HVK Archives: A national fantasy
A national fantasy - The Indian Express
Mani Shankar Aiyar
()
23 April 1997
Title : A national fantasy
Author : Mani Shankar Aiyar
Publication : The Indian Express
Date : April 23, 1997
P. Chidambaram, the articulate, English-speaking
philosopher-spokesman of the Tamil Maanila Congress (which means
Tamil State Congress - and has nothing to do with Imelda Marcos!)
has, over the past twelve months, given us two major reasons for
which regional parties such as his are the need of the hour. The
events of the past week have put both theses to the test.
First, he has told us, the era of national parties is over; we are
now, he has asserted, in the era of regional parties. It is
ironic, therefore, that it is the regionals who have ousted the TMC
from its position of national pre-eminence. For although the TMC
had secured the endorsement of the Federal Front (the sub-group of
regionals within the United Front) to run Moopanar for Prime
Minister, it is now the TMC's bitter plaint that it is the
regionals who were the first to opt for a national candidate in
preference to its own regional choice.
The TMC's bitterness is particularly directed at its regional ally,
the DMK. The DMK has never made any bones about its regional base,
its regional character and its regional aspirations. Although
Karunanidhi is far and away the senior-most Chief Minister in the
country, having first become CM all of 28 years ago, a good eight
years before even Jyoti Basu made the grade, he has left it to his
nephew and sundry underlings to look for a niche in Delhi. As far
as he is personally concerned, Fort St. George, the scat of
government in Chennai, has consistently circumscribed the horizons
of his ambition. He came to power defeating the Congress; he has
lost power or remained in power primarily in opposition to the
Congress (and its allies); and through these turbulent decades his
main political opponent has been the present leader of the TMC. Why
anyone should imagine that Karunanidhi would wish to gift his
regional opponent the Prime Ministership of the country -
especially when this opponent has repeatedly reiterated, to the
thunderous applause of his TMC followers, his life's desire of
ousting Karunanidhi to himself become CM defies all reason.
As for the other regionals, none of them has anything to gain from
the other - and, by definition, nothing in common with the other.
For what, after all, can the TMC do to boost the AGP in Assam - or
even the TDP in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh? Nothing, beyond
joining hands against their common enemy - the Congress. But, last
week, the Congress was not the enemy; the enemy was the other UF
aspirants to the Prime Minister's gaddi! It is this internecine
war which the TMC lost, putting paid to Chidambaram's thesis that a
congeries of regionals can aspire to run the Union.
Which brings us to the second of the Chidambaram theses, that what
sets the TMC apart is that it is "a regional party with a national
outlook". Which regional isn't? Even the DMK, in the wake of the
Chinese invasion in 1962, abandoned its secessionist aims to become
a regional party with a national outlook. Bar some factions of the
Akali Dal, and some avowedly secessionist groups that do not even
wish to be represented in the Lok Sabha, all regional parties are
regional parties with a national outlook. The point is that when
there is a clash between the regional interest, narrowly conceived,
and the national interest, broadly perceived, which takes primacy?
For a regional party, the former; for a national party, the
latter. That is what distinguishes a regional from a national.
The TMC has complained that the rejection of its leader has hurt
Tamil pride. But by that token, the rejection of Mulayam Singh
should have hurt UP pride; the betrayal of Chandrababu should have
hurt Andhra pride; the betrayal of Deve Gowda should have hurt
Kannada pride; and the refusal to countenance Laloo should have
hurt Bihari pride. The point is not whose regional pride has been
hurt; the point is: has Gujral's ascension hurt Indian pride?
In a national party, regional aspirations are subordinated to the
national interest; in a regional party, regional interests are
transferred wholesale to the national plane. That is why there is
logic to a regional party seeking pre-eminence in its region and a
national party seeking pre-eminence in the nation. The other
members of the Federal Front are exemplars of this proposition; the
TMC is the old man out. For all the other leaders of the Federal
Front are Chief Ministers of their respective states with no
overriding national ambitions; the leader of the TMC is the only
Federal Front leader who has never been CM - and who, short of a
miracle, can never become CM. He would, however, like to be PM.
In 1988-89, he persuaded the Congress Party High Command to let the
Congress contest the state Assembly elections of January 1989 on
its own, in opposition to the DMK and both factions of the AIADMK.
The Congress won but 26 of the 234 seats in the Assembly, the
leader himself barely securing a plurality of a few hundred votes,
and that too in controversial circumstances. The TMC of 1996-97 is
the TNCC of 1988-89, minus the hard core of party loyalists
(including myself) who have remained with the Indian National
Congress, come what may and whatever our many differences with the
Party High Command.
The TMC, on its own, would not be able to win even 20 seats in the
state Assembly. Yet, the party holds 20 seats in Parliament and
aspires to transform its leader from Kingmaker to King. As a
member of the Congress, Moopanar could quite easily have become PM;
indeed, after Narasimha Rao, he would have been the obvious choice
for Congress President. However, as a regional leader of a
regional party with no regional base, that aspiration was fantasy,
and has been cruelly revealed as such. If "a regional party with a
national outlook" is no more than an operationally meaningless
platitude, a regional party with national ambitions has been shown
up as a contradiction in terms. The people of Tamil Nadu know what
Chidambaram has been trying to hide: that the TMC is not a regional
party with a national outlook but a national party in search of a
regional perch.
That is why the TMC has nowhere to go in Tamil Nadu. The only place
it can go is back to the Congress. For the TMC to stay with the
Chidambaram theses would be to compound the disaster the party has
brought upon itself.
Back
Top
|
