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NATION:
BJP
A
Whimsical Goodbye
Uma Bharati's reckless streak shows up again, this time making her
quit the Lok Sabha
By Swapan
Dasgupta
There
was always a child in Uma Bharati waiting to come out. "I just want
to be free, to do the things I never managed to do, to play with my dogs,
to get wet in the rain, to just be myself," said the 41-year-old
BJP MP and sadhvi a few hours before she wrote to the party bigwigs resigning
from the Lok Sabha and the BJP National Executive.
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| "I'm
not changing the direction, only the route" |
Last Thursday,
she separately met Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and her political
mentor Home Minister L.K. Advani to explain her decision. Both heard her
out, with Vajpayee making it quite clear that under no circumstances was
he going to accept her resignation from the Lok Sabha. With Parliament
scheduled to meet next in November for the winter session, Uma's resignation
is in suspended animation. As far as she is concerned, she has resigned
from Parliament; as far as the BJP brass is concerned, it hasn't been
accepted.
Despite
a month-long murmur that the stormy petrel of the Ayodhya movement was
contemplating something drastic, her decision took the party by total
surprise. Just three days earlier, she met Advani to apprise him on the
positive role of the Jammu and Kashmir Police in battling terrorism and
even spoke passionately in a Lok Sabha debate on the minorities.
But Uma
had made up her mind some three months earlier, even as she was fiercely
battling the Digvijay Singh Government in Bhopal on behalf of casual employees.
She consulted two persons whose opinions she truly values-her guru since
1992, the Pejawar Swami of Udupi in Karnataka and Satya Sai Baba. Both
expressed extreme unhappiness and advised her against taking such a drastic
step. Her guru advised her to think the matter through for three months
and then act according to her conscience.
Equally
interesting, Uma did not consult the other two persons whose opinions
she values-Chennai-based chartered accountant and swadeshi activist S.
Gurumurthy and BJP General-Secretary K.N. Govindacharya. "I know
what they would have said. I would have consulted them if I was willing
to be persuaded, if I felt my resignation was negotiable."
If Uma is
to be believed, her decision to quit stemmed from a growing disillusionment
with the political system. "There was a time when there were stalwarts
and good men like Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Ram Manohar Lohia and E.M.S. Namboodiripad.
Now it's different. There are still good men in all parties, particularly
the BJP but the political system has failed. I feel I can be more effective
outside Parliament." For a champion of Hindutva, the inclusion of
Namboodiripad in her pantheon may seem strange. "I come from a communist
background and my Hindutva has traces of it. That's why I feel so passionately
for the poor," she says.
But was
it merely exasperation with the big, bad world that propelled Uma into
abandoning public life? There was always one facet of her that was impulsive,
impetuous and reckless-perhaps natural for someone who had consistently
tasted public adulation since she became a preacher at the age of six.
At the same time, there was another Uma-ambitious, motivated and with
a profound grasp of political strategy. Among the religious figures who
entered the BJP in the wake of Ayodhya, Uma was perhaps the only one who
successfully made the transition to politics. Always mindful of her backward-
caste status and her humble origins, she was naturally cut out for bigger
things. So what went wrong?
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INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 
