Dec 14, 1998

Before it bids for office the Congress must complete its rejuvenation.

In the triumphalist euphoria of the moment, it is easy to be swayed by the argument that the Congress has returned to the happy days of the earlier Mrs Gandhi. Truly, India's oldest party has not experienced a series of victories of such magnitude since early 1985, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination. Yet there is a perceptible difference in approach. Realpolitik may remain the Congress' credo -- but Sonia Gandhi is not quite as crude a practitioner as her mother-in-law was. For a start, she has turned down all entreaties that the Congress now draw away the BJP's allies, enter into short-term agreements with members of the amorphous "third front" and bring down the Vajpayee-led Government. For a party which was solely responsible for unseating four of India's seven previous non-Congress regimes, this is some achievement. The conclusion that the recent assembly elections were a referendum on the BJP and represented popular desire to remove the 18-party administration bears some amount of reality -- and large dollops of sophistry. Sonia's determination to form a government only after gaining a mandate is a lesson to those in her party who see even the Emergency as an expression of political legitimacy.

While the Congress has every reason to celebrate its success, it cannot forget that it already had a strong presence in all three states. A better touchstone of the party's rejuvenation will be Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where it is near extinction. To become a contender for office in this Hindi heartland requires an attribute Congressmen have long forgotten: political activism at the grassroots. In the old days, it used to be said that the Congress had an office in every village of (at least) north India. This observation reflected the vibrancy of an institution which identified itself almost absolutely with mass aspiration. The day Sonia's Congress reaches even half that level of dynamism, it will not need to seek political office by subterfuge -- India will vote it in resoundingly.

In the Line of Fire

What next? A Shiv Sena committee on un-Indian activities?

There are times when India's ability to rationalise everything ceases to be a strength. A couple of days ago, Shiv Sainiks stormed into two cinema halls in Mumbai, asked gathered cineastes to go home and warned the management against any further screening of Fire, a film with a lesbian relationship as its central motif. No doubt many will choose to describe the Sainiks' achievement as "political agitation". Less hypocritical societies have a better word for it: hooliganism. Bal Thackeray's party is a strange political organism. At a time when the city which is its home territory is ravaged by criminal gangs and sundry freelance extortionists, all it can focus on is banning films and snarling at Pakistani cricketers. Given that Maharashtra's ruling Shiv Sena-BJP coalition faces elections (and a resurgent Opposition) in just over a year, the political logic is even more bewildering. In 1995, it was the post-Babri Masjid violence which was the theme of the alliance's poll campaign. Does the Sena now want to convert the 2000 election into a plebiscite on Fire?

Beyond farcical politics and clever asides, however, lies an issue of great import: India's relationship with freedom of speech. This in turn is inextricably linked to the value Indians as a people attach to the rule of law. If a group is horrified by the depiction of homosexuality or if a section of a community judges a novel blasphemous, the grievances should be taken to the relevant authorities -- be they the film censors or the courts. To reduce civic consciousness to vigilante terrorism can never be the answer. That larger point apart, the Sena's objections to Fire are ridiculous. Lesbianism may not appeal to everybody but it cannot be wished away; or is it the Sena's case that if a subject be ignored long enough it will simply go away? Hopefully that is not its solution to soaring crime rates as well.

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