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| BJP of compromises | | | Hari Om
All or nearly all the political parties in India are up in arms against what they term as backward-looking, conservative, communal, pro-Hindu and ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some of them include the "secular" Congress, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M), the Forward Block (FB), The Samajwadi Party (SP), the Rashatriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Janata Dal - United (JDU), the Janata Dal - Secular (JDS), the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the National Conference (NC).
These are the parties which have never compromised their respective ideologies for winning elections or forming coalition government -- whatever the circumstances. They consider their "secular" ideologies sacrosanct and have suffered massive defeats. Take, for example, the 2014 general election. The Congress, the Left Parties, the SP, the BSP, the RJD, the JDU, the NCP, the RLD and so on stuck to their "secular" stands and suffered massive defeats. Some of them, including the RLD, even got completely decimated.
The most striking aspect of the whole situation post-May 2014 is that these parties have not deviated even an inch from the path they have been treading since their inception. They continue to attack the BJP like before, assert day-in and day-out that the uncompromising and pro-Hindutva BJP poses a live threat to the unity of India and insist on overt and covert unity among all "secular" forces so that the impending disaster could be averted and delicate "socio-cultural and religio-political equilibrium" remains undisturbed. The leadership of these parties says again and again that they would prefer defeat but will not compromise their ideologies and have no truck with the "anti-minority" BJP.
The upshot of their whole argument against the BJP is that its ideology is dangerous and poisonous, and not an elixir to life, and its single-point agenda to implement its "perverted" ideology all across the nation and destroy all the non-BJP parties and formations. Their formulations appear flawed and misplaced. For, the BJP perhaps is the only party in the world which has consistently compromised its ideology to forge alliance with "secular" parties to capture power and retain control over it.
And it all started in January 1977, when the earlier incarnation of the BJP, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), merged its whole identity into the Janata Party (JP), which was founded on January 23, 1977 under the inspiration of skilful and effective leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, as an alternative to what was described as the anti-democratic Congress. The BJS not only merged into the JP, but also completely abandoned the path its founder Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee had charted for it in 1951.
In other words, the BJS abandoned its core ideology of which Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code were the two most important components. The erstwhile BJS leadership did come out of the JP in 1980 and founded the BJP, but this parting of ways was not for ideological reasons. The erstwhile BJS leadership snapped ties with the JP for technical reasons - dual membership controversy. That was the first and the last occasion when the RSS' political wing snapped ties with any political party.
On the contrary, many "secular" parties, including the Janata Dal (JD), the JDU and the NC, shared power with the BJP on their own terms and conditions, but ultimately severed ties with it, saying they couldn't afford an alliance with the communal outfit.
It would not be out of place to mention here that Atal Behari Vajpayee as the first president of the BJP in his first presidential address had declared that the BJP should not be taken to mean the replica of the BJS. It was a very significant statement and it only indicated that the BJP would be as secular as the Congress. LK Advani, another BJP veteran, did successfully try to convert the BJP into a party with a difference and brought the BJP to the centre-stage of Indian politics by not only insisting on abrogation of Article 370 and invocation of Uniform Civil Code, but also by adding to the party's core agenda the Ram Temple plank.
However, the BJP again abandoned its ideology in 1998 under pressure from the "secular"Vajpayee to form ragtag National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The BJP even stitched alliance with the pro-autonomy NC and pro-Bhindawale Akali Dal (Badal). The short point is that the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) under which Vajpayee formed government at the Centre contained almost everything which the secular parties like the Janata Dal (JD) held very dear. There was nothing whatsoever in the CMP on the basis of which the BJP had won more than 180 seats in the 1998 Lok Sabha election. There was no reference to Article 370, Uniform Civil Code and Ram Temple in the CMP. Sophisticated journalist, columnist and opinion leader Tavleen Singh is only right when she says that "Vajpayee behaved as Congress' Prime Minister".
It was no wonder then that the core constituency of the BJP voted it out of power in 2004. Even its "shining India"slogan failed to carry conviction with its own constituency. Convinced that one of the fundamental factors responsible for the humiliating defeat was the people's belief/perception that the BJP had no commitment to its proclaimed ideology and its core agenda, the BJP in 2009 again sought to give the Indian electorate in general and its core constituency in particular to understand that it, if again voted to power, shall not dilute its ideology or make any compromise for the sake of power, but with no result. The BJP under the leadership of LK Advani sought people's mandate against the Congress-led UPA on four major planks - Congress' "pseudo-secularism", Article 370, Uniform Civil Code and magnificent Ram Temple --, but the Indian electorate inflicted a crushing defeat on the BJP. It couldn't win even all those seats it had won in 2004.
It was only in 2014 that the Indian electorate turned towards the BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. The reasons are not far to seek. Narendra Modi exploited to the hilt the unpopularity of the "corrupt" Congress-led UPA; gave radical slogans; talked about Indian culture, Indian Civilization, Indian ethos, India's glorious history, Article 370, Uniform Civil Code, defence preparedness, social harmony and economic prosperity; advocated the need for pro-active and nation-centric foreign policy; attacked dynasty-type politics; drew the attention of the nation to the dangers to the national unity, territorial integrity of the country and national security; promised new foreign policy vis-à-vis Pakistan; held out a categorical commitment that his government would set things right in the restive Kashmir; and so on.
His electoral strategy clicked and the BJP and its allies won 336 seats. While the BJP's own tally was 282, its allies, including the Shiv Sena, won a whopping 56 seats. All, barring four, NDA candidates were Hindus. Such was the impact of the Modi factor in the 2014 general election. No political party had ever got such a mandate between 1952 and 2009 and no political party will ever get such a mandate in the years to come.
What Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister has done since May 26, 2014, is in public domain and, hence, there is no need to reflect on his achievements or failures. Suffice it to say that the year 2015 was a very bad year for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in electoral terms. The BJP not only suffered ignominious defeats in the assembly elections in Delhi and Bihar and by-elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand, but also suffered huge defeats in the local-bodies' and panchayat elections in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. The worst happened in the Prime Minister's own Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, where an overwhelming majority of the BJP candidates lost the panchayat elections.
The highly poor performance of the BJP in these elections had led many to believe that the BJP would learn lessons from its past mistakes and abandon its politics of compromise, but it was not to be. The BJP dumbfounded the entire nation in February 2015, when it forged an alliance with a Kashmiri party, which had sought votes from Kashmir on self-rule slogan. The BJP sprung a big surprise by going back on all the solemn promises it had held out to the people of Jammu province and Ladakh region during the election campaign and through its November 2014 "Vision Document". But more than that, the BJP shocked its whole constituency by endorsing the election manifesto of its new ally.
All this only serves to demonstrate that the BJP repeatedly compromised its ideology and abandoned its constituency for the sake of power. But more than that, all this should also establish that there is no reason for the "secular" parties and formations to dub the BJP as "communal". Their charges against the BJP are as ill-designed as they are politically motivated. The truth, in short, is that the BJP is ultra-secular and more accommodating than other "secular" parties. In fact, the BJP is a party of compromises. |
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