Shekhar Gupta: Clutching at a saffron straw

If the BJP and the Left didn't hesitate to align against a common enemy in the past, why can't the Congress now? It doesn't have much to lose anyway

In politics, or war by any other means, the oldest principle is: The enemy’s enemy is your friend. And what do you do when you are so down in the dumps that you aren’t even in the fight? Then conventional rules no longer suffice. Once you get desperate enough you venture out to even reverse it: What if the enemy’s best friend then becomes your friend? If there is the minutest crack visible in their relationship, why not probe it with a finely sharpened hatchet?

That is exactly the game the Congress and its ally, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), are