[sacw] sacw dispatch (2 June 00)

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Fri, 2 Jun 2000 15:54:25 +0200


South Asia Citizens Web -
2 June 2000

------------------------------------------

#1. India/Pakistan: Witness to a tumultuous era of partition & independence
#2. Track II diplomacy needed than in South Asia
#3. Sri Lanka's future was civil war's first casualty
#4. India: BJP No Longer a party with a Difference

__________________________

#1.

Indian Express
June 2, 2000
Op-Ed.

Witness to a tumultuous era

by Mushirul Hasan

At the time of Independence and Partition, all the officers were asked
to state in writing their choice of the country they wished to serve.
Last week I met one of them who stated candidly: "I kept my promise to
the Muslim men and volunteered for Pakistan. In fact, I was acting
commandant of my regiment and remained with them for six months serving
under the flag of Pakistan." This was in the inhospitable terrain of
Kohat in the North-West Frontier Province.

Win a couple of million dollars by guessing his name! Win another
million by telling me who recommended President Zia-ul-Haq for a regular
commission? Let me drop a few hints. Schooled in Shahpur, some three
miles from the east bank of Jhelum river and the land of Muslim
landowners like the Noons and the Tiwanas, he was among the few hundred
pre-War Indian officers to receive a regular commission from King George
VI. During World War II, he was the first Indian to join the British
officers to go with the regiment for operations in the Middle East and
Italy.

In free India, he headed an armoured squadron to fight Pakistan's tribal
incursion into Kashmir. Later, he became the first person from the Third
World to be appointed Chief of Staff of the United Nations force
deployed in the Sinai after the Suez War. He was appointed Military
Advisor to the United Nations Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, whom
he met in Gaza in 1957. This again was a first. His special assignments
carried out for Hammar-skjold's successor, U Thant, added to his
prestige and reputation as a skillful negotiator. He emerged as the
leading peacemaker in the late-sixties, the man who was trusted for his
objectivity and commitment to the UN peacekeeping mission.

He is the 80-year-old Lahore-born Major General Inder Jit, a man of many
qualities. He has risen to the pinnacle of his career, but is remarkably
modest and unassuming in his demeanour. He chose to live in the US after
retiring from the UN in 1969, but he remains an Indian to the core. Next
to the Gita, the writings of Gandhi inspire him most. Ironically, it was
the Mahatma who prevailed upon Inder Jit Rikhye's father, whose
ancestors had close ties with Maharaja Ranjit Singh, to let him join the
army. Incidentally, his father was a medical doctor who died in 1951.

Nurtured in the composite ethos of pre-divided Punjab, he does not speak
the language of a V.S. Naipaul. Hindutva or Hindu nationalism militates
against his world-view. He is not a Muslim or Islam-baiter. He is a
fervent votary of Indo-Pa-kistan rapprochement and recalls his
friendship with several surviving Pakistani generals. "Not only India
and Pakistan are divided but they now seem quite determined to appear
different. If Biji (mother) were alive, she would have said the same. Do
you know something? "In the army barracks, we weren't sensitised to the
great communal divide in the 1940s. At least I wasn't. India's
Partition? Nobody talked about it. Not even the Muslim officers." Much
of this conversation was filled with nostalgia and a sense of remorse at
the unfortunate turn of events.

When he visited Pakistan decades later, "the wounds of Partition and the
sacrifices of my family for the price of freedom were still raw under my
scars." This was during Zia-ul-Haq's regime. I was reminded of Amrita
Pritam, a remarkable Punjabi writer and poet, who once implored Waris
Shah "to turn the page of the book of love" in a region where "somebody
has mixed poison in all the five rivers."

Why did General Rikhye leave Kohat? Well, Mohammad Ali Jinnah did not
want a Hindu or Sikh officer in the Pakistan army. "My inability to
remain with the regiment and continue my life in the land where I was
born and with the people I knew, had dampened my enthusiasm for
independence." He dreaded the day when the transfer of his squadrons
would take place. "It would be a terrible wrench, like losing someone
from your family, and that is what we were." Clearly, the General had no
feelings for national borders or the geographical entities that were
being laboriously created in 1947.

