|
 |
 |
Running the worlds largest democracy means riding 26 party horses in a motley coalition of some of the greediest, most opportunist and egotistical politicians in that vast legislative pool of sharks around the world. Of course, Churchill had it right democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.
So perhaps one can be forgiven for questioning in the recent past the character of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We watched while this notorious moderate turned a blind eye to a poisonous campaign to overturn Indias secular government with a campaign for Hindutva an obscurantist vote getting doctrine of Hindu chauvinism. We watched him rationalize fanatics destroying a famous mosque, on the myth of a Hindu temple on the site. He turned a blind eye to a pogrom in Gujarat resulting in the death of thousands and the displacement of tens of thousands.. And we heard his hapless apology when his own rhetoric fell over the edge in the growing campaign to gain votes at any cost.
But rather suddenly the old Vajpayee -- foreign minister of the short-lived Desai government which sought to turn back decades of New Delhis role as chief Third World lapdog for Soviet imperialism, who stood up to Indira Gandhis attempt to institute dictatorship -- is back. Risking terror that pervades that jewelled valley, for the first time in 16 years an Indian prime minister spoke to the Kashmiri people [instead of the 700,000 security force], and promised a new local opposition government he would respond to their search for identity and livelihood. He reversed government policy toward the Pakistanis with whom his government has refused to talk for more than a year. And Pakistan has taken up the invitation with alacrity, although any process of negotiations will be slow and fraught with obstacles.
Speculation will continue into the far distant future over what brought this sudden change. There are obviously many logical reasons. Vajpayee, a severe critic of the U.S. in Iraq, has warned there is a message for the Third World: if it does not solve its problems, it risks the worlds only superpower taking up the challenge. [Vajpayee took a leaf from Roman Catholic sophistry: a parliamentary resolution denounced the sin but not the sinner, and then was published in Hindi-Urdu rather than English to make it still more vague.] The approach of another U.S. delegation led by States muscleman Armitage is in the offing, backing up persistent calls from Secretary Powell to leaders of the two nuclear powers not to blow up the world. While he still insisted Pakistan must first halt the terrorist infiltration, he has also acknowledged the possibility that Pakistan President-Gen. Musharraf may not control all of them. Vajpayee recognizes deployment of the Indian army was met by Pakistan defiance. He must be aware that just as in Kashmir where Indian policy turned a pro-Delhi Moslem population against Indian rule, continued Moslem-baiting by his party and confrontation with Pakistan must inevitably waken radical elements in Indias own long passive 250 million Moslems.
Vajpayee is defying Hindu ultras, the base on which his party is built, even large segments of his own party, and probably some of his coalition. He is going into a series of state elections where party strategists believe their Hinduistic line will win votes as it did in the post-riot Gujarat campaign. And he faces the prospect that if it were successful, he may not be the moderate faade of the party for next years elections as he has been in the past.
The bachelor poet is ailing at 78. And it might be, even for a poet, he has intimations of mortality.
It has been a clich among Indian and Pakistan politicians that with each passing year, the old bonds of British India when before the horrors of the Partition massacres their elites lived in relative harmony, are disappearing. Perhaps Vajpayee, who has roots in the inextricably mixed culture of north India, feels that in his waning years. Quoting Lalleshwari, one of their famous Sufi saints, he appealed to Kashmiris to shun gun culture, Shiv or Allah lives everywhere; do not divide Hindus from Muslims. Use your sense to recognize yourself; that is the true way to find God.[That couplet was written when an earlier pro-Indian Moslem population overturned a Hindu tyrant.] It is not the first time that Vajpayee has brought tears to the eyes of Indian Moslems.
Poetry, and certainly not tears which the Indo-Pakistan conflict has seen aplenty, will not wash away the clouds of nuclear warfare that hang over the subcontinent. But this unpretentious poet has proved, again and again, he has political smarts to defeat his competitors. Maybe this will be one more time.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.