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Is it a mad hatter's party, or what..?

There is an alternative headline for this piece, and that's 'the who's what, who's where of Indian politics'. But before I launch into that, a confession: for long I have been an ardent follower of political developments, much against my wellwishers' warnings to the contrary and even much against my own better sense. I mean, who in his right mind would want to know about the yo-yoing fortunes of Sitaram Kesri and the labyrinthine mental processes of Sonia Gandhi, or the often inexplicable quirks of Bal Thackeray. But after having done it for well-nigh 14 years, comes the realisation. That one is good for little else in life -- which, again, must be how our career politicians must be feeling themselves.

But I have come to the conclusion that the past is little match for the present. If one looks back, from the time the Congress decided to extend support to the United Front till now, its been quite a frenetic musical chairs that has been played. It is almost as if our politicians have decided to adopt Kanshi Ram as their role-model.

Just look at it. P V Narasimha Rao decides to support the United Front, comprising parties that are viscerally opposed to his party, on the plea that it was necessary to fight the communal forces, aka the Bharatiya Janata Party. Then Kesri succeeds him as Congress president, and promptly decides to withdraw support to the UF, votes out the government, and back the front after it elects a new leader, as if I K Gujral is more qualified to fight the communal forces.

And the new PM fights the next election from his pocket borough of Jallandhar, and the same communal forces decide not to oppose him there.

In the meantime, the Rashtriya Janata Dal government in Bihar becomes a minority, and who should bail it out? The same Congress, which has been virtually wiped out in the state thanks to Laloo Prasad Yadav's politics of Mandal and the BJP's politics of masjid.

Comes the general election, and instead of the UF and the Congress fighting it jointly, considering that they kept the government going for the last 18 months, they indulge in a slugfest. Given this new manner of fighting communal forces, the BJP sneaked past the winning post, with a little help from quondam foes like Chandrababu Naidu, Farooq Abdullah and the like.

Naidu, in fact, takes the Mad Hatter's Award for politicians, just beating Jayalalitha to it. As head of the United Front government opposing the BJP's growth, here he was, extending "issue-based" support to A B Vajpayee and Co.

Meanwhile, the All India Anna DMK, which went along with the BJP's slogan of providing an able and stable government, has done its best to disable and destabilise the Vajpayee administration. One could easily be excused for thinking Jayalalitha to be an Opposition leader, so critical has she been about the ability and stability of the BJP government. She has called Advani unfit to be home minister, and stopped short of naming Pramod Mahajan as recipient of kickbacks in the transfer of M K Bezbaruah from the Enforcement Directorate. And not a day passes without the Czarina of Chennai providing grist to newsmen's mills.

All along, in Tamil Nadu, further political farce is being enacted. The Tamil Maanila Congress, which broke off from the Congress over its decision to ally with the AIADMK in the 1996 election, now is veering around to rejoining the party, which is courting and is being courted by the AIADMK. The Congress, atypically, fights shy of seizing the day, despite knowing that the BJP government is a thing of the past if the Sphinx nodded...

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, whose alliance with the TMC looked like it will go on forever, meantime is turning soft on the BJP and getting increasingly estranged from its partner. The two are, in fact, doing a mini BJP-AIADMK kind of act in Tamil Nadu.

In Maharashtra, the Samajwadi Party, which did the Congress in over its pseudo-concern for Muslims, suddenly decides that the BJP-Sena is a worse enemy and joins hand with the former. The saffron alliance, which boasted of the unbreakability of the Hindutva credo, is today going for each other's jugular, and no prizes for guessing what is at the core of their slugfest.

Forget political parties, even individuals seem susceptible to the outbreak of Acquired Ideological Deficiency Syndrome. How else can I explain to myself the spectacle of Pritish Nandy, an editor I have always held in high esteem for his liberal views, being nominated to the Rajya Sabha on a Sena ticket and who is today reduced to defending the undefendable, like the goon attack on M F Husain? Or the sight of a Yashwant Sinha or George Fernandes plugging the BJP line as federal ministers...

Oh, there has been never a dearth of political trapeze artistes in the country, executing aerial somersaults of the kind that Buta Singh did recently. Or Wilfred de Souza in Panjim. Even laser-guided missiles would be unable to keep our politicians in sight, I am sure.

At the same time, I realise, this is what makes our politics interesting. Granted, it may not appear very moral or ethical, but the silver lining to those like me keeping track of the comings and goings of our politicians is their ideological waywardness. Otherwise, if the netas were to stick to their vows, our politics would suffer the worst death possible: become uni-dimensional.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy