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Altered states

That Mr George Fernandes has been given the all-important defence portfolio, and Dr Murli Manohar Joshi given science and technology in addition to human resources, is a Machiavellian move that delights me. (Thunder... lightning... Darth Vader-like rumble from the secular heavens: I sseeee the hannd of the RSS in thisss...)

Georgekaka (yes, he's carried me as a child) is going to make all the right-sounding liberal noises which will soothe the West; he will attend to the defence forces with the same zeal as he protected his trade unions; he has the radical militant streak which made him go underground during the Emergency and hatch a plot to blow up railway tracks; and he won't have the time nor the duty to snuff out Coke. Naturally, the defence bureaucracy will keep doing their own thing (notice how Mr I K 'Open-Border' Gujral changed his serenades to Pakistan within a month or so). But best of all, this still-flamboyant, still-hirsute 68-year-old man won't display a bare upper thigh a la the dhoti-lifting Mulayam Singh.

In the meantime, the noted hardliner in the BJP, Dr Joshi, who's tutored two former prime ministers, V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar (hmmm... that's not such a commendation, after all), could well be busy boosting the technological resources of Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, the scientific advisor to the defence minister... Oooh... it's lookin' goo-ood! <

If that weren't reason enough to gloat, the first thing Home Minister L K Advani did was to set about bringing the CBI back under the purview of his executive branch -- which Indira Gandhi had de-fanged for her own political purposes. Since Mrs G's tenure, the CBI has been, more or less, part of the PMO. Please note that though all the anti-Congress parties deplored this anomaly, the "clean" UF government did zip to restore the agency to said ministry. In fact, it, too, used the CBI as its private instrument of political manoeuvring vis-`a-vis sensitive cases against members of its constituent and supporting-from-outside parties. Now, Advaniji's real test lies in the CBI's handling of the Bofors affair *and* the cases against Jayalalitha...

I do adore Mr Advani: His second task was to order his officials to prepare to end the restrictions on normal traffic flow during VIP movement, to check the inconvenience caused to the public. "What is this VIP movement?" he asked, adding that he intended to lift the traffic ban even during the PM's transit! Then, he questioned the security cover provided to a horde of politicians. Anticipating a furore over the withdrawal of Z-plus security, Advaniji stymied his rivals with, "Let it begin with ourselves." This should put an end to the culture of politicians being more equal than the janata. I wonder how Congressmen will cope with such altered states...

Now for the most crucial portfolio: As you well know, this columnist is severely handicapped in the economics department, and therefore will abstain from commenting on finance. That Mr Yashwant Sinha is known to be a liberal, comforts me, and his statement -- "My first task would be to restore the investor's confidence" -- makes me sigh with relief. (Besides, he's quite a stunner in his own grey-haired way...) Other than that I have nil to say about the FM.

I don't really care about the rest of the ministries -- in the end, it's the gnomes who do it all. Except one: information and broadcasting has me chewing my nails. One of the first things Sushma Swaraj had said during Atalji's previous government was that there was a need to evolve a dress code for sari-wearing anchors on television -- something to do with how much flesh can be revealed. I don't yet know what she saw wrong in whose attire. If the lady insists on going Victorian prudish, I'm opting out of, what Bhosle-baiters call, my BJP-mouth-piece mode.

The BJP has its share of nuts -- and most of them are women. But the one who truly repels me is Khajuraho's MP Uma Bharati. In one of her election speeches, the sanyasan said she would oppose the commercialisation of "this heritage city" and agitate against the Spice Girls concert at Khajuraho in November: "Agar woh ladkiyan chhoti skirt pehan kar aayengi, to main unhe airport par land tak nahi karne dungi (If those girls come here in minis, I won't let them even land)." The point everybody seems to have missed is -- what is Khajuraho famous for...?

No, I do not like Uma Bharati; I sense great frustration about her. The first and (I hope) last time I met her to probe her stance on women's reservations, she took off on "jeans-wearing, elite, urban, female journalists who drove around in their Maruti Esteems and thought themselves capable of understanding the Real India." It was all obviously directed at me, even though I'd arrived in a rickshaw. Naah, bad scene.