National borders were political constructs, imagined projections of
territorial power. They reflected merely the mental images of
politicians, lawyers and intellectuals but not the men on the
battlefront. Rikhye agreed with me that the cartographic and political
divisions constituted by Partition were "the shadow lines" that the
novelist Amitav Ghosh seeks to repudiate.

It was a cool and misty morning of September 27, 1947, when the train
pulled out of the otherwise sleepy Kohat railway station. Escorted by
the Pakistan army, some 1,500 men and 500 women and children travelled
through the valley of death and destruction to reach their destination.
The journey from Kohat to Rawalpindi and Sialkot from Jinnah's Pakistan
to Gandhi's India in Ambala (via Montgomery) took 21 grueling days.

Describing the journey, the General picked up Bapsi Sidhwa's novel
Pakistan Bride and started reading out a passage he had marked the night
before our meeting: "The earth sealed its clumsy new boundaries in blood
as town by town, farm by farm, the border was defined. Trains carrying
refugees sped through the darkness at night Hindus going one way and
Muslims the other.

They left at odd hours to try to dodge mobs bent on their destruction.
Yet trains were ambushed and looted and their fleeing occupants
slaughtered."General Rikhye vividly described his engagement in Kashmir,
the site of his `last battle', his missions to Congo, Cyprus, Yemen,
Cuba and West Asia, his close encounters with Indian politicians,
including Indira Gandhi, and his interaction with men of power and
influence at the UN Secretariat on the East river in Manhattan and in
the far-flung areas of Asia and Africa. To a historian like me, he
offered quite a remarkable tour de force. He was, after all, a witness
to a tumultuous era.

Indeed, I learnt much about international politics that I did not know.
Let me share with you his meeting with Zia-ul-Haq. Why did you hang
Bhutto? Rikhye asked the President. Zia kept quiet for a while. Then, he
drew his right hand across the throat and declared, "It was either him
or me." Somebody remarked that "Generals never die, they just fade
away." I beg to disagree. With his distinguished record in India and
overseas, the awards and honours he has received and the books he has
published, it is hard to imagine Major General Inder Jit Rikhye fading
away.

Copyright =A9 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

________

#2.

