V. Krishna Ananth on BJP's Game Plan to Reshape India Ideologically

It is indeed a fact that the BJP's leadership was forced into disowning its own past only because the party's allies in the ruling alliance insisted on it. And the high point of this "return to sanity" was the contempt with which Vajpayee referred to such "tall" leaders in his party ... But then, the reality is not all that plain; and the most appropriate statement to this effect came from none other than the BJP's president, Kushabhau Thakre. In his own way, Thakre made it clear, on a private TV channel, that "Ayodhya was only on the BJP's programme and never the party's ideology". He must have known what he was talking about and so must hav. those in the RSS. Only the politically naive would feel convinced that Thakre's statement was a virtual compromise or a climb-down.

Instead, the imperative for the present is to understand that a "programme" cannot but be internal to the "ideology" and that while any "programme" has to be time-bound, the "ideology" is not. In other words, Thakre had conveyed that the Ayodhya issue was only an aspect of the BJP's ideological movement and that construction of a temple there was not the end in itself.

The message is that Ayodhya became an important part of the BJP's programme only at a given point in time. After all, the Jan Sangh (1952 and 1977) and the BJP (since 1980) existed very much as political parties even before February 1986 (when Ayodhya crystallised into a political issue). The Jan Sangh came into existence in 1951 as a political party wedded to the notion of cultural nationalism as opposed to the nationalism that was born out of the one of the mightiest struggles against colonialism. The Ram temple was not even thought of in the Jan Sangh during most part of its existence as a party.

And yet a cross section of the political groups in the country, despite their opposition to the Congress, refused to ally with the Jan Sangh; each of these platforms had their own objections to aspects of the Jan Sangh's ideological positions. For instance, the Jan Sangh, in its "Principles and Policies" (a 1965 document) declared: "All the creeds that form the commonwealth of Bharatiya Rashtra have their share in the stream of Bharatiya culture which has flowed down since the Vedas in unbroken continuity, absorbing and assimilating contributions made by different peoples, creeds and cultures that came in contact with it in the course of history in such a way as to make them indistinguishable part and parcel of the main current ... Any talk of composite culture, therefore, is not only untrue but also dangerous, for it tends to weaken national unity and encourage fissiparous tendencies."

Neither has the BJP taken a position, at least in public, against this understanding of the Indian nation nor have its allies in the NDA bothered to clarify with the BJP on this. And yet, such parties as the DMK, the MDMK, the Telugu Desam and the National Conference are at ease. And far more significant in this context is the Jan Sangh's prescription (handed out in a resolution at its all-India session at Jodhpur on January 1, 1955) on education reforms: "The nation today requires an education which would have a proper blend of the ancient Gurukul system, in which emphasis is laid on moral values and character and the modern system based upon the latest scientific discoveries. For familiarity with the great Indian tradition and instructions in moral behaviour it is necessary to lay emphasis on the study of Sanskrit language and literature."

It further stressed that "for discipline and physical well-being there should be adequate arrangements for physical and military training".

(There are) striking similarities between (Joshi's proposal) and the Jan Sangh's prescriptions. It is another matter that these prescriptions are being followed in their entirety in the schools run by the Sangh Parivar outfits - the Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and the Vidya Bharathi schools in the Northern States - even otherwise. And yet, there seems to be a celebration that the BJP is no longer the party of the "bad boys" as it used to be.

If these are only 'small and minor' expressions of the communal-fascist agenda, there cannot be a more dangerous manifestation of the ideology at work than the passion with which the Prime Minister has hit at Pakistan in the context of the plane hijack. One only has to go back to the Jan Sangh's 1965 document: "The existence of Pakistan not only means a separate political entity on Indian soil, it also amounts to a refutation of the fact of one nationhood and one culture and a bid to keep alive the theory of two nations and two cultures ... It shall be an objective of the Jan Sangh policies to end the separation of India and Pakistan and to bring the two together." There certainly is a continuity between the Jan Sangh's article of faith and the BJP's line of thinking ...

Ayodhya was only a programme for the BJP and not its ideology. The ideology is much larger and the BJP has certainly not compromised on that. (Source: The Hindu, 11 January, 2000)

Contradictions to the Fore

Editorial, The Hindu, 15 December, 1999

The sudden resort to the Ayodhya rhetoric by sections in the BJP is a cause for concern in the larger sense. The Sangh Parivar's Ayodhya campaign in the past had caused serious harm to civil society; the number of communal clashes that were witnessed across the country during the past decade ... has also left the polity fractured and fragmented on communal lines. Any attempt to revive the Ayodhya rhetoric at this stage will make the situation worse. And in this sense, it will not do for Vajpayee to merely distance himself from such attempts. Instead, he is bound ... to ensure that such attempts ... are thwarted. The drift, if allowed to persist, will harm not only the ruling coalition but will also do incalculable harm to the polity.