By face, phrase and style, they may look alike, but all of them belong to different political parties and are competing for the soul of Himachal Pradesh, claiming it through angry and emotional slogans for their respective parties and factions. Exploiting emotions, anger, frustration is no longer the exclusive preserve of Narendra Modi of Gujarat, the youth lifestyle leader of the BJP and co. There are younger elements in the Congress and the Himachal Vikas Party and even independent freebooters who are playing for and against the saffron card with equal vehemence, shouting politics and sporting beards and shock-hair styles cultivated overnight to challenge and convey the message: "Come, grapple with me, I am more Modi than you are." For the young hotheads in different political parties being "Modi" is being "mod" in politics. The qualities which go with this "modism" or "Modi-ism" are being reckless, revolting and uncompromising. But who benefits from these hotheads and firemouths of politics in the fray in the fast-approaching Himachal elections? Of course, the one and only Sukh Ram who knows that Modis and Mungerilals perhaps belong to the same day-dreaming tribe. There is the Jammu and Kashmir political dream boy Bhim Singh also in the field. With too many Modis of various kinds in the field and the election outcome hopefully hung, would he not become a Mufti in Himachal to head a coalition of inevitability? Who knows? But then politics these days is the ideal setting for a re-run of soaps like Mungerilal Ke Hasein Sapne.

Political gossipers are agog with the prospect of Ambika Soni, once a very favoured protege of Sharad Pawar, then an Indian National Congress giant, going into Maharashtra with a new mission. Her target seemed to be none less than Sharad Pawar himself. Was there a move to bring him back home to "mother" Congress Well, Sharad Pawar is Sharad Pawar and he has dominated Maharashtra polities for a much longer period than anyone else around at the moment. If Ambika succeeds in her mission and Sharad comes home, then it could forge a deadly political triangle of Sharad, Shinde and Soni, which could launch the beginning of significant changes in Indian politics. Whatever will be will be.

Great Lord! How could the roaring tiger of Maharashtra, the uncrowned king of the Mumbai political forest and money jungle miss one hunter from the north and another, in the great disinvestment hunt? Of course, he was angry and roared in fury when he thought that the North Indian money bags, the Batras, were raiding his exclusive empire in the West in the disinvestment hunt. He gnashed and lashed and roared at the Batras. Everyone heard it, inside and outside Maharashtra. But was he ignorant that Sahara and its Sahari Shri, even though they flaunted respectable Bengali surnames as individuals, were also the great money hunters from the North. Well, Gorakhpur, the original breeding ground of the great Saharans is clearly located in Uttar Pradesh, the heart of the Hindi belt and the great money-hunting ground of the North. O Lion of Maharashtra! O Bal Thackerey the Great, please look before you roar against the disinvestment hunters next time.

For professional politicians, personal revolutions are often more important than revolutions in public and national interest. Remember the sampoorna krantikaris or the total revolutionaries of the exciting days of the Gujarat and Bihar movements launched under the leadership of the great Jayaprakash Narayan. Some of those leftover old revolutionaries and some newer ones of their kind are around even today. Happily as well as unhappily, they are going about their business, each in the pursuit of his own private revolution. The unhappy revolutionaries include Arjun Singh and Digvijay Singh who see their personal revolutions blocked by confrontation from the younger elements aided by Kamal Nath and Motilal Vohra. They fear the revolt of the younger elements brewing which in the past had spewed the furious and ferocious leadership of the young revolutionaries of the kind of Sanjay Gandhi. Subodh Kant and Laloo Prasad Yadav. In the Golden Jubilee year of the Indian Parliament, they are worried about the prospect of a Sampoorna Kranti and the demand for Sampoorna Swarajya breaking out from amongst the younger elements of their own party. And if does happen so, who can stop it?

The Congress seems to be a party in a hurry. The way Rajasthan has suddenly found itself with two Deputy Chief Ministers, Maharashtra, which said goodbye to one Deshmukh as the Chief Minister has found two Deshmukhs in other seats of power and the way the caste and communal adjustments seem to be on the anvil; there does seem to be certain elements of panic in the wind. And if it is studied re-adjustment and re-deployment to meet the rising threat of the Hindutva wave, then Delhi will naturally be the next destination for the Congress High Command to introduce re-adjustments and new permutations and combinations. There are, however, lessons for the Congress too in the air.

While making such adjustments and re-deployments, the leaders of the party must keep in mind the fact that if it has to give honest and ideological battle to the rise of Hindutva, which is rattling it, it has to go in for real and ideological secularism, not sham slogans alone. It has to be a national drive to revive, reorganise and reconsolidate the secular forces. It has to be secularism for the people, not for the party alone. The Congress must dare to get out of the corridors and go to the people in the open. They cannot expect the masses to come to them. Will the change in Delhi reflect realisation of the writing on the wall?

The Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, whatever his other strong or weak points, is no doubt the fastest political operator this side of Delhi.