Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: April 9, 2001
Introduction: Norms set by the secular
Taliban are governing the BJP's actions.
It is entirely possible to look
at the almighty fuss over the National Film Awards as a real-life variant
of the Pinky and The Brain show on Cartoon Network. A group of left-leaning
aesthetes were offended by the jury's genuflection before Bollywood commercial
cinema and promptly detected a conspiracy by the Hindutva brigade to take
over the arts world by honouring a starlet who made a fleeting appearance
at a BJP election meeting in Delhi's Chandni Chowk two years ago. The charges
were lapped up by the Sahmat-supporting classes because the villains included
the editor of the RSS weekly Panchajanya, a nondescript BJP MLA from Orissa,
and Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj's election agent
in Bellary-hardly the types the beautiful people in Malcha Marg barsatis
would want to sup with.
The problem of the ancien regime
resisting the encroachments of a wannabe Establishment is a very familiar
one. In recent times, there have been pitched battles between the rival
camps in the Indian Council for Historical Research and the Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts and less publicised skirmishes in other institutions
where the Government has a say in appointments. At the heart of the controversy
is not a grand clash of ideologies, but what Human Resource Development
Minister Murli Manohar Joshi evocatively described as ''It's our turn now''.
On the face of it, Joshi's contention
is unexceptionable. For much of the past 50 years, the Congress-Left establishment
perfected an elaborate patronage system at the taxpayers' expense. Whether
it was the boards of the public sector ITDC and Air-India or the more humble
telephone advisory committees, political appointments were the norm. Every
section, from academics and film stars to petty racketeers came under this
gigantic embrace. In the high noon of Indira Gandhi's socialism, S. Nurul
Hasan and P.N. Haksar handled the left academics and intellectuals, I.K.
Gujral managed the media and Pupul Jayakar patronised the arty crowd. It
was an incestuous world, whose cosy ugliness has been vividly described
by Raj Thapar in her book All Those Years.
Tragically, that is the world the
BJP seems determined to inherit. It is one thing to dismantle the Congress-Left
patronage system. However, to replace one gravy train with another makes
a complete mockery of its claim to being a ''party with a difference''.
The recklessness with which some BJP ministers are proceeding to pack various
institutions with their own set of unworthies has not only corrupted the
party, but made life very difficult for those ministers who have tried
to be different. In the Prime Minister's Office, this use of discretionary
patronage has touched ridiculous levels. There is, for example, mirth in
the corridors of South Block over the case of one notable who was found
to be so completely useless in his job that he may be pensioned off as
India's ambassador to Denmark.
After last month's National Executive,
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee spoke about the need for introspection and
L.K. Advani referred to the Tehelka scandal as a ''wake up call''. But
try telling party loyalists that the rewards of power don't mean a berth
in the Atya-Patya Federation or cadging off the National Bal Bhavan. Good
politics involves bulldozing a process of depoliticisation of national
institutions, not emulating the cronyism of the secular Taliban. Two wrongs
don't make a right.
