''Had It Been Early, It Had Been Heroic''

It was only after the second magistrate too held against him that he resigned as Congress president. In the eyes of those who take seriously Sri Ramachandra's austere view of what is becoming conduct of a ruler's wife, Mr Rao had put off his sacrifice too late. To adapt Dr Johnson on a famous occasion, if it had come earlier, it would have been a heroic act of self-vindication by renunciation. But now, few would offer Mr Rao the halo of martyrdom, for it has been delayed, till (the public) had become indifferent.

What about the view that he has resigned too soon? By the logic to which he had been tenaciously clinging so far, he is still innocent in the eyes of law, since nothing has been proved against him. His resigning now is therefore neither here nor there. It is probably only a case of his endurance against peer pressure snapping at last. No moral principle, not even a legal one, has been vindicated.

 

And even this act of renunciation is riddled with ambiguity. He has only given up Congress presidency and retained, in some respects the more powerful office of the leader of the Congress parliamentary party (CPP). Inevitably, his renunciation invites comparison with Mr Advani's. In the first place, Mr Advani scores on spontaneity. He also established the principle of appearances counting for something in public life, by resigning his membership of Parliament, which alone had made him a public servant (under the amended law) and therefore, liable to charges of corruption. What is even more important, he passed up his opportunity of contesting for election till he was cleared of the charges.

By analogy, Mr Rao should have resigned his membership of Parliament and consequently, his prime ministership, which he didn't. And when he did resign, he was anything but spontaneous.

But unlike Mr Rao, who has resigned his presidentship of the Congress party but retained his membership of Parliament and the leadership of the CPP, Mr Advani retained only his presidentship of the BJP. Thus Mr Rao's gesture is the direct opposite of Mr Advani's. In any reasonable evaluation of relative sacrifices in the prevailing political climate, Mr Rao's is the lesser deprivation. Moreover, the spirit of the law that Mr Advani respected related to alleged misconduct by a public servant which an MP is. Mr Rao is hardly showing any respect to this spirit when he continues to be an MP ceasing only to be a party president, about whose becoming conduct the law relating to corruption has nothing to say.

And in terms of power equations with the UF, as the leader of CPP, Mr Rao has a great deal more manipulative power than as only the Congress president. Mr Deve Gowda's dependency on Mr Rao for survival, at least in an immediate and proximate sense, is in no way diminished even if the latter ceased to be the president of the Congress. Thus even in a seeming sacrifice Mr Rao has given little away, confirming his reputation as a survivor.

In a strictly legal sense and in terms of the rights of an individual in a free society, there will be much sympathy for Mr Rao. This is particularly manifest in the one case in which he has been actually named an accused on the basis of an assertion of a confessed bribe giver whose extraordinary plea is that Mr Rao did not misuse his powers to confer on him (Pathak) an illegal advantage. The form of words that Mr Rao is alleged to have used by way of reassurances to Mr Pathak is not good enough to hang a dog on. Despite this, Mr Rao has had to resign because of the accident of its being the only case in which criticality