Guess Who Came For Dinner

WHITHER the "secular coalition"? After the Deve Gowda-Bal Thackeray dinner meeting at Amitabh Bachchan's house in Bombay on August 20, the answer seems ambiguous. The Left parties, Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and a section of the Prime Minister's own party, the Janata Dal, are understandably furious. For them, Gowda's manoeuvre undermines the United Front (UF) Government's very raison d'etre.

The critics say Gowda has exhibited political dishonesty by hobnobbing with the leader of a party described repeatedly by the UF as "dangerously communal and anti-minorities". A senior JD leader feels the Prime Minister's attempt "to cause a rift between the BJP and Shiv Sena" reeks of "political immaturity". One major fault is the timing: the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections are around the corner.

So much for what's perhaps Gowda's first major move as a national-level political strategist. At the minimum, the intention must have been to convey that he's not just the manager of an unwieldy 13-party coalition that props him up. The key message is that he can search—and find—alternatives, that he has wider acceptability.

But, says a non-JD Union minister, "just when it seemed that Gowda was getting better at managing contradictions, he has stumbled". Or, he is getting too good at the job—he has created contradictions where there were none. "He may climb down under pressure from allies. The government may be in no immediate danger, but the portents are ominous," he adds.

Not the least because former prime minister V.P. Singh, the moving force behind the United Front, is learnt to be "very unhappy". Sources say V.P. Singh had already spoken to Gowda about the meeting his confidant—Civil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim—had with Thackeray in July. (That, on hindsight, seems to have been no chance encounter). Gowda's rationalisation had been that it was only a political move to try and cause problems for the BJP in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The matter was left at that, though Singh's aides say he didn't sound convinced.

Now, he is really riled—and he is not averse to the idea of UF leaders raising the matter within the steering committee. Other JD leaders have vowed to broach the topic at the party's national executive meet slated for the month-end. The JD's Maharashtra unit had made its displeasure known to the PM in Bombay itself.

Ideology apart, many perceive a tactical flaw. Says a senior JD leader: "V.P. Singh's point, with which many of us agree, is that even if Gowda is to be taken at face value and his intentions were to cause problems for the BJP, a surreptitious meeting with Thackeray at a film-star's house during his first visit to Bombay as prime minister is certainly not the way to go about it."

The communist parties are seething. Prakash Karat, CPI(M) politburo member, minces no words: "The Sena practices a reprehensible brand of communal politics. And when the party, its leader and its state government are under pressure due to their ties with the underworld—extortion, land rackets and the Ramesh Kini murder—such a move will give them legitimacy."

A.B. Bardhan, CPI general secretary, is equally clear that the meeting "should not have taken place"—a point he plans to make within the steering committee. Senior Left leaders tell Outlook that, thanks to "Gowda's indiscretions", all UF constituents are worried about the political price they would have to pay in terms of the support of the minorities.

The man in the worst spot is Mulayam. As it was, his Samajwadi Party (SP) didn't exactly make the UF a frontrunner in a three-way contest with the BJP and the BSP-Congress alliance. Gowda's forays into western UP made only a cosmetic difference. Now, Gowda's dinner diplomacy may cost Mulayam the Muslim vote—no thanks also to Amar Singh, SP general secretary, who helped Ibrahim set up the meeting.

Sources close to Mulayam say he has been monitoring reactions in the Urdu press. By all accounts, it's bad news all the way—as the "wrong message has been sent out". In effect, not many seem to have bought the line that Gowda met Thackeray merely to offer condolences or that it was part of a greater scheme to upset the BJP applecart.

It's not clear what exactly was discussed at the meeting, where the Shiv Sena chief's son Uddhav and Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi were also present. The Gowda camp's explanations are innocuous. They range from "the PM had gone to see Amitabh Bachchan's father", to "he only offered condolences to Thackeray on the death of his wife and son". The line being pushed within the UF: "It was part of a ploy against the BJP". The hush-hush air around the meeting has fuelled less benign theories: that ABCL's plan to host the Miss World contest in Bangalore figured at the meet, as did the Joshi regime's Sahar airport expansion plan, involving the Hindujas.

The crux, however, is the secular question. On August 23, Ahmed Bukhari, Naib Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid, delivered a stinging blow when, in his address to the masses before the Friday prayers, he made it clear that Gowda had given final proof of his true intentions. "Could he not, during his first visit to Bombay as PM, have looked up the victims of the 1993 riots instead?" Ibrahim too drew severe flak. In an overtly political speech, Bukhari appealed to Muslims in UP to either dump the so-called secularists "who only need Muslim votes" or insist on a UF-BSP alliance, failing which they should boycott the polls altogether. Bukhari's influence on Muslim voting patterns may be negligible, but the SP leadership fears he may set off a chain reaction among UP's Muslim clergy.

Within the UF and the JD, the murmurs continue though no leader is willing to go on record yet. Even Laloo Yadav, who was having problems with the PM, is learnt to be mulling over the options rather than go on the offensive, which he may have done had he been on a stronger wicket in Bihar. Ibrahim, however, is being panned by UF leaders as a "fixer", though they admit he can't take all the blame off Gowda.