Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 20, 2004
For the past week, India's premier
Opposition party has conveyed all the impressions of being a headless chicken.
Following the unexpected remarks of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
in Manali, the BJP has flapped about aimlessly, generating lots of noise
and hurtling from one direction to another.
The impact of the party's grandstanding
in Parliament on the appointment of tainted Ministers has been overwhelmed
by a deep internal crisis centred on the question: What is the road ahead?
Let it be said at the outset that
the issue is not the future of Narendra Modi. Regardless of the disappointment
felt in BJP circles over the slide in Gujarat, the party still won a majority
of Lok Sabha seats from the State and its popular vote touched 48 per cent.
Modi's style of leadership did certainly generate a degree of resentment,
particularly his handling of the farmer agitation against power tariff
hikes. However, on the substantive issue of pushing ahead with power reforms,
Modi's policies were in line with the NDA. Punishing him for being a reformer
would be akin to impaling Arun Shourie because he combined his zeal for
disinvestments with a remarkable intolerance of his critics.
Nor does it make sense to belatedly
crucify Modi for the riots that happened more than two years ago. If Modi
was a liability for the BJP, he should have been removed before the 2002
Assembly poll. It is worth recalling that the Gujarat Chief Minister had
offered his resignation at the BJP national executive in Goa and that it
was turned down, not least because it would have a debilitating effect
on the Hindu vote. That decision was vindicated by the BJP's impressive
victory in the Assembly polls. To reverse that decision now would not only
be unprincipled, it would also suggest a deep contempt for the voters of
Gujarat. I have little doubt that the BJP would find it difficult to recover
from such an amazing U-turn.
It has been suggested that the issue
is not what the people of Gujarat think but the Modi effect on the 2004
General Election. With retrospective wisdom it has dawned on the BJP that
the much-hoped-for support from Muslims did not materialise. Muslims, it
would seem, voted as a bloc against NDA candidates. A subterranean campaign
by the Congress and Left centred on the Gujarat riots is being blamed for
this anti-NDA, Muslim consolidation. Consequently, Modi's removal is being
sought to rectify this so-called anti-secular image.
The BJP's desire to forge the broadest
social coalition for the NDA is understandable. Yet, there is more than
a tinge of dishonesty in the contention that Vajpayee failed to be prime
minister again because the Muslims weren't enthused by the BJP. According
to the exhaustive exit polls of the CSDS, the NDA's share of the Muslim
vote fell from 14 per cent in 1999 to 11 per cent in 2004. In social terms,
the decline in Muslim support was not more marked than the fall in NDA
support among upper caste Hindus and the middle classes. Looking at Uttar
Pradesh, where the party won more than 50 seats in 1991, 1996 and 1998,
when Muslim support for the BJP was almost zero, can it not be said that
real failure was in the inability to secure Hindu votes? Were the overdoses
of contrived secularism, such as flaunting images of Pervez Musharraf on
campaign buses, counter- productive?
The fuss over Gujarat is an expedient
red herring. Like Mao Zedong who once mounted an attack on Beethoven as
a cover for an assault on Liu Shaoqui, BJP stalwarts have used Modi to
settle a debate on more fundamental issues.
The first question is: Should the
BJP and NDA sit in opposition for the foreseeable future or should it use
the existing Lok Sabha to forge a realignment that would upstage the Congress?
Modi's departure would be powerful signal that the BJP is eyeing the treasury
benches before another Lok Sabha election.
Linked to this is the second issue.
Who will call the shots in the party? If Modi is shown the door, it will
open the floodgates for a bout of internal reorganisation of the BJP in
which the casualty could well be party president M Venkiah Naidu.
Modi has become the symbol of a
larger battle over the future of the BJP.
