That Foreign Hand Bogey

IN January 1991, as the Gulf war raged, Chandra Shekhar as prime minister faced ahostile Parliament over the refuelling of US warplanes. Leading the attack was theCongress, which was supporting his government from outside. Joining in the chorus were theLeft parties, which too said the government was playing into the hands of the US.

Though faced with a barrage of criticism, Shekhar chose not to reveal in Parliament thedetails of such facilities extended to US warplanes in the past, including during RajivGandhi and V.P. Singh’s tenure. Instead, that night itself, he telephoned USPresident George Bush. He informed Bush that, in deference to the wishes of the people ofIndia and its Parliament, he had decided that US warplanes would not be extendedrefuelling facility henceforth.

Over six years later, on April 11, Shekhar  hit the Congress back with the samemissile—of playing into the hands of the "superpower...which, everyone knows,does not want Indo-Pak amity restored". "Why did the Congress or its presidentchoose March 30 for withdrawing support, when the prime minister was negotiating deals ofa serious nature with Russia, when the Indo-Pak talks were about to begin and India wasgoing to host the NAM ministerial conference?" he asked in Parliament.

There is much more here than meets the eye, he insisted. After all, thesuperpower (the US) must be upset with these positive developments in India. Withdrawingsupport to the government at this sensitive juncture, he felt, was nothing short of a"crime against the nation".

While Shekhar as prime minister took Parliament in all seriousness—followingit up with a phone-call to President Bush and convincing MPs that the facility wasextended only in continuation of a bilateral practice being followed for years—thistime the Congress chose not to respond to the charge. Not even when Speaker P.A. Sangmarepeatedly asked the Congress chief whip if anyone from the party was willing to pick upthe gauntlet. This marked perhaps the first occasion that a party chose not to refuteserious charges that cast doubts on its "nationalist" credentials.