The Statesman
June 1, 2000

TRACK TWO-I Diplomacy's Handmaid Or Rival?
By AG NOORANI

THERE is no place in the world where track-two diplomacy (TTD) is more
needed than in South Asia; more talked about and sought after, yet least
understood. It has little to show by way of results for all the
activities. When Syed Mir Qasim flamboyantly declared on 2 May that his
was not TTD but "Track One Diplomacy", he was unwittingly right. One
whose intercession is sought by Kashmir's chief minister, Farooq
Abdullah, and the defence minister, George Fernandes, performs the same
role as private individuals, nominated as emissaries by the state, have
done for centuries.
This is not TTD. But neither is the back channel; nor the secret
channel; still less the unofficial mediator or go between whe-ther
state-sponsored or not. The back channel is one used by a leader behind
the back of colleagues and officials whom he does not trust. Neville
Chamberlain used Horace Wilson because the Foreign Office could not be
trusted to carry out his policy of appeasement of Hitler.
ABUSE
At the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's very first meeting with
Nixon, on 17 February 1969, "the President went on to establish a
confidential channel through Henry Kissinger, his National Secu-rity
Adviser... (in order) to be able to exchange views urgently and
privately with the Soviet leadership," behind the back of secretary of
state, William Rogers. His more spirited successor, George Shultz,
exploded when he learnt of similar doings by Reagan through his NSA,
William Clark, and offered to resign.
The grossest abuse of the back channel, and a debasement of the
diplomatic process, was perpetrated by Rajiv Gandhi. He used RAW, an
intelligence outfit, as a tool of diplomacy, and as a rival to the MEA.
That perversion explains the mess in India's Sri Lanka policy which he
bequeathed to the nation. The ambitious RAW chief, AN Verma, "started
advising Rajiv Gandhi that he should follow a three-track policy ... The
military operations should be continued to keep the LTTE generally under
pressure; secondly, RAW should be allowed to keep in touch the LTTE with
the purpose of persuading it to move back from military confrontation
against India; thirdly, that RAW should be authorised to make direct
contacts with Jayawardene without involving the Ministry of External
Affairs or the Ministry of Def-ence" to persuade him to im-prove on his
offer to the Tamils.
The then high commissioner JN Dixit's memoirs contain significant
under-statements. The contradictions in this policy "resulted in
operational limitations on the IPKF", while its men were being killed by
the LTTE. Verma met President Jayawardene on 28 April and 19 June 1988.
The LTTE was spared to fight another day.
The back channel undermines institutions; not so the secret channel,
unless it is mishandled. Mohammed Heikal's book Secret Channels
describes their working no sooner than Israel was born. RK Mishra and
Niaz A Naik were duly appointed by their respective PMs to conduct
confidential talks after their Lahore summit. This was not TTD, either,
nor were the private ventures of men like Averell Hariman, trusted alike
by the Kremlin and the White House.
RESULTS
Resolution of the Cuban missile crisis was significantly facilitated by
a talk between the ABC News reporter John Scali and Alexander Fomin, a
KGB man under cover as a journalist, on 26 October 1972. Fomin suggested
a deal based on withdrawal of Soviet missiles in return for a US
guarantee not to invade Cuba. Kennedy was informed of it in the nick of
time to shape his letter to Khruschev in a conciliatory vein. It
clicked.
TTD, in contrast, is a citizen's initiative, heir to the citizens'
diplomacy practised by the Quakers. In 1798, a Philadel-phia Quaker,
George Logan, went to Europe in a valiant effort to prevent war between
the US and France. His hosts responded well; his countrymen censured him
for his "usurpation of executive autho-rity". Congress passed the Logan
Act criminalising any direct intervention of citizens in foreign
affairs. It still adorns the US statute book. In the sixties, Norman
Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, initiated the Dartmouth conferences
at which influential Americans and Soviets met for off-the-record
discussions. Cousins also went on unofficial missions between Kennedy
and Khruschev. These conferences "set the stage" for accord on the
limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), ins-tallation of the "Hot Line",
expansion of trade, and for direct flights between the two countries.
Before long, TTD began to show re-sults, particularly in the last years
of the Cold War. Based on its exchanges with Americans, the Institute of
USA and Canada of the Soviet Academy of Sciences inspired Brezhnev's
appeal to Reagan in February 1981 to begin dialogues at many levels. The
Oslo accords, the most outstanding success of TTD, were the result of a
TTD process that began at a lunch in a Tel Aviv restaurant in June 1992.
NO RIVAL
Two academics, one Israeli and the other Norwegian, discussed Gaza. The
Israeli was Yossi Beilin, founder of the Economic Cooperation
=46ounda-tion and a Labour politician close to Shimon Peres. The Norwegian
was Terje Larsen, founder of the Norwegian Institute for Applied
Science. Larsen arranged for Beilin to meet Faisal Husseini, a highly
respected Palestinian leader. Both, Beilin and Larsen had done
considerable homework already. Eventually, the Nor-wegian government
agreed to help, not as a mediator, but "as a facilitator of secret
talks". TTD is thus neither handmaiden of, nor a rival to, official
diplomacy. It is a companion; understanding but independent.
Early success inspired expansion. There exists an Institute of
Multi-Track Diplomacy in Washington, DC which prescribes seven other
tracks - business, education, religion, media philanthropy, "activ-ism",
and private citizens. Its founders are Louise Diamonds and John W
McDonald. In this context one must acknowledge that the Pakistan-India
Peo-ple's Forum for Peace and Democracy, which held a highly successful
conference in Bangalore last April, has rendered high service in
promoting such exchanges. Indians and Pakistanis agreed on a set of
recipes for peace.

