Aditi Phadnis: But(a) humble servant

PLAIN POLITICS

Buta Singh showed surprising spine for a person known to do what his political bosses want.

After the severe political mauling and embarrassment it has been visited because of the actions of super-loyal Congressmen appointed as governors in Jharkhand and Goa, the Congress must be heaving a sigh of relief.

Bihar Governor, Sardar Buta Singh, too, doesn't appear to feel impelled to prove his loyalty as a soldier of the party.

He appears to be in no hurry to appoint advisors though the pressure on him is enormous. In Bihar, the vote has been against Lalu Prasad in this Assembly election, so logically, as governor, he should exercise his own judgement about the nature of the administration.

Whatever his other faults, Singh has always listened to and respected the public mood, and will hopefully do so in his current assignment as well.

He first came to the Lok Sabha as an Akali Dal leader from Ropar. He moved to the Congress when the movement for the Punjabi Suba fizzled out.

In the 1980s, he, along with Giani Zail Singh, had to make reparations to the (largely upper caste Jat Sikh) Golden Temple theocracy for his role in the government-initiated rebuilding of the Akal Takht after Operation Blue Star.

He, a Mazhabi Sikh, had been excommunicated from the Sikh Panth. To be taken back, he cleaned devotees' utensils and shoes at the Golden Temple as punishment.

In this, he admitted that the Congress government's first move to get militants out of a house of prayer was incorrect and that it was more important to bow before a theocracy than defend the decision of a government and the party to which he belonged.

There could be two views on this but there is no doubt that his stock went up after this.

The man is easily influenced. As home minister in 1989, Singh stood by and watched as bricks inscribed with Ram's name were consecrated, brought to Ayodhya and "temple construction" for the Ram temple began on land that was still disputed.

Singh tried to plead and cajole Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leaders into shifting the site of the puja. But drunk with the success of their mobilisation, these leaders were not really in the mood to listen.

Later he said ingenuously that all the VHP leaders did was "to place seven bricks at that site". The Parliament saw the dangers of co-option of a Hindu mobilisation by a government that was being buffeted by several crises simultaneously, and passed a unanimous resolution that the government should have nothing to do with temple construction.

What Singh could not have perceived was that a new phase in the Congress' history, of flirtation with soft Hindutva, started with this move.

When the chickens came home to roost and the Rajiv Gandhi government lost power, Singh said the elections were lost to Ram Lala. Obviously weary of battling the overwhelming and seemingly universal Hindu opinion that the Hindu and the construction of the Ram temple were synonymous, Singh threw in the towel.

He joined the winners instead of being on the losing side and defected to the BJP.

Congressmen always want to shove under the carpet the reality of having closet Hindutva-wallahs in their ranks. They had to face this squarely when the P V Narasimha Rao government came to power and the K Karunakaran Committee gave its report on the decline of the Congress in UP.

It remarked that in several districts and villages, entire Congress party offices defected wholesale to the BJP. The buildings were the same, the people were the same, except that it was the saffron flag that began to flutter overnight from Congress offices.

The charge was led by senior Congressmen like Singh.

He become a Cabinet minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government in 1998. But as minister for civil supplies in the P V Narasimha Rao government, Singh had tried to assist Rao in getting a majority by attempting to get Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs to vote for the Rao government.

At around the time he became communication minister, the court charge-sheeted him in this case. J Jayalalithaa, seeking a way to part from the BJP, demanded that charge-sheeted ministers resign.

Singh said he was no different from other charge-sheeted ministers like L K Advani. So there was no rationale for demanding his resignation if the others were going to continue in the government.

Vajpayee was having none of that. The BJP forced him to quit within 29 days of appointing him minister.

Singh bided his time and then left the BJP, attempting to launch an independent regional political party. It sank without a trace.

He finally returned to the Congress fold in the finest tradition of veteran Congressmen, never really comfortable in outfits that are not true regencies and where the onerous burden of thinking is not gratefully left to the High Command.

However flexible his political beliefs might be, Singh is an MP of the traditional sort who believes that the only way to win elections is by nurturing and developing your constituency.

He left Punjab when elections could not be held there in 1984, and contested Lok Sabha elections from Jalore in Rajasthan, which he has represented for several terms. He had the distinction of being the candidate to win by the highest margin in Rajasthan once "" upwards of 1,50,000 votes.

The reason is clear. The roads in Jalore are a sight to behold "" you feel you're flying. Sirohi and Jalore, the twin districts in this constituency, have a network of optical fibre cables (OFC) that is the envy of many larger cities.

Rajasthan has Internet facilities in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jalore. Five of Rajasthan's eight 132 kv power plants are in this constituency.

Agriculture facilities like a Krishi Vikas Kendra, groundwater irrigation planned following a satellite survey, drinking water, and the leveraging of his personal resources (his farm supplied cattle feed to this predominantly pastoral economy during the drought) has ensured a continued presence.

He lost the last Lok Sabha election to former BJP President Bangaru Laxman's wife, Sushila, mainly because he met with a serious road accident days before the election and was unable to campaign.

The UPA government offered to make him governor, an offer he accepted.

Former Chief Minister of Nagaland S C Jamir was made governor because he was proving to be a major hurdle in the emergence of a younger party leadership in his home state.

Syed Sibte Razi who has always served the Congress was rewarded with the governorship. Singh was given a job that no one really expected would be particularly politically significant. What a mistake!

Earlier this week, a Congress leader named a pro-Lalu bureaucrat and said it was logical that he should be appointed advisor. This hasn't happened, suggesting the governor is keeping his own counsel.

The people of Bihar are looking to Buta Singh to do the right thing "" right by them, not by the friends of the governor.