Back To Front

MR. GURNAM SINGH has certainly not been a shining example of bowing to the verdict of the people in inducting a defeated candidate to the cabinet. The charge on this score would hold good even if it had not been Mr.  Bassi but Dr. Baldev Prakash or Mr. Rarewala. The CPI, the SSP and the RPI which are otherwise sympathetic to the Government, though with reservations, have rightly criticised it for this lapse from democratic norms, while the Jan Sangh’s embarrassed silence speaks volumes for its role as an accomplice or accessory to this not very edifying fact of thumbing the nose at the people and their verdict — for whatever both may be worth, now that the poll is over.

Click here for a larger view of Editorial published on February 19, 1969

An unsavoury and extra dimension is also added to the episode because Mr. Bassi had been defeated by Mr. Gill, and it is against Mr. Gill that the Government has banged its big drums to show that it means business. Mass transfers of Government servants and commissions of enquiry against former Ministers have by now become rather shop-soiled techniques for signalling the arrival of a new Government with its promise of clean administration. But whatever might have been Mr. Gill’s sins of omission and commission, the inclusion of Mr. Bassi in the cabinet is a propaganda bonus for him and he would now be comfortably placed to argue a case of political vendetta against him. Even more. Mr Gurnam Singh loses some of his credibility when he warns “funny” men against repeating their “funny” acts by conjuring up visions of a dissolution of the House and an appeal to the people again.

He knows, just as well as anybody else, that he did not succeed in this last time. It requires a concatenation of favourable circumstances which might not obtain in Punjab even if it does in Haryana. But, apart from this, he would have to admit that if defection is dirty, as it undoubtedly is, giving cabinet posts to defeated candidates is not good, clean fun either. This time, mercifully, only two constituent units of the United Front have taken office, the others having preferred to keep out or been kept our. Smaller coalitions are easier to work and communist-baiters would also be happy that the communists are not there in this panchayat of five. For the Ministry too it must be a relief that it would not have to become entangled however remotely or peripherally, with any scrap that might develop between West Bangal and the Centre. But the coalition, as it is, has not been free from criticism even nearer home, and that is what must cause concern – and Mr. Bassi is not the only issue. The RPI, for instance, while welcoming the Government has denounced the Jan Sangh as “Enemy No. One of the Working people.” How then it can reconcile itself to supporting the Akalis who are collaborating with the enemy is perhaps a minor contradiction, when set against other major contradictions besetting the coalition, the Akalis in particular.

Mr. Kapur Singh, Senior Vice-President of the Akali Dal, has in a written statement denounced as “phoney” the election manifesto of the Dal. He has also expressed a preference, at his press conference, for an Akali coalition with the Congress and other “secular and patriotic” parties. He also wants the Akali Dal itself to become a “constitutional and secular party.” The point is well taken. It seldom seems to occur to the Akali Dal or the Jan Sangh that when they project their coalition, as a rule and without qualification, as the antithetic symbol of communal unity, the self-images of both as communal parties – and not much more than as communal parties — unwittingly shows. Hence the need for both these parties to break fresh ground instead of simply seeking to thrive only in the catchment areas of protest votes against the Congress. Mr Gurnam Singh evidently does not share Mr kapur Singh’s view of the Congress and he has armed himself with tape-records of what he calls the communal speeches of top Congress leaders. Tapes and tape-recorders have loomed large in Punjab politics not only now but from the days of Mr. Kairon when a tape-recorder was admitted by the Supreme Court as evidence against him. This pathetic reliance on tape for everything is thus perhaps understandable, but it is a pity that telephones are without T.V. circuits so that the owners of the voices that spoke to the Governor questioning Mr. Gurnam Singh’s title to leadership could be identified.

Who spoke is perhaps not so material now as the fact of incipient revolt or attempted sabotage that is established. Surely it is this – not that other straws in the uncertain wind were wanting – that must have made Mr. Gurnam Singh utter his dire warnings of doom awaiting the funny men – and heaven knows there is no dearth of them too. That the new Ministry should be haunted by fears of defection immediately after the poll which itself was brought about by endemic defection and which it was also intended to cure, is deeply to be deplored. To ring a change from Action, power disrupts, absolute power absolutely.

The decay and disruption of the Congress derived directly from its long draught of power over a couple of decades. Other parties which came to power in 1967 supplanting the Congress disrupted more quickly, partly because they were coalitions but more because, being new, power had a funny effect on their original selves. If the Akali Dal, now the single largest party in Punjab, does not learn the moral even from these lessons of the recent past, and if the new Government falls as a nurseling with far more grave-diggers than it will only itself to blame.