Commentary/T V R Shenoy

No government in Delhi has survived without strong support from south India

On May 15, 1996, every newspaper seemed to have the same photograph splashed across its front-page. It showed P Chidambaram, M Karunanidhi, N Chandrababu Naidu, K Moopanar, and H D Deve Gowda mugging for the cameras, arms interlinked and held high. It was intended, and understood, as an expression of south Indian solidarity.

Call me morbidly sensitive, but I couldn't help noticing one significant absence. There was nobody representing my home state of Kerala, that bastion of the Communist Party of India-Marxist.

That wasn't terribly surprising, of course. In the general election, the CPI-M had backed rebels who had broken away from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. (Though, in typical Communist fashion, all bets were covered by allowing the CPI to ally itself to Karunanidhi!)

Kerala's absence from the group was a cloud on the horizon. But in the high noon of coalition politics, nobody cared. Barring half-a-dozen Bharatiya Janata Party MPs, every Lok Sabha member from south India was backing the United Front. They were all either active participants in the government (DMK, TDP, TMC, CPI), inside the UF but outside the ministry (the Left minus the CPI), or supporting from outside (the Congress).

From the very beginning this was a ramshackle arrangement. Forget the servile dependence on the Congress. There was precious little that the constituents of the UF themselves had in common.

I have already mentioned the bad blood between the DMK and the CPI-M. This was far from unique. For all the forced camaraderie of the aforementioned photograph, there wasn't one man standing there who didn't have reason to be bitter with someone else in it.

Both Chandrababu Naidu and Karunanidhi felt let down by the Janata Dal that Deve Gowda represented. Hadn't that party flirted with Lakshmi Parvati in Andhra Pradesh and Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu?

Even if personal and party equations could be forgotten, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu had longstanding water disputes with Karnataka. And surely it couldn't have helped matters that Deve Gowda had made a campaign promise in the assembly polls 'never to release a drop of water' to outsiders.

Or take the relations between the DMK and the TMC. Moopanar had been telling his cadres that their ultimate aim should be to recreate the glories of Kamaraj's time and capture Fort St George. Given the seat of government in Tamil Nadu was held by the DMK, this scarcely held the promise of cordial relations.

Small wonder, then, that the myth of south Indian solidarity had begun to unravel long before Sitaram Kesri pulled the carpet from under Deve Gowda. One by one, the constituents began to go their own way, reducing the UF into 'a joke or a circus' (to quote Karunanidhi).

Every time you looked, one or the other of the south Indian parties was threatening to pull out of the UF. Chandrababu Naidu did so twice -- first over the Almatti dam, then over cyclone relief. Moopanar and the TMC whined that they weren't trusted by their partners. And now Karunanidhi is creating a rumpus over Laloo Prasad Yadav, insisting that the Rashtriya Janata Dal continue in the UF.

In fact, I find the rift in the south Indian components the most fascinating fallout of the RJD episode. The MPs from Kerala are hard-liners. The heavyweights from Karnataka are speaking in different voices, depending on whether they are pro or anti-Deve Gowda (the RJD's Enemy Number One). Moopanar and the TMC are sidling ever closer to the Congress, which means backing Yadav. And Chandrababu Naidu is trying his best to be neutral.

The last bit of information is, perhaps, the most surprising. The TDP and the Left Front are old allies. But today the UF convener is carefully distancing himself from the Communists. On one occasion he reportedly went so far as to say, "You're pushing us into the BJP's arms!"

No government in Delhi has survived unless it possessed strong support from south India. Those that tried to rule without such support proved remarkably unstable. (Think of Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, V P Singh, and Chandra Shekhar.) Narasimha Rao, on the other hand, enjoyed a full term in office despite the Congress being wiped out across north India.

South Indian solidarity was the only true shield of the United Front. It was, for instance, impossible for Kesri to move into Race Course road when confronted by a solid phalanx of south Indian parties. Now that they themselves are pulling in different directions how long can the Gujral ministry last?

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