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Immaculate conceptions

I tell you, this toppling business is the best thing that could've happened to India. The gloves came off -- and the mask crashed down. Since I'd never been taken in by the bullshit about the virtues consecrating the Shroud -- her tyaag, her intellect, her asceticism, her devotion to this land, indeed, her hidden, inner, mystic power -- I simply never realised the impact that the last week has made on those who had an immaculate conception of her. As one distressed pal wrote, "I think Sonia has been exposed by this political tamasha. She is pathetic in her strategy and has handed over this country to the rabid loonies of the Hindu right." Mooh me ghee shakkhar, yaar!

If I were a Boobus Indicus, I'd say that the Congress was responsible for the brainwashing. But since I'm not, I'll let Swapan Dasgupta -- oooh, so deliciously viciously -- tell you who should be eating mud: "It was a well-cultivated myth that had no basis in reality but yet was so readily lapped up by the editorial classes. There is little point in blaming stenographers hungry for appealing theories and sound bites for this theoretical travesty." Oh Christ, why didn't *I* think of that "stenographers"? Another gem: "[Sonia] willfully conveyed the bewildering message that she was coy about returning to Race Course Road and that her primary interest was rebuilding the party block by block. 'Is she ready?' asked the hacks innocently." "Innocently"? Hahahaha...

Yup, editorials-wise, the week's been a laugh riot. No matter how they cloaked it, I could only see secular talking heads banging against secular walls. Till that resolute "Yes, I am going to do so", our Innocents may have actually believed the garbage they'd been dishing out. Even after the coup that decimated Sitaram Kesri, they'd stuck with their fantasies. It was only after the Shroud's adamant advance of a minority government that light finally dawned: The prime ministerial chair had always been the goal.

The CPI-M Politburo has decided that the services of Jyoti Basu will not be spared to lead the country. I'd never doubted that. They are shrewd, they study the polls, and they know the effect a "third front" government will have on the next elections. Anybody who thinks their hatred of the BJP is based on its supposed communalism, should take a reality check -- it's all about Hindu shraddha's never having allowed Communism to take hold in India. Too, their motives for crowning the Shroud have zero to do with the populace they claim to serve. The Red ragtag knows that Marxism is a dead duck -- on their own steam, they've no chance to screw this country; Comrade Surjeet himself admitted, "At this juncture, Basu as prime minister will send the Sensex nose-diving." Please, no more immaculate conceptions. All that the Left can hope to do is rule by proxy.

The Sonia stratagem was really quite brilliant. It ousted the BJP; it installed a shaky minority government at the mercy of the Left; and it placed a clueless person at the top. In effect, it would have set the Congress back to the Golden Age of Kesri. No matter what constraints it would be working under, the party would've had to bear the full blame for decisions the mob took and face the janata's ire. Meanwhile, the pinkos would've merrily been pulling the strings.

Immediately after the ousting of the government, Surjeet declared: "We will extend issue based support to the alternative government from outside... We would not expect the alternative government to completely change their economic policies but would certainly put conditions before them that the economic policies have to be pursued keeping the interests of the poor and down-trodden. These include re-organising the public distribution system and cheaper foodgrain to the public... the Congress should stake claim to form the government. Even then, we will have our say in the functioning of the alternative government." They had it all chalked out... Chal kathputli, naach...

Remember last March and Surjeet's meetings with Arjun Singh to curry a front to keep the BJP out? Two days later, he was blasted by the Left Front for announcing that the United Front was prepared to support a Congress government. In his desperation, the comrade had pledged the Left's support -- without an endorsement from the Politburo. This is exactly what the Shroud did. She went empty-handed to the President and proposed that the Congress would form a government supported by all the other Opposition parties from outside. And guess who'd been having meetings with her... Chal kathputli...

Frankly, these dorks live in some strange world of their own. Seema Mustafa writes in The Asian Age: "In politics there are always some individuals who do not like to create but derive peculiar satisfaction from their ability to destroy." Correct. JJ, Swamy are all of that. But... "Of late this tribe has grown... but if there was an award to be given, the only recipient would be Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav." Mulayam??? Of course. He helped destroy the government. But... "...sabotage the carefully laid out plan by Opposition parties to not just bring down the government but to successfully install an alternative government in its stead." Talk about warped! But, oooh... the great and the good are really cut up with the Mullah...

It's true, Mulayam did have a personal axe to grind. It seems, the Round Mound had asked the Shroud for the reason the Congress opposed the Samajwadi Party's inclusion in the proposed government. Consequently, Arjun Singh supplied her with the criminal records of several MPs of the SP. Mulayam's anti-Congress posture hardened thereafter.

