I feel sorry that Vasant Sathe walked straight into the trap I laid for him during one of those TV election specials because he remains my favourite Congressman. The poor fellow gave away the game the most senior Congressmen nurture as a deep secret.

After the late Madhu Limaye, I do not know another person who, in spite of being a politician, remains so thoroughly a creature of Saraswati, the goddess of learning and of the arts. He is, in many ways, the quintessential Brahmin whose absolute secularism issues from boundless self-assurance which itself is a function of that unselfconscious knowledge that he has been at the top of the caste heap for centuries.

Let me now revert to that TV discussion. Onthe panel were two Congress-men, Vasant Sathe and Jairam Ramesh to take stock of the situation just before the counting began. To wind up the situation I asked them a simple question: "Supposing, for argument's sake, the Congress emerges as the largest single party, would it be willing to form a coalition government?" Ramesh said: "If such a situation arose we shall have to consider coalitions".

But Sathe, in full glare of TV camera, raised both his hands like he were warding off some evil: "No, no, no" he exclaimed. "We are all sunk if we ever go into a coalition".

Let us consider the attitude towards coalitions that Sonia Gandhi's Congress has maintained from the very outset.

Remember the Ides of March, 1998. The election results were in. The BJP was deftly putting together a coalition. Chandrababu Naidu, with 12 MPs, was hesitating. The President, who was consulting various leaders, also met the Congress President, Sitaram Kesri, who asked for time. Supposing the wily old Congress President wasbuying time to put together some sort of a backward caste-driven power structure which would have included the dreaded Yadavs from UP and Bihar, where do you think would Sathe have stood in such a bargain? "No, no, no," he would have said, "we shall be sunk in a coalition". That Sathe is a metaphor for a large body of the Congress party became quite clear on that occasion. Kesri's nameplates were pulled out in a matter of hours. Sonia Gandhi was installed as party president.

Her moment of glory was the Pachmarhi session of the Congress in September 1998. Under her leadership, the party said "no to coalitions" even though the Yadavs were imploring her to let them in.

"No" to coalitions at this juncture made a great deal of sense because in the assembly elections due in November in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, the contest was a direct one between the Congress and the BJP. No coalitions we-re required. Considering that the Congress trounced the BJP in the three contests, the decision taken atPachmarhi was a brilliant one.

Instead of treating the outcome of the three elections as a particular happening, thinkers around Sonia Gandhi, somewhat in the Sathe mould, enunciated a general principle: the Congress would return to power on its own. Even this carried credit so long as Sonia was seen as the architect of a Congress party revival.

But her implausible pursuit of prime ministerial power caused not just Sharad Pawar's revolt, but raised eyebrows all around. Sonia Gandhi does not wish to supervise cabinet meetings with the likes of the Yadavs breathing down her neck; Sonia Gandhi would like to be prime minister. How does one reconcile the irreconcilable? It was some cheek on her part to really believe that even though her party had threatened to bury Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP, the Samajwadi party leader, driven by some inexplicable higher purpose, would still support her elevation to prime ministership.

Many Congressmen have developed an amnesia about the fact that Sonia Gandhi, by saying noto coalitions on that occasion, was once again enabling the BJP to continue in power during the period when the NDA extracted the advantages from Kargil.

Then followed the current campaign. Sonia Gandhi was the prime ministerial candidate but it was still unclear whether she was still averse to coalitions or enthusiastic about them in graduated measure.

What are the implications of this sustained ambiguity? Sonia Gandhi allowed herself to be pitted against Atal Behari Vajpayee as the prime ministerial candidate. To become prime minister, sans coalitions, she would have had to be within striking distance of 272 seats. This, clearly, was an absurd proposition.

What then, was the game? Well, as Jairam Ramesh said, "we may have to consider a coalition" provided the numbers favour such a scenario.

But if Vasant Sathe is allowed to write Sonia Gandhi's speech in such circumstances, it would read something like this: "We must rediscover the elan of the Congress for which Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru,Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi made so many sacrifices. This we can do only by not falling prey to the lure of office by entering into unprincipled coalitions. We shall soon see that a coalition of 24 disparate elements, where Mandal and Kamandal have joined hands in crude pursuit of power, cannot take the country forward".

What would have been the implications of this hypothetical statement? It would have enabled the BJP and allies to come to power for the third time.

The Indian electorate has spared Sonia Gandhi the occasion to play such a role. The point I am making is this; after the Mandalisation of politics, the BJP reacted swiftly and sought to accommodate all tiers in the Hindu society into the power structure.

The BJP, for all its weaknesses, is a politically alert organisation. Look how it created space for powerful regional parties in its framework. The Congress, under the leadership of political illiterates like Sonia Gandhi, has persisted with its self-defeating upper casteism.

"No, no,no to coalition". Now let the party go in for a spell of reflection in the political wilderness of its own making.