Bipartisanship is the name of a feral entity in Indian politics. Apolitical is a scarier creature. Former president Pranab Mukherjee’s decision to address Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadres for what is known as the officers’ training course has predictably triggered an uncomfortable debate in his former party at a time when its political heath is showing signs of a delicate improvement.

In a sentence, this is a clash between fidelity to a party versus being above party politics. Within the Congress, there are two sides in the debate: between those who say that being wedded to 'Congress ideology’, he should not go to the RSS function, and others who counter that as a former president, and therefore by definition non partisan, he cannot close the doors on anyone, even if he is not favourably disposed towards them personally. The controversy will linger on the inability to see a politician beyond his party.

At the start, while it is a coup for the Sangh to get Mukherjee to address the RSS cadres, who will become full-timers after the course, it is no surprise that he, rather than any other Congressman should have been invited for the function. For long, Mukherjee has been a respected figure within the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar.

Privately and sometimes publicly, they have said Mukherjee is one of their favourite non-BJP leaders of the present times. His election as President is testimony to this. As it became clear around June 2012 that he would be the UPA candidate, the NDA effectively withdrew from the contest, opting to nominate not a political heavyweight but a relatively weak candidate in PA Sangma, a former Congressman who later joined the Nationalist Congress Party.

There are reasons why he has endeared himself to the Sangh. The former president has been a Congress loyalist, but his loyalty was to Indira Gandhi while he had a difficult equation with Sonia Gandhi. By inviting him to address RSS pracharaks, the Sangh would hope to diminish the Nehru-Gandhis by establishing a line with Congressmen outside the family. Then, Mukherjee’s nationalistic streak sometimes overlaps with the Indian rightwing. Besides, a practicing Hindu and a scholar of Hindu scriptures like he is, will always find respect in the saffron parivar.

Yet, for the present times, against the backdrop of Narendra Modi’s ascendancy, it would be worth seeing how it all pans out because political divisions have cast a shadow on public life and policy issues leaving no space for non partisan politics. A few examples will make that evident. For a long time, it has been a tradition in India that while there would be differences in domestic politics, there would be continuity in foreign policy. That has now changed emphatically with the Modi government delegitimising and running down much of what India had stood for earlier, mainly to show him in better light than his predecessors. Then, on the question of economic liberalisation, there had been general consensus that it was the path to be followed even though the BJP had not stopped itself from equating problems in rollout with corruption and took political advantage of it. Generally, political consensus building on key issues, like Kashmir, farm debt and petrol prices have taken a nosedive and even affected parliamentary functioning.

It is against this backdrop that the RSS invite to Mukherjee should be seen as a way forward. The RSS has evidently been working on Mukherjee for a while to get him to address its cadres. Mukherjee, one of India’s canniest politicians, should be lauded for rising to the challenge. A stickler for norms, he waited till he demitted office to keep the office out of controversy. While, he has stirred one now, he is canny enough to know that even within his former party, his stature is high enough for him to find support among the stalwarts and to escape censure in any way.

Mukherjee is also a good choice because he can be didactic. His support for Indira Gandhi during the emergency is a grey area. His autobiography, ‘The dramatic decade, the Indira Gandhi Years’ shows little contrition for what happened during those 19 months between 1975 and 1977 or the former prime minister’s authoritarian streak. But, he has since spoken for the need to question those in power and stressed on India’s pluralism. As a scholar of Hindu scriptures, and one who performs Durga puja at his ancestral home in Mirati in West Bengal, he can help to correct all ill-informed discourse on Hinduism in the Sangh Parivar. One instance stands out from a speech in the Lok Sabha. It was August 25, 2006 and the Bharatiya Janata Party member Vijay Kumar Malhotra led other BJP MPs in raising a noisy objection to MA History course material of the Indira Gandhi National Open University for purportedly containing insulting language about Hindu deities. The texts had claimed that goddesses like Durga consumed alcohol, the BJP members said. Mukherjee, who was defence minister then, rose to say that this was not entirely incorrect and proceeded to quote at length from the ‘Chandi Path’ to describe how Goddess Durga prepared for battle with the demon Mahishasura and her eyes had become bloodshot. Faced with someone so knowledgeable about the scriptures, BJP members were unable to respond. Hopefully, the former president will inspire a debate on the idea of India that is reasoned and accommodating rather than shrill and one-sided. He surely has the scholarship and stature for that.

In a sense, the scepticism over Mukherjee’s visit to the RSS function is unlikely to wane. The Congress, through its various members, is perhaps rightly articulating its buried anxiety over its future. Political wisdom is likely to parrot what had been suggested at the start of Modi’s prime ministership in 2014 – that unless the BJP itself invites attention to it by making mistakes, the Congress party will be no more than a footnote in 2019. Victories in the interim and some unpopular decisions by the NDA government have fired its ambitions and in that sense Mukherjee’s decision to address the RSS cadres has come at the wrong time. It, however, marks a step forward in building a common vision for India that goes beyond the purposes of a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ or an ‘alliance-mukt BJP’.

ananda.majumdar@mydigitalfc.com