 "Devi Prasad Tripathi")
Devi Prasad Tripathi, Nationalist Congress Party spokesperson, was Rajiv Gandhi's close aide during the latter's prime ministerial tenure. Tripathi tells Archis Mohan how Narendra Modi may eat up his creator, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has a lot to learn. Edited excerpts:
How do you see the current political situation?
Firstly, I want to tell the media what it terms a "wave" is a misnomer. There hasn't been a single "wave" election at the national level since 1989 since no party has managed even a simple majority, let alone an absolute majority that a "wave" election should be expected to deliver. As for this election, let us, for a moment, accept all surveys to be correct. Even they don't predict a simple majority for the National Democratic Alliance, leaving the exercise of cobbling up a majority to post-poll alliances. The days of single party dominance are over. Coalitions are going to stay.
How do you see the so-called Modi phenomenon?
I don't call it a Modi but a "moody" phenomenon. It's the mood in the country being created by the media on the basis of religious and divisive polarisation. There is no wave throughout the country. The Modi phenomenon is causing far more problems to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In UP, we have seen how leaders such as Murli Manohar Joshi, Kalraj Mishra and Lalji Tandon have been treated. Everywhere else there are internal dissensions within the BJP.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is playing a decisive role in this election as well as in managing the party. The RSS leadership couldn't aspire to a bigger role after Rajju Bhaiya (Sarsanghachalak Rajendra Singh) because of the presence of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani. The leadership that succeeded Rajju Bhaiya in 2000 was junior to Vajpayee and Advani and couldn't establish its authority over the party, for example K S Sudarshan. But Mohan Bhagwat can do that since Narendra Modi is an RSS creation. However, creations mostly gobble up their creators in politics. The RSS needed to establish its leadership, so it promoted a new person and sidelined the old.
I also see a certain reversal from the situation that existed in 1998. The BJP's rise in 1998 was marked by a person, who was nowhere near the Babri Masjid demolition or the Rath Yatra movement, becoming the PM and Advani had to agree. Now, there is a reversal happening. No one within the BJP leadership wants Modi to be the PM, whether it's Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Advani, Shivraj, Arun Jaitley… but they have to agree. This is a very significant situational reversal being played out in the BJP-RSS that has gone unnoticed in the media.
Do you think the BJP can win a consolidated Hindu vote?
There are global dimensions to this like the rise of Muslim fanaticism as well as complete weakness and inadequacy of the secular leadership.
Earlier, there were socialists and communists, at least until the Shah Bano case, who would openly oppose the Muslim Personal Law Board. Leaders such as Ram Manohar Lohia would speak against Muslim personal law in his meetings "ke bhai personal law nahin chalegi" (personal law shouldn't continue). Communists would say they don't believe in God, so how can they believe in the Prophet and this when the founder of the party was Muzaffar Ahmed? In those years, this leadership would fight against superstition and other ills. Now, the entire secular leadership doesn't say a word against Islamic fundamentalism. Is it that the meaning of communalism is only Hindu communalism? I believe Muslim communalism is the most staple diet of Hindu communalism.
Has the Congress' decline contributed to this?
There is a total lack of change in the style and content of the Congress leadership. Politics has changed in the country but not in the Congress. Now, you cannot behave like an Indira or a Rajiv Gandhi. You are one of them, the people.
Rahul Gandhi has never spoken to any of his alliance partners. Bhai, jo aapse senior hain unke ghar jao baat karne ke liye. (Go to your seniors to talk.) Times have changed! Even Sonia Gandhi keeps sitting at her home and expects everybody should go to her to genuflect. Rahul did try, he started going to the universities, interacting with students but stopped within six months.
Then the kind of leadership the Congress has, who openly doubts their government's statement? Digvijay Singh and Salman Khurshid insinuated that the Batla House encounter was fake. I am not supporting encounters but you have to analyse… you cannot say Sonia Gandhi cried. What are you doing? Either the government or your home minister is wrong or you are wrong. Both cannot be right.
You had a close association with Rajiv Gandhi. How do you assess Rahul as a leader?
I had just joined Rajiv (in the 1980s). Ramesh Dixit and I planned an appointment of Rajiv's with educationist Moonis Raza. We went to meet Raza saheb who told us that he wouldn't go to meet Rajiv. "I am of his mother's generation. Unse kaho kabhi ustadon ke paas bhi aaya karein, acchi baatein milengi. Why do you want to take me to him?," he told us. We returned and told this to Rajiv, who immediately sat in his open jeep with the two of us and drove to Raza's house. Rajiv and Raza hit it off famously. He appointed Raza as a member of the advisory council on education and then Vice Chancellor of the Delhi University, overriding objections by his education minister K C Pant.
Who will make Rahul understand the importance of this? You tell me has Rahul ever gone to meet any intellectual of this country? No. Has Rahul ever met a top film-maker? No. Has he met any top litterateur? No. Couldn't he have gone to see Mrinal Sen, whom his grandmother would meet often, in the hospital? He would have won the hearts of Bengalis. But who will teach him all this?
I was asked at least five times that Rahul Gandhi wishes to see me, do phone him. I replied that I had worked with his late father and never sought an appointment. How could I seek an appointment with Rahul? If he wishes to talk to me then he should. I am willing to have a chat with him.
You have spent several years in the Left. How do you see its role in the coming days?
Unfortunately, when India needs it the most the Left faces its most decisive decline. And the entire Left leadership is responsible for this because of the kind of political line they adopted belonged to an era 30 years back. On the nuclear deal issue, we suggested that they should abstain. At the time, practical politics would have told them they could have yet again won in Bengal if they didn't allow Mamata (Banerjee) and the Congress alliance in the state. Similarly, in Kerala they would have won if they had not insulted their leader V S Achuthanandan. They lost in Kerala by a fraction of votes. But, I still believe a new kind of secular opposition will emerge.
This election will also witness the largest numbers of new, first-time voters. They will change the shape of politics. If people in the Congress had any sense then they would have fielded candidates who are 25, 27 or 30-year-olds. They should have fielded fresh faces. In the first few decades after independence, there were several new faces. Unfortunately, the trend has stopped now.
