End of the Georgian calendar?

Writing political obituaries in India is always a hazardous task, considering the incredible resilience of our politicians.

Writing political obituaries in India is always a hazardous task, considering the incredible resilience of our politicians. But, perhaps, the time has come for George Fernandes to hang up his chappals and pen his memoirs. It is not just his age — 82 — that is the problem, or, for that matter, his recent infirmity. What is the problem is that his political message has lost traction in the party he helped found. Losing the presidency of the Janata Dal (United), 413 to 25, to yet another carpetbagger —Sharad Yadav — is a nadir of sorts for the person who has seen more than his fair share of ups and downs.

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The outcome of the JD(U) national convention and the presidential election reveals the extent to which the party that was so closely identified to Mr Fernandes has shifted. In part, it has to do with the victory of Nitish Kumar in the Bihar state assembly elections. But the real reason is the extent to which Mr Fernandes’ own politics had drifted from his original Lohiaite ideology to becoming the defence minister in the cabinet of the BJP-led NDA. We could have argued that Mr Fernandes provided the previously untouchable Sangh parivar party with a fig leaf of respectability — if it would not be something of an oxymoron. But his mentor’s humanism and socialism would never have countenanced the role Mr Fernandes played in pulling the government’s chestnuts out of the fire lit by the Graham Staines murder and the post-Godhra massacres in Gujarat.

Minus Mr Fernandes’ pathological anti-Congressism, the JD(U) could begin to play a more constructive role in Indian politics. The sober and centrist Nitish Kumar, who is the real force in the party, has never shown much of an inclination to underwrite the BJP’s more ideological postures. He and his party could emerge as yet another free radical in India’s constantly changing political equations.