Some distinctly anti-federal rumblings

Not even a week has passed since Prime Minister Narendra Modi entranced India with his I-Day speech, which had a judicious mix of charm offensive and a call to religious groups and political parties to take the nation forward — kandhe se kandha milakar (shoulder to shoulder) — and we’ve had a serious problem in Centre-State relations.

Last week saw a quick succession of non-BJP chief ministers being booed, jeered and insulted by the BJP and Modi fans at meetings in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. Incidentally, all these States are going to the polls soon.

The booing began in Solapur where Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan was sharing the dais with Modi; he was continuously heckled through his short speech. A fallout of this was Chavan refusing to participate in the foundation stone-laying of the Nagpur metro rail project by Modi the same evening.

Next, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, yet another Congress Chief Minister, was hooted at while participating in a meeting with Modi in Haryana. The next victim was Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, who participated with Modi in an event of the NTPC plant in the State. Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government is supported by the Congress.

Even as he was heckled during his speech with a section of the crowd chanting “Modi, Modi”, to his credit, he dug his heels in, completed his speech and urged the audience to respect the event and the office of the Chief Minister.

With these incidents, a war of words has broken out between the Congress and the BJP and its allies. The Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray, who looks at an almost certain victory in Maharashtra, and other BJP leaders have absolved Modi of blame and asked the Congress and its allies to look closely at the “misgovernance” they have provided in the States they rule.

While all this may look fine in the world of politics, a continuance of such a situation — non-BJP chief ministers boycotting the Prime Minister’s meetings in their States — doesn’t augur well for the democracy of which all of us are so justifiably proud.

It has the dangerous potential of a real breakdown in Centre-State relations in several parts of India. And this would be disastrous in a country where the States — whether of the ruling party or the Opposition — are getting more and more autonomous.

An angry Soren later termed such heckling “rape of the federal structure of India” and his party, the JMM, demanded an apology for what happened. Soren’s words might be harsh, but the underlying sentiment cannot be dismissed.

Today, the BJP is riding high on the Modi wave — with the anointing of Amit Shah as the party chief, after he carried off a miracle in Uttar Pradesh in the recent Lok Sabha polls — and is facing the coming Assembly polls with huge confidence.

But hubris is best contained by a look at history. In 1985, the Congress won 415 seats, and look at where it is today — on its knees, begging for a formal post in the Lok Sabha, as it has not even qualified for the stipulated minimum of 10 per cent of the total seats. It is now hanging on to the coattails of the Supreme Court.

So what can Modi do if the people of the States angry at their “non-performing” chief ministers boo them, asks Thackeray in an editorial in Saamna .

It is futile to blame him, he thunders. Returning to what Modi can do — apparently at the Jharkhand meet, Modi did put up his hand asking the crowd to stop the disturbance. But at best it must have been a half-hearted attempt as it did not get the desired result. And it certainly wasn’t the assertive Modi this nation has been seeing in the run-up to the general elections and beyond. Couldn’t he have got up and told the crowd, with folded hands, or with a frown and a command if required, to maintain peace?

But, unfortunately, political contingencies such as winning elections and getting a matching representation in the States — and hence later in the Rajya Sabha — often take over the right and just thing to do. India is yet to see a leader who can rise above narrow political gains.

‘Nation first’ as a slogan sounds great, but juxtapose this against unseating opposition governments and winning polls, and the fizz often goes out of it, leaving mere jingoism. Going forward, if this dangerous trend continues, it will soon trickle down to such heckling at meetings of Central (BJP) ministers in non-BJP States.

If such a thing were to happen in Tamil Nadu, can you even imagine the response of a powerful regional leader such as J Jayalalithaa? She might be a friend or well-wisher of Modi and the BJP, but she certainly cannot get too close to a party that can erode the AIADMK vote base, given the pathetic plight of the DMK. As the Hindi adage goes: Ghoda ghaas se dosti karega toh khayega kya? (If the horse befriends the grass, what will it eat?)

And in West Bengal, what would our mercurial Didi do? After all, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! (The actual quote from a William Congreve play — it’s not Shakespeare, as often wrongly attributed — is “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”)

So the quicker Modi puts an end to this boorish behaviour, the better. He doesn’t need lessons from anybody on how to do it. After all, the voters have both humiliated and punished the Congress through the just and powerful route of the ballot. Does a triumphant victor need more, and through such repulsive means?

Hopefully, the Prime Minister and his PMO will end this aberration before this corrosive acid erodes the federal fabric of democratic India.

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