Author: Ashok Malik
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 23, 2004
BJP needs to get over its 'ruling
party hangover'. And get on with life
Hum to doobenge sanam, tumko bhi
le doobenge. (Roughly: I'll sink, sweetheart, but I'll take you down with
me.)
As the BJP tries to figure out whether
Atal Bihari Vajpayee's indictment of Narendra Modi and the Gujarat riots
was a diversionary tactic, a ''casual remark'' or an opening gambit in
an elaborate attempt at government (re)-formation, one conclusion is inescapable.
The party is today a confused mess. It is torn between second guessing
the leadership - and going by its own survival instincts.
There are moments when simple truth
is appropriate response to complex reality. As the BJP's national executive
meets in Mumbai, it could do the party a favour with a short declaration
on, broadly, these lines: ''The BJP respects the voter's verdict. We believe
the UPA government will not serve out its term. Even so, since we do not
have the mandate, the BJP will not attempt to form a government in the
14th Lok Sabha.''
A categorical clarification of the
innuendo that insists the BJP is attempting a ''broader coalition'' by
September - or whenever astral configurations and more down-to-earth combinations
present it an opportunity - would be comforting.
The buzz has been bewildering. Karunanidhi,
Paswan and Ajit Singh will troop back to the NDA. George Fernandes is ''in
touch with'' Mulayam. Laloo will conveniently get into a scrap with the
Congress. The Manmohan Singh government is already unpopular (in five weeks,
if you please). As such, sooner or later, everybody other than the Congress
and the Left will come together and decide the BJP is a better option.
Gogia Pasha will conjure a majority out of thin air. Vajpayee will be back
as prime minister.
This scenario is so unrealistic
as to be laughable. For the BJP, such a government would not be a dream
- it would be a death wish. To even entertain the idea is to suggest that,
regrettably, the BJP is still suffering ruling party hangover. It is trapped
in the politics of denial.
There are three consequences to
this. One, the party has not got into regular opposition mode. Its political
impulses are about as active as deadwood. Two, the issue of rebuilding
bridges with the sangh parivar - a necessary if not sufficient condition
for reviving the party - has not even been addressed. Three, the party
is far from identifying the face or set of faces for the next Lok Sabha
election and crafting a concomitant campaign.
Ultimately, all three problems can
be traced to one fundamental pitfall - slackness in effecting generational
change. After all, with Vajpayee as prime ministerial candidate and L.K
Advani as party president - this is one reading of the former prime minister's
Manali interview - the BJP cannot quite present itself as a 21st century
party.
In the cloak-and-dagger, dope-and-stagger
atmosphere of power Delhi, the BJP has become so lost in its internal conspiracy
theories, it has forgotten basic political positioning.
Take, for instance, the June 15
gunning down of four suspected terrorists in Ahmedabad. Admittedly, two
of those killed may have been only used or manipulated by a Laskhar-e-Toiba
cell. In particular, the story of the teenaged college girl from Mumbai
is a poignant human tragedy.
Yet, crude as it may sound, this
is also a political issue. For days, sections of the ''English language
media'', ''leftist NGOs'', ''the pseudo-secular Congress and Communists''
- a happy confluence of the BJP's pet hates - savaged the Gujarat government.
They alleged innocents had been kidnapped (presumably from Pune and Mumbai),
brought to Ahmedabad and killed to win Modi some cheap sympathy. Seen in
terms of national security, such critics broke the post-Kandahar ''take
no prisoners'' consensus.
The ''Ahmedabad encounter'' is already
political football in Maharashtra. At once the NCP and the Shiv Sena got
down to using it in the run-up to assembly elections. What did the BJP
do? Precisely nothing till the end of the week, Sunday, May 20, when M.
Venkaiah Naidu mounted a low-key defence.
The BJP used to have stomach, now
it only turns the other cheek. Nobody knew what the two senior men wanted
them to say. So nobody said anything at all.
That brings us to generational succession.
Doesn't the BJP's duumvirate have to answer why the party's ''second generation''
- the Mahajans, Jaitleys and Sushma Swarajs - was kept out of the Lok Sabha
contest?
This has left the BJP with a strange
depletion in the Lower House. After Advani and Vajpayee, the next most
articulate member is probably first-timer Manvendra Singh, unless you count
Navjot Sidhu as a practitioner of the grammar of politics.
When Ashok Singhal advised Vajpayee
and Advani to retire, he may have been his usual irascible self, but he
had half a point. In the VHP, Singhal is a figurehead - important figurehead,
but figurehead all the same. The organisation has devolved on a bunch of
40 somethings - Pravin Togadia as general secretary, Vinayak Deshpande
and Raghavulu as all-India secretaries running the national network and
so on. In comparison, the BJP's top brass has been somewhat tightfished.
Actually, the increasing alienation
of party from parivar can also be partially explained as a personality
clash between leaders of the same generation, all of whom are stuck in
their ways. If Singhal will not budge, Vajpayee and Advani can be accused
of circumscribing the BJP's ideological commitments as per their own experience.
Hindutva cannot end in March 1998 and post-Hindutva begin the next morning.
It is for those with an active stake
in the 2009 election (2007 for that matter) to repair the sangh coalition
that gave the BJP its inner core, around which the larger NDA could be
put in orbit.
The BJP's past has to bless the
BJP's future. If it doesn't, it should be forced to.
