Both of India's major parties, the Bhartiya Janata Party and Congress, have missed the main point in their deliberations, the former in Rajasthan and the latter in Madhya Pradesh. They do not seem to realise that either of them is not in a position to form government on their own at the Centre in the foreseeable future. In other words, neither the BJP nor Congress can get the required 273 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the Lower House, in the next couple of elections.

For Congress leaders to say that they will go it alone means that they want the BJP-led coalition to continue. On the other hand, the BJP's effort to put everything worthwhile on its own plate bodes ill for the allies. The voters in the country are divided on considerations of caste, community and province to such an extent that no ideology transcends them.

Congress is becoming more and more acceptable as the days go by. But this is because there is no viable alternative to the BJP, which has lost its luster. The party has a long way to go before it can get a majority in Parliament. There is no escape from a coalition government. The BJP recognised the fact when it adopted the National agenda in place of its own. But it is not imbibing the culture that is required for a coalition.

Atal Behari Vajpayee got a lifetime chance when he became the Prime Minister. A liberal among communalists as he is, he could have moulded the BJP in his own cast. He would have faced several difficulties. But he did not even try. The result is that he only presides over a setup which the BJP hardcore runs in the real sense.

He could have built in certain fields a consensus, which his predecessors did. But Vajpayee has no time for meaningful talks with the constituents in the coalition, much less with parties in the opposition. He has finished six months in office but has not convened the meeting of National Development Council, an apex economic body that includes state chief ministers. Nor has he constituted the National Integration Council, a top body of eminent persons, leaders of political parties and ministers to look at developments without the party pulls.

In fact, his party president Khushabhau Thakre has put the blame on the opposition for not effecting the consensus. His grievance is that there is no agreement in opinion on the bomb and Kashmir. The fault is that of government. It was bad enough for the BJP not to have consulted even leader of the opposition on nuclear tests. But it was rubbing salt on the wounds of the opposition when Vajpayee took none during his visit to the Pokhran II site. Till today the BJP has neither invited nor allowed anyone from Congress, the communists or other non-BJP parties to the place.

The fact is that the BJP wanted to parade that the bomb was its 'achievement'. Home Minister L. K. Advani even said with bravado that the BJP alone had the courage to detonate the bomb, not the parties running the government before it. The courage does not mean exposing the country to the dangers of nuclear war. The retaliatory explosion by Pakistan shows how the governments before the BJP-led coalition were conscious of insecurity they would create by taking the bomb out of closet.

Even then there could have been some understanding in the country if the BJP had tried to take opposition parties into confidence. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Jaswant Singh has been holding a series of conference with top American officials and giving the impression that the two sides have nearly reached the agreement. Why is the BJP initiating off his own bat such important issues as the bomb? It is an open secret that the BJP-coalition is prepared to sign the CTBT. But it is afraid to approach the opposition. Had there been a dialogue between the two, the agreement on the CTBT would have been easier to reach.

Any why to blame the opposition on Kashmir? Nuclear tests have re-focussed the world's attention on the problem. There is fear abroad that if there is no rapproachment between the two, it can ignite nuclear fires in the subcontinent. What kind of consensus the BJP chief expects when the points of view are so divergent?

South African President Nelson Mandela's reference to Kashmir, however reprehensible, was not unexpected. Practically every world leader is saying the same thing in private. In Mandela's case, the ineptness of our foreign office is also apparent. South Africa wanted our expertise on holding an international conference of the NAM scale. But our foreign office did not care even to acknowledge the letter. There was no effort to explain to Mandela beforehand why Kashmir stood a better chance bilaterally than with the help of outsiders.

In fact, one would like to know about the BJP-led coalition's policy on Kashmir. Even army commanders fighting militancy in the state have admitted that there has to be a political solution. Obviously, it means that people in the state have to be retrieved. By giving them powers they enjoyed after joining the Indian Union, there is a chance of winning them back. But the BJP wants to abolish Article 370, which gives a special status to the state.

Still there is no doubt that the different opinions on Kashmir, the bomb and the economy have to converge one day. The way to do is not to blame Congress or other political parties, as the BJP is doing, but to seek their cooperation. This is not possible so long as the BJP is riding high horse. It must try to build a consensus.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in a well-written speech at Panchmari, has rightly pointed that she would not encourage shifting of alliances in the name of stability. But if compulsions of Indian politics are to be faced there is no alternative to alliances. Mulayam Singh in UP, more than Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar, is a reality, which cannot be denied. Their base may be that of backward classes or Muslims. But they count in their respective states and Congress cannot shut its eyes or indulge in wishful thinking. Rebuilding the party may be necessary, as Sonia has argued. But it will take time. What do people do in the meanwhile?

