Column

Meanwhile in Delhi

An era in politics is fading out almost unnoticed. I call it era, not generation, because the political culture of yesteryear leaders was so different from the personalized, hate-driven politics of today. The death of this era came home seeing two stalwarts of the old Janata Party, Chandra Shekhar and George Fernandes, reduced to a pale shadow of their fiery selves in the current session of Parliament.

Chandra Shekhar came after a six-month absence, frail and emaciated by his bone marrow disease. Tragically, his appearance created barely a ripple. He sat in the Lok Sabha for a brief while and then retired to the chambers of his old friend, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, chairman of the Rajya Sabha. A handful of admirers dropped by to pay their respects. It says something about the tremendous personality of the man that he still draws a disparate crowd. From Digvijay Singh of the Janata Dal to Jaswant Singh of the BJP to Suresh Pachauri of the Congress, they touched his feet and stayed for a bit to chat.

Old timers recall the Chandra Shekhar they knew. He was the Young Turk who helped create the Indira Gandhi of garibi hatao fame. He was the angry not-so-young man who left the Congress during the Emergency to become the backbone of the Janata Party, which swept to power on an anti-Indira wave. He was the mature leader who captured the imagination of a nation with a padyatra from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

He was generous enough to support a man he hated, Morarji Desai, as Prime Minister of the Janata government. Yet, he fell prey to the pettiness of our times when V P Singh pipped him to the post of PM in 1989. He plotted with Rajiv Gandhi to bring down Singh's government 11 months later.

Still, it's a tribute to the place he once held in Indian politics that when he was in New York a couple of months ago for treatment, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spent three hours with him, seeking tips from a man known for his keen political brain.

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But it was George Fernandes who underlined the decline of the old stalwarts. When he rose to speak during the Volcker debate last week, few could believe that this was the mesmerizing trade unionist who used to paralyse Mumbai's industrial units and crippled the Indian Railways with a strike in 1974. Fernandes could barely speak that day in Parliament, embarrassing even his critics in the Congress.

It turns out that Fernandes had not been feeling well for some days but he kept quiet because he was so keen to speak on the Volcker issue and attack his favourite target, Sonia Gandhi. Two days later, he was in hospital, with a suspected neuro problem. It looks like the end of the road for a man who has dominated Indian politics for four decades. Controversy has always been his middle name but now the baton of spearheading the socialist cause will probably be passed on to Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav. The latter is tipped to take over a JD (U) president in a few weeks.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net