Why Jana Sangh Opposes Shimla Agreement

 

NK SINGH

The climax to the Jana Sangh's Gadra Road tamasha was provided by the Prime Minister's devastating indictment of the party on the floor of the Lok Sabha and not, as it had expected, by its so-called "massive" demonstration in New Delhi on the opening day of Parliament's monsoon session.

In a hard-hitting speech, Smt Gandhi asked Jana Sangh not to echo the voice of "the enemies of India", and to behave as the mouthpiece of "Reaction outside and inside the country". 

This was the first ever occasion when BJS was officially branded as acting on behalf of forces inimical to India. She described Jana Sangh as "a small, whining, weak minority" with a definite trace of a "deep inferiority complex".

Her stinging words came in reply to what she called a "ridiculous and deplorable demonstration" earlier by the Jana Sangh members when they tried to disrupt the proceedings of the house to record their objection to the Shimla accord between India and Pakistan. 

There was ample cause for the Jana Sangh members to behave in the manner they did because the fiasco of their much-publicised "satyagraha" in the Gadra Road area. It required suitable "counterbalancing". 

The Jana Sangh satyagraha led by its President, Sri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, wanted to become "martyrs" in defence of what they called Indian territories captured from Pakistan and to oppose the Shimla agreement. 

This was their "sole objective" declared at public meetings before they launched their so-called satyagraha on July 25.

However, they had not bargained for the ridiculous situation they would land themselves in when the Rajasthan Government refused to oblige them with arrests and even withdrew the prohibitory order on entry into the area just before they proceeded to it. 

Their chagrin required an outlet.

The "massive" demonstration against the Shimla agreement, organised on July 31, proved to be another disappointment for the Jana Sangh leadership. 

The show was considerably smaller than what the party had put up in August last year demanding the recognition of Bangladesh. 

This time, the isolation of the party had been so complete that only a handful of Rajnarain socialists and a few politically weightless people like Acharya Kripalani could be roped in.

Shimla Agreement

All this came as a culmination of one frustrating experience after another. The Jana Sangh bluster against the Shimla accord had failed to rouse the people of this country into the desired frenzy with the help of which it could refurbish its broken image.

Even before the ink on the Shimla agreement was dry, Jana Sangh pounced upon it, denouncing it as a "sell-out", "surrender", "betrayal" and whatnot, and directed its workers to organise protest demonstrations against it. 

After the ugly demonstrations at Palam, and the abortive attempt to get the Delhi Corporation to discuss the agreement, came Sri Vajpayee's "revelation" that Smt Gandhi had entered into a "secret agreement" over Kashmir with President Bhutto and Sheikh Abdullah. 

Sri Vajpayee also alleged that India had been pressurized by the Soviet Union and the United States into signing the agreement. Asked if he had any evidence to prove this, the Jana Sangh Chief promised to present it in the Lok Sabha. 

However, when he spoke in the Lok Sabha, he had nothing more to say than repeat these charges and was not present in the House when Prime Minister squarely repudiated all such insinuations.

Earlier he had demanded that the agreement should not be effective before it was formally ratified by Parliament, and called on President Giri not to put his signature on the agreement without its approval through a national referendum.

The Jana Sangh President must have known that approval would be as certain in a referendum as in Parliament. What was the motive, then, behind Sangh's demand for such an elaborate procedure to "gauge public opinion"?

The only answer is that Jana Sangh wanted to hold up the ratification and thereby consolidate its position. The greater the delay the greater the publicity that the Sangh hoped to secure for itself by keeping up its agitation against the agreement. 

After a long gap, the party was hoping to again attract some public attention. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was correct when she said that the Sangh was raising controversy over the Shimla agreement because it had no other issues to agitate about.

The fact is that the Jana Sangh, which was sent into the wilderness after the terrible mauling it received in the State Assembly elections three months ago, has been trying several methods to keep together its disillusioned and frustrated ranks and boost its leadership's image which was never so low. It tried many gimmicks.

Earlier, it was a crusade against the AIR which turned out to be a fiasco. The party announced a new campaign against a rise in prices. Now it is the communal hysteria at the Shimla summit, under the cloak of working in the national interest.

The furry of the Jana Sangh was, of course, all too expected. By nature, it cannot swallow the idea of the possibility of amity between India and Pakistan and a durable peace in the sub-continent. 

Its entire existence depends on communal tensions and a permanent Indo-Pak confrontation. It was brought into existence to oppose the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950 when its founder, the late Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, resigned from Central Government.