Probably, Sonia's calculations are that the manner in which the BJP is going down the hill will result in its defeat in the state assembly elections in November in Delhi, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and that Congress will emerge victorious. She may turn out to be correct. But how does this help Congress to come to power at the Centre? Sooner or later, it will have to accept the logic of coalition.

What both the BJP and Congress, more so the former, have not realised is that they convey the type of message which make most people go away from them. They have to get to win them over. The rhetoric of the two parties has ceased to evoke response. There is nothing new about them, neither in approach, nor in their argument that they can deliver the goods. It is true that Congress is gaining most of the ground that the BJP is losing. But it is not true that Congress can capture power at the Centre on its own. Too much emphasis on their own party will neither help Congress nor the BJP. They have to convert themselves into platforms where the people of different persuasions can gather. The BJP is stymed because of its goal of Hindu Rashtriya.

Congress can provide the democratic front, particularly when the communists have offered it support. But the party has to learn the rudiments of coalition. To say that it is ready to fulfill its constitutional obligation and form a government if and when the Vajpayee government falls is not enough. It will have to convince the non-BJP parties that Congress has shed arrogance and that it is willing to share power with others. The declaration that Sonia Gandhi will not be the Prime Minister will help. In any case, the danger to the BJP-led coalition seems to have averted till the budget session in 1999.

The Prime Minister placed the palm of his right hand over the palm of the left hand and gazed at it. His initial thought was that the palm was the electoral symbol of his party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

It had been a good sign, the hand denoted destiny.

He was aware that he was a man of destiny. He was the instrument of deep and independent social change in the country.

The hand was also a symbol of power. It was the instrument of strength and of holding, guiding, directing, shaping, moulding.

His gaze focussed on the life-line. Astrologers had told him that it was broken in the middle denoting a grave risk to life.

His lips curved sneeringly. Quickly, he withdrew his gaze from his hands and surveyed the room.

It was Monday, a relatively free day because the House did not meet on Mondays.

There were, as a rule, so many other matters that were scheduled on Mondays precisely for that reason.

But this was a Monday in the month of May. It was a Monday in the holy season of Vesak, the festival that commemorated the triple events in the life of Gautama Buddha - his birth, enlightenment, and attainment of Nirvana. For a brief while every year, the people, and this included politicians, put aside mundane thoughts and mundane matters and raised

their minds and spirits to the sublime teachings of one who had claimed, five hundred years before the birth of Christ, that he had received enlightenment while meditating under a bo tree in Gaya in North India. He had claimed to have found the answer to the problem of suffering and death: all evil stemmed from desire. All salvation lay in the annihilation of desire.

On the day of Vesak and in the days that followed, devout Buddhists and even those who were Buddhist only in name visited temples clad in whit

e garments and offered flowers and lighted tapers and chanted incantations in Pali, the classical language of the Buddhist scriptures. They gave alms to the poor and practised Maitri Bhavana, a form of meditation that breathed out blessings to the universe in ever-widening circles of goodwill.

And the universe, they believed, absorbed such blessings and breathed them outward again, and the recipients received them like echoing benisons.

Such tranquillity filled the heart of Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, the man born to a noble house and into a Christian family, the man at whose baptism a British governor had been sponsor, and in whose honour the child had been given the two middle names.

He was now seated in a high backed chair with a deep, springy cushion, his slight, bony frame sinking into its easy, luxurious indolence. In his hand he held a leather bound edition of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. He could not recall how many times he might have read it. But this evening he did not need to read it to find solace in it. The very touch of the pages with their scent of age, comforted him. His thoughts tended to roam.

He lit one of his aged briar pipes again, with a lighted match. The warm glow brightened his face, his wide intellectual brow, his fleshy nose, the dark skin taut over his prominent cheek bones. He puckered his wide mouth to suck the flame into the bowl. The flame was reflected on his spectacles with the slightly dated frame he wore; round with the thin long arms that curved round his ears. Mahatma Gandhi wore glasses like these.

He might have liked that comparison.

He was a great admirer of the huge sub-continent that dominated the tiny pear-shaped island over which he now ruled. Parliamentary democracy in those days was usually the Prime Minister’s will though the motions of being the instrument of the people’s will were gone through to satisfy the disciples of Erskine May.

