The National Democratic Alliance government’s decision to open talks with the Hurriyat after sentencing itself to a premature death is a classic instance of far too little, far too late. Why this decision could not be taken years earlier is explained only by the consideration that there were no Lok Sabha elections in the offing years earlier. The fact that the government believes talks with the Hurriyat to be electorally advantageous only goes to show that it is not national sentiment but deliberate foot-dragging by the government to appease its sangh parivar pack that accounts for the stagnation of the internal dialogue with Kashmiri discontents all these six long wasted years. The country, like Barkis, was willin’; the ideological standard-bearers of the sangh parivar were not. Which is why we got poetry, not statesmanship, from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. How else to explain the meaningless verse (and worse) of Vajpayee’s doggerel three years ago that talks with the Hurriyat and other militants would be held not within the framework of the Constitution but “insaniyat ke dayire mein” (“within the framework of humanity”)? Does the prime minister believe humanity lies outside the framework of the Constitution he is sworn to uphold?

The same opportunistic electoral considerations appear to underlie the initiative to begin the external dialogue with Pakistan after the NDA government has rendered itself lame-duck. Pervez Musharraf’s term of office has been almost co-terminus, within a few days, with Vajpayee Mark III: October 1999 till today. Four wasted years into the fag end of term, and Vajpayee suddenly wakes up to what a good man is his Pakistani counterpart of four years’ standing. Vajpayee really cannot have it both ways. Either Vajpayee seriously misjudged Musharraf all these four years — or he is seriously misjudging him now. Otherwise, how to explain the bonhomie at Islamabad between Vajpayee and a man that Vajpayee and his colleagues in government and the sangh parivar, have relentlessly portrayed these last four years as the Butcher of Kargil, as a mullah to out-mullah the taliban, as the arch-villain of international terrorism, as the evil power behind the 13/12 attack on Parliament, as the Akshardham assassin, as the harbinger of our Most Wanted Twenty, as the architect of the proxy war in Kashmir, as the finger on the trigger behind every murderous outrage not only in the Valley but all the way down to Karnataka? What has happened to the argument that our democratic government can have no truck with a military dictator? What of all the vainglorious talk of the Pakistan army’s “mindset”? Has Dr Vajpayee performed a lobotomy?

Remember the Agra summit. Jaswant Singh and Abdul Sattar wandering around with pencils behind their ears, like munshis at a stock-taking, adding and subtracting words to a draft until their labours were so successfully concluded that the media was put on high alert that a historic agreement was minutes from signature. Suddenly, on the turn of just two words — cross-border terrorism — the summit was sabotaged and Musharraf was returned to Islamabad, “khaali haath aur moonh latkaye hue” (“empty-handed and downcast”), in Vajpayee’s own much-celebrated phrase. What has changed on the cross-border front to make the same Vajpayee now tango with yesterday’s enemy? Please note, the Islamabad communiqué does NOT refer to “cross-border terrorism”. Nor, for that matter, did the Lahore Declaration!

Everything said about terrorism in the Islamabad communiqué had already been said at Lahore — and Musharraf was more than ready to reiterate every word of that and more at Agra. It was Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, the Mosque Breaker, who broke the Agra summit on the rock of those two little words: “cross-border terrorism”. How is it that the same Mehmood-and-Tun-Tun team has now buckled at the knees? Or is it that they sent thousands upon thousands of our finest jawans on full alert right up to the borders, and kept them there ten long months twiddling their thumbs on the nuclear trigger, not because of their dedication to “ending cross-border terrorism” and “dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism” but because there were no Lok Sabha elections in the offing in 2002? And have they decided on an April election because in May the snow will melt in the passes between “our” and “their” Kashmir and only then will the country be able to test whether Musharraf has really called off his terrorists?

Indeed, the direct consequence of the utterly irresponsible behaviour of the Vajpayee government in virtually provoking war between two nuclear weapons-armed neighbours has been to so alarm the international committee that the Americans have established themselves as the Suzerains of South Asia. That is why Yashwant Sinha has had to rush to genuflect before his Masters in Washington, and, like a good little doggie being patted on the head, been given a photo-op in the Oval Office, no less. It is a replay of the Delhi Durbar 1911. In six miserable years, the NDA has mortgaged six decades of the independence that took the life-time of Mahatma Gandhi and his fellow freedom-fighters to wrest from the Brits. There is little to choose between this octogenarian Vajpayee and the callow young Vajpayee of 1942 who cravenly pleaded before a colonial court that he had done the Empire no harm, no none at all.

That it is good politics to reconcile our domestic dissidents and make friends with Pakistan is the important lesson to be learned from the fits and starts of the last six years. The next government — which will emphatically not be another Vajpayee government — needs to build on, not the Vajpayee legacy but, the evident goodwill that the people of India and Pakistan entertain for each other and the immense dividends that lasting peace with Pakistan will pay the people of not only India but all of south Asia. It is the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee which has been stalling both the internal and the external dialogue for narrow partisan considerations all these six long wasted years. Once the elections are over, the sangh parivar will once again take over the BJP, targetting Pakistan and the Hurriyat as the surrogate for our Muslim minority. Back on centre-stage will emerge the true face of the BJP’s quintessential communalism — the hideous visage of the likes of Narendra Modi, who went around claiming that “Mian Musharraf” would burst crackers if the Congress were to win in Gujarat. Who’s celebrating Diwali off-season now?

Govindacharya was quite wrong in describing Vajpayee as a “mukhota” (mask). Vajpayee is really a mannequin, who sports whatever mask it is most politically convenient at any give moment to wear. Sincerity calls for a change of government.