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| Wilting lotus | | RSS as the BJP’s albatross | |
by Amulya Ganguli
IF Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee reminded the BJP during its recent conclave about the wisdom and experience of its senior leaders, the reason was apparently the restiveness in the party on the leadership question. Ever since the RSS ensured L.K.Advani’s ouster from the party president’s post, and in view of Mr Rajnath Singh’s failure to measure up to expectations as the new chief, the BJP has been facing a situation where the old order had begun to lose ground before a new order could get its place.
Although Mr Vajpayee is still batting for GenPast even if no one of GenNext is yet to emerge as a serious contender, he cannot be unaware of two imponderables. One is that the next general election is still two and a half years away — a long time for the elderly — and the second is that the chances of the BJP’s success in that contest do not seem too bright at the moment. So, the possibility of the former prime minister and deputy prime minister taking up their earlier posts in 2009 is dim.
Even then, considering that Indian politicians do not retire — vide the CPM Politburo’s rejection of the 92-year-old Jyoti Basu’s request to let him retire — it is not surprising that Mr Vajpayee has let it be known in his imitable style that he is still around. For the present, Mr Rajnath Singh is seemingly keeping the younger set — Mr Venkaiah Naidu, Mr Narendra Modi, Mr Arun Jaitley and Mrs Sushma Swaraj — at bay while Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani retain their informal positions as No 1 and No 2 in the party.
The person who considers himself to be No. 3 Mr Murli Manohar Joshi — seems to be no one’s favourite, not even the RSS, despite his hardline postures. Of the others, the two Sinhas with similar names — Jaswant and Yashwant — have shot themselves in the foot — the first through his contradictory statements on the suspected mole in the PM’s office and the second by hobnobbing with Mr Natwar Singh of the Iraqi oil-for-food scam. The third Sinha, Shatrughan, is quietly fading away.
But the BJP’s problem doesn’t relate so much to the ambitions of the elderly and the lack of preparedness of the young as to the behind-the-scene role of the RSS in controlling the party. What is more, had the RSS played this part with a greater appreciation of the Indian realities, its interference might have been regarded as worthwhile. But the fact that the paterfamilias has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing over the eight decades of its existence makes it an albatross round the BJP’s neck — even if the latter carries the burden more or less willingly with only occasional vague murmurs of disquiet.
Two factors persuaded the RSS to emerge from the background to exercise greater control over the BJP. One was the latter’s defeat in 2004 and the other was Mr Advani’s praise of Jinnah. Both events convinced the RSS that it was time to bring the BJP in line. The head of the Sangh parivar was apparently convinced that it was the party’s straying from the hardline Hindutva positions which was responsible for its electoral setback and also for Mr Advani’s flirtation with “pseudo-secularism”.
While Mr Vajpayee had never been the RSS’s favourite — despite his claim that the organisation constituted his “soul” - it was Mr Advani’s fall from grace which must have shocked the organisation to which all members of the parivar routinely pay gurudakshina. The capitulation of the man, who rode the Ram rath and was widely regarded as the quintessential hawk, to secular ideals obviously warned the RSS of the insidious influence of the pluralist ethos of a democracy on ruling politicians.
Arguably, Mr Advani’s defenestration by the RSS robbed the BJP of the only chance — albeit a slim one — of gradually adjusting itself to the inescapable multicultural tenets of Indian society and thereby transforming itself into a right-wing party of the mainstream from its present Ku Klux Klan orientation. But the Grand Dragons of the RSS can hardly allow it. Besides, even if the RSS has been partially successful in marginalising Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani, it is probably still unsure of their replacement since Mr Rajnath Singh can hardly be a long-term answer to the problem of leading the party.
Mr Modi is a possible choice. After all, he presided over the “awakening” of the Hindus during the Gujarat pogrom. But is he still the same man, considering that he is speaking more about development nowadays than about the threats from “aliens” inside the country ? Has he also been bitten by the “pseudo-secular” bug like Mr Advani? Is this the reason why he has fallen out with his childhood friend, the fire-breathing Pravin Togadia?
Mr Modi is not the only politician who has realised the difficulty of pursuing a hard line while in power. Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s decision to lay the foundation stone of a Haj centre, which has aroused the ire of the VHP, is another example of how a pluralist society compels the people in power to cater to all the communities instead of favouring only one, as the RSS would like.
As the VHP’s reaction to this particular incident, and also its occasional tirades against Mr Advani and the BJP on the temple issue show, the saffron parivar is already a house divided. The late Vijayaraje Scindia’s boast, therefore, in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, that the incident did not cause a split in the party, is no longer true. The BJP may have remained more or less united — the departures of Ms Uma Bharti, Mr Madanlal Khurana, Mr Babulal Marandi, et al, being matters of personal dissatisfaction — but the Hindutva brigade is obviously experiencing severe internal strain. So, while on the one hand, we see the spectacle of a somewhat mellow Modi and Vasundhara Raje, on the other Mr Rajnath Singh threatens to bomb the terrorist camps in Pakistan and Bangladesh and amend the Constitution to make the singing of Vande Mataram a fundamental duty.
The tussle between the hardliners and the moderates has been a feature of the BJP for a long time. But the difference now is that the RSS has intervened with much greater vigour than before presumably because the VHP’s disenchantment with the BJP has warned it against letting the BJP follow its own meandering course involving compromises with secularism. As is known, the party’s failure to build the Ayodhya temple is crucial in this respect. It is the VHP’s main grouse, and undoubtedly also of the RSS although it doesn’t say so openly.
To the moderates in the BJP, the pitfalls of raising such an emotional issue must be obvious by now, especially since the party must have realised that the chances of the temple being built are remote. It wouldn’t be able to do so even if it came to power because of opposition from allies like the Janata Dal (United), which had vetoed the Arjun Munda government’s anti-conversion proposal. But despite the lesson of the unbuilt temple, the BJP has taken up another emotional issue, this time over the status of Vande Mataram. What the RSS obviously does not realise is that the more it pushes the BJP to the right, the less is its chance of returning to power at the Centre.
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