A similar anti-Congressism held together the National Front in 1989 with the centrist Janata Dal and regional parties like the DMK, AGP and TDP inside it. Supported by the Left and BJP from outside, the NF faced an awkwardness similar to the one JP grappled with in the mid-’70s on account of RSS-Jana Sangh participation in the anti-Congress mobilisation. But in 1989, as in 1977, for “secular forces”, sleeping with the Jana Sangh/BJP wasn’t an unbearable discomfort.

With the BJP’s successful mobilisation on the Ram temple issue, came rampaging anti-BJPism. The United Front government formed in 1996 with the stated objective of keeping the BJP out of power subsisted on Congress support. At one time, former CPM general secretary, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, had declared the choice between the Congress and BJP as one “between cholera and plague”; under Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the CPM announced the BJP to be the greater evil. Throughout the ’90s, the secular-communal faultline enjoyed pride of place among all-India political cleavages.

In the UNPA, it is not just that nearly all constituents have supped with the BJP or Congress or both. Earlier antagonisms were neither tidy nor pure. What has changed is this: even the overhang of the grand narrative has been dispensed with.

This is not all intended, of course. With the thinning of the Congress at the Centre and in the states through the ’90s, anti-Congressism had lost its currency by the turn of this decade. Now, the Left’s privileging of “anti-imperialism” over “secularism” as elections draw near seems to be the belated flagging of another change. The secular-communal divide has lost its relevance as an explanation of the politics of our time.

... contd.