These days history doesn’t take much time to repeat itself. The entry of Sonia Gandhi into the electoral fray and the continuation of TMC’s alliance with the DMK, have triggered off a chain of events which bears a striking similarity to the happenings on the eve of the 1996 polls; except that the roles have been reversed.
Two years back the TMC found its ranks swelling because of an alliance which did not reflect the aspirations of the Congress workers and voters alike. In the euphoria generated by an anti-establishment wave, the TMC’s alliance with the DMK was able to pass unnoticed of its contradictions. But things have changed now, the haze has vanished and the TMC workers are able to see clearly where their leadership has goofed up. Two years is a long time in politics, especially in these days where rug-pullers abound and governments clock their existence in minutes. Not-withstanding the typical rhetorics from the DMK chief about marriages, honeymoons and family life, the relationship between the two parties has been an uneasy one all along.
The simmering discontent among the TMC workers can be gauged in two phases. Firstly, despite the hasty marriage with the DMK which reaped good electoral gains for both, the TMC partymen always had a deep-seated hatred for their ally. This was because the DMK has always been the antithesis of all that the Congress stood for. Except for a few historical aberrations, the DMK and the Congress had never been successful bedfellows. Secondly, the DMK’s indictment by the Jain panel has once again brought out all this suppressed contempt, which is now welling up at a pace that can only gather more momentum, with Sonia launching her campaign from the State, before gobbling up the TMC leadership.
If in 1996 Moopanar had only one reason to breakaway from the Congress, the TMC now had a thousand ones to severe ties with the DMK. That despite this apparent negative mood, the leadership had gone ahead with its ‘deal’ with the DMK only reveals that the TMC leaders had an agenda that was divorced from the wishes of its partymen. This was evident even when after a prolonged- bout of shadow-boxing with its ally, the TMC leadership suddenly buried the hatchet on the eve of Rajya Sabha elections. It didn’t like it when they were told that the party had sacrificed its self-respect and identity for the sake of a few seats in Parliament. And now, the anguished partymen are uttering very much these same words.
Now their hopes, that ‘this’ high command being different from the earlier one vis-a-vis their sentiments, have been belied, they are unlikely to take it lying down. Sonia entering the fray may not cause a massive wave, but is certainly a storm in the Congress tea cup which is bound to rock the TMC too as its vote bank is essentially the Congress vote bank which still feels drawn towards the Nehru family. Moopanar and Co stands clearly alienated from them and may as well stop trumpeting their affinity to Nehru-Indira-Rajiv lineage. One can’t preach vegetarianism when in the company of wolves.
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