Frankly, I'm too much of a hedonist to be fully comfortable with Sangh Parivaris. But now that two-times Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist John Burns, while profiling our country's prime minister in the New York Times, hasn't much to say about Mr Vajpayee's six decades of politicking, even while accenting, "Unlike many purist Brahmins who shun alcohol and are strict vegetarians, he has a taste for Scotch whisky, curries and kebabs... Though unmarried, he has lived since the late 1950s with a woman whose 37-year-old married daughter he has described as almost like a child of his own," I feel great affinity for Atalji. As Prem Paniker said to me: "Pathetic. I guess, coming from the land of Clinton, even the best of their journalistic talents are unable to think above groin level." Hahahaha...

John Burns is a clever man: In the article, he quietly slips in terms like "Hindu supremacy" -- which, for an American, instantly evokes White supremacists of the Ku Klux Klan type. He calls Advaniji a "Hindu nationalist zealot" and worries that "The post will give wide police powers to Advani, who remains under indictment for allegedly inciting a Hindu mob that destroyed a 16th century Muslim mosque and killed 13 Muslims..." And all this goes under the title, "Vajpayee: moderate extremist who likes his Scotch".

Earlier, on March 2, Mr Burns did a lon-n-g piece on, of all the people, Gopal Godse. It was titled, "Hindu Nationalist Still Proud of Role in Killing Father of India", and linked the BJP to the kind of fanaticism that brought about Gandhiji's death. If that failed to evoke anti-BJP-ism, Mr Burns, for extra measure, threw in a "swastika" drawn near the urn containing Nathuram's ashes... Yes, we Hindus know what our swastik signifies -- but does the common American?

The Western press has been consistent in its treatment of the BJP: During elections, the party has been projected as a gang of murderers and terrorists. For instance, The Times, London, of March 1 said, "Five years ago, mobs led by Hindu extremists hacked 950 Muslims to death. Last night, as India completed the final main round of voting in its general election, the country's minorities were waiting apprehensively to see whether the same 'saffron army' of Hindu extremists and nationalists would come to power... Shiv Sena not only instigated the Bombay riots but also, together with BJP supporters, played a significant part in organising the destruction of a mosque at Ayodhya..." Whither proof? Has the Srikrishna Commission Report been delivered to Christopher Thomas in advance...?

And all this garbage came juxtaposed with: "The BJP's strong showing came despite a spirited campaign by Sonia Gandhi, widow of the murdered prime minister Rajiv. Last week, in front of 200,000 people at a rally in Bombay, she swore that she was "ready to give my life for this country" -- as her husband and mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister, had done -- to defeat the forces of Hindu extremism."

Then, Time magazine's Anthony Spaeth reported that "The BJP, a pro-Hindu party with links to various fundamentalist groups, hopes to rule over a country that is currently home to many non- Hindus, including 120 million Muslims, the second largest Islamic population in the world... The party's pedigree is perhaps its most worrisome feature. It was formed in 1952, under the name of the Jana Sangh, as the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a militant Hindu group formed in 1925. The RSS shot to prominence in 1948 when one of its renegade zealots assassinated Mahatma Gandhi for being sympathetic toward Muslims..." And then he quoted The Shroud of Turin: "These people only want to push our country into a deep pit of communal hatred." OUR country? Whose? Spaeth's and yours?

Guys, us idiots know that your respective nations would be more comfortable negotiating with a fellow-White and European ruler of India, but can't you at least be subtle about displaying your preferences? We know that the opinion makers (including novelists) of the US work in tandem with the Pentagon, that the English Establishment includes the conservative press. But is it really necessary to indulge in international propaganda? Of course we know that you're darn worried about the BJP's stand on the nuclear option... But, like our perpetually whining secularists, you will just have to learn to cope with altered states...

Is the BJP going to win the confidence vote? I can't say. With dorks like Mulayam Singh and Subramanian Swamy around, the party faces an onslaught from all directions. Who knows, a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, *we* may be facing another altered state. That's the bitch of it all.

Varsha Bhosle