The absence of any reference to Ayodhya, Article 370, etc has demonstrated that there is a national consensus against such policies and that the BJP represents nothing more than an illiberal minority by upholding such views. After all, it cannot now claim that it is the Muslim-appeasing, vote bank-chasing "pseudo- secularists" who are opposing Article 370 and all that. It is the BJP's own partners, courted with great ardour by the party before the elections, who have ensured the exclusion of these controversial items. Their stand in effect means that the entire political spectrum - from the Congress, the Left Front, the United Front and its allies to the BJP's 20-odd partners - is against these socially divisive measures.
So the national agenda has turned out to be really a secular agenda, markedly different from the BJP's own "Hindu agenda" as outlined in the party's manifesto. So far as the latter is concerned, the BJP has no one else for company than the RSS and other Sangh Parivar outfits. Perhaps even its xenophobic soul mate, the Shiv Sena, is not with it, considering that Mr. Bal Thackeray has favoured the building of a national monument rather that a Ram temple at Ayodhya. What this curious development, where the pet projects of the largest party in an alliance is rejected by its partners, underlines is the predicament faced by a party of the political periphery on being suddenly pitch-forked to the centre-stage of a country's political life by a quirk of circumstance. It also means that the secular formations were right all along in opposing these parochial items so close to the BJP's and the Sangh parivar's heart since these militated against India's multicultural polity and threatened the country with civil strife.
The BJP's silence on these controversial points does not mean, of course, that it has abandoned them. All that it has done is to beat a tactical retreat, hoping that this ploy will lull its friends and foes into complacence, enabling the party to continue its pretence of being a "normal" political entity and thereby spread its influence till it feels that there is no need to wear the mask any more. This tactics is not something that it has only recently evolved, but is part of a strategy the party has pursued for a fairly long period.
Under this overall plans, the BJP has now embarked on the second stage of its political journey. The first was when it was a part of the anti-Congress alliances which lasted from the time of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal ministries in the mid-sixties to 1990 when the BJP brought down the V.P. Singh government by withdrawing its outside support. All through this period, it never gave an inkling to its the then allies of its real agenda. Instead, it used the company of the other secular parties to increase its percentage of votes ... to 11.5 in 1989. It was only in 1990 that the BJP broke free from its alliances and set out on its own, leading straight to the Babri Masjid demolition and countrywide riots, giving it the "untouchable" status. Initially, the party was not too worried about the stigma because it felt that its now revealed agenda would propel it from strength to strength, especially since its voting percentage had gone up to 20.9 in 1991.
However, the stagnation of its voting percentage at this figure between 1991 and 1996 and the loss of several States in 1993 made the BJP realise that it could advance no further on its own and, therefore, needed a new set of allies ... In its search for new friends, the BJP was helped to a considerable extent by the follies of its opponents ...
As before when it was a part of the non-Congress groups, the BJP is all sweet reasonableness at present when it deals with its new friends ... What the BJP evidently hopes is that, in course of time, they ... will fall by the wayside while the BJP will be ready to come into its own.
The difference between the BJP's pre-1990 manoeuvres with allies and its present ploys, however, is that the mask is now off. It feel down, perhaps accidentally, on December 6, 1992 ... Since no further dissimulation is possible, the BJP has evidently decided to follow a two-track policy. In its manifesto, it has made no secret of what it stands for. But, so far as the common agenda with its allies is concerned, it has shelved all the controversial points, something it had promised to do in 1996 also in order to save its 13-day ministry.
The problem with such an approach is that the BJP can now no longer ignore the fact there are no takers for its basic line. Until now, its claim was that it represented the Hindu ethos which constituted the very basis of the Bharatiya or Indian identity. The Ayodhya temple was projected as a symbol of that identity and, as its manifesto said, "Shri Ram lies at the core of Indian consciousness". The proposed "magnificent" temple at Ayodhya was to be an assertion of that consciousness and of Bharatiya and Hindu - the two being the same - pride.
But, clearly, none of the BJP's allies who are virtually all Hindus ... shares this ... Instead, they apparently endorse the "pseudo-secular" view that the concept of "one people, one nation, one culture" is essentially fascistic and, therefore, ruinous for a multicultural polity. Given this reluctance within the BJP's own camp to accept the party's majoritarian thesis, the saffron lobby will not only have to tread carefully at present but may also find it somewhat difficult to propagate its so-called cultural nationalism thesis with as much vigour as before. How can the hype on Hindutva be sustained when not even Ayodhya, let alone Kashi and Mathura, is on the "national agenda"?
It is too early to say that impact the moderating influence of its allies will have on the BJP. Arguably, a party which can merrily abandon one set of principles relating to the observance of a moral code in public life to gain power, as UP has shown, can throw overboard the other principles as well. After all, if the communists can become virtual social democrats, the BJP can become another Congress. The only difference is that the last few years have seen a strengthening of the position of hard- liners in the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, and even the formation of a new outfit, the Bajrang Dal ....
Even if it is now clear that their world-view, which the BJP has now temporarily put aside, belongs to the periphery of Indian social and political life and not the mainstream, the militant groups are unlikely to accept their relegation to the background meekly. The BJP will ... expect them to have patience so that it can consolidate its position at the Centre and then implement the "Hindu" agenda. But it will not be an easy line to sell ... The Sangh parivar's vaunted discipline will be sorely tested .. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 30 March, 1998)
