Advani the arsonist

RUMOURS that the government is planning to name former Lok Sabha speaker Purno A. Sangma as its special emissary for talks with the different factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland and other insurgent organisations is threatening to light yet another forest fire in the most emotionally distanced region of the country, the troubled Northeast. There is so much anger there over the continuance of the present envoy, former Home Secretary K. Padmanabhiah that the whisper of his being replaced (or reinforced — it is not clear which) by Sangma amounts to adding grave insult to even graver injury.

It is not Sangma’s personal qualities — or lack of them — that is at issue here. Sangma is a practising politician of the region, a partisan in-fighter, nakedly and unashamedly peddling his penchant for recognition as the senior statesman of the Northeast. This notwithstanding the fact that apart from a presence in his home district of the Garo Hills in Meghalaya, nowhere else in the Northeast has he succeeded in making a significant mark. A quintessential Dilli-wallah, he is far better known and respected in Lutyens’ New Delhi than in the verdant hills and valleys of the region to which he lays claim.

Moreover, with the Nagaland ceasefire question spilling into his own state, and the special responsibility he has for keeping in place the few Northeast MPs and MLAs owing loyalty to him, he lacks the credibility to be regarded as an objective judge of what is in the best interest of the Northeast. It is not enough that the government interlocutor be welcomed by the few thousands who have taken to arms to terrorise the general populace, suborn the sovereignty of our Republic and assault the integrity of the nation. The interlocutor must first enjoy the confidence of the many millions of patriotic Indians of the Northeast.

Hence the demand of the Chief Minister of Nagaland, S.C. Jamir, that the interlocutor be from what he significantly calls the ‘‘mainland’’.

That such would be the reaction to any attempt at inducting Sangma into the process should have been obvious to any responsible home minister of India.

Unfortunately, our current Sardar Patel seems intent on undoing what his role model achieved — the integration of India. There is no lack of non-partisan expertise on both the Northeast and the tackling of terrorism. Go no further than an Assam cadre IPS officer who earned renown as the terror of terrorism in Punjab, K.P.S. Gill, who, in the years since he retired has shown through books and articles, on television and in seminar rooms, the fine mind he has, his keen grasp of history and contemporary events, his sensitivity to ethnic conflicts and compulsions, his soaring patriotism and his undaunted courage. There are others too of the same ilk. Another Gill — M.S. — comes to mind.

What then lies at the bottom of the ‘‘draft Sangma’’ campaign? Politics. Of the narrowest order. For the BJP to tie up with the hilariously named Nationalist Congress Party, Bal Thackeray would have to be ditched in favour of Sharad Pawar. Sensing this the Tiger has growled — through Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Nirupam. Therefore, pacify the Shiv Sena supremo into caging Nirupam and appease Pawar by a high-profile assignment for his most ardent supporter, Purno Sangma, and, hey presto! you solve in a single blow the BJP’s problems in the west and the Northeast. Wah, Advani! Wah, Sardar the Second! Except that neither is the Tiger caged nor can Sangma be unleashed without setting the forest on fire. When low politics is the response to the imperative of high statesmanship, this is what follows.

We saw this earlier this year in Manipur. The shenanigans of George Fernandes had brought down the Nipamacha Singh government but was unable to cobble together an alternative. By January 2001, this had created a situation in which President’s rule followed by quick elections was the only route to saving democracy in the state. This was so obvious to even Advani that he approached Sonia Gandhi for her concurrence to precisely this course. She responded that it was for the government to create a consensus and would he therefore sound out the other parties concerned and get back to her? He never did. It is clear that Advani was sidelined by Fernandes acting through and in concert with the prime minister to bring the politics of Bihar to the far reaches of the Northeast. Thus it came about that a Samata Party which had won no seats in the state assembly elections of February 2000 was able to install a Samata chief minister by February 2001. This magnificent sleight of hand was then undone when the legislators of Manipur, who numbered only six BJP MLAs among them at the conclusion of the elections, found themselves up to 26 by the time it came to casting a vote of confidence in the Samata usurper.

So, the Manipur ‘BJP’ MLAs under cut their own NDA partner and national convenor George Fernandes to deliver a stunning rebuff to manipulative politics of this order.

Then came the geographical extension of the ceasefire to beyond the borders of Nagaland. With Manipur under President’s rule, Advani failed to consult even his hand-picked governor, let alone the newly-elected chief minister of Assam, the serving chief ministers of Arunachal, Tripura and Meghalaya, or even the chief minister most affected, Jamir of Nagaland. He also ignored the repeated warnings administered by his chosen fistful of chief ministers at their meeting with him and the prime minister in September 2000. He ruled only on the agreement he had squeezed out of a cornered Prafulla Mahanta in March 2001, who was ready to surrender even the security of his state to the BJP to get an alliance with them in what were then the forthcoming Assam state assembly polls of May 2001. And although the new CM, Tarun Gogoi, was sworn in on May 14, Advani deliberately refrained from consulting him before Padmanabhiah signed on the dotted line at Bangkok all of one month later, June 14.

The Northeast is in flames because this is a government of Aryavarta, not of Bharatavarsha.

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