Editorial
The Pioneer
May 8, 1999
Title: A separate reality Author: Editorial Publication: The Pioneer Date: May 8, 1999 Ms Sonia Gandhi's speech at Thursday's meeting of the chiefs of Pradesh Congress Committees and Congress Legislature Parties at the headquarters of the All-India Congress Committee in Delhi, deserves serious attention. It reflects not only her highly personalised understanding and articulation of reality but the breathtaking assumption that people will accept both without demur. Nothing else can explain her claim that India would be forced into holding the fourth Lok Sabha election in four years before the year 2000 was out, if the BJP brought into power another "hydra-headed" coalition. What she failed to mention is that while the BJP could form a coalition Government last year, her frantic effort to cobble one together following the Vajpayee Government's defeat in the confidence motion in the Lok Sabha in April came to nought. If her failure is astounding, so is the nonchalant audacity of her statement that after the fall of the Vajpayee Government it became clear that only a minority Congress Government supported from outside by secular parties could provide a stable Government. Clear to whom? Certainly not to the supporters of the BJP-led coalition! Certainly not to leaders and supporters of the Samajwadi Party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc! Her failure to take cognisance of these facts indicates either a tendency to regard her own perception as the only valid one or an exercise in suppressio veri and suggestio falsi to present an interpretation advantageous to her. And apart from anything else, how could a minority Congress Government be stable considering that it would be totally dependent on the support of the Left Front, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the AIADMK, particularly when from the beginning the Left Front was prepared to provide only issue-based support? Given Ms Sonia Gandhi's remarkable ways with the truth it is not surprising that she should hold the BJP "more often than not" responsible for the collapse of all non-Congress governments at the Centre. Her claim that it was the controversy over the double membership of the Janata Party and the RSS which brought the Morarji Government down in 1979, makes one wonder whether she has not heard of the late Charan Singh and the late Raj Narain, and does not remember her late brother-in-law, Sanjay Gandhi. It was the latter who worked on the first two and made them withdraw support to the Morarji Government. Having had the late Charan Singh installed as Prime Minister, the Congress promptly forced him to resign by withdrawing support! And was it the BJP or the Congress that was responsible for bringing the Deve Gowda and the Gujral Governments down? Again, while one could claim, by stretching things a bit, that it was Mr LK Advani's Rath yatra that brought the VP Singh Government down, the fall of the Vajpayee Government was not merely due to the BJP's patent inability to keep the coalition going. It was due as much to the Orissa Chief Minister, Mr Giridhar Gamang's morally questionable casting of his Lok Sabha vote. Meanwhile, one can only feel amused by her question, "How can the BJP assure stability by replacing the AIADMK by another Dravidian party?" Did she expect to form a stable government with the support of the AIADMK?
This archive was generated by (modified version of) hypermail.pl 1.00