But soon after he had assumed power, in the most resounding victory in post independence Ceylon, he realised the painful fact that political power was the most ephemeral force in the world.

It had been almost inevitable from the time of his birth, and perhaps even before, that he would be seated in the seats of power.

His father, a belted knight, and his grandfather before him had been aristocrats. They had walked among the mighty of the land at a time when the mighty were aliens and invaders and conquerors. They had wielded power not only among their feudal serfs but even among their equals, for they had collaborated with the foreign rulers.

It was inevitable that Bandaranaike would be sent to England for his university and professional studies. It was hoped that this would help him absorb the manner of the British so that when the time came he would be able to rule in a regal manner.

But as is customary when fiercely independent minds are confined, they break the mould.

Oxford had had quite the opposite effect. He had acquired a markedly anti-British attitude there because of the sham and hypocrisy of the British establishment.

He had been made aware of the colour bar in subtle ways.

He had, indeed, referred to it as a "period of disaffection and frustration,’ that he had been "opposed by barriers invisible and impalpable, but real.’

What had bothered him even at Oxford, the seat of liberal education and values, was what so many coloured people had had to endure: the colour bar.

"With positive rudeness and brutal frankness one might be able to deal; bounders and snobs can be suitably handled. But the trouble was far more subtle and deep-seated. In a variety of ways one was being shown politely and unmistakably that one was simply not wanted,’ he had written.

But nothing could suppress his brilliance. He gained fame as a powerful writer and an eloquent speaker.

Those were vintage years at Oxford. Really outstanding men bestrode the scene. There was Anthony Eden, later to be knighted and to become the Prime Minister of England. There was Krishna Menon with an agile mind that won the easy admiration of Bandaranaike. They were both trusted friends of the young Ceylonese. Their paths were to cross on the field of politics and statecraft. The Prime Minister put the book down and walked over to the long wide window of the library.

In the distance, muffled but audible, he could hear an amalgam of amplified sounds emerging from several pandals in the vicinity. Each broadcast a message from the Buddhist scriptures and legend.

He held the bowl of his pipe in his hand for a while and puffed luxuriantly.

There was a benign look in his eyes which the populace rarely saw and the cartoonists never.

They always depicted him as a cynic, a man without feeling or compassion, a man who had subtly manipulated his way into power, as one who cared for no one and for nothing but for himself and his own ambition. A columnist had referred to his 'smile that never reached the eyes.’ Yet, when he had returned from Oxford covered with glory, he had had a great future ahead of him as a lawyer. He had practised for a while as an advocate, and there were no heights that he could not have reached in the profession, financially or socially, had he continued.

Yet he had freely chosen the way of politics.

As a Buddhist he had, indeed, wondered whether this wish was akin to thanaha or desire, which the Buddhist is exhorted to abjure and eventually annihilate.

Could an individual ever discard desire totally? Living in the world, all individuals had legitimate desires: to acquire a reasonable education, to obtain a reasonable job, to earn a reasonable income, to marry and raise a family and then breed a fresh progeny of desires, all equally legitimate. Yes, one could control and limit desires to eliminate greed, but could one eliminate desire?

Within a monastery or assuming the life of the mendicant monk, depending totally on others for one’s very own sustenance, one could possibly come near to the Buddha’s ideal. But then, what about those who supported such mendicants and detached persons? They would have to keep a few desires alive. Would not the mendicants themselves retain the final vestiges of desire: for minimum food to sustain life, minimum clothes as protection against the elements? And in the final crucible, what about the very desire to eliminate desire?

The Prime Minister smiled gently. He delighted in the conundrum. Yes, he was aware that he was caught in the cleft stick. He had, indeed, set out in the service of his people and of the world. And he was equipped with every gift needed to take his place as a leader of great vision in his own country, and as a statesman with a world view in international affairs.

But he could not have achieved such lofty objectives without rising to some eminence, and he could not have done that unless he had some ambition to do so, and unless he was prepared to meet his adversaries if not on his terms, then on theirs.

About the author

E.C.T. Candappa was one of Sri Lanka's been feature writers in the mid-fifties till the seventies. He was an outstanding journalist at Lake House and distinguished himself as a reporter and feature writer. He is now domiciled in Australia but still very much interested in his country of origin. He visited Sri Lanka last year and interviewed many of the personalities featured in this book.