All things to all people

Musharraf and Vajpayee are caught, each on the horns of the same dilemma: how to kick from under them the ladder which took them to their present eminence without themselves falling off the top rung. In Pakistan, since at least the time of Zia-ul-Haq, the terrorists trained for one task have found it easiest to turn their terror on their creators. The Kalashnikov culture has converted Karachi from the pleasant little city I once knew into the hotbed of hate it has now become. The irony did not end with the death of Zia in a mysterious air accident, very possibly engineered by one of the homicidal spiritual movements he had patronised in the name of Islamisation. Till the conclusion of the civil wars in Afghanistan, the energies of these homegrown terrorists could be concentrated substantially on foreign lands. But once Afghanistan was talibanised, the terrorists had nowhere to practice their skills more expertly than in Pakistan itself.

One solution pursued by the ISI was to export the terrorists to Kashmir. But not enough could get across — or be persuaded to go. With the result that far more of their terrorists are engaged in hostilities with the Pakistan state than with India. The immediate task for Musharraf has been to disarm his terrorists before they get him. It, therefore, did not surprise me that Musharraf was only minutes behind Jaswant Singh in declaring his undying loyalty to the American cause. For the war on Osama gave him the cutting edge over his own terrorists. Thus American pressure on Musharraf to show himself the Ataturk of 21st century Pakistan was exactly what Musharraf needed to fulfill the priority item on his own agenda since the coup of October 1999, while winning from the Americans, for himself and his country, some hugely remunerative brownie points.

Musharraf’s problem is that he has to defang Islamic terrorism while avowing the very objectives for which such terrorism exists in the first place. To laud what the terrorists seek to secure while depriving them of the means they use to do so is the circle he has to square. Vajpayee’s dilemma is no different. He is of the RSS, shares their assumptions, is at one with them in their goals, depends on them for ideological inspiration as much as for political achievement, and has no differences with them over the ultimate aim — which is the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra.

It was his comrade-in-arms for the last five decades, Lal Krishna Advani, who converted the minor movement over Ayodhya into a nation-wide crusade against Islam. Vajpayee was not a step behind any knickerwallah in treating Ram Bhakti as the litmus test of patriotism. His doubts were about the effectiveness of the means employed by Advani to advance their common goal. It was an argument over tactics, not over objectives. As a practicing RSS acolyte, Vajpayee wants the Ram Mandir as avidly as any Bajrang Dali.

As prime minister of a shaky coalition, however, he knows that it is either Ram or his gaddi. So, he says one thing today and quite another tomorrow. He wants to be all things to all men: sweetly reasonable to the secular middle-class, dedicatedly Hindu nationalist to his own kind. Ideally, he would like the sants and sadhus to endorse him. Not taken in, they want him to endorse them. Nothing would please him more than a smile from Acharya Giriraj Kishore. But to induce a smile out of the Acharya, Vajpayee would have to kiss goodbye to Race Course Road. So he draws what comfort he can from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad saying one day they have no desire to see the last of the Vajpayee government and just 24 hours later insisting that it is all one to them whether Vajapyee stays or goes, they must have their mandir come March 12, hell, heaven or high water. And so keen is their appetite for confrontation that their abuse of Vajpayee from their platform makes this column sound like a paean of praise in his honour.

Musharraf and Vajpayee are existential victims of the same dilemma. Both need to repudiate their respective constituencies to pursue their other objectives and remain in power. Their constituencies, however, are loathe to accept that their role is to serve the master’s purpose only to be discarded when they no longer serve that purpose. Their dedication to their narrow goals is just as deep-rooted, possibly more, than the mukhautas they have thus far worn. So, the internecine struggle assumes complementary dimensions: the Islamic terrorists see Musharraf as the main hurdle in their path, just as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its myriad sympathisers across the spectrum of the sangh parivar, including the BJP, see Vajpayee as the main hurdle in their path.

Therefore, every rejection by Musharraf or Vajpayee of the fanatics they have nurtured is followed quickly by sops to prevent themselves becoming victims of their own creation. Musharraf has the better chance of surviving politically because he runs an efficient, imaginative and supple dictatorship, but a worse chance of surviving physically because the weapons he has supplied the terrorists are quite as effective as the big stick he carries himself.

Vajpayee can keep the VHP dangling so long as the numbers on his side in the ranks of BJP MPs remain larger rather than smaller. At the same time, he has to keep the most marginal of his NDA partners satisfied that he is not reverting on Ayodhya from the NDA agenda to the BJP back-burner. To this end, he has tasked the most discredited member of his government, George Fernandes, who is as reviled outside the NDA as he is adored within, to keep the partners on leash, while the RSS boss-men keep the BJP treasury benches whipped into line. However, the NDA partners are such an opportunistic lot that it is not Vajpayee’s fate but their estimation of their own which will determine whether they follow George or abandon him. As for the BJP MPs, so long as Vajpayee looks like he will survive, they will be there — albeit without enthusiasm, but if Advani decides that this is the moment of his tryst with destiny, the BJP will split down the middle and the nation will find itself back at the hustings. The struggle is between the True Believers and the Faint Believers. The jehad against the kafirs within the sangh parivar is gaining momentum. It has penetrated the restive ranks of the BJP. I think it would be prudent to begin preliminary preparations for the 14th Lok Sabha elections.

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