Two children named Naveen and Pyari were playing football in their school. Their names resembling to Naveen Patnaik and Pyarimohan Mohapatra are coincidental. While playing a scuffle ensued and Naveen called Pyari a Beimaan.
Their teacher rebuked, “Naveen, you should never call anyone Beimaan. It is an insult, a slur, a bad word.” Naveen looked up and replied doe-eyed, “Teacher, Odisha’s Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik used this word a few months back publicly against his longtime friend Pyarimohan Mohapatra. I and my friends heard it and we assumed that it was a socially acceptable word. You taught us to follow the footsteps of the elders. I was just following the footsteps of my dear Chief Minister. Many friends of mine are following him. The teacher fainted.
On May 29, 2012, streams of BJD MlAs were sighted arriving at the Saheed Nagar residence of BJD Rajya Sabha member Pyarimohan, considered the then Chanakya for Naveen. Hushed whispers of an alleged coup on Naveen’s Chief Ministership by Pyari started doing the rounds. Mediapersons surrounded Pyari’s posh residence and live satellite video streaming flooded the households in Odisha. Naveen rushed from london and suspended Pyari from the party, calling him Beimaan, which loosely translated means traitor. Pyari placed his reverse counter statement that it was indeed Naveen who had orchestrated this entire coup drama purportedly to oust him from the BJD as he (Pyari) had a vice-like grip on the party’s jugular vein. Naveen’s alleged conspiratorial stratagem could have also stemmed from the perpetually scathing comparisons that while Naveen played the puppet, Pyari was the puppeteer. Both the sides offered their defences. While Naveen could count on a dozen hoarse voices in his support, Pyari had turned the proverbial pariah for the BJD overnight. Pyari’s protégés who till yesterday used to literally have their breakfast tea on his residence balcony and used to touch his feet benignly in full media glare, suddenly turned hostile and finally succumbed at Naveen’s feet. None of them were ever called Beimaan but termed as Naveen loyalists.
The “Beimaan” word is the latest trending word in the Odisha political lexicon if the Twitter-atti and their Tweets are to be believed. “Beimaan” could be elaborated to include many inferences such as traitor, deserter, betrayer, unfaithful, disloyal or treacherous. But how did Naveen zero in on the word for Pyari and that too with such a clarity and profound relevanceIJ The answer lies in the legacy of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and its fine understanding of the term Beimaan as the party has seen this word up close for a decade and more during various stages of its political journey. let’s do a rewind in chronological sequences to understand this phenomenon better.
When Naveen Patnaik arrived on the political scene in 1997, the possibility of resurrecting Biju Patnaik’s Janata Dal unit in Odisha looked remote. Many advised Naveen to merge the Janata Dal State unit with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was riding the post-Ram Mandir wave in the Nineties and had ensconced itself in the North Block and South Block in Delhi. It sounded logical. It would be better to synergise the Biju Patnaik brand name with the rising BJP power in Odisha. At that time, there were unconfirmed reports that the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan suggested an alliance between the BJP and a new party to be founded by Naveen for capitalising the Biju Patnaik legacy, instead of subsuming the legacy within the saffron of the BJP. Thus, was born the idea for BJD.
There were many stalwarts like Bijay Mohapatra and Dilip Ray who were the chief architects of the BJD and, in fact, Naveen was not made into a puppet by them, rather they had chosen to use the BJD platform for their political survival and reclaiming power. The same stalwarts were unceremoniously ousted even before they could cry “Beimaan.” Alas even if they had cried out the word, there were no Odia television channels to dish around the word as a sound-bite in those days. Biju Patnaik used to spend his days at Delhi in the residence of Dilip Ray instead of his Aurangzeb Road residence. He breathed his last in the residence of Dilip, who tended to him like a son but later Dilip was probably also found to be a “Beimaan” by Naveen and, therefore, expelled from the BJD. Or was it the other way roundIJ No wonder, the BJD and Naveen have a better understanding of the Beimaan word.
Naveen has dismissed 36 Ministers in 13 years of his regime. Either he is the most shortsighted Chief Minister as far as Ministerial colleagues’ talent identification is concerned or a master at carving scapegoats, probably deserving a Guinness record for that as well. This dry-cleaning of his Ministerial colleagues is ostensibly dished out as summer cleaning before the “aam aadmi” by a benevolent looking, perceptually clean Chief Minister. But not one among the 36 dismissed Ministers ever cried out “Beimaan” since they all were expected to make the world believe that at a Minister-expulsion ratio of about three per year was a benchmark for projecting a corruption-free regime and they had to reconcile to a shorter shelf life than normally expected. Naturally, how could the Ministers ever call anyone Beimaan since the Chief Minister could do no wrong, see no wrong, know no wrong, though the wrong had been done to varying degree by almost 36 Ministers right under his nose at different points of time during his 13-year-reign, a la Dhritarashtra!
The BJP which had lent its shoulder for propping Naveen to Chief Ministership in 2000, watched silently through the eyes of BJP Rajya Sabha member Chandan Mitra on March 7, 2009 evening as Naveen demurely split his alliance with the BJP at the twelfth hour before the elections. He played the BJP with a poker face, drawing it for discussions on seat-sharing for multiple sessions and when the BJP had gotten down on its knees to keep the alliance going ostensibly on the advice by its Delhi mandarins; Naveen cut the umbilical cord with it and declared his bones are secular and therefore it was necessary to purge the saffron from the green of the BJD. No one bothered to ask whether his bones had turned saffron when he was in alliance with the BJP for nine long years. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj shouted hoarse about Naveen calling his action of splitting with the BJP at the last moment a “Vishwasghaat” during the 2009 elections, but all in vain. After all, despite having led the BJP down the garden path, how could Naveen be faulted if the BJP hit the ditch insteadIJ Naveen after all could never be called a “Beimaan” for dumping the ills of Kandhamal on the BJP and cleansing his own face with a secular handkerchief!
After dumping the BJP, Naveen entered into a pre-poll alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) joining hands with its supremo Sharad Pawar. Pawar trusted Naveen as a brother, a friend. The friendship bore fruit. In the elections, the BJD won 103 MlAs and the NCP four. I had read a story about a king who had all the riches in the world but still did not hesitate to usurp the goat of a peasant. It was similar to what Naveen did with the NCP. He did not waste a moment in stabbing Pawar’s friendship and trust in the back and merged all the NCP MlAs into the BJD, though the matter is still sub-judice. Pawar, having worked his way up in politics, kept mum instead of shouting “Beimaan.” For Naveen, merging the MlAs of a trusting political ally into the BJD was a walk in the park with a free conscience at play. Why this fuss about the Beimaan word anywayIJ
The Beimaan saga has but one moral of the story. Never trust Naveen Patnaik. Pyarimohan must be rubbing his chin in thought and wondering how the Chanakya got outplayed. The Chanakya was outplayed since he was being played for 13 years by his protégé while the world was given an impression that a Beimaan was playing the devil while Naveen was the angel. Thus, when the widely-acclaimed devil of 12 years was called a Beimaan by his protégé, the world believed. They had to. The Chanakya himself had led them to believe it for 12 years. They were not going to be easily dissuaded now. Till the next Beimaan is not slaughtered at the altar of the BJD politics, let Naveen’s search continue. Or maybe, he has already found someone who is to be fed and fattened for the opportune moment, someone from Tamil Nadu probably!
(Dr Sasmit Patra is a keen observer of the Odisha politics. He can be reached at sasmitpatra@gmail.com)
