India's dynasty gambles on old loyalties
Posted by Ashok Chowgule (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
The Independent, London
September 5, 1999.
Title: India's dynasty gambles on old loyalties
Author:
Publication: The Independent, London
Date: September 5, 1999.
The hamlet of Vittalapora clings to the side of a granite hill in the
middle of nowhere in Karnataka, southern India. The empty landscape of
scrub, pasture and cotton fields stretches away to a chain of blue
hills in the far distance. It's 4.20 pm on 3 September: pumpkin time
approaches.
Sushma Swaraj, candidate for the ruling alliance in the general
election, the woman on a mission to beat Sonia Gandhi, must finish
campaigning by 5pm or she will be disqualified.
This is, therefore, the last stop on the tour. In 14 days Ms Swaraj
has travelled more than 4,000km, starting at 4 am and getting back at
midnight, addressing 25 to 30 meetings every day, speaking in the
local language, Kannada, which she says she learned in the first three
days of the campaign.
And in between the meetings she has the likes of me to pacify. The way
to interview practically any Indian politician at election time - the
heavily cordoned Mrs Gandhi being the obvious exception - is to
slither uninvited into the back of their car after a campaign stop,
and fire away.
Ms Swaraj is tired and a little croaky but far from down as the car
climbs into Vittalapora, and then you see where she gets her energy. A
swarm of villagers descends on the car like happy bees, whooping and
thumping the boot and bonnet and banging on drums. Young girls in
green and golden saris bring brass trays containing petals and incense
and rotate them solemnly over the bonnet, giving the candidate the
welcome of a returning village daughter.
The hamlet contains barely a dozen whitewashed mud huts, but in a flat
area in the middle, before a bamboo stage, 200 villagers, mostly
women, are sitting very quietly and attentively on the ground, with
another hundred standing behind them. Ms Swaraj ascends the stage and
begins talking to the people in Kannada; quite quickly it is apparent
why she is one of the stars of her party, the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
"Every constituency I have stood for I! have adopted as my child," she
told me in the car, and this cliché comes to life when she speaks. She
has the large, bright eyes of some small friendly mammal; her face is
all motherly curves and dimples, and the big red spot on her brow and
the red paste in the parting of her hair declare her a proud and pious
Hindu. And when she speaks it is as if she were addressing only one
person, in words arising just now to her mind - not repeating for the
300th time (in a foreign tongue) the same speech.
At Vittalapora, as everywhere before, she makes just two points: Mrs
Gandhi, her opponent, is a foreigner by race and religion, with no
experience of politics; and the Congress party she heads, for which
this constituency, Bellary, is one of the safest seats in the country,
has done nothing in 50 years to repay the voters for their loyalty.
If Ms Swaraj is as popular across the rest of this huge constituency
of 1.3 million voters as she is in Vittalapora, Bellary will be Mrs
Gandhi's political graveyard. And it will serve Mrs Gandhi and her
party right.
Congress has always been a complex mixture of the modern and the
reactionary, but 50 years ago it was the best embodiment of India's
progressive urges. Today, in a place like this, it is just the
opposite. The only voters it can depend on are the most backward, the
poorest of the poor - not because Congress has been their champion and
changed their lot, but because they are too uneducated to change the
habit of a lifetime.
If Mrs Gandhi gets their votes, it will be because Congress's gamble
on their stupidity has come good. Mrs Gandhi has spent only two days
campaigning in the constituency, reading out her speech in Hindi
before large crowds, and even this commitment of time may have been
more than originally intended before the Sushma guided missile hit
town. "They thought she would only have to file the nomination and
collect the certificate," Ms Swaraj remarked caustically.
If Mrs Gandhi wins, Congress will have found the constituency where
people are too dumb to ask whether her striking inadequacies as a
candidate - her inexperience, her remoteness, and, yes, her
foreignness - matter. A place dopey enough to vote for the dynastic
principle. The arrogance is breathtaking. One local Congress grandee
expressed it to me very well. "It will be a privilege," he said, "for
the people of Bellary to elect Sonia Gandhi."
But if Congress has got it wrong, Bellary will be seen as a watershed,
both for Congress and the BJP, which is the main pillar of the
National Democratic Alliance, the governing coalition. Bellary is
classic marches land, border territory where the Dravidian culture of
southern India met and mingled, violently and peaceably, with the
Aryan culture of the north.
Something similar is happening in this election. While the BJP is
theoretically a national party, it has never had any strength in the
south before; in last year's general election, the BJP candidate for
Bellary gained only six per cent of the vote. But under the
imperatives of power - and the crafty stewardship of prime minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee - the BJP is visibly changing.
Two years ago it was regarded as "untouchable" by other parties
because of its commitment to radical Hindu nationalist goals. For the
sake of harmony with its many coalition partners, all controversial
goals have been set aside. What the party stands for has accordingly
become rather muddy. But it is the party which fought and "beat"
Pakistan at Kargil; in the simplest terms, its nationalistic
credentials have proved sound. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, it has
a partnership with a local party, Telugu Desam Party, whose leader,
Chandrababu Naidu, is the boldest executor of economic reforms in the
country. In Ms Swaraj, it has a northerner who is a champion of the
touchies and feelies.
And Congress? "What can I do?" Congress's last and rather pathetic
leader, Sitaram Kesri, lamented. "I have only a widow!"
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