The Hindu Business Line : Art of political speak, fatwa and all that

Seasoned politicians are masters at saying the right thing at the right time. The former Prime Minister and BJP leader, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, used this art to steer the erstwhile BJP-led coalition government through many a storm. The ease with which he bailed out BJP leader, Mr Madanlal Khurana, is another case in point.

POLITICS has much to do with words — statements, speeches, insinuations and accusations. More important, it is the art of saying the right thing at the right time. Sometimes, it is even more important to leave things unsaid. Seasoned politicians of the likes of the former Prime Minister and BJP leader, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, have also mastered the art of double-speak. With a combination of all the above, he was able to skilfully steer the erstwhile BJP-led coalition government through many a storm and turbulence for six years.

The effortless ease with which he managed to bail out the Delhi BJP leader, Mr Madanlal Khurana, has proved yet again that Mr Vajpayee is indeed a politician par excellence. And that the BJP president, Mr L. K. Advani, is hardly a match.

For political observers it is no secret that the two BJP titans have been playing a cat-and-mouse game for many years. Even when Mr Vajpayee was Prime Minister in the NDA government and Mr Advani his deputy, behind the scenes there was a constant tug-of-war between the supporters of Atalji and Advaniji.

On the issue of pushing the Sangh Parivar's agenda on hardline Hindutva, Mr Advani has always been seen as a key proponent, while many Muslims search for excuses to prove that Atalji is not a Muslim-baiter. But in many instances it has been found that while Mr Advani had no hesitation embarking on rath yatras to espouse the cause of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, even while Mr Vajpayee presented the softer face of the Parivar in the BJP, the truth lay elsewhere.

One knew where one stood with the BJP's Loh Purush, but when it came to the party's Vikas Purush, one could never be sure. For not only did he spin webs around his own partymen, but also other politicians and those who looked at him for a direction on sensitive issues, such as communal amity. Not for nothing did the RSS ideologue, Mr K. N. Govindacharya, call him the Sangh Parivar's mukhota (mask).

Take the Gujarat carnage of 2002: The quick changing facets of Mr Vajpayee the country saw during those days were mindboggling. After the Godhra incident, when for days together communal violence raged in the State, the entire country looked at Mr Vajpayee as the prime minister to offer some soothing balm to the minority community.

He measured up admirably and during his visit to Ahmedabad, a grim-looking Prime Minister asked the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, to practise raj dharma. He made it clear that he was not happy with the facilities offered to the riot victims in the refugee camps and that the guilty must be brought to justice, and speedily too.

Hardly had a couple of days elapsed than he said at the BJP's party meeting in Goa that Muslims were often to blame for their woes. But even as he flip-flopped on the larger issue, it must be said to Mr Vajpayee's credit that within the party he tried very hard to bring about the Gujarat Chief Minister's resignation.

But with support from the RSS, Mr Advani and some other senior leaders, Mr Modi kept his job. However, the Gujarat events, and the feeling that the leadership in Delhi failed to get justice for the victims of the communal carnage, contributed its bit to Mr Vajpayee's losing his job two years down the line.

Throughout these developments, Mr Advani, as the Home Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, made no apology for Mr Modi.

Recently, though, even as the RSS, the VHP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar, including his own colleagues in the BJP, bayed for his blood on the Jinnah issue, Mr Advani got unstinted support from Mr Vajpayee. But on the expulsion of Mr Khurana from the party for criticising the Gujarat Chief Minister and challenging the party leadership, the Vikas Purush has run circles around the Loh Purush.

It is obvious that Mr Khurana would not have challenged the BJP's top leadership without support from his mentor, Mr Vajpayee. With the latter choosing to openly criticise Mr Khurana's expulsion from the party for six years, a beleaguered Mr Advani, whose days as party president seem numbered as the RSS is in no mood to forgive him for the Jinnah faux pas during his Pakistan visit, has had to backtrack and restore Mr Khurana's primary BJP membership.

Ironically, while Mr Advani's position as BJP president is getting weaker, his senior colleague seems to be getting stronger. Not shackled by any key position in the party or in the governance space as a senior Opposition leader, Mr Vajpayee is obviously having fun. By refusing a meeting with Mr Advani over the Khurana issue, even as senior BJP leaders scurried back and forth between the homes of the two leaders, he has proved that he can neither be sidelined nor ignored.

In this entire tussle, and the shenanigans that went on in the BJP over the Jinnah remarks, with senior BJP leaders accusing Mr Advani of breaching the Lakshman Rekha, what has suffered is the image of the BJP as a party.

First, the defiance and expulsion of the fiery sanyasin, Uma Bharti, only to be followed by its revocation; then l'affaire Jinnah that sent the party into a tizzy and resulted in several leaders speaking in different voices, with an eye on scoring brownie points with the RSS, and now the Khurana issue. All this has resulted in the BJP emerging a pale shadow of the party it was barely five years ago.

The Sania fatwa

Returning to where this column began — the art of saying the right thing at the right time — we also have the example of some Muslim clerics and so-called scholars who say the wrong things all the time. First, on the Imrana issue we were subjected to the bizarre spectacle of a theologian suggesting that if Imrana's father-in-law had indeed raped her, she was now haraam (forbidden) for her husband and should marry the rapist!And now we have some kattar Muslim clerics going after Sania Mirza and how her short skirts are a "corrupting influence on young women."

"Sania Mirza is a Muslim and she stands half-naked on the tennis court while playing, which is against Islam. She is trying to ape some Western tennis players who dress in a similar way," an AFP report quoted Siddikulla Chowdhury, secretary of the Jamiat-Ulama-Hind Islamic movement. The Hindustan Times quoted another cleric, Maulana Hasheeb-ul-Hasan Siddiqui, thus: "The dress she wears on the tennis court not only doesn't cover large parts of her body, but leaves nothing to the imagination of voyeurs." Such statements should anger not only women, but also anyone who believes in the freedom of every individual. The choice of words, particularly the phrase "leaves nothing to the imagination" gives the game away and also gives us a glimpse into the minds of people who strut around as self-proclaimed guardians of other people's morality. Do these clerics want Sania to play tennis, peeping demurely from behind a veil? Instead of being proud that the Muslim community, where women are an oppressed and suppressed entity, has produced a sporting sensation such as Sania, we have mullahs applying their "imagination" in areas where they have no business to tread. The teenager herself has reacted with reticence and has refused to comment. Let us hope the fatwa dies a natural death.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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