Of course, it didn't help that the Congress had targeted the SP during the Pachmarhi and Hardwar sessions. In fact, Mulayam was just as furious at Surjeet for not making "any effort to advise the Congress to attack the BJP instead of the SP" after Sonia criticised him during her Lucknow meet. He landed up saying that Surjeet should not teach him how to fight the BJP.

And then there's the question of the crumbling Great Wall of Chennai. It seems that just like she'd presented Atalji with a wish-list, she gifted one to the Shroud, as well. The updated version was nearly the same as the old one, with some extras: FERA cases against her companion Sasikala, and the inclusion of her Sancho Panza in the Union Cabinet.

Apparently, Congress negotiators told her that their party would "find ways" of quashing the cases pending at the Centre against Sasikala -- but, they wouldn't give her a guarantee. Next, Swamy on the same platform as the Shroud was a near impossibility: His alleged role in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination is under investigation of the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency set up by the CBI. As for Karunanidhi's dismissal, it was straight-away ruled out due to the expected opposition from the BJP and the Left. Worse, no discussion on the AIADMK ministerial quota was entertained. JJ's anti-Congress posture toughened thereafter.

What "principle" do these pinkos soapbox? Less than a fortnight ago, Comrade Basu went on record that his party would not touch the AIADMK with a barge pole. What happened next? The DMK was left holding its you-know-what. Last year, they did the same thing to Chandrababu Naidu: They made eyes at his main rival in Andhra Pradesh, the Congress, and when Naidu refused to play along, he got shafted -- straight into the arms of the BJP...

Meanwhile, Chief Secularist Chandrashekhar oh-so-magnanimously declared, "...we are unable to use one another's good points. Instead we keep harping on the negatives. This kind of attitude is not helpful in running a parliamentary democracy. We should try to take advantage of everybody's positive points." This, after bringing down Atal Bihari Vajpayee...

Meanwhile, Sancho Panza finally got it right: The entire Opposition debacle was the fault of the RSS, which "rumour-spreading society" had pilfered the round table from Congress headquarters and thus prevented the party from holding a round table conference with its fellow morale-and-country builders (just kidding -- but it sounds plausible, inn'it). His next project would be to exterminate the RSS (true). One way ticket to Lala Land...

Meanwhile, 10 days minus 5 minutes after the fall of the Vajpayee government, the Shroud notified the nation, "We are trying to get the support of those parties which had promised to back us. Several parties have already expressed their support for us. But some parties are allowing their personal ambitions to affect the Congre, er... country's interests."

Meanwhile, Harkishen Singh Surjeet retired licking his wounds after realising that the Shroud hadn't fallen prey to the master-manipulator's masterplan... Don't forget, Sharad Pawaretti had held that, in his view, "the better option will be to go to polls"...

Meanwhile, your favourite debauchee put her feet up on the pouffe, snuggled deep into the sofa, and grinned like a Cheshire cat while watching on Doordarshan her preferred editors, India Today's Prabhu Chawla and The Pioneer's Chandan Mitra, hold forth with ToI's Dilip Padgaonkar and H K Dua. Chawla: "There's something genetically wrong with the Congress! They just cannot take another majority government!" Mitra: "The Congress philosophy is to not allow another government. If somebody shows signs of stability -- bring them down. There is no issue for which they brought down the BJP. The no confidence vote was totally unnecessary!" Chawla: "I think we should have a President, full stop. No 'working' President."

Meanwhile, my pal Rajdeep Sardesai had organised his own circus on Star: Samajwadi Amar Singh, Comrade Somnath Chatterjee, Congressman Kapil Sibal and Samata's Digvijay Singh. One of the few complete sentences I heard was that, even before the confidence vote, a "senior Congress leader" had said that the Samajwadi Party was "a flock of migratory birds." Amar Singh asserted that despite knowing this, the SP had voted against the government -- and that's how secular they are. This brought a whole bunch of loud, overlapping rebuttals from Sibal, Chatterjee and Amar Singh for a while...

The next discernible thing I heard was Amar Singh referring to Sonia's targeting the SP in UP politics -- and who was the enemy of secularism, SP or BJP, huh? And again: din, clamour and shouts. So then Rajdeep says to Amar Singh, "It seems like you carried the battle of UP to Delhi." Absolute pandemonium...

And all the while, Digvijay Singh just sits there, smirking as wickedly as I am. Finally, Rajdeep notices and says words to effect that, Digvijay here is smiling away while all you supposed allies are at each other's throats. Cue for Digvijay to pounce with the alliance line: only we can give a stable government...

Ladieees and Gentlemennn, I present: the Third Front...

Varsha Bhosle