Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar
Can inter-regional problems be solved without the umpire at the Centre basing himself on supraregional, pan-national compulsions?
The Tamil Maanila Congress describes itself as a 'regional
party with a national outlook.' An accurate description I
am sure - but one which hardly qualifies as an Unique Selling
Proposition. For surely there is no regional party which foreswears
a 'national outlook.'
The AIADMK, which the TMC was formed
to worst, calls itself 'All-India' before going on to describe
itself as the 'Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam'. And even if
a terminological confession to being national in outlook is not
included in the names they have taken for themselves, neither
the DMK nor the Assam Gana Parishand would, I am sure, wish
to assert or even accept that they are lacking in a national outlook.
The fact, however, is that a political party has to be either
a regional party - or a national party; it cannot be both. And,
therefore, it does not help to obfuscate this essential distinction
by pretending to a national outlook when one is circumscribed
by a regional identity and a regional base.
This is not a matter of semantics, India is not a federation.
It is a Union of States. It is not the states which constituted
the Union, as in the United States of America, but the Union which
has created and continues to create the states, as in the case
of Deve Gowda's Independence Day announcement of the new state
of Uttarkhand, the state in which I grew up.
That is why our Constitution
does not describe us as a federation but as a Union. And Dr Ambedkar
was categorical in labelling the Republic of India as a Union
of States with federal features. The distinction between a federation
and a Union is crucial to an understanding of the essential difference
in 'national outlook' between a regional party and a national
party.
A regional party is, of course, interested in national issues.
Equally, every national party is necessarily interested in regional
issues. The question is: Which receives primacy? Is a regional
party capable, when it comes to crunch, of rising above the regional
imperative? Can inter-regional problems be solved without the
umpire at the Centre basing himself on supraregional, pan-national
compulsions?
This is the contradiction at the heart of the troubled week which
has led to Deve Gowda unfurling the national flag at the Red Fort.
When Jawaharlal Nehru first did this on the morrow of our tryst
with destiny, no one had any doubt that here was a national leader,
incidentally elected from the United Provinces.
Sadly, no one can be in any doubt that Deve Gowda is a regional leader,
incidentally (accidentally?) elected as prime minister. Indeed,
Deve Gowda's personal celebration of 50 years of Independence,
as reported in The Hindu of August 16, was his assertion at Bangalore
airport that 'he was the prime minister , not the chief minister of Karnataka'.
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