news details |
|
|
| BJP from one unprincipled position to another | | |
BL KAK
The belligerent presidential campaign of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) reflects its internal turmoil. The party has hopped from one unprincipled position to another--once proposing Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, later pitching for APJ Abdul Kalam for a second term and eventually going back to Shekhawat.
The BJP tried to argue against the advisability of a sitting President entering the contest only to back President Kalam’s candidature jointly with the UNPA. The intention obviously was to get the third front’s reciprocal backing for Shekhawat — and using that proximity to attempt a working relationship between the NDA and the UNPA. But this stratagem has failed miserably as the Congress shut the door on any discussion on this issue.
That opened the door for BJP to indulge in mudslinging. In a fit of desperation, it has resorted to a cocktail of falsehoods, half-truths and concoctions for purposes of spreading canards against the UPA presidential nominee Pratibha Patil and muddying the poll process, the Congress has charged. “Our commitment to upholding the dignity of the President’s post prevents us from raising questions about the Vice President’s educational qualifications”, a Congress spokesman said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is in total disarray. After the shattering Uttar Pradesh Assembly poll debacle came its biggest blow when the party’s hardline ally, the Shiv Sena, choosing Maratha pride over Hindutva, left it in the lurch in the upcoming Presidential poll. With the Shiv Sena’s desertion of the NDA’s choice of Presidential candidate, the spotlights that kept the BJP politically visible as a national opposition are no more there now.
The party is down and out. The UP election debacle would have made any other party retreat from the limelight, eschewing bombast and bravado for a quiet introspection. But not the aggressive BJP that has always sought to develop the best spin machine in the political business. Even stronger than the message of the stunning defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha was the drubbing the party got in the UP Assembly poll. In 1991, the BJP had 51 of 84 Lok Sabha seats, and 221 of 425 Assembly seats from India’s most populous State. Today it holds 10 of 80 Lok Sabha seats and 50 of 403 Assembly seats — its worst show in 16 years.
By shutting its eyes to realities and pursuing an ideology alien to Hindu culture, the BJP, which has never won more than 25 per cent of the national vote even at the best of times, has made itself all but unelectable. The BJP also filed a complaint with the Election Commission that the Congress is using “undue influence” on voters in the Presidential election and sought “appropriate action” against the party and UPA nominee Pratibha Patil. The opposition alliance cited the Congress’ move to get Natwar Singh disqualified as Rajya Sabha member a day after he joined NDA leaders in proposing the nomination of Shekhawat.
Ironically, senior BJP leaders, Sushma Swaraj and V K Malhotra, and JD (U) leader Digvijay Singh had to meet Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, against whom the NDA had filed a petition for his removal for alleged links with the Congress. “Natwar Singh is a member of the electoral college that elects the President. A petition filed by Congress chief whip, V Narayanswamy, to disqualify him amounts to exercising undue influence in the election”, Sushma said.
The BJP is running out of ideas as is obvious from its latest move to project itself as the champion of women’s rights by announcing that one-third of the party’s posts will be held by them while staunchly opposing and tarnishing the first Presidential candidate from the gender. The BJP is not an ordinary political party. It is a political front of the RSS, which floated the Jan Sangh on October 21, 1951. On January 5, 1952, Jawaharlal Nehru called it the “illegitimate child of the RSS”.
In 1980, the Jan Sangh members left the Janata Party rather than spoil their links with the RSS. They revived the Jan Sangh under the label of the Bharatiya Janata Party on April 5, 1980, in order to claim the legacy of Jayaprakash Narayan and masquerade as the ‘real’ Janata Party. The root problem retarding the growth of the BJP is not the growth of the population of the Muslims or Christians. The modern Hindus the BJP tries to address and woo reject its stale mumbo-jumbo of ‘pseudo-secularism’, ‘minorityism’ or ‘minority-appeasement’ and refuse to buy the complex of a besieged minority. Deep commitment to the faith does not obscure Hindus’ vision as Indians. Nor does it blind them to the fact that the Sangh Parivar’s revivalism and obscurantism will only retard the country’s progress.
In its May 27 issue, the Sangh Parivar’s mouthpiece, Organiser, lamented: “Globalisation has diluted the ideological purity of all political parties. This is an era of political churning”. But will the BJP and, indeed, its mentor, the RSS, also undergo the ‘churning’? Not likely, perhaps impossible.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