The Statesman
June 2, 2000

TRACK TWO-II Need To Dispel Fears
By AG NOORANI

THE term track two diplomacy was coined in 1981 by Joseph V Montville, a
former diplomat. The concept was expanded in an article in the journal
=46oreign Policy (Winter 1981) which he wrote jointly with William D
Davidson, a psychologist. Its title suggests the theme: "Foreign Policy
According to Freud" - how to instil mutual confidence in an atmosphere
of deep distrust. Profes-sional diplomats think of the worst case
scenario as, indeed, they ought to, though not obsessively. Track two
tries to build on the slender foundations of hope. It succeeds only if
it combines grit with creativity fails if it becomes detached from
rea-lity.
In the authors' view: "Track two diplomacy is unofficial, non-structured
interaction. It is always open-minded, often altruistic, and ...
strategically optimistic based on best case analysis. Its underlying
assumption is that actual or potential conflict can be resolved or eased
by appealing to common human capabilities to respond to good will and
reasonableness. Scientific and cultural exchanges are examples of track
two diplomacy."
PERCEPTIONS
Experience has amplified these broad outlines. They recognised the
"interaction and interdependence" between the official and unofficial
tracks. TTD must have two aims. Immediately, to promote dialogue and
devise CBMS; but, in the long term it must doggedly go to the roots of
the conflict. TTD must not forget that while it educates public opinion,
the government is its consumer, no less. A conflict is the product of a
clash of interest and rival perceptions of motives and goals which
aggravate the clash. TTD should not stop at "creating an atmosphere". It
must devise compromises, realistic and practicable, which "the consumer"
can buy and, in turn, sell to its people. Crusaders have an honoured
role in democratic society. Their usefulness in TTD is doubtful. So is
that of men who draw sustenance from the establishment. TTD is not a
forum for propaganda.
It demands as much discretion as official diplomacy with one vital
difference - there is a conscious effort to reach out to the other side;
to understand its fears and aims in order to evolve formulae which show
a way out of the impasse, however imperfectly.
Interaction between the two tracks is at the heart of the problem. If
the state has no use for such efforts, they must be directed at public
opinion. It would be a sheer betrayal were track two to shape its
recipes to suit the tastes of the consumer. On the other hand, TTD would
be sterile if it did not address the concerns of the state and formulate
solutions which try to meet them. It must be realistic as well as
creative; focussed and persistent. It must go well beyond "improving the
atmosphere".
Governments have tended to be hostile to ventures which they did not
bless or, as in cases, foster. On 23 February 1995, Pakistan's Foreign
Office dubbed an Indo-Pak meet as "somewhat inappropriate and
questionable" because of "the timing and size of the meeting". Similar
paranoia prompted New Delhi to abort a meeting of Kashmiris on both
sides at Rawlakot in 1992.
RAIDING MIND
TTD reflects the quality and integrity of intellectual endeavours in the
field of foreign policy. A government which is unready to learn, or
unwilling or too weak to contemplate change or whose leaders and
"professionals" imagine they have all the answers scorn "academic"
exercises; unless they are able to control them. TTD is then left with
three options - trim; bow out; or, meet the challenge with efforts of
quality that make the scorn contemptible in public esteem.
A proper planning outfit in any foreign office, run properly, draws on
independent exercises. As Peter Hennessy wrote in an excellent article
on the British Foreign Office in The Times (31 October 1983), "part of
the planning staff's job is to inject heterodoxy into the FO, raiding
the minds of MPs, academics, journalists" and think-tanks. The advice
which a policy planner, Pauline Neville-Jones, gave her colleagues
should be taken to heart by practitioners do TTD - "Think the
unthinkable by all means but do not stray into the realm of the
politically daft."
TTD can be practised domestically, also. The Nagaland Peace Mission,
comprising Jayaprakash Narayan, Michael Scott and BP Cha-liha formulated
proposals, on 20 Dec-ember 1964, which came within inches of success.
They deftly resolved the dilemma of self-determination vs Indian
statehood. Nagas "could, on their own volition, decide to be
participants in the Union of India which in turn, would consider how the
structure should be "recast so as to satisfy the political aspiration"
of the Nagas. Trust was established. Inter-Naga differences wrecked the
process.
It will not be wrong to suggest that fear and distrust on both sides lie
at the root of India's differences with some of its neighbours. India
would not admit that a boundary "dispute" existed lest China reopened
the entire boundary for debate. China regarded this as unrealistic and
intransigent.
STRIKING BALANCE
India, likewise, rejects the D-word on Kashmir for fear that
acknowledgment of a political dispute dilutes its undeniable legal title
to the state as a member of the Union of India. It likewise fears that
revision of the 1950 Treaty with Nepal and the 1987 letters with Sri
Lanka will open the doors to external influences. In each case, to be
sure, there are differences on substantial issues. Fears on both sides
congeal the impasse.
TTD can help to dispel the fears and, proceed to evolve solutions which
meet the concerns of both sides to the dispute. That implies, of course,
that there are in South Asia persons of independence and creativity who
will strike the right balance not only in their tasks but in their
relationships with their respective governments and public opinion,
persons who are not slaves to conventional wisdom. In the final
analysis, the worth and vigour of two-track diplomacy can be no greater
than the quality and integrity of public discourse on foreign policy in
the region.
________

