Mohan:
Strange alliances and bed fellows in Kerala and Khajuraho (that figures). This liaison reeks of more political prurience than the hard-rock depiction of Kama Sutra prurient poses, poises and positions in Khajuraho love temples and caves
expressindia.com
Strange deals in Kerala -- BJP, Cong
smile
Vijay Simha
NEW DELHI, AUG 17: An Indian political version of Jekyll
and Hyde is apparently being played out by the two great
rivals, the Congress and the BJP, in the coming elections.
Bitter foes in public, the two have kept a deadly, committed
and deep friendship at various levels, hidden from view. And
the private friendship is yielding good results, or so it seems.
In at least three crucial constituencies, involving high profile
candidates, the Congress and the BJP have reached an
understanding completely contrary to the enmity they display
in the open.
Three-time Kerala Chief Minister and patriarch of the state's
politics, K Karunakaran, has promised help to the BJP's
general secretary O Rajagopalan who in turn has vowed to
push Karunakaran into the Lok Sabha with the help of RSS
cadres. Many miles away, in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, a
similar friendship is in force between the BJP's stormy petrel
Uma Bharati and Congress veteran Vidya Charan Shukla.
While the former deal is purely political, Karunakaran
andRajagopal aiming to see that both emerge victorious, the
latter has other tones to it, with Shukla not having been given
a ticket this time for the Lok Sabha. He has, thus, pitted one
of his followers Satyavrat Chaturvedi against Bharati in an
election which even Congressmen feel is one-sided.
The Cong-BJP relationship is a crucial one which helps both
tide over uncomfortable moments and has historical
overtones. In the past, RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras had
often asked his cadre to vote for Indira Gandhi's Congress
and the tradition has been kept alive by the current RSS boss
Rajendra Singh.
The Karunakaran-Rajagopal episode is an interesting one.
The Congress veteran has old links with the RSS in the state
which have been used when required. Such a time has come
again, Karunakaran informed Rajagopal many weeks ago,
even before the Congress got down to finalising its nominees
in Kerala. Following his talks with the RSS, Karunakaran
unilaterally declared his candidature from the Mukundapuram
seat and notfrom Thiruvananthapuram which he represented
in the last Lok Sabha.
This was to avoid two things: One, a direct battle with
Rajagopal who was the BJP nominee from
Thiruvananthapuram and two, a ``sure' victory unlike the
tough fight in 1998 where the CPI nominee was only 18,000
votes behind Karunakaran. Mukundapuram and
Thiruvananthapuram were two seats in his quota and thus
Karunakaran had the final word on the choice of candidates
from these areas.
But the shift in Karunakaran's constituency triggered off fresh
problems. The Catholic Church took serious objection to its
own man, A C Jose, being shunted around because of
Karunakaran. Jose was the sitting Mukundapuram MP and
the Church felt Catholics shouldn't be moved around ``like
furniture'. The Church was thus aligned against Karunakaran
making the RSS vote central to his immediate future.
This is where Rajagopal came in. Being an old RSS hand, he
promised the Right's vote to Karunakaran to counter any
drop in Catholic support. Rajagopal, in fact,went one better:
he chose a candidate under the banner of the Socialist
Republican Party (SRP) against Karunakaran, virtually
ensuring a Congress victory.
Now, the SRP is a 30-year-old creation of the Ezhava
community, who are OBCs. The SNDP (Sree
Narayanswamy Dharma Paripalana Sanstha), a body floated
by the Ezhavas, created the SRP as its political wing and it
once had a nominee in the early 80's in the then Karunakaran
ministry. The SRP and Karunakaran are old friends and
hardly enemies. Currently, the SRP barely exists in Kerala
and its entry into the electoral fray was practically a bolt from
the blue.
No one, not even the SRP, expects to win the
Mukundapuram seat. It was now Karunakaran's turn to chip
in. He chose a little-known follower of his, V.S. Shiva
Kumar, against Rajagopal in Thiruvananthapuram. In any
case, a large section of Kerala's Capital voted against the
Congress in 1998 and more are expected to do so this time.
As of now, Rajagopal has every reason to smile with a
victorybeckoning. Karunakaran had done his job and the
Cong-RSS ties have been strengthened if anything.
In Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharati was in trouble in
Khajuraho from where she refused to contest the election.
The BJP high command went ahead and chose her its
candidate anyway (so far no replacement for Bharati has
been named). She turned to her friends in the Congress: V.C.
Shukla was the best to approach.
Shukla, in whose quota the Khajuraho seat fell, chose his
follower Satyavrat Chaturvedi. In 1983, Chaturvedi was
sentenced to six years RI in a case involving the murder of an
armyman in Khajuraho by a bench of the Jabalpur High
Court including J.S. Verma, who was to later become India's
Chief Justice. Chaturvedi was prime accused in the murder
which was later owned up to by another man.
Chaturvedi's sentencing was overruled by the Supreme Court
some time later, making it perhaps the only murder case
conviction by J.S. Verma to have been overturned. Now,
Chaturvedi's candidature is manna from heaven forBharati
who has shortlisted the dead armyman's widow for help. The
widow is understood to have agreed to campaign for Bharati,
should she finally contest.
In the aftermath of Kargil, the widow's appeal is being seen
as a potent weapon against the Congress. Yet again, the
Congress came to the RSS' rescue. Two cases, one
friendship. The Cong-RSS bandwagon is well and truly in
place.
Copyright ¸ 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay)
Ltd.
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