HVK Archives: Go soft on BJP: It is going the secular way
Go soft on BJP: It is going the secular way - The Asian Age
Sankar Ghosh
()
15 October 1996
Title : Go soft on BJP : It is going the secular way
Author : Sankar Ghosh
Publication : The Asian Age
Date : October 15, 1996
The Uttar Pradesh Assembly election results are out and
the Bharatiya Janata Party has, despite all manoeuvring,
emerged the crucial, single largest party in the biggest
Assembly of the most populous state in the country.
Although the BJP leadership is clearly disappointed at
having fallen short by at least 36 seats to get an abso-
lute majority, they can take heart from the fact that
their numero uno status remains intact.
In the event, the handpicked governor of Uttar Pradesh,
Romesh Bhandari, may have to call Kalyan Singh, the once
dismissed chief minister of the state for his collusion
in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 to form the
ministry. Whether the other parties in the new Assembly
will try to make a repeat performance of what they did in
the Lok Sabha earlier this year to prevent the BJP from
securing the compulsory vote of confidence in the house
and, if they do, whether they will succeed may be known
after the current bout of hectic behind-the-scene in-
trigues and manoeuvres is over.
Frayed and familiar arguments will be will be put forward
that the BJP's victory at the polls is, in reality, a
defeat, for the party's failure to secure an absolute
majority is proof that more votes were cast against it
than for it. Such quibbling cannot hide the disconcert-
ing fact that in three successive Assembly elections, the
BJP has shown that, despite setback, it remains a popular
party in the state and for all the concerted campaign
against it by the so-called secular parties, its accept-
ability with the people has been steady. These parties
should wake up from their simulated sleep and acknowledge
unhesitatingly the unpalatable reality that the BJP still
commands quite a bit of the heart of India, literally and
figuratively, and no amount of permutation and combina-
tion of political forces can dislodge it from that envi-
able position.
The only occasion when the BJP could have been decisively
contained by the parties opposing it was in 1993, when
four states in the Hindi heartland of the country went to
the polls to elect new Assemblies as the states had been
placed under President's Rule in the wake of the demoli-
tion of the Babri Masjid. In Himachal Pradesh and Madhya
Pradesh, the BJP was thrown out by the Congress, but in
Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh it remained the largest
single party. In Rajasthan, the BJP was once again in
saddle but in Uttar Pradesh it had to sit in the Opposi-
tion for a coalition of the Samajwadi Party and the
Bahujan Samaj Party had taken office as their combined
strength in the new Assembly was more than the BJP'S.
This had become possible because the non-BJP parties did
not fritter away their voices by fighting one another.
For once they acted as if the BJP was their sole enemy.
That was a one time exception: The non-BJP parties, all
of them minuscule except for the Congress, suffer from a
delusion that they are big parties capable of taking the
measure simultaneously of the BJP and the Congress. With
the return of this delusion after the partial setback of
the BJP in the Hindi belt, the tactic of an all-inclusive
electoral front against the BJP has been given up. In
fact, hostility between some of the non-BJP parties is
far more bitter and irreconcilable than their antagonism
to the BJP. The Samajwadi Party and the BSP were partn-
ers of an alliance that wrested power from the BJP in the
1933 election. But their relation has soured so much by
now that the SP and the BSP refuse to co-exist in the
same camp. With the results of the UP Assembly elections
out, it may be found that if all parties other than the
BJP and its allies combine, they will be in a position to
stake a claim to the government. But that is yet an open
issue. The SP and the BSP are determined not to live
under the same roof.
This incompatibility between the one-time partners of a
ruling alliance was cleverly exploited by the BJP. It
made a reconciliation impossible by offering support from
outside to the BSP ministry. The BSP supremo, Kansi Ram,
did take the bait. He had his lieutenant, Ms Mayawati,
installed as chief minister, may be keeping himself
available for the post of Prime Minister.
The BJP's expectation that Mayawati will be a pliable
chief minister because of her utter dependence on the BJP
was soon dashed, as Mayawati refused to play the puppet.
The caste compositions of the supporters of the two
parties also made their continued collaboration diffi-
cult. When the parting of ways came, they knew they were
foreclosing future collaboration too.
When the BSP broke with the BJP it seemed that Kansi Ram
had exhausted all his options and was doomed to political
quarantine, shunned by all parties. Those gloomy proph-
ets did not take into account the unpredictability of
Kansi Ram's politics or the political guile of P.V.
Narasimha Rao, now trying desperately to avoid a season
in hell which Delhi's notorious Tihar Jail is. They
sprang a surprise on all parties by entering into an
electoral alliance almost surreptitiously. The United
Front government at the Centre which cannot last a day
without the support of the Congress would have been glad
to have the BSP in its fold but its alliance with the
Congress makes it unacceptable to the purists in the UF
who are ready to put up with covert links with the Con-
gress but no open collaboration. The mutual hostility of
the SP and the BSP is another factor inhibiting the BSP's
association with the UF.
