The particular creature, though eminently carnivorous, rarely attacks. This is not to be mistaken for a lack of appetite on its part for its pound of flesh. Rather such a trait is its first nature and decades of experience has taught it that one can still have a full meal by feeding on the carcass without exactly felling the prey.
The Congress, like the wolf, rarely has blood on its paws nor are its fingerprints ever found on the scene of crime, yet it is an open secret that it remains the hidden ?hand and the mastermind behind almost every political coup that is being enacted. When the wolf gets hungry, it loses no time in provoking the hounds for the hunt. The gullible and the why alike fall for the call and go for the kill, and the wolf gets its fill besides the gratification of seeing its enemy decimated owing to its own follies.
The Congress has its own ways and none of them would seem strange, if one really understands its proclivities. Much has been said and written about the Congressmen?s despair when out of power, but there is also no gainsaying the fact that the party still is the best bet for the nation, considering the woeful performance of non-Congress regimes.
This perhaps is the wolf?s biggest advantage, the fact that if others fall then there is always the good old Congress to fall back on. All its past crimes get buried in the turmoil of the present and the party suddenly sees a bright future. There is this growing conviction that the next dispensation is mot certainly going to be a Congress one and we may well start reconciling ourselves to a foreign-born Prime Minister. Howsoever one may resent this sort of democratic colonisation of India, the writing seems to be on the wall.
But that is the future story, and in any case, once in power, the party would easily shed its wolf skin to don a more respectable cloak. The botheration is now about the present when the Congress seems to be at its wolfish best. It wants to hurt but is unwilling to strike. It wants the cake but does not want to pay the price.
It wants the enemy destroyed but would want no part of the blame. And it wants power desperately, but wants it to be delivered, packed and sealed, at its doorstep, on its terms. To put it in more current and popular terms, it would attend tea parties but would refrain from partaking of the tea. What a virtue!
And what a ploy! It is really astonishing that a party which actually lost the polls should be wooed so assiduously by all and sundry and worse still, that it has the temerity to hoist itself on a pedestal and feign disinterest. These modern political Vishvamitras are really a very subtle lot. They surely know how and where to corner their damsels, read power, away from the public eye. And yet it would seem that it was the damsel that threw herself on them.
Just watch these conmen sorry Congmen, the next time when they appear on any of those ubiquitous channels. Be it spokesman Ajit Jogi with his trademark grin, the articulate Aiyar and his asides or the scholarly Jairam, their sense of glee at the ongoing turmoil and more particularly at the BJPâs discomfiture is unmistakable.
One cannot also miss the gleam in their eyes as if they have just sighted Mckenna?s gold. From Pranab to Pawar, all exude the air of persons who have scented power. Yet they never say so. Instead they would like to pass it off as if they are no hankering for it. One worthy says that the Congress would not hesitate to fulfil its âconstitutional obligationsâ if the need arose, whatever that means.
Another saint claims that the party is not keen to hasten the end of the BJP regime and would rather wait for the government to fall on its own. But if was their leader who really took the cake for the best performance in malingering when she nonchalantly announced that she would not rush into power knowing full well that she would be pushed into it, in any case.
All this after the Congress showed adequate symptoms of power hunger during the last few weeks preceding the current crises owing to its apprehension that the Vajpayee government may survive after all. This is not to take the blame off the clinched âweight of contradictionsâ ailment that the ruling combine has been suffering from for long.
And the Sangh Parivarâs misplaced paranoia is also unwarranted and is a shabby alibi to hide its own shortcomings. But the fact remains that it was the Congressâs palpable restlessness that emboldened the likes of Swamy to get into the act.
Having clandestinely ignited the explosion which was in any case waiting to happen, the party now wants to play truant with the nation?s nerves. But would it not be better for the aspiring PM to stop playing hide and seek, dispense with the cold feet and come clear on how per party is going to fulfil its âconstitutional obligationsâ instead of waiting for it? to happen?
Is not the lure of power enough motivation to walk that extra mile, having come so far? Why this shadow boxing and all this saintly stuff? Who is she fooling? Do the Congressmen really believe that the people canât tell a wolf from a sheep? Whatever the strategy of the Congress party under the euphoric spell of the current Sonia-mania, it is the nation and its progress that are being held to ransom and any precipitate step without a clear alternative is only going to accentuate the turmoil. The wolf will then have blood on its hands.
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