In the cunning corridors of Indian politics, the Left and the Bharatiya Janata Party, whether they like it or not, have begun to walk and work shoulder to shoulder. The most important indicator of this convergence is that both the Left and the BJP have decided to put their parties before the country. The Left for its own ideological obsessions decided to oppose the Indo-US nuclear deal despite the benefits the deal will bring to India. The BJP also opposed the deal, not because it had any principled stand against it, but because it saw in the crisis created by the Left’s animosity to the deal a chance to topple the United Progressive Alliance government. Both the Left and the BJP had thus placed their own political and ideological interests above those of the nation. Here the objectives of Prakash Karat and L.K. Advani converged. When the history of the trust vote of July 21-22 comes to be written, the names of Mr Karat and Mr Advani will be bracketed together. Neither will relish this, but history can be very unkind.

The Left, it can be argued, has often put its own ideology before the nation. Comrades are not always patriots. But the BJP is of a different colour. It prides itself on its patriotism and projects a hawk-like nationalism as a component of its core ideology. Thus the BJP’s refusal to place the country before the party calls for comment. When the BJP was in power, it was an enthusiastic initiator of economic reforms, but now it opposes reforms because its leadership feels that economic reforms will not fetch electoral dividends. Similarly, the BJP was responsible for much of the groundwork that paved the way for the Indo-US nuclear deal, but now it stands stridently opposed to it. An even more appalling example is the recent utterance of Sushma Swaraj. When the entire country is threatened by bomb blasts that are probably prompted by external agencies, she chose to see the events as a conspiracy to divert attention from the seedy aspects of the trust vote. She said this because she felt this would embarrass the government and the Congress and give the BJP some advantage. Scoring a petty political point against a rival was more important to a senior BJP leader than the threat that looms over the country. On its current form, the BJP will perhaps oppose a proposal to build the Ram mandir or to pass anti-conversion laws if it came from the Congress.