BY SWAPAN DASGUPTA

Clash  of Civilisation

The ancien regime is looking to Sonia Gandhi.

Last week, even as Sonia Gandhi was creating waves, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) played unlikely host to one of America's most controversial thinkers. Professor Sam Huntington did not endear himself to those present at the RGF when he spoke of the "bloody borders" of Islam aggravating the global "clash of civilisations". For the Indian establishment nurtured on a hotchpotch of Third Worldism, quasi-market friendliness and Nehruvian agnosticism, Huntington's stark division of the world into religio-centric civilisations -- with India as a "lonely" Hindu outpost -- is anathema. A nebulous and contrived cosmopolitanism has been at the heart of the chatterati's self-image.

Over the past few weeks, it is this elite cosmopolitanism that is suddenly looking fragile. The surge in the BJP's fortunes has threatened a cosy world for a variety of reasons, the least of which is Atal Bihari Vajpayee's views as expressed in the saffron website. As long as the BJP was the party of outsiders, a coalition of interests led by the forces of lala capitalism, it was no threat. Ayodhya may have triggered an emotional upsurge in the Aryavarta and even swayed a handful of retired generals and impressionable plus (People Like Us), but it never made a serious dent in the Indian establishment. To be saffron was also to be an outlander.

No longer. The opinion polls and Arun Nehru continue to prophesy another hung Parliament. But no one is really sure. Hence the dreary initiation ritual enacted daily at the BJP central office. Yesterday it was Indologist Lokesh Chandra and a former director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, today it is a forgotten Ram Dhan and B.P. Maurya and tomorrow it is stars

Gautami and Vinod Khanna. Suddenly, the establishment is showing cracks; it is hesitantly detecting the hidden virtues of saffron. Ramakrishna Hegde and Naveen Patnaik, hot favourites on the social circuit, have demonstrated that the communal-secular divide is negotiable and others are unwilling to be left behind. Vajpayee's office, it is said, now maintains a rapidly growing file of letters of recommendation for the prime minister's principal secretary. And at the hint that the next BJP finance minister may well be a technocrat in the Manmohan Singh mould, a galaxy of senior economists are dining out on the claim that they have been sounded out.

All very premature, considering that the BJP has to literally claw its way to a majority. But that is not the point. The important thing is that each day another defector is paraded before the TV cameras, the more intense becomes the level of resistance to the BJP. Saffron is not the colour of revolution, but its victory will redefine the Indian establishment. If Vajpayee wins, the guest lists for state banquets will look different, the character of goodwill delegations to Burkina Faso via the US will undergo alteration, the trustees of cultural bodies will have new names and the government-appointed directors of various corporations will not be Congress groupies. In short, the elaborate patronage network created in the past 50 years will be jeopardised.

It is not a monumental threat. But to the Indian establishment this is the real "clash of civilisations". Which is why it is so relieved at Sonia's foray into electoral politics. Don't be misled by those who say she will make no difference. Sonia is the last stand of the ancien regime. If she fails, we will gauge the hollowness of India's cosmopolitanism.

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