| Movie and sports stars are generally ahead in the line; there is some inner craving amongst the likes of Hema Malini, Jeetendra and Navjot Singh Sindhu, to leap from performances on the screen and pitch, and seek legitimacy in real-life public roles. |
| It's not so very different from Sunil Dutt, Vyjanthimala, Rajesh Khanna, Raj Babbar et al engaging in a final fling as their film careers wane. |
| Apart from bringing some welcome colour "" and no doubt some crowd-pulling appeal "" to the election process, it's a move that looks good CVs. Joining politics can give film folk a third dimension they otherwise seem to lack; it can even increase their longevity in the spotlight. |
| More intriguing is why public figures of the stature of Sir V S Naipaul and Bhupen Hazarika need to ally with the BJP or, indeed, any political party? |
| They have been too long feted for their achievements to need the imprimatur of political legitimacy. Hazarika's biography describes him as "the most important Assamese singer and composer in post-Independent India". |
| In his early years he was a passionate Leftist. So what? Many of yesterday's Leftists have crept steadily up the greasy pole of the new Right. |
| Hazarika also holds a Ph.D from Columbia University, has served as a member of the Assam Assembly and was until recently chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Does he now need the ruling party's patronage for jobs, honours, elections? |
| Sir Vidia didn't go as far as joining up but he graced the BJP office and fended off a barrage of questions. Refusing to comment on the demolition of the Babri Masjid or the Gujarat riots, among the more curious remarks he made were that the idea of a foreigner being barred from becoming prime minister was "worth considering". |
| This from a writer of eminence who owes some of his greatest debts "" acclaim as well as honour "" to Britain, the country of his adoption. And also his greatest escape in life. |
| For as Diana Athill, his distinguished editor who published the first 19 of his books, reveals in her excellent memoir of literary life Stet: "Vidia had felt fear and dislike of Trinidad ever since he could remember... (in) his first non-fiction book, published in 1962... (he) examined the reasons why he feared and hated the place where he was born." |
| After the Nobel Prize, a knighthood and treasure chest of glittering prizes what does Sir Vidia want? A prize from India's ruling party, surely, bona fide acknowledgement that he is a great son of India, and not just an outstanding Person of Indian Origin? As his feisty wife put it, "he can be appropriated by anybody" "" liberals and conservatives alike. In other words, Sir V S Naipaul is up for grabs. |
| If it's clear what late-comers want from the BJP, what does the BJP want from them? It's own form of legitimacy, as it adopts the attitude of a tolerant, centrist party. |
| If Gujarat had happened the other day rather than two years ago or if Atal Bihari Vajpayee had defended Narendra Modi recently, it is unlikely that Naipaul and Hazarika would be queuing at the BJP office this week. |
| As it is, the BJP has successfully forged an image of the party of the future, welding the illusion of a dynamic economy with the peace divided arising from the recent Indo-Pakistan thaw. |
| A younger PLU class of educated professionals who wouldn't have dreamt of voting BJP in the last election are all set to do so today. "The BJP has given people like us a sense of citizenship of the world state," a young Indian banker on Wall Street told me the other day. |
| Where voters will go is also determined by lack of choice. The Congress Party appears so utterly bereft of ideology, ideas or leadership that the BJP has skilfully manoeuvred itself to appropriate many of its former votebanks. |
| This includes not just the normal gaggle of film and sports stars but also the literary stars. That's why Ashoka Road is currently such a popular address in New Delhi. |
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