One of the most dramatic scenes of the Mahabharat is the Bhagavad doot, wherein Krishna goes to the court of Dhritarashtra seeking the forfeited kingdom back for the Pandavas. When that is denied, he seeks five villages for the five brothers. That denied, he seeks one village for all five. No, says the arrogant Duryodhan, not even a needlepoint of land. The road to Kurukshetra began there.
A similar drama was enacted lately in the land of Kurukshetra. The Aam Aadmis, much in distress with their leaders in jail, went to their big INDIA brother Congress seeking 10 of Haryana’s 90 seats in the assembly polls. Denied, they reduced the demand to five, then three. Even the needlepoint of one denied, they marched off to Kurukshetra swearing revenge.
The main battle of Haryana is going to be waged between the ruling BJP and a supremely confident Congress, but the Aam Aadmis are determined to stage a side-show that may damage the Congress at least a bit. A minor needlepoint of discomfort for the Congress, but a needless one brought about by the mulish mindset of its warlord-satraps.
When the INDIAlliance was created and christened, they claimed it would hold fast even after the Lok Sabha election, come hell, high water, or poll defeat. Defeat visited them in the polls, but the alliance performed far beyond their best optimists’ hopes. Together they brought down Narendra Modi from his day-dreamt high horse of 400-plus, and reduced the world’s largest political party to a parliamentary minority.
Naturally, most of INDIA’s voters expected them to stick together transcending elections, making life and reign miserable for Modi & Co. But now the first agnipareeksha has come in Haryana, and the alliance is wilting in the heat.
The contest to the Haryana assembly still looks like a two-horse race between the BJP and the Congress, with the latter being the favourite. It won five of the state’s 10 seats in the Lok Sabha round, up from nil in 2019, and polled well in more than half the assembly segments. The only way to go from there is further up.
For many reasons. One, the ruling BJP has wasted away its two-term long goodwill. Two, the hardy Haryanvi youth who used to throng army recruitment camps in hundreds have been feeling cheated by the Agnipath scheme. Three, the Singhu-stopped farmers are still seething at the BJP. Four, the Hoodas of the Congress have rallied the Jats back from the Chautala clan parties, and Selja has brought back the dalits. Five, there is much wrath over how BJP leaders had treated the state’s doughty Dangal daughters as The California Dolls. The California Dolls, if you don’t know, was a low-grade Hollywood entertainer on woman wrestlers, and no match for or patch on Bollywood’s Dangal.
Thus, everything was looking hunky dory for the Congress, and a good time for it to show grace to those who had helped it in its bad days. Remember how only three months ago the Aam Aadmis had gracefully granted three of Delhi’s seven seats to the rudderless Congress, and even campaigned for them free? It’s another matter that the Congress couldn’t win even one, but the party had only itself to blame. It couldn’t even get candidates to contest for full two weeks after Kejriwal gave them the seats.
For once, the blame is not on the Congress’s much-reviled crown prince. Much as Rahul had wanted to keep the alliance intact and be graceful to his friends, his Haryana satraps wouldn’t budge.
Clearly, the spirit of coalition dharma is yet to percolate.
prasannan@theweek.in