MUMBAI, Dec 30: He will not return. And he is no more interested in politics. Former Maharashtra Chief Secretary P G Gavai, who quit Bharatiya Janata Party, thinks he can do the things that first attracted him to the BJP through social work forums.He had joined the BJP in 1991, and was impressed by the party's then declaration of commitment to roti, kapda aur makan, transparency and high intellectualism.
Instead the only time the party felt the need to ultilise him was as part of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad delegation to the President of India. ``There I was among all these sadhus, the real saffron brigade, the only BJP member apart from Murli Manohar Joshi. Could there have been anything more ridiculous? Do you mean to say a man like me has just this contribution to make?'' he questions in an outraged tone of voice.
At a time when the exodus is the other way round, Gavai, who was earlier Union Defence Secretary and Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, has dared to move against the mainstream, in
the opposite direction. After five agonising years of brooding over the ``subtle untouchability'' allegedly practised by the BJP, Gavai has now charged the party with being ``like a village with its own Maharwada (the enclosure for untouchables in Maharashtra's villages)''. He has called it quits.
Gavai was the vice-president of the party's Scheduled Castes Morcha, ``reduced to writing speeches for the morcha president''. Having been turned into an ornamental piece, he now says the party ``found it expedient to show me the proper place, redolent of the erstwhile orthodox priests showing the untouchables their proper place.''
After seven years in the party, Gavai has a good word for only former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. He is courteous where others in the party are not, he says. And having grown up in the ``more Catholic culture of Lucknow, Vajpayee is able to take all sections of the people with him which BJP president L K Advani, with his memories of Partition, is not. He seems to havea mind already made up (about Muslims). That is why they are forced today to continuously restate their positions on minorities and other groups. If they could actually carry these groups with them, would they have needed to emphasise their commitment to them over and over again?''
In fact, he admitted that he was disturbed about his association with the BJP ever since the demolition of the Babri Masjid. But he did not speak out because he felt marginalised, lacked a forum, and did not want to make himself small, he said.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
