This sanyasin surrenders only to soar higher. She gives herself in only to regain freedom. That is the paradox of being the kinetic sadhvi. Power sheds its inhibitions when it is liberated from the gilded cage on the leafy Shamila Hills in Bhopal and played out in the erupting streets of her karmabhoomi. When she showed up in a court in Hubli in Karnataka, it was not a bathetic moment of crime seeking punishment. Rather, it was Uma Bharati's independence day. And she is all set to take off in tricolour splendour. The Ascetic Unbound has changed the political calculus-and how.

ON THE WARPATH: Bharati arrives in Hubli to court arrest

Governance may not have worked for her. Symbolism is at work now. Chief minister Uma Bharati was out of place, and remote from her natural habitat. A Bharati in judicial custody-for the crime of violating prohibitory orders while hoisting the national flag at a disputed ground (see box) on August 15, 1994-has acquired the aura of martyrdom. Add a dash of the tricolour to it and you get a symbol that can mobilise the party, demoralise the enemy and possibly divide the ruling partnership. The BJP, still drifting in defeatism, badly needs a grassroots push; and Bharati, when she steps out of the jail, crying Ram and Rashtra, will be the Force. At a time when the Congress is fast becoming the most privileged custodian of the politics of immorality, Bharati's glow magnifies the stain of, say a Laloo Prasad Yadav on the ruling alliance.

And the context makes Bharati's martyrdom text singularly beneficial to her party and uncomfortable to the Congress. For, it was not long before when Shibu Soren was a subterranean minister. He was on the run but beyond the reach of cameras. Soren had to go eventually but, for a while, he dominated the UPA's version of morality and governance. His colleague Laloo, who has already made "tainted minister" a cliché in the current political glossary, continues to be quite blasé about occupational hazards like corruption and judiciary. And now, set against them is Bharati, going all the way from Bhopal to Hubli, to court arrest, to give the doctrine of pre-emption a moral spin-the colour of which is saffron.

MOBILISING MASCOT

And what a journey it was. Soren or Laloo could not have missed it. Bharati turned it into a 32-hour long pilgrimage. En route, she was met by supporters at every out-of-the-way station in Maharashtra, whiling away time in between talking with the journalists aboard the train. Engine failure delayed her arrival at Pune, where a larger crowd was waiting, and if the idea of winding her way through Maharashtra on a slow train was to drum up emotions and raise the political temperature in the election-bound state, it succeeded.

UNIFYING CAUSE: The Bharati episode has given the BJP leadership an opportunity to mobilise public support and win back its core votes

The run up to the telegenic surrender itself was dramatic. At Alnavar, all of a sudden, Karnataka Police SP D. Rupa (who had been dispatched to Bhopal to accompany the ex-chief minister, but had kept to herself throughout the journey) popped up in the sanyasin's compartment. Bharati had disarmed the policewoman earlier by saying it made her day by looking at such a pretty girl. Rupa said she would have to arrest Bharati on the spot and take her to Hubli by road for fear of a riot. Bharati, backed by Ananth Kumar, said nothing doing; they would not go by road. So the train chugged its way to Alnavar, Dharwar and finally Hubli, with a visibly embarrassed young Rupa awaiting fresh orders, which had not yet come by. So the sanyasin went to the nearest temple to pray.

Has the slow train to Hubli put the BJP on the fast track? The Congress doesn't think so. Says Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal: "In 10 days, this episode will be over. It's not a serious matter. What she attempted to do in 1994 at Hubli was a serious matter. Yeh jhanda nahin, danga failanay gayee thee." Certainly, it puts the sadhvi on the fast track. Last year, it was she, along with Vasundhara Raje in neighboring Rajasthan, who gave the BJP a spectacular boost when she captured Madhya Pradesh from Digvijay Singh, who looked almost invincible. In retrospect, it was a spellbinding prologue to a thriller that didn't happen. Now, the party is getting up to take another piggyback ride on Bharati's heroism.

The shambolic BJP badly needs a hero at this moment; and there is not even a decent short list. So Bharati, the new mascot, has an easy ascent. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, the Leader and the eternal Leader-in-waiting, are in a passive mode. Narendra Modi, the last mascot but lately diminished, is fighting a lonely battle, with nobody giving him a hand except the RSS. Pramod Mahajan, the campaign guru who couldn't make it, has been exiled to Maharashtra. Sushma Swaraj, the feisty lady who never gives up, is too busy with her Rajya Sabha duties. Rajnath Singh, the indefatigable Thakur, has been banished to Jharkhand. Kalyan Singh, a heartland veteran, is not even a member of the BJP Parliamentary Board or the party's Central Election Committee. No grassroots leader is given a national assignment. The party president, an alliterating apparatchik, is far removed from the masses to give new direction to a tired-and tiring-party. It needs a redeemer. Bharati, who has a way with the masses, is the candidate.

