Opposition makes a pitch for joint presidential candidate
The emphatic electoral victories of the Bharatiya Janata Party seem to have awakened Opposition parties to the need for unity and even be willing to shed long-held ideological positions in a spirit of accommodation.
This was evident on Monday as prominent Opposition leaders met to advocate “unity of progressive forces” to "fight the challenge to the democratic and secular character of the Constitution by the Sangh Parivar." The occasion that brought these leaders on the same platform was an event to mark the 95th birth anniversary of veteran socialist leader Madhu Limaye, who was a strong votary of antiCongressism.
Leaders like Communist Party of India (Marxist) chief Sitaram Yechury said fielding a common presidential candidate would be the acid test of Opposition unity. “First let's achieve this. Then we can talk about the next step.” But he cautioned that a grand alliance would fail if it were to focus only on electoral arithmetic. Yechury advocated that progressive democratic forces should sit together to agree on a common minimum programme as an evidence of their ideological coherence.
The Communists have had deep ideological differences with the Congress and socialists, but Yechury recounted the several points of congruence and their shared history. On issues like triple talaq, Yechury said it was arbitrary and all religions should follow a uniform civil code, where not just triple talaq but also abandoning one’s wife without divorce is illegal.
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has been one of the most acerbic critics of the Sangh Parivar. But in his speech, Singh indicated that the time has come to embrace secularism as defined by Mahatma Gandhi and jettison the secularism of Jawaharlal Nehru. He said the secularism of Gandhi and of Nehru were distinct. “Gandhian secularism is more relevant to India,” Singh said, emphasising that it was Gandhi’s secularism that had stopped the advance of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He said Hindu and Muslim communalism were two sides of the same coin and needed to be fought with equal vigour.
The leitmotif of the politics of Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav has been antiCongress.