When it
comes to travel, Harkishen Singh Surjeet is an unrepentant internationalist. It was this
fascination for struggles abroad that made him miss out on two of the major developments
of this year: the replacement of Deve Gowda with Gujral, and the kerfuffle surrounding the
aborted declaration of President's rule in Uttar Pradesh. Surjeet was determined not to
miss out on the fun this time. He kept his intrepid traveller's instinct in check and
casually clocked more miles in his white Ambassador car within Lutyens' Delhi than the
entire Core Committee put together. Surjeet had no love lost for Gujral; he had always
wanted Mulayam Singh Yadav as prime minister. With the help of Madhavrao Scindia and Amar
Singh, he tried to stitch a deal to revive Mulayam's sagging fortunes by anointing him
Gujral's successor. It faltered on the DMK question. Not that Karunanidhi is a cause very
dear to Surjeet, but he had a politburo and Jyoti Basu's fanatical commitment to
federalism to reckon with. So he swung to the other extreme and became a dissolution hawk.
His detractors say that dissolution was Surjeet's way of preventing further embarrassment
to the Congress in a Lok Sabha debate. After all, in every government -- from Indira
Gandhi to Deve Gowda -- Surjeet's writ has run. Marxists don't change: like Surjeet, they
constantly adjust.
When it
comes to travel, Harkishen Singh Surjeet is an unrepentant internationalist. It was this
fascination for struggles abroad that made him miss out on two of the major developments
of this year: the replacement of Deve Gowda with Gujral, and the kerfuffle surrounding the
aborted declaration of President's rule in Uttar Pradesh. Surjeet was determined not to
miss out on the fun this time. He kept his intrepid traveller's instinct in check and
casually clocked more miles in his white Ambassador car within Lutyens' Delhi than the
entire Core Committee put together. Surjeet had no love lost for Gujral; he had always
wanted Mulayam Singh Yadav as prime minister. With the help of Madhavrao Scindia and Amar
Singh, he tried to stitch a deal to revive Mulayam's sagging fortunes by anointing him
Gujral's successor. It faltered on the DMK question. Not that Karunanidhi is a cause very
dear to Surjeet, but he had a politburo and Jyoti Basu's fanatical commitment to
federalism to reckon with. So he swung to the other extreme and became a dissolution hawk.
His detractors say that dissolution was Surjeet's way of preventing further embarrassment
to the Congress in a Lok Sabha debate. After all, in every government -- from Indira
Gandhi to Deve Gowda -- Surjeet's writ has run. Marxists don't change: like Surjeet, they
constantly adjust.