Those who had imagined that their road to power would be
clear if the Congress disintegrated must have realised
how grievously mistaken they were. They had fancied
themselves, separately or collectively, as the next in
line of succession. Their certainty had been shattered
by the emergence of the BJP as one of the major political
forces in the country in the past 70 years. During this
brief period the BJP had grown to become one of the
largest party in the Lok Sabha. The BJP has benefited
more than any other party from the combined assault on
the Congress leading to the abject decimation of the
party, a process not yet halted. Other parties of stead-
ily dwindling strengths are too daft to realise that
their blind anti-Congressism of decades has not helped
them at all. The vacuum has been filled by a party which
they had imagined had no future because its politics was
against the national ethos. The BJP has proved such
facile conclusions wrong. It has advanced by leaps and
bounds, from 2 in 1984 to 86 in 1989 to 118 in 1991 to
161 in 1996.
Even now these parties imagine that the onward march of
the BJP can be halted by paying lip-service to secularism
and denouncing the BJP's policy of Hindutva. The BJP
cannot be wished away by a bunch of slogans and half-
hearted confrontations in which the other half is direct-
ed against the Congress. The effete opposition of these
parties does not worry the BJP for it knows from experi-
ence that these so-called secular, anti-BJP parties will
feel no qualms in seeking BJP's support if the Congress
shows any sign of revival. With Sitaram Kesri, who has
lived his 80 years in total anonymity, as party president
in place of Narasimha Rao, the chances of a Congress
revival are slim indeed. The more the Congress goes
down, the higher is the possibility that BJP may come up.
Other parties, including the vociferous Left, have alrea-
dy been marginalised, and they will be more so if the
present process continues.
Separately, none of them is a force to reckon with in
national Politics. Collectively, they have managed to
secure a precarious hold on power at the Centre but the
political monstrosity of a 13-party coalition will col-
lapse the moment their punching bag, the Congress, with-
draws its support. The instability at the Centre and the
likely instability in the country's largest state will
continue till there is a radical change in the country
politics.
The political reality of the unstable years following the
defeat of the Congress in the 1989 polls is the emergence
of the BJP as a major political force in the country.
However much the Janata Dal and the Left parties may try
to minimise its importance or dismiss its ascendance as a
flash in the pan, it has come to stay in national polit-
ics and will play the role that it deserves and which is
being denied to it by parties more skilled in intriguing
and manoeuvring than in the art of politics. Political
uncertainty will till then continue to sap the morale of
the nation and will water down international confidence
in our polity. Leaders of the country beginning from the
President, now dispersed all over the world, may cry
themselves hoarse over India's political and economic
stability but there will be no taker. Nor will such
strenuous exertion bring a single additional cent to the
nation's coffer.
After the Uttar Pradesh elections, it should be clear to
all that the political instability at the Centre will
persist and may even spread to the states, as it has in
Uttar Pradesh, as long as the BJP is kept out of national
politics by a gang of small parties who separately have
no place in national politics and together have a subsid-
iary role that they cannot play on their own. Much is
being heard of the people's verdict which is said to have
been in favour of the 13-party coalition. They are
scratching out BJP on the specious argument that more
votes have been cast against the BJP than for it.
Strange that the sate argument is not being applied to
the 13-party coalition. These parties are right to an
extent only. The verdict of the people is for a coali-
tion but not a coalition of the smaller parties like the
UF. The people's verdict is not for a fragile coalition
but for a stable coalition which cannot be formed if the
two biggest parties, the BJP and the Congress, are kept
out. If these two parties combine on the basis of a
common programme and stick together, ignoring provocation
from the Left and the so-called Left, the political
instability that threatens us will disappear.
The BJP is changing fast. It has perhaps realised that
the politics of Hindutva which alienates the minorities
cannot take it to the pinnacle. It has already leavened
its politics with a dose of secularism. The discomfiture
of the party president, Lal Krishna Advani, over his
alleged involvement in the hawala scandal is helping the
process. Advani has receded to the background and the
leader of the moderate wing in the BJP, Atal Behari
Vajpayee, is now unrivaled in the party.
The strident voices of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and
other similar communal organisations are no longer find-
ing a ready echo in the BJP. It is the moral duty of all
secular forces in the country to help this process of
secularisation of the BJP. This process will not be
helped if the BJP is treated as a political pariah. The
people's verdict is for a coalition with a softened BJP.
To keep the party out of the coalition will be against
that verdict.
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