#3.

Boston Globe
31 May 2000

Sri Lanka's deep scars: Country's future was civil war's first casualty
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff, 5/31/2000
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Roshi, a 31-year-old businesswoman, recalls driving
along a highway some years ago and noticing two bodies necklaced with
flaming tires, burning at the side of the road.
Accustomed to violence after years of ethnic warfare, she wove her account
matter-of-factly into the conversation. But minutes later, she turned to a
friend and remarked sadly:
''Can you imagine what our friends in England and America would think of
this? To us, that was just normal. What has happened to us?''
It is a question many Sri Lankans still are asking themselves.
Hailed at midcentury as perhaps the Third World country most likely to
succeed, this island nation has instead sacrificed more than 60,000 of its
19 million people, made refugees of nearly a million, and forfeited its
chances of serious economic development. The cause: a 17-year war that
exploded long-simmering tensions between Sri Lanka's two main ethnic groups.
''People don't realize that this is one of the most active wars in the
world. A lot of people are dying here,'' said a foreign diplomat. Citing a
report last fall that 1,000 Russian soldiers had died in Chechnya, the
diplomat shook his head sadly: ''In my first 18 months here, there were
three separate weeks where at least 1,000 Sri Lankan soldiers died in a
single battle.''
=46or a decade and a half, the battlefield advantage has swung between the
majority Sinhalese army and minority Tamil rebels, who are fighting for an
independent homeland. Now, after six weeks of intensified fighting in the
northern Jaffna peninsula, an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 rebels could be
within striking distance of a David-and-Goliath feat: recapturing Jaffna,
the cultural center of their would-be state, from as many as 40,000
soldiers defending the peninsula. Last week, the rebels launched an assault
in the country's east, forcing the military to spread its soldiers even
thinner.
The coming days may prove to be a turning point. But even if the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam win this battle, it would hardly be the end of the
war.
Military analysts say neither side - the 120,000-strong but demoralized and
desertion-plagued military; nor the minuscule, but well-equipped and
ruthless band of Tigers - is strong enough to wipe out the other. Analysts
say a negotiated settlement is the only hope, albeit an extremely faint one.
The Sinhalese, who represent 74 percent of the country and control the
ruling party, its political opposition, and the military, are often
described as a majority with a minority complex. Since independence in
1948, resentment has boiled against the 18 percent Tamil minority - who
were better-educated and held more powerful positions during British
colonial times.
Sinhalese was made the sole official language in 1956, university and civil
service admission was changed to favor Sinhalese, and thousands of Tamils
were killed in riots. But today, years after discriminatory policies were
reversed, many ordinary Tamils still feel persecuted.
Yet here in the capital, 200 miles south of the battleground, from which
journalists are barred, people of both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities
say they are tired of the war, and that it is the government's vested
interests that keep it going - not the sentiments of the people.
Tales of incompetence and war profiteering among civil and military
officials were widely reported in local media before strict censorship was
imposed. Arms dealers interviewed allege that amid the current
weapons-buying spree, dealers are routinely paying commissions to senior
officials.
''The government has mismanaged this war from day one, and now the war has
become a business - people are losing on purpose,'' said Sivasubramaniam, a
development worker, who like many people interviewed asked that his full
name not be used.
To be sure, money is in part driving the war, from top to bottom. Rural
families encourage their young men to enlist; in the face of 8 percent
unemployment, the army is a job and the pay is good. When a soldier dies, a
handsome pension is paid to his survivors, an insurance policy that
