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Opinion/V C Bhaskaran

The Jain Commission leak provided the red rag for old bull Sitaram Kesri

The Congress as a crutch to power seems to be the political philosophy of the United Front. But if one thinks of a stilt, the BJP provides the leg on which the UF dreams of striding this street circus of Indian politics.

During the 11th Lok Sabha campaign in April-May last year, H D Deve Gowda, then Karnataka chief minister, cried aloud, "Kick out the Congress." The Congress, he said, had ruined the country. No UF partner imagined the BJP would emerge as the single largest political force in the Lok Sabha, albeit its failure to muster adequate support to continue in power for more than 13 days.

One found chief minister Deve Gowda pushed up into the dizzy heights of power as prime minister and UF chairman. The UF's survival mantra was simple: Lick the Congress feet. They made this fact jarringly clear in practice.

It was a street circus where a nondescript man plays on his makeshift drum to the notes of which the funnily attired monkey dances. And the disparage political grouping, with varying ideologies often inimical to one another, provided colour to the tatters that made up the monkey's robes. The world couldn't help watching what the largest democracy had turned into in its 50th year of independence.

India has added more than a fifth of its original population. About a third of India's present population of 1,000 million go to bed without food. They hardly have a roof over their heads, forget such luxuries as minimal education, health care and safe drinking water. Here is where the term daridranarayan comes into play.

The term is an euphemism for the poor wretch who is conditioned to grin and accept poverty as divine will. So we had a plethora of undesireables that included a former prime minister, a few chief ministers and countless bureaucrats and business tycoons who could get away with it all because the daridranarayan will not even squirm at his 'fate'. As the law usually takes a labyrinthine course, the loot would remain safely in the custody of Swiss banks for generations. Countless reports of inquiry into large-scale corruption by our political leaders have been gathering dust. The main culprits of these happen to be the chief supporters of the UF -- the Congress, and what could be called Congress rejects. And that's why both the UF and the Congress harped on the 'communal' BJP.

Deve Gowda and UF steering committee convener Chandrababu Naidu have identified the Congress as their enemy now, besides the BJP. To add spice to the anti-BJP campaign, both the CPI and the CPI-M sought to open the Ayodhya wounds at a rally in New Delhi on December 6, the fifth anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition. Purely materialistic Communists have an abiding faith in symbols of 'opium of the mind' (borrowed from Mao, please). The communal fire should be kept alive -- for consolidating secular votes, you see.

Some recalcitrant devils planted bombs on three trains down south and killed about a dozen innocent people. The bomb culture appears to vitiate the peace in the refined south. Policemen in uniform shouting slogans against Chief Minister M Karunanidhi in Coimbatore for his alleged appeasement of Muslim fundamentalists did not perturb Communist Home Minister Indrajit Gupta or secular intellectual Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral! They even struck work and their women sat in dharna for the protection of their men.

The Jain Commission leak provided the red rag for old bull Sitaram Kesri. None in the UF, nor in the Congress, had the eye for the dusty Vaidyalingam Commission report on Karunanidhi's alleged corruption in the 1970s. India is on for the poll churn. Could one pray for nectar to save the gasping Indian democracy and its billions of silent, suffering, wretched daridranarayanans?

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