| The
Congress, as noted earlier, has always had a large Brahmin presence
in its top central leadership and even state leadership in much of
north India. This presence was strengthened as a result of the 1967
general election when a number of non-Brahmin leaders such the party
chief Kamaraj Nadar (Tamil Nadu), party treasurer S.K.Patil
(Bombay), and Atulya Ghosh (party boss in West Bengal) were
defeated, and then of the split in the Congress in 1969 when Indira
Gandhi drove them out. Rajiv Gandhi maintained the status quo. Thus
there is a dramatic break with the past. Suddenly, the character of
the party has changed in two other significant ways. It has become
predominantly a south Indian and western Indian party and it has no
individual capable of providing charismatic leadership of the type
it has been used to.
There is, on the face of it, an
ephemeral quality about developments which have transformed the
Indian political scene since 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi came under
pressure on the Bofors payoff issue. Three of these deserve notice.
One: V.P.Singh's exist in 1987 first from the government on the
question of an inquiry he ordered as defence minister into the HDW
submarine deal without the prior consent of Rajiv Gandhi, and then
from the party on the issue of the appointment of the American
company Fairfax to look into alleged violations of foreign exchange
regulations by Indian corporations and individuals when he held the
finance portfolio, again without the prior consent of the prime
minister in August 1989 to order implementation of the Mandal
Commission report favouring 22.5 per cent reservations in government
and semi government jobs for the so-called other backward castes,
other than the scheduled castes. Three: the response of
L.K.Advani, leader of the avowedly Hindu organization, the Bharatiya
Janata Party, to it.
|
