Many Quams, One Nation

If the ghost of separatism is to be laid, what happens to the Anandpur Saheb resolution, it may be asked. First, it is difficult to be sure what the resolution said as there are many versions of it and none accepted as authentic till date. Second, the resolution was above all a plea for reordering Centre-state relations, something that the Sarkaria Commission has examined in full detail, and action upon which awaits the pleasure of the present government. Third, much wrongful stress was laid on the use of the word quam which was alleged to imply a nationhood distinct from the Indian, when it could also have been seen as an expression of sub-nationalism which is subsumed in a higher nationalism.

 

The elections hold a special significance for large pan-Indian parties like the Congress and the BJP, as also for the future shape of national politics. The news could not have been worse for the Congress as it will deal a severe blow to its new president Sitaram Kesri, who had been banking on engineering something dramatic with which to bounce the Congress back into serious reckoning. In the event, the fortunes of the Congress have worsened, and this should spell the end to whatever imminent danger there existed for the Deve Gowda government. The Congress will be licking its wounds and will need time before it can think of striking again. It doesn't help that the party seems to be more in the grip of the Buta Singh-Kamal Nath culture than of secularism and national support.

For the BJP the results are also a turning point. Not because they have given some permanence to an unlikely marriage with a regional party which has a particular religious credo (after all, the Akali-BJP alliance thrived through the sixties and seventies until the basis of politics changed), but because the sheer success of regional alliances is putting paid to the BJP's faith and dream of unitary rule. Now the party has three thriving alliances in Maharashtra, Haryana and Punjab with the possibility of a successful one in Bihar with the Samta Party. So the BJP may now officially set out for the goal of capturing national power through the regional route. If this were to happen, it would fully enshrine the robustly growing doctrine of federalism, and (dare one say it) of secularism as well.