discourages dissent.
Meanwhile, mainstream politicians, fearful of losing hard-line Sinhalese
votes in elections this August, are accused of dragging their feet on an
autonomy proposal for Tamils that might defuse the war.
Lack of information also feeds an odd acceptance of the body count. The
government recently imposed strict censorship, shut down a critical
newspaper, and arrested five people for ''rumor-mongering.''
''Censorship and self-censorship of the media has created a situation where
people don't know and don't want to know about the war,'' said Paikiasothy
Saravanumuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives, a
local research institute. ''The average Sri Lankan has seen more images of
what war has done to Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor than to Sri Lanka
itself. With no information coming out, there's nothing to galvanize
people'' against war.
People recall battles in which over 1,000 men died within 48 to 72 hours -
most recently last month - and the sound of ambulances carrying bodies from
the front to Colombo hospitals was an unbroken cry for days. Yet the stream
of bodies didn't keep people from work, school, or discos.
''The majority of deaths on both sides are rural youth. The Colombo elite
are still untouched,'' said Sugeeswara Senadhira, associate director of the
Regional Center for Strategic Studies.
Colombo has not escaped occasional guerrilla suicide bombings, which have
claimed scores of lives and millions of dollars in damage, but even they
have become accepted in a way.
''As soon as a bomb goes off, you rush to school and pick up your children
and rush home, and for a few days you worry. ... But we have begun to learn
to live with it, to think that we may have to live with it for the rest of
our lives,'' said Arjuna, 37, a banker.
A sense of doom has even pervaded everyday speech. It is customary in
Sinhalese to depart with the words, ''I will go and I will return.'' But
these days, some people simply say, ''I'm leaving,'' because they don't
know if they will come back.
Rather than the numbness to violence, the biggest obstacle to peace may be
that neither side is willing to compromise on the question of a Tamil
homeland.
''We all have aspirations and expectations, but can we cater to them all?
No, certainly not,'' declared Thilak Karunaratne, general secretary of the
Sinhala Heritage Party, which rejects a homeland or autonomy for Tamils, or
even the idea that Tamils suffer discrimination. ''We're all tired of this
war, but it must go on.''
Political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda says the gap may be widening between
the two sides. ''Tamil nationalists and Sinhala nationalists have reached a
point where they don't even want to recognize each other's legitimacy. ...
This will drag on for years.''
Whenever and however the war may end, it has left an indelible scar.
''I was 14 when this war started, and it has become part of us,'' said
Roshi, as she sipped a gin-and-tonic at a colonial-era rugby club filled
with black-and-white photos, tatty leather couches, and an air of genteel
decline.
''When you hear of 60 people dying in a bomb blast, you think, `That's
sad,' but you go on. ... Everyday I don't know if I'll see my husband
again. And you know, you learn to live with it.''
This article was reported in Colombo but filed from Hong Kong because of
government censorship of all reports submitted from Sri Lanka.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 5/31/2000. =A9 Copyright
2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
________

#4.

India Today News
June 1, 2000

BJP NO LONGER A PARTY WITH A DIFFERENCE

Now the BJP is afflicted with the same problems that afflict many
centrist political outfits-among them infighting and rebellion. Consider
these: In Delhi, the state unit office was vandalised by "committed"
party workers a couple of weeks before a president was re-elected
through "consensus". In Kanpur, agitated BJP workers smashed photographs
of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Home Minister L.K. Advani to
protest "irregularities" in the organisational elections in the Uttar
Pradesh unit.

In Madhya Pradesh, factional squabbles have derailed the party's
internal election process and in Rajasthan, senior leaders view with
suspicion attempts to settle the state election through consensus.

