Murky Waters

I am no lover of BJP nor do I have a jaundiced view of it. I am apolitical like the silent majority which looks at national politics with questions like: What is happening? and How is it happening?, rather than: Whether it should happen or not? The last would be pontification, if not wishful thinking.

Apropos of Virendra Kapoors write-up The BJPs fall from grace (November 4) and David Devadass The saffron brigade is waiting in the wings (November 6), both of which are studies of the same subject from different viewpoints. Virendra Kapoor is ruefully asking You to Brutus?, while David Devadas is acting like Cassandra, who envisions that four horsemen of apocalypse will descend on India if BJP comes to power in any state, particularly at the Centre, while losing sight of the fact that the horsemen have covertly been on the job during the last over four decades of Congress (mis)rule.

The silent majority is pained to see the perverse grammar of politics being written in India, where all parties have accepted the inevitability of a coalition government, now and in future. But most of them, particularly the Congress and the JD, refuse to accept the stark reality that BJP is numerically the largest group in UP as well as at the Centre and cannot be treated as a political pariah. BJP has to be given the benefit of condonation for engineering defections because it was jaw-boned into doing so after making a fair attempt to bring around BSP to realise that UP is a state to be administered and not a political fiefdom to be carved out.

If a specimen of political mediocrity like Deve Gowda and a specimen of political ennui like Gujral can be given a chance to head the government, why not Vajpayee?