TARGET SONIA

The candidate has now denied Sonia Gandhi the sole copyright over renunciation. Anyway, that should come naturally to Bharati; but she has gone a step further. She has made it an act of hang-me-in-the-tricolour cloth of nationalism. It is a powerful slogan-jail for hoisting the national flag-specially manufactured for Target Sonia, who also happens to be Bharati's favourite foreigner. She asks: It was a crime during the British Raj, but now? It is pure music to the disillusioned-or almost abandoned-children of Hindutva. The foreign rule is passing from Bharati's rhetoric to the mass mind, once again. The "Italian woman" now perfectly fits in her script: the case against Bharati, closed by former Karnataka chief minister S.M. Krishna, was reopened by new Karnataka chief minister Dharam Singh. Along with renunciation, emotional nationalism too hits the streets.

NEW PIN-UP: With Modi in the dock, Bharati is the new mascot for the BJP; Sonia and Manmohan take stock as events spiral out of control (above)

The Congress can only afford to be secretly embarrassed. Laloo behaves, in his cultivated jesting way as if he is above the judiciary and the basic dignity of democracy. Bharati, as dramatic and kitschy as Laloo, has declared that she respects the institutions of civil society. It is not accidental that Laloo has already unearthed the "tacit understanding" between Bharati and the Congress chief minister of Karnataka. It is well known that the RJD, whose support is essential for the survival of the Manmohan Singh Government, is home to most of the so-called tainted ministers. Can the Congress defend Laloo? This renunciation can divide the ruling alliance. And Bharati is planning a trip to Bihar. That will be fun.

Today, Bharati is the event, and it intensifies the ongoing clash of ideologies, or the politics of confrontation. At the root of this is Sonia's conscious decision to take the BJP head on. The Congress was once seen to be drifting towards soft Hindutva. She wants to change that impression. The BJP calls it witch-hunting, the politics of vendetta; the Congress calls it detoxification. But Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh's RSS bashing-targeting of RSS friendly bureaucrats, overturning the decisions of his BJP predecessor, rewriting rewritten textbooks, threatening inquiries into the source of RSS funding and purging organisations and panels of suspected Sangh sympathizers-has won Sonia's whole-hearted endorsement. At the last AICC session, she characterised the RSS ideology as the politics of hatred.

ALLIANCE AGONY

Interestingly, the Congress's own Maharashtra unit has been at the receiving end of this uncompromising attitude. When Union Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer decided to expunge Veer Savarkar from a memorial plaque at the Andaman's Cellular Jail, unmindful of his iconic status in Maharashtra, the MPCC President Prabha Rau and Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde were in a bind. They not only made public statements lauding Savarkar but tried to get the central leadership to retract, even as the BJP made hay by raising the issue in Parliament. Sources say Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had tried to work out a compromise, which was nixed by the party. Taking a hard line, the Congress said Savarkar would stay expunged from the controversial plaque.

As if that weren't enough, the Congress decided to strike at Bharati, a BJP leader intimately associated with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. On June 21, the Dharam Singh Government filed a plea in a Hubli court to withdraw the cases against her (eight had already been withdrawn at the behest of the previous S.M. Krishna government). Less than two months later, Dharam Singh did a volte face. Among those said to have advised him are an AICC general secretary and a former Karnataka speaker and law minister D.B. Chandre Gowda.

The confrontationist attitude appears to have rubbed off on even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the gentleman politician. So miffed was he with the BJP's refusal to allow Parliament to function that he behaved with uncharacteristic curtness when a delegation, which included Advani, former finance minister Jaswant Singh and former defence minister George Fernandes, met him. They had gone to him to hand over a list of proposals amending the Finance Bill but Manmohan reportedly flung it away, suggesting that they participate in the budget discussions if they wanted to move amendments. "I will never meet the prime minister again. I have been insulted," says NDA Convener Fernandes. The Congress is seriously worried about the fallout of the BJP's proposed agitation. Jaiswal may dismiss Bharati as a 10-day wonder, but Manmohan is not that sanguine.

For the BJP, the challenge is to hardsell Bharati. It doesn't just want to score points against the ruling party in Parliament. It wants a mass mobilisation along the lines of the one leading up to the Ram Mandir movement. For the party, opportunity hasn't just come knocking-it's virtually breaking down the door at 11 Ashoka Road. After all, the "chintan baithak" at Goa had left the BJP more chintit (worried). Morale was at an all-time low and there was intense bickering and finger-pointing among BJP leaders.

The baithak also did not help in bridging the widening gap between the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar. The VHP and SJM had openly and roundly criticised the conduct of the BJP and even the normally taciturn RSS had told the party leadership to rectify its vichaar and vyavhaar-a pointed reference to the BJP having strayed from the path of Hindutva. In Bharati and the proposed "rashtriya samman" agitation, the BJP sees hope of a consolidation within the Parivar. VHP leader Ashok Singhal's words of encouragement to her on the telephone were echoed by the RSS and all its frontal organisations, heralding, the BJP hopes, fresh solidarity.

In Parliament, the ruling party was put on the defensive. The BJP targeted the chargesheeted ministers in the UPA Government with renewed vigour. Hopelessly cornered on the issue, the Congress left the defence of the tainted ones to, well, Laloo. He offered to quit on the spot if Advani resigned as leader of the Opposition. Vintage Laloo.