Strangely, the party's high command is smug. Says O.P. Kohli, who is in
charge of the organisational elections: "Whenever there is an election,
disputes are inevitable. But we have the mechanism to resolve such
disputes".

Not quite. Look at Madhya Pradesh. There, two party stalwarts, Union
Rural Development minister Sunderlal Patwa and Lakhiram Agrawal who is
in charge of the state party are slugging it out in public. The
infighting in the state unit took a bizarre turn when the membership
registers "vanished" from some of the district party offices. Such
developments have delayed the elections in the state and last heard, BJP
president Kushabhau Thakre, who is from the state, was rushing between
Bhopal, Jabalpur and Raipur on fire fighting exercises.

Such fights are not limited to the Hindi belt, once the traditional
arena for intra-party squabbles. In Kerala, Union Minister of state for
Law and Justice, O. Rajagopal was forced to withdraw to enable the
"unanimous election" his rival C K Padmanashe as state party chief for
three years.

In West Bengal, the scenario is grimmer. Never mind that the small party
unit in the state rides piggy back on Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool
Congress. But the ambitions of state party leaders are inversely
proportional to the party's grassroot strength in the state, resulting
in the party facing the real prospect of a split.

And it Uttar Pradesh, once considered the party's bastion, things are
bad enough for party general secretary K.N. Govindracharya to
acknowledge: "We are in a precarious situation". That was no
exaggeration when you consider that matters relating to organisational
elections in Lucknow was dragged to courts, bomb explosions shattered
the party office in Bareilly, and in Ghaziabad bordering the national
capital, frayed tempers triggered fist-fights.

The significance of these events was not lost on the voters. Last week,
the BJP suffered a humiliating defeat in the by-election to the state
assembly from Soro, coming a poor fourth. That the seat was won by
Rashtriya Kranti party, former state chief minister who was expelled
from the BJP was like rubbing salt into its wounds. Even that was not
enough to shake the leadership. Ram Prakash Gupta, the state's amnesiac
chief minister perhaps reflected the mood in the party itself when he
said: "Victory and defeat are part of elections."

Part of the problem can be attributed to the rapid and phenomenal growth
of the party in the two decades of its existence. In 1980, the year of
its birth, it membership stood at 15 lakh. It is two crore now. Its
support base has increased as the party expanded geographically,
socially and politically. Says M. Venkaiah Naidu, the party
spokesperson: "We are not simply a cadre-based party. Over the years the
BJP has become a mass-based party". The new Maharashtra BJP chief
Pandurang Phundkar feels that such "rapid quantitative" growth of the
party could result in "qualitative deterioration". "If the experience of
the Congress is anything to go by, after acquiring power a party
organisation weakens".

Happily for the party, the elections in nine states-Tamil Nadu,
Maharashtra, Goa, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Arunachal
Pradesh and Punjab-were smooth, even if the unanimity in some cases was
rigged. Elections in nine more states-Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam,
Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Haryana and Andaman and Nicobar-would be
completed by the first week of June. In four states, Bihar, Orissa,
Haryana and Manipur which faced Assembly polls in March organisational
elections have been put off for some time. The delay in some of the
states has put in jeopardy the election to choose the party's national
president.

The BJP constitution stipulates that national level elections could be
held if the poll process in over 50 per cent of the states were
completed. Last week, the party leadership conducted a mid-election
appraisal. Taking into account the fact that since elections had been
completed in only nine states, it has decided that the exercise to
choose a new national President be held either in late July or early
August.

Despite these hurdles, party leaders draw pride from the fact that the
BJP was the only party where internal democracy thrived-organisational
elections are held every two years right from the Local Committee level
to the National President. The fact that this is the tenth time internal
elections are being held in the party in its twenty years is proof that
democracy is alive though sometimes overenthusiastic partymen tend to
stretch its spirit a bit too far. That perhaps explains why ever since
it came to power in 1998, its leaders stopped taking of the BJP as a
party with a difference.

(With Bureau Reports)
______________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH (SACW) is an
informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service
run by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
since 1996. Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
by joining the ACT list run by SACW. To subscribe send
a message to <act-subscribe@egroups.com>
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL