'Bhasmasuras' of Indian Politics

Finally, the political crisis in Karnataka appears to have blown over with a ‘dictatorial’ Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa succumbing to the demands of rebel MPs led by Bellary’s (in) famous Reddy brothers, after an emotional outburst on television. With his wings clipped, the Chief Minister presented a rag-tag compromise as a memento to party stalwart L K Advani on his 82nd birthday in Delhi. In the process, he had to ‘sacrifice’ not only his close aides such as Minister Shobha but also loyal bureaucrats like Baligar.
While the emergence of the Reddys, mining barons who have wreaked havoc with their mining activities on the Andhra-Karnataka border, as political heavy weights influencing the fate of democratically elected Governments is a matter of serious concern for one and all, the development should also open the eyes of political parties like the BJP, which swear by morality and ethics, to the follies of aligning with such elements in their blind pursuit of power.

All said and done, it was the Reddy brothers, who facilitated the formation of the first saffron Government south of Vindhyas, by luring away legislators from the opposition Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) and it was but natural that they would extract their pound of flesh. The days of freebies and free lunches are over, so are convictions and ideological commitments in politics. Politics has become a marriage of convenience and power has become an end in itself and no more a means to serve the masses.

In Indian mythology, we have the story of Bhasmasura, the demon who obtained from Lord Siva the power to turn anyone into ashes by just keeping his hand over them and then turned against the same divinity to try his hand out, literally. In the West, we have the famous story of Frankenstein.

But then grooming monsters are not new to us in Indian politics. Wasn’t it the Congress party which groomed Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale with the vested interest of belittling the Akalis. The Sikh militancy, the Operation Bluestar, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the unfortunate riots that followed it are too deep scars etched in our national memory. So is the case with the LTTE, which ultimately devoured a promising national leader.

Examples galore both domestically and internationally. The US is paying the price to date for raising the Mujahideen in Afghanistan while Pakistan is today at the receiving end of Taliban, the Islamic student militia, which it sustained and nourished for decades.

The decline of the BJP has little to do with either Hindutva or Jinnah. They are at best excuses. For a party that projected itself as ‘different’, the nemesis has its origins in the umpteen compromises it made for the sake of power. In its pursuit of power, the party threw to the winds all norms of propriety and ethics and colluded with the most corrupt.
Soon, the façade fell of and the people, who were looking for an alternative to the five-decade long rule of the Congress party, realized they were being led up the garden path by a poor copy cat of the very same party they were planning to boot out for good. If corruption and compromise are the hallmarks, then why not the original, they asked and voted back the Congress for a second consecutive term.

From the Tehelka tapes to the cash for questions and MPLAD scam, BJP leaders and MPs ruled the roost and established new benchmarks in political debasement - from a national President taking Rs One Lakh on camera to an MP being sold for Rs 5,000/- for a parliament question. The compromise with the Reddy brothers will add another inglorious chapter to the party’s long list of unpardonable compromises for the sake of sticking on to power. After all, wasn’t this the party which aligned with Jayalalithaa after organizing nation-wide protests against the arrest of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi by her Government? If BJP intends to restore its credibility and regain the confidence of the Indian people, it will have to live up to its ‘PROMISES’ and end once for all, the tendency to ‘COMPROMISE’.