NEW DELHI: Is there a tacit understanding between Prime Minister P.V.Narasimha Rao and the BJP leader ship? Indications point to this possibility and are given credence even by a section of top Congress (I) leadership.

Senior Congress (I) leaders Arjun Singh, Madhavrao Scindia and Sharad Pawar are said to be unhappy with Rao’s handling of the Ram janmabhoomi Babri Mosque controversy according to political circles here.

At last week’s meeting of the national integration council, the Prime Minister was too mild towards the BJP and its communal fascist polices of slowly pre paring the ground for demolishing. The Babri Masjid while Arjun Singh went out of his way to take on the BJP. Before launching the attack, Arjun Singh re marked that the Prime Minister was perhaps not tackling the B.L.P. leader L.K. Advani “head on” because of the “compulsions of his dignity and demand on his office” but, Arjun Singh said, he was under no such compulsion. “Therefore I can tell Advaniji that what he is doing is wrong. This party is speaking with forked tongue. I am also a Hindu and a devotee of Ram but my Ram is not one who pulled the trigger on Mahatma Gandhi.”

A few Congress (I) Leaders explain away the differences among Congress (I) leaders by saying that Rao was genuinely trying to thrash out a consensual approach on the Ram Babri issue and that explained his conciliatory approach towards the B.P. But others are intrigued at the manner in which the BJP chief gave Rao a clean chit on country’s problems but blamed the Congress (I) for the current national mess, Writing in the latest issue of R.S.S. mouthpiece, Panchjana, Advani said that Rao, after Lal Bahadur Shastri, was the only post-Independence Prime Minister whom the BJP respected. But he was an individual and the blame for the current mess should go to the Congress (I).

These remarks have embarrassed many Congress (I) leaders who are on the defensive, but the impression in political circles Persists that some sort of a secret deal guides the two sides on vital political matters, For, not long ago the two sides cooperated on the election of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker in the Lok Sabha.

The Central govt has not gone beyond expression of concern topping the B.J.P Jed U.P. govt from acquiring land for the building of the Ram temple at Ayoda. It has also not moved a little finger to stop Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal vandalism against the Babri masjid whose walls have been damaged.

Those developments have provided an opportunity to Akali leader Simranjt Singh Mann to describe difference between the B.J.P. and Congress (I) as only of quantity and not of quality.

The relationship between the Prime Minister and the B.J.P, will have greater Clarity after Rao is free from the Andhra by-election later this month. He is seeking election to the Lok Sahba and will be in a stronger position to give shape to what until now has been his secret deals both within and without the country.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 8, 1991