None can claim to be clean, opportunists they are all

GUWAHATI, April 17: Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has seemed to have matured, claimed his fans. However, going by his latest political somersault, his critics claimed that Mahanta has matured as a tricky politician being adept in the skill now to swing along from old 'friends' to newly discovered 'friends'. For him, the critics said, political expediency is above morality now and he has mastered the use of craft and deceit to maintain his authority and carry out his 'policies'. But still, argue some quarters, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and for that matter his party Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), is far behind the subtle or unscrupulous cunning, deception or dishonesty of the Congress when comes the questions of demagogic pretence and chicanery. In the perspective of the recent AGP-BJP alliance however none of the anti-Congress and anti-BJP parties who were partners in the AGP-led four-party alliance of the State, can claim itself to be free from the blemish of political expediency. Rather one has to admit that it was the opportunist attitude of all the four-party alliance partners that led to the recent developments of the AGP ditching its alliance partners to win over the BJP to its side. Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and his newly formed AGP rose to power in 1985, for the first time riding the euphoria of the 1985 Assam Accord which marked the conclusion of the six-year-long Assam agitation. The ideology professed by the AGP that time was regionalism. It was an extension of the spirit of the Assam agitation which made the 'All India parties' irrelevant and projected regionalism as the lone ideology so far as Assam was concerned. The Assam agitation saw martyrdom of hundreds of people, while hundreds were maimed, during the course of the agitation, by the security forces. It also saw holocausts that brought some basic weaknesses and contradictions of the Assamese society out in sharp relief with far-reaching impact on the Assamese society itself. It also saw relent less attack on the activists of the left parties. The left parties then were referring to the agitation as a fascist one hinting at the Nazis of Germany under Adolf Hitler. The Assam agitation also witnessed imposition of a Congress-led minority Government in the State and the enactment of the 'discriminatory' IMDT Act, while it also marked the development of Assamese militancy in the form of the ULFA. After ascending to power through the 1985 election, the AGP however forgot the lessons of puritan regionalism it learnt from the Assam agitation. It soon joined hands with the Janata Dal and took part in the Janata Dal Ministry of VP Singh at Delhi with its MP late Dinesh Goswami becoming a Cabinet Minister in that Ministry. It was the first major ideological deviation of the AGP from its avowed principles of regionalism. AGP has since then been trying to curry favour with the 'All India parties'. It is because of its lack of confidence in the common Assamese masses who infact built it. Or else, there would have been popular movements under the AGP's leadership on the issues of more power to the State and restructuring the Indian polity into a real federal one. But, instead, the AGP is now trying to impress upon the people that it was forced to forge an alliance with the BJP 'in the interest of development of the State'. Going by this argument, one may safely conclude that the AGP will also forge an alliance with the Congress if the latter comes to power at the Centre. For, AGP was denouncing the BJP as 'communal' till the other day. But what about the CPI, CPM and the Samajwadi Party (formerly UPPA) - the other partners of the now defunct four-party alliance? They also entered into an alliance with the AGP in a manner which left rooms for doubting their integrity. Even while in the alliance, they were seemed to be bereft of scruples on occasions. For example, the CPI and the CPM never asked for any regret from the AGP leaders who were the leaders of the Assam agitation for the attacks on the communists by the agitationists. None of Promode Gogoi and Hemen Das will be able to produce any evidence of their obtaining any apologies in this respect from the AGP. In the case of the IMDT Act also CPM's Hemen Das and Samajwadi Party's Abdul Muhib Mazumdar do not have any explanation with them as to what stand they took within the alliance when the state government at the instance of the AGP, filed an affidavit with the Supreme Court favouring repeal of the IMDT. While CPM is for the favour of keeping the IMDT effective, Abdul Muhib Mazumdar is the man who boasts himself as the architect of the IMDT. And finally, when AGP Rajya Sabha members Arun Sarma and Jayashree Goswami Mahanta voted in favour of the BJP Government when a censure motion against it was put to vote, what did Gogoi, Das and Muhib Mazumdar do? Except remaining silent for the reasons best known to them, they did nothing. Infact, the four-party alliance should have stood dissolved that very fateful date. Can Gogoi, Das and Muhib Mazumdar claim themselves free from the stain of political expediency even after this? Perhaps none of Prafulla Mahanta, Promode Gogoi, Hemen Das and Abdul Muhib Mazumdar is in a position today to deny the allegation that they were the politicians who helped their sworn enemy Congress to stage a resurrection in the State politics. They may try to disprove the allegation with their rhetoric, but facts will always go against such assertions of theirs.