The moulting of Manmohan Singh

Indian PM Manmohan Singh appears to have undergone a moulting, silencing critics with his cricket diplomacy.


Jyoti Malhotra March 27, 2011

Can poetry change the course of war? Can the iambic pentameter, irrespective of language, extract the sting from the frontal assault but nevertheless ensure that the message reaches home? Can the hero reach out to the bad guys and change the ending of the formula film?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has appeared singularly lacklustre or damaged or both in recent weeks, ruling over a disparate coalition that is at once corrupt and seemingly bereft of ideas, looks like he has undergone a moulting in the last 48 hours. And surprisingly, it was an Urdu couplet that came to his desperate rescue.

Imagine if you will, an unlikely opposition consisting of both the left and the right, whose strength is inversely proportional to the determined suicidal tendencies of the government. First, there was the utterly scandalous matter of the Commonwealth Games last year, in which senior Congress party members have been caught with their hands in the till. Then, the Congress party in power wanted to appoint a tainted man as the country’s top vigilance bureaucrat. As if all this wasn’t bad enough, India’s fantastical economic growth story took a big beating when it was found that former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja had siphoned off a few hundred crores from the sale of precious spectrum for expanding national mobile telephony, without as much as batting an eyelid.

Was this the same prime minister who, as finance minister in 1991, launched the economic reform that had set India upon its path of self-confident growth? How could Manmohan Singh, circa 2011, condone this rank and unadulterated mess?

No wonder Sushma Swaraj, senior leader of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, taunted him in parliament: Tu idhar, udhar ki na baat kar/yeh bata ki kaafila kyon luta/Hamein rehzanon se gila nahin/teri rehbari ka sawaal hai.

As the House erupted in derisive laughter, the PM got up to reply, his voice soft and hesitant as he read his defence from a piece of paper. That was only to be expected, the barely-controlled chortling indicated. Then Manmohan Singh put the piece of paper down on the table and invoked Iqbal: Maana ki tere deed ke kaabil nahin hoon main/Tuh mera shauq to dekh/mera intezaar to dekh

Sushma Swaraj began to smile, LK Advani hid his own behind his hand, Sonia Gandhi was suppressing a grin — but the packed House had no such compunctions. The sudden gust of relief underwrote the triumphant comeback. The PM had belied all his opponents, that too in the idiom of the day. He had won. The Congress party had succeeded in putting the opposition in its place.

Within the next 36 hours, as Yuvraj Singh played his bit role in the larger picture of returning the people-to-people relationship between India and Pakistan to its rightful place — at the centre — and gave India a shoo-in at Mohali — the PM played his second card: He invited Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari and his counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani to watch India and Pakistan in combat.

Make no mistake, the Mohali match is war by another name, especially since this is the first time that both countries are confronting each other on the sporting arena since the Mumbai 2008 attacks. But the question is, how badly can you behave when the top leadership of both countries are watching from the same box?

Since cricket is religion in India/Pakistan, all the political heavyweights are bound to be at the stadium too. Can both sides do what they have been claiming on the front pages of newspapers forever, which is to separate the desires of ordinary people — play cricket, travel to each other’s countries, perhaps to Moenjodaro, or Ajmer Sharif, go out for dinner in Lahore or Amritsar — from the high politics of government?

If the ball is at silly point, how long before both leaderships are leg before? The short lesson is that Singh seems to have realised that this is his last shot at the history books. Perhaps Gilani can take a page from the same tomes?

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28th, 2011.

COMMENTS (23)

AnIndian | 12 years ago | Reply @ G.Din Bro, I withdraw the remarks I made about you using the word Sardar. I feel you are giving far less credit to these personalities and their achievements... However, given the ground we are standing, let's agree to disagree...
G. Din | 12 years ago | Reply @AnIndian: I am grateful for your detailed history of our tribulations under Nehru and his dynasty. Mind you, I am not blaming him for bad intent or faith. He was a great man and did the best according to his best lights. But, he was essentially a benevolent dictator. It must be said to his credit that he made effort to restrain himself from such dictatorial tendencies. He knew those existed as he acknowledged in a piece written in third person in the British magazine "Punch". We gave him unquestioned adulation, so it was our fault, too. But the discussion here is about MMS. You misunderstand when you say "The appellation “Sardar” denotes a tinge of racism". It is not racist because it is with some pride and personal gratitude to Sikhs that I pointed out how as a Sardar, known for their bravery, he acts atypically timidly in a faminine manner. Please don't blame me of sexism now. A man who refuses to let go of power when he has been rejected by the people and who prefers to come to his "kursi" every morning by the back door is, in my book, NOT an honourable man. No matter how brilliant he may be, I can assure you that there are, if not smarter, at least as smart people in plenty in India. India is hardly a one-man show! We do not have to be beholden to a man who looks upon our democratic institutions as merely inconvenient and bypassable. You say:"at least he didn’t come by money power or family legacy." Unless we expect India to be feudal, shouldn't that be the normal way of reaching high office? Has he done us some sort of favour? But, the whole Indian nation knows that he occupies the office, which was once occupied by far greater men than he, only as a place-holder. That my country is being governed this way is profoundly disgraceful and outrageous to me.
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