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EDITORIAL
The End of an Aura
The discredited cannot blame the system. They were
supposed to redeem it.
Is it the funeral
fragrance of power that is wafting across Indraprastha? Maybe not, not
yet. It's the stench of the rotten cadavers of powerlust. And look around,
preferably with a handkerchief of indignation as protection, and you are
unlikely to be shocked by the sight-been there, seen that. Still, be there,
see that, once again, and no hidden camera is required to capture the
enormity of the grotesque. Relax reality TV, welcome raw reality.
Lying there banished, glowing with shamelessness,
is the bloated child of gesture politics, or the test-tube pro-duct of
political correctness, with a reduced blackmarket value of merely Rs 1
lakh. Standing stained is the socialist-once a streetfighting romantic
whose brand equity equalled that of a Coke bottle. Today his national
value is fixed by his partner-the pornography of socialism? Then fixers
without even the fig leaves of defence. Amidst this scattered shame presides
the patron saint of moderation, or the Dubcek of Hindutva, irredeemably
scarred by not involvement but association and situations. Is India's
most popular politician distancing himself from popular sentiment?
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Perhaps power makes the journey from the exceptional
to the banal much easier. Take a return trip to the Coronation Day to
realise the pathology of the present. Then it was the most defining turn
in Indian politics-the right turn, politically as well as literally. It
was a popular repudiation of the manufactured demonology of Hindu nationalism,
and it was a massive protest against the culture of Congressism. A moment
for the unfairly caricatured nationalist to step out of wall calendar
mythology, to occupy the vital centre of Indian politics. He did indeed
succeed, with a little assistance from Pokhran and Kargil; and the so-called
human face of Hindu nationalism, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
still could do no wrong. The BJP was different, and the government led
by the BJP did look different, distinctive. But power is an indifferent
leveller.
It makes morality a dirty deed. Well, moral
politics can easily turn into a celebration of schmaltzy sociology. But
you cannot sell your belief system to the highest bidder in the marketplace
of greed, for you have already made a label for yourself in the calligraphy
of pop conscience. This is abundantly true in the evolutionary saga of
Messrs Bangaru Laxman and George Fernandes. Laxman was brought in as a
kind of Joe Liberman of the BJP, a Dalit to head the Hindu party-touch-me-more
populism wrapped in political correctness. And the symbolic Laxman - surprise!
surprise! - elevated himself to become a man of substance, and a socially
sensitive conscience. Remember his brotherly call to the Muslims? It takes
only a few currency notes to turn a symbol into a shame. The BJP cannot
even call it an embarrassment of riches. And social correctness won't
allow it to add an appropriate adjective to the embarrassment either.
But Stained George, being a socialist with diminished
causes, suffers from no embarrassment. And the perforated sainthood of
George won't listen to the much quoted Orwell: "Saints should always
be judged guilty until they are proved innocent." Today the Georgian
morality looks as crumpled as the Georgian kurta. Not that George has
been personally compromised by a suitcase. But George has been compromised
by power, and it happens with streetfighters. This time melancholy and
martyrdom are not going to define his abdication of power. Resignation
is not the same as renunciation, despite his telegenic rhetoric on sacrifice.
It can be seen only as one millstone falling from Vajpayee's neck. Still,
the sinking sensation persists.
It should not have happened so soon. For, in
the beginning, the BJP in power marked a redeeming break from the predictability
of power. The rusty, corrupt Congress, India's Grand Old Party, in a biological
as well as ideological crisis; the politics of social justice a tired,
and tiring, joke-there was indeed a historical opportunity, and there
was indeed a mandate for change. Someone had to show that all politicians
are not rapscallions, that change means hope regained. There was a crisis
of faith: the political class is untrustworthy; power takes politics away
from the people. The BJP had the advantage of inexperience-or innocence.
No longer, that televised image of Laxman accepting the service charges
is likely to have a life longer than his party's life in power. What is
the difference? And can Vajpayee still make a difference? He cannot say
the system corrupts. The mandate was for correcting the system. But that
was then, long long ago.
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