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INDIA:
PRIMA DONNA:
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ASIA | March 30, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 12 |
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Fasten Your Seat Belts Hindu nationalists take over in India, but nobody knows how militant-or how durable-they will be By TIM McGIRK New Delhi  folksy orator, atal bihari vajpayee likes to enliven his speeches with tales from the ancient Hindu epics. Asked why his right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, after all its talk of purity, was courting several allegedly corrupt politicians to form a government, Vajpayee recalled an episode from the Mahabharata in which a warrior tells a lie to keep the bad guys from winning a battle. The lie succeeds, but as soon as it is spoken, the warrior's flying chariot loses its magic and slams to earth.
Vajpayee's new government is only a few days old, but already the wheels of his Hindu nationalist chariot seem to be sinking into the mud. From the start, the bjp has had to make too many compromises in an awkward coalition of 17 partners. Some of those parties are led by personalities who will be taxing Vajpayee's famed tact and affability: there's Jayaram Jayalalitha, a Tamil Nadu leader and former actress who broke off coalition talks with the bjp and rushed back to Madras because her favorite pet dog died; then there's new Defense Minister George Fernandes, a firebrand leftist who kicked Coca-Cola out of India in the 1970s and would like to do the same now to more multinationals. Other regional allies want to flex their new-found influence in Delhi to bring down rival parties back home. Vajpayee also faces inevitable pressure from the Congress Party, rescued from oblivion by its new leader, Sonia Gandhi.
Even inside the bjp, Vajpayee is not secure. He could well find himself assailed for his moderate views by Hindu hardliners who want, among other things, to aim nuclear missiles at Pakistan. These militants are also demanding an end to the "appeasement" of India's 120 million Muslims and other religious minorities. It was no surprise that at last Thursday's swearing-in ceremony of his unruly cabinet, the new Prime Minister rarely smiled; his eyebrows were gathered darkly like approaching thunderclouds. Vajpayee, 71, usually a funny and gifted speaker, was left speechless. As a youth, Vajpayee was singled out by India's founding leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, as a future Prime Minister. What surprised many of his admirers is that Vajpayee chose the bjp as his vehicle to reach this goal. True, during his student days he was an early recruit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (rss), a Hindu militant group that provides the bjp with many of its officials. But the Premier seems to have mellowed; he is decidedly moderate in his personal life; he likes music and the occasional drink, and has Muslim friends. But Vajpayee may have trouble controlling some of the party's more radical tendencies. His first choice of Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh, who favors foreign investment, was blocked by party militants who fear that the country's Hindu identity is being eroded by Western consumerism. Vajpayee often seeks advice from Lal Krishnan Advani, the party's president and now Home Minister, who has a following among rss cadres. A senior party official describes Vajpayee as a kind of jovial "mask" hiding the bjp's sterner features. But Vajpayee has also scored some victories in the ruling coalition. A National Agenda, which he drafted with other members of the governing alliance, carefully avoids the bjp's most incendiary issues-like its pledge to build a "magnificent" Hindu temple on the site of a mosque razed in 1992 by Hindu militants. The government's agenda also avoids two other sectarian flashpoints raised by the bjp: abolishing separate laws on divorce and marriage for Muslims and ending autonomy for the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. Coalition partners agreed with the bjp pledge to "exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons," but the agenda remains silent over another bjp vow to re-start development of missiles that are capable of hurling nuclear warheads onto both of India's unfriendly neighbors, Pakistan and China. Under U.S. pressure, India stopped building those missiles nearly three years ago. For now, say defense analysts in both Islamabad and New Delhi, it's doubtful the bjp government would risk international sanctions by building up India's nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, says Brajesh Mishra, one of the Prime Minister's close aides, "It's our belief that people want India to be a nuclear weapons state. Our nation's security requires it. We're not for a 'bang' for the sake of a 'bang.'" Pakistan's Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan warned of a "befitting and matching" response if India aggressively pursues a nuclear arms program. "Our security is thus endangered. We cannot remain indifferent to it," he said. Vajpayee also faces a delicate calculation involving foreign investors, who fear Hindu militants will succeed in expelling them from India. The best hope is for some balance. As the bjp's ascetic general secretary, K. Govindacharya, puts it: "It's a myth that foreign investment is a panacea for all ills." But, he adds, the anxiety created whenever foreign investment is questioned, "undermines our economic potential and morale as a nation." Most Indians who voted for the bjp were endorsing its promise of stability, not its Hindu ideology. That stability is increasingly hard to come by in a nation of nearly a billion people with 18 languages. No single political party has won a parliamentary majority in India for the past decade, and the natural life span of coalition governments since then seems to grow ever shorter. The swiftest fade-out was the bjp's first attempt in 1996, which lasted only 13 days. Vajpayee's government may prove more durable, but judging by the alliance's quarrelsome start, it won't be easy for him to last longer than a year or two. "I'm convinced the recent elections were only a semi-final," says former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. "Stable political alignments will emerge only after the next election." Luckily for Vajpayee, no one else wants to run the country right now. The next largest party is Congress, with Gandhi at the helm, but it can come to power only by hitching up with the third-ranked United Front. A combination of leftist and regional parties, the United Front is still angry at Congress for having pulled down its last two governments. How long the bjp remains in power may ultimately depend on how stridently party militants try to impose their Hindu ethos on prickly coalition allies and on the nation. -With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad and Maseeh Rahman/New Delhi Photograph by TEKEE TANWAR
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