^WITH the passing of each election the two main national parties in India, the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, are getting weaker and weaker. Their reliability on the respective alliances—the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and National Democratic Alliance (NDA)—are increasing yet their leaders are not realizing it. Both the main political parties are paying for their big brotherly attitude and not understanding their real limitations. They are unable to fathom as to where the real disease lies and are vainly thinking that they would expand themselves by fighting more and more seats alone.

Just on the eve of the election the decade-old partner of BJP, the Biju Janata Dal unlocked the knot. The arch-rival Congress is also facing the similar music as its most trusted ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Lok Janashakti Party decided to contest separately in Bihar and Jharkhand. Though they still claim that they are in the UPA, the RJD and LJP took this drastic decision because of the insistence of the Congress leaders to contest more seats in these two states. In Bihar the initial formula floated was that RJD would contest 22 seats (though it won 22 seats in 2004), the LJP 12(won 4 last time) and Congress six when it won only three seats last time. Though the RJD was making maximum sacrifice, the Congress refused to accept this formula and insisted on 16 and even 20 seats. In retaliation the RJD and LJP announced to contest 25 and 12 seats respectively leaving just three for the Congress. This compelled the Congress to decide to go it alone.

Similar was the case in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress did not fight the last election with the Samajwadi Party. In Maharashtra too the seat-sharing arrangement with the Nationalist Congress Party could be made after much bargaining. The Nationalist Congress Party managed to seek its own pound of flesh. However in West Bengal the arrangement was rather unexpectedly smooth though the party had to deal with unpredictable Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress.

What is happening in India needs to be understood in proper perspective. Earlier the parties used to split, re-unit, then break and again come up under a different umbrella. Congress has got split even in the pre-Independence years.

What has changed in India is that now instead of parties it is the alliances which are breaking and then remerging. This phenomenon started in 1989 a very significant year in the annals of the global history too. It was in this year that the Communist Soviet Union started disintegrating. The Communist movement started weakening. And BJP started gaining ground. In 1984, it was won only two seats but captured 88 in 1989.

It was because of the frequent disintegration and re-unification of alliances that we had two more elections in this period of two decades—1989 and 2009. The post-1990 years saw the weakening of ideology and strengthening of personality. It is not that personality was not there before that. It was very much there, but even the personalities used to take refuge in some ideology. For example, the Congress split of 1969 was on the basis of personality, but immediately after that Indira Gandhi took shelter in the ideology of Socialism and even the Communist party of India lent support to it. Coupled with personality, ideology played a key role in helping Indira Gandhi overcome the then stalwarts like Morarji Desai, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy and Kamraj. The split under the leadership of Morarji Desai became Congress (O) and the Congress under Indira Gandhi as Congress (I). The old stalwarts of Congress moved the court for using “I” (“I” was standing for India) and restricted the use of “I”, instead use Indira not “I”. The Congress’ recognition could be cancelled, single word “I” is used by the Congress.

During the 26 months of emergency, Indira Gandhi relied on personality sans ideology. Though she got the Constitution amended and declared India a Sovereign Secular Socialist Democratic Republic but paid the price in 1977 election.

The Congress split with Congress for Democracy under Jagjiwan Ram came up just at the fag end of Emergency. Then it split under the leadership of former Union Minister Yashwantrao Chavan and subsequently under the then Karnataka Chief Minister Devraj Urs. But it was the personality of Indira Gandhi, which finally helped her re-establish after 1980, but by then she was a different lady away from Socialist ideology.

The various Communist parties continued to split most of the time in 1960s. But the basis of these splits was also ideology. Some followed the original philosophy of Marx, some others of Mao and some of Lenin and Marx and yet some others of Stalin.

It is not that the RSS back Jana Sangh did not split at all. Yes, it too, under the precursor of Balraj Madhok.

Various Socialist parties got divided and united several times till the advent of Emergency, which forced them to take the cover under the banner of a single outfit called the Janata Party. Incidentally, the Jana Sangh—now BJP—was also one of its constituents and the purpose of coming together was just to fight the totalitarianism and personality-cult of Indira Gandhi.

The year 1989 provided the last opportunity for the national level political parties to their mettle. It was only after that the culture of alliances took shape. The year saw emergence of Janata Dal under V.P.Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Atal Behari Vajpayee. Though the BJP came into existence in 1980 but managed to establish itself as a national party in 1989 by winning 88 seats against two in 1984. The BJP which continued to gain grounds became one of the leading constituents of one of the alliances. However, till then the Congress adopted go-it-alone polity. It was only in 2004 that it realized the importance of alliance.

The fall of ideology gave space to the rise of communalism, casteism and capitalism. If the Mandir movement consolidated religious extremism, Mandalisation of the society gave another twist. The Congress in 1991 tried to carve out its own space by introducing liberlisation, privatization and globalization. But it the BJP which later hijacked this plank too.

Similarly, when the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru adopted appeasement policy, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerji hijacked his secularism ideas: - 1. Kashmir issue: (a) Article 370, (b) Uniform Civil Code, (c) Removal of permit system to visit Kashmir, (d) abolition of separate constitution and flag in Kashmir, (e)Restoration of Mandirs i.e., Ayodhya, Kashi, and Krishna Janambhoomi. It was only Syama Prasad who had the courage to shake the nation on his own by resigning from the Union Cabinet and established Jana Sangh. Resultantly, the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru defamed the Jana Sangh as communal. That is why till date the Jana Sangh now BJP is called a communal party.

Recalling, at the time of Partition, before leaving for Pakistan, Mohd Ali Jinnah had advised to his Indian fellows to ban Muslim League in India but Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru restricted Muslim League within Kerala only but Indira Gandhi in 1969 pushed Muslim League out of Kerala. It was Jinnah, who while opposing the Partition of India, had burnt the office of Muslim League at Delhi’s Jama Masjid.

So in the last decades we have Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, Sharad Pawar, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mamata Banerji. All these leaders formed their separate political party in the name of the casteism but instead of removing the poverty of their castes, they themselves have become billionaires. Secondly, doing any welfare to their communities are busy to please the Muslims only just for their votes and their communities suppose that they are busy in their upliftment.

The one state where the cocktail of personality and ideology both went together right from the beginning was Tamil Nadu then Madras—the first place where anti-Congressism took its root as early as 1920 under Justice Party of Periyar. After him Annadurai, Karunanidhi, M.G.Ramchandran and now Jayalalithaa all had the quality to attract voters. But of late the anti-Brahmanism almost ceased to remain an idea and the Dravidian parties remained just personality based.

Another experiment was successfully made for some years by noted film star and later Chief Minister N.T.Ramarao in Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s. His son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu carried his legacy for about a decade.

With the central all-encompassing ideology gradually disappearing even the negative policy of Hindutva is not selling too much now. The other political parties including Congress are unable to make any big penetration though they resort to personality of Nehru-Gandhi family but it is BJP using Varun as Dr Mookerji was used. If this plan clicked, perhaps, BJP may kick alliance-polity from India. Perhaps, with this thinking after a decade BJP has now released its own manifesto. Now time will tell that either the era of alliance flourishes or will banish.