In the early fifties, Jana Sangh openly advocated military action against Pakistan as its brand of "solution" to the refugee problem. In 1960, it again raised a hue and cry in Parliament and outside against the Indus Water Treaty. Its frenzied opposition to the Tashkent agreement is still fresh in public memory.

Even during the Bangladesh struggle, what interested the Sangh -- which was obliged to pay

lip service to it -- was not so much the fortunes of that struggle, but the opportunity which it

thought had come for a full-scale annexationist war against Pakistan. 

It was, the Sangh thought, an opportunity to fulfil its long-cherished dream "to end the separation of India and Pakistan".

However, the jingoists exposed themselves when the Sangh leaders in Parliament openly opposed India's act of unilateral cease-fire.

The birth of a secular, democratic Bangladesh had been a severe blow to the Sangh ideology of communal hate. The Shimla accord only added to its misery.

'Shimla worse than Tashkent'

Significantly, critics of the Shimla agreement have yet to put forth a viable alternative formula that could have served India's interests better. The Opposition to this bilateral agreement is based on two main points:

1. Having won the war we should have made Pakistan agree to settle the outstanding problems here and now; India should have insisted on payment of pre-Partition debts, claimed war damages and also compensation for the burden she had to bear on the refugees from Bangladesh; India should continue the occupation of the Pak territory in addition to holding the Pakistani POWS as hostages to secure the return of Pak-held Kashmir. 

In an article, 'Shimla Worse than Tashkent', Sri Balraj Madhok said: "If this is not done, any other course will be disastrous for peace and for vital interests of India."

Is it a programme for peace or another war between two neighbours? 

2. Pakistan will attack us again after achieving her short-term objectives and making good her losses of men and arms. As The Motherland put it, "The leopard cannot change its spot and President Bhutto cannot change his anti-India mentality."

This seemingly most "tenable" argument makes nonsense of the earlier argument that having trounced Pakistan, India should have made her agree to settle the outstanding problems. 

On the one hand, it is asserted that Pakistan being down and out, we should have derived the maximum advantage from that and, on the other hand, it is seriously suggested that Pakistan is still in a position to engage in another war.

The Sanghi argument that as a result of the Shimla agreement Bhutto has "walked away with 5,139 square miles of territory in his pocket" while India got only 69 square miles, is absurd and pernicious in the extreme. 

It is nothing but a repetition of the imperialist allegation that India had territorial ambitions against Pakistan.

Another issue, on which the Jana Sangh is trying to stoke communal passions, concerns the future of some fifty to sixty thousand Hindus in the areas of Sind which are soon to be vacated by the Indian army. 

A few thousand of them have moved to Gujarat and Rajasthan for fear of Pakistani reprisals. 
President Bhutto has given a categorical assurance that the Sind Hindus who remained behind in the occupied areas would not be discriminated against or harassed in any way. 

But any encouragement of an exodus of Hindus from Pakistan as the Sangh is trying to do would only be reviving and justifying the two-nation communal divide.

'Soldiers fight, politicians surrender'

The Jana Sangh plea that its campaign is not politically motivated is unlikely to carry much conviction even among its followers. 

The cat was out of the bag when Sri Balraj Madhok declared that the only solution to the whole problem was: "Oust those from power who have betrayed the country and the armed forces by signing the agreement." 

One can easily discern the political motivation behind the "holy indignation" of Jana Sangh, the self-appointed "only nationalist party in the country".

The Sangh bosses have taken great care to build up their propaganda offensive, stage by stage, and have succeeded in getting some publicity, this is bound to lead to avoidable tension which will have the effect of further escalating the atmosphere of crisis now sought to be created by the party.

But there is another danger and a far greater one that which Sangh's vicious and highly provocative statements are bound to cause. 

Talking to newsmen in Gorakhpur on July 5, Sri Vajpayee said that the politicians had lost at the conference table what the jawans had won on the battlefield. 

On July 23, he said at a Delhi public meeting: "The soldiers fight; the politicians surrender. The soldiers die; the politicians live."

This line of argument was laid down by The Motherland of July 6. It talked of "cheaply bartering away" captured territories and accused the Government of "playing with the morale and the fighting spirit of our troops".

It is quite obvious that Jana Sangh wants to cause dissatisfaction among the armed forces, resorting to unscrupulous tactics to weaken the country from the inside.

Tailpiece: The day Sri Atal Behari Vajpayee was seen off by his admirers at the Delhi railway station to launch his "satyagraha" at Gadra Road, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan was haranguing a 40,000-strong crowd at Lahore: The Shimla agreement was "complete sell-out".

Mainstream 

August 5,1972