BACK TO HINDUTVA

The BJP sees it as a win-win situation. If, under pressure from the opposition, the contentious ministers (see box) are dropped, differences will crop up in the ruling UPA. Laloo, already upset with the Congress for not having put up an adequate defence of his ministers in Parliament and for hob-nobbing behind the scenes with Ram Vilas Paswan, would be further angered if asked to quit the Cabinet. If the UPA retains the ministers in question, the BJP has a convenient stick with which to beat the Congress. This past week in Parliament, however, the BJP kept the focus on Bharati's abortive attempt to unfurl the national flag at the Idgah Madian in Hubli. "Rashtra dhwaj ka yeh apmaan/nahin sahega Hindustan (India will never tolerate this humiliation of the Tricolour)," chanted NDA Rajya Sabha MPs, as the BJP's Kirpal Parmar waved a small flag-symbolic of the whole issue-in the well of the House. Slogans like Bhagwan Ram ka nam or Tirange ki shaan ke saath iss desh mein jo khilwad karega uska sarvanash ho jayeya, were heard.

YATRA POLITICS: Can the tiranga yatra repeat the rath yatra's magic?

After all, it is on this issue that the BJP intends to create a national upsurge, galvanise its party workers and win back its core voters. The national flag issue would be dovetailed with Hindutva and the Ram Mandir movement to create ground for a mass movement. If Aiyer handed the BJP a convenient emotive issue for the Maharashtra elections by bad-mouthing Savarkar, Bharati gave the party one for the rest of the country. On the stump in Maharashtra will be Bharati the angry Hindu; and later in Bihar, the raging backward in saffron will be taking on the Yadav raj. Says Sushil Modi, BJP MP from Bihar: "While Laloo and his tainted ministers continue to rule, Bharati has resigned, not for corruption but for her patriotism."

The BJP is determined to exploit the issue to the hilt. The game plan drawn up for a countrywide agitation has reportedly been coordinated by Sangh ideologue S. Gurumurthy in consultation with Advani, Singhal, RSS' Madan Das Devi (who is quite ill and hospitalised in Bangalore), Naidu and Nanaji Deshmukh. The agitation is to continue until the cases against Bharati are withdrawn. Once they are withdrawn and/or she is released from custody, the sanyasin will embark on her nationwide yatra.

As is always the case, the Bharati effect could be neutralised by the BJP alone. The party's second rung leadership, although mindful of the need for a cause, is nonetheless upset at the prospect of a rising Bharati. In Parliament's Central Hall last week, a senior BJP leader was overheard making light of Bharati's martyrdom and telling Congress MPs that they had done the BJP a favour by ridding them of a temperamental chief minister.

The truth is, they had done Bharati a favour. She flag-marched to the centre of political action.

-with Neeraj Mishra in Bhopal, Stephen David in Hubli
and Lakshmi Iyer in Delhi

BABULAL GAUR Bulldozing to the Top

Politics is about actions not promises. All the ministers, advisers, officials and unofficial pets handpicked by Uma Bharati, who might have expected to survive under her influence on the new chief minister, were thrown out the moment she boarded the train to Hubli. In an unequivocal speech to officers at the state secretariat in his first hour in office, Babulal Gaur declared his independence from the past. That's Gaur. All of 74, eight time MLA, trade unionist turned Janasanghi, lawyer and now the 27th-but first Yadav-chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Nick name: Bulldozer. IN AND OUT: Gaur (right) was Bharati's second choice for CM "This is the BJP's government and not my government's party," Gaur says as he touches the feet of both state BJP President Kailash Joshi and BJP General Secretary Kaptan Singh Solanki demonstrating that there will be no tussle between the government and the organisation. Those who know him well are familiar with his native cunning and swear by his patience. A no-nonsense administrator, Gaur loves the Urban Housing and Development Department as much as Jagmohan. As the urban development minister in the Patwa government in the early 1990s, he was nicknamed Bulldozer for having razed every encroachment in all towns in undivided Madhya Pradesh. His move was so well received that it became one of the contributory factors to the BJP's hold over urban votes. On his return as the urban development minister in the Bharati government earlier this year, he revived his mission. The only visible work in Bhopal was being done by his department before Bharati changed his portfolio to Home. Gaur's ascent to high office is as much a result of the BJP high command's desire to see some order in the state administration as some realpolitik calculations by Bharati. She detests other leaders like Vikram Verma, Sumitra Mahajan and Kailash Joshi and distrusts General Secretary Shivraj Singh Chauhan. As the high command ruled out Prahlad Patel, Bharati reluctantly agreed on Gaur's name. At least over him she still has moral control having been his boss. Besides, Gaur is not a leader outside Bhopal and will depend on her hold over 173 MLAs. Gaur may want independence and even actively seek it but he cannot escape the larger than life shadow of the sadhvi who gifted him her throne. -By Neeraj Mishra