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VIEWPOINT: RIGHT ANGLE
Two Wrongs Isn't Right
Norms set by the secular Taliban are governing the
BJP's actions.
By Swapan Dasgupta
 It
is entirely possible to look at the almighty fuss over the National Film
Awards as a real-life variant of the Pinky and The Brain show on Cartoon
Network. A group of left-leaning aesthetes were offended by the jury's
genuflection before Bollywood commercial cinema and promptly detected
a conspiracy by the Hindutva brigade to take over the arts world by honouring
a starlet who made a fleeting appearance at a BJP election meeting in
Delhi's Chandni Chowk two years ago. The charges were lapped up by the
Sahmat-supporting classes because the villains included the editor of
the RSS weekly Panchajanya, a nondescript BJP MLA from Orissa, and Information
and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj's election agent in Bellary-hardly
the types the beautiful people in Malcha Marg barsatis would want to sup
with.
The problem of the ancien regime resisting the
encroachments of a wannabe Establishment is a very familiar one. In recent
times, there have been pitched battles between the rival camps in the
Indian Council for Historical Research and the Indira Gandhi National
Centre for the Arts and less publicised skirmishes in other institutions
where the Government has a say in appointments. At the heart of the controversy
is not a grand clash of ideologies, but what Human Resource Development
Minister Murli Manohar Joshi evocatively described as ''It's our turn
now''.
On the face of it, Joshi's contention is unexceptionable.
For much of the past 50 years, the Congress-Left establishment perfected
an elaborate patronage system at the taxpayers' expense. Whether it was
the boards of the public sector ITDC and Air-India or the more humble
telephone advisory committees, political appointments were the norm. Every
section, from academics and film stars to petty racketeers came under
this gigantic embrace. In the high noon of Indira Gandhi's socialism,
S. Nurul Hasan and P.N. Haksar handled the left academics and intellectuals,
I.K. Gujral managed the media and Pupul Jayakar patronised the arty crowd.
It was an incestuous world, whose cosy ugliness has been vividly described
by Raj Thapar in her book All Those Years.
Tragically, that is the world the BJP seems
determined to inherit. It is one thing to dismantle the Congress-Left
patronage system. However, to replace one gravy train with another makes
a complete mockery of its claim to being a ''party with a difference''.
The recklessness with which some BJP ministers are proceeding to pack
various institutions with their own set of unworthies has not only corrupted
the party, but made life very difficult for those ministers who have tried
to be different. In the Prime Minister's Office, this use of discretionary
patronage has touched ridiculous levels. There is, for example, mirth
in the corridors of South Block over the case of one notable who was found
to be so completely useless in his job that he may be pensioned off as
India's ambassador to Denmark.
After last month's National Executive, Prime
Minister A.B. Vajpayee spoke about the need for introspection and L.K.
Advani referred to the Tehelka scandal as a ''wake up call''. But try
telling party loyalists that the rewards of power don't mean a berth in
the Atya-Patya Federation or cadging off the National Bal Bhavan. Good
politics involves bulldozing a process of depoliticisation of national
institutions, not emulating the cronyism of the secular Taliban. Two wrongs
don't make a right.
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