McCarthyist witch-hunt let loose against all opposition leaders.  

But later on differences erupted in the Janata Party of which the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (the present BJP’s earlier avatar) to the point of the party biting the dust in the 1980 general elections and Indira-led Congress recapturing power. 

Then the monolithic Congress rule continued till 1989 when the National Front (NF) was formed as an alternative to the Congress led till 1984 by Indira Gandhi (assassinated) and later by her son Rajiv Gandhi (who was also assassinated).  The National Front (1989-91) was floated by a coalition of parties led by Janata Dal which had N. T. Ramarao (Telugu Desam) as the president and V. P. Singh as convener and Prime Minister of the country. Later Chandra Shekhar (Janata Dal president) succeeded V. P. Singh as PM. Regional parties such as DMK in Tamil Nadu, NTR in the then composite Andhra Pradesh and Asom Gana Parishad in Assam represented the NF and the Left parties supported the front as a force to demolish the hegemony of the Congress. 

Later the anti-ruling party movement gained traction in the form of United Front (1996-98) welded together by parties such as Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, DMK, TDP, AGP, Left front, TMC and so on.  It was a 13-party coalition that made H. D. Deve Gowda (Janata Dal S) PM and later I. K. Gujral.  

Though the BJP attained the status of the single largest party in the 1996 general elections, it could not muster majority to sustain its government that lasted only for 13 days.  So, the UF, a medley of several parties, was installed in power and yet its regime came crashing in 1998. 

The BJP, which had just 2 MPs in 1984, has developed by leaps and bounds to the extent of boasting of 303 MPs now. It began its account as a ruling party in 1999, only to lose its ‘power’ status to the Congress in 2004. The NDA led by the BJP had to wait for a decade to recapture power in 2014. So, now the Congress has been in the political wilderness for almost a decade. 

 Just as the Congress ascended the throne again in 2004 after eight years of disgraceful defeat, will it recapture power in 2024 now that it is set to complete a decade of denial of power?

It all depends on what the parleys among opposition parties, mostly regional, will culminate in. Congress or no Congress to lead the anti-BJP front? After all, democracy needs at least two equally powerful parties for its survival.  Bob Hope, the famed American comedian Bob Hope’s words are never more appropriate: No one party can fool all of the people all of the time; that’s why we have two parties.” 

All said and done, it is BJP vs Congress in India as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines were in the medieval Italy.                                                                                                                 ---------------------------

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