NATIONAL POLITICS

Dipankar Gupta on Roots of Crisis within the BJP

Recent dissensions within the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have certainly undermined its claim of being a disciplined and united organisation. The Vaghela affair calls for a closer analysis of the principles on which religio-nationalist organizations are formed.

Some religio-nationalist organizations like the Shiv Sena openly proclaim their anti-democratic preferences... This is one of the many factors of discord between the Shiv Sena and the BJP, though on the face of it the two. appear very compatible.

In religio-nationalist bodies there is little room for a reconsideration of alternatives. The slightest dithering on this score can bring about an organizational collapse. These parties must necessarily be clear, unambiguous, and unflinching about their political aspirations. For instance, the primary aim of the BJP and Shiv Sena is to teach the Muslims a lesson and assert Hindu pride nation- wide. It is their uncompromising assertion of ultimate values that makes these organizations more like social movements than political parties. Hence even when they are in power, they must initiate movement-like elements into their political programme.

As long as movement - like elements dominate such parties, procedures fora democratic reconciliation of differences will hardly receive any consideration. This explains why religio-nationalist organizations are generally authoritarian in character.

The BJP is however caught in a dilemma. While it does not openly flout inner party democratic norms the way the Shiv Sena does, it cannot allow its movement- like features to diminish either. This would be organizational suicide. In fact, the BJP was practically wiped out in the 1984 elections because it campaigned on a democratic and secular manifesto. Other parties like the Congress have less difficulty in switching goals. From import substitution they can become advocates of economic globalization and yet gain in strength as the Rajiv Gandhi period demonstrates. As parties like the Congress are not driven by commitment to ultimate values, they are organizationally better equipped to respond to internal pressures and redefine their objectives.

But the BJP gives primacy to ultimate values and goals. This is the reason it finds it difficult to control power tussles as democratic procedures have little credibility within the organization. Political rivalries can only be resolved by an authoritarianism is not founded on naked power- as with the Shiv Sena. It is far more subtle in character. It is a cultural authoritarianism based on status. It demands acquiescence to a certain kind of lifestyle.

In the past it was much easier for the BJP to exercise their subtle silken, or velvet-gloved, authoritarianism for the party was still quite small, it was limited to urban and literate Hindus. This brought about a rather homogeneous cultural base that allowed an authoritarianism of life- styles and etiquette to monitor the party's functioning but this restricted support structure also made the BJP electorally insignificant. In order to meet the imperatives of electoral politics, the BJP worked hard to enlarge its mass base by reaching out to the rural population and to the so-called backward castes.

Factions in BJP

Now that the BJP is consciously trying to go beyond its earlier Brahmin-Bania confines it is forced to project the interests of other ranks and strata within the Hindu community. This has led to tensions within the organization.

Though the late RSS chief Babasaheb Deoras, and others like him, may have strenuously argued against casteism, both the RSS and the BJP were, till very recently, upper caste and urban in their membership. In that sense they never really had to face the alternative lifestyles, ethics and ambitions of non-urban backward castes within their respective organizations, it was only when Kurmi BJP leaders like Vinay Katiyar emerged in Uttar Pradesh, or leaders of backward castes like Vaghela began to nurse ambitions of their own in Gujarat, that the varieties of political styles, and their accompanying mass bases, within the so-called Hindutva fold, became apparent.

It is not as if these other non-urban classes and backward caste BJP activists are less zealous about Hindutva. There are after all Hindus and Hindus: the Jats do not get along with the Gujjars, the Gujjars are contemptuous of the Kurmis, the peasant castes together distrust the village Banias, and the list goes on. Such cleavages in routine existence can be expressed through a religious idiom, but religion here is used and understood differently by different sections of the community.

Such an admission will not do at all for religio-nationalist parties. This explains why the BJP strives so hard to present an unified pan-Hindu view of its ultimate goal and necessarily depends on urban elites to articulate its ideologies and programmes. It is the urban literati that most pretentious about being universally are representative. They believe that they alone can give an all-India perspective and rise above caste and regional differences. It is they who dictate the terms on which the authoritarianism of lifestyle and etiquette is founded.

A religio-nationalist party therefore has only two options. Either it remains openly dictatorial and ridicules democratic forms like the Shiv Sena and other fascist organizations do worldwide. Or it stays as a small and cohesive status conscious political group, as the RSS and the Jana Sangh used to be. Since the BJP wants to be neither, it faces a systemic crisis. The Vaghela affair is just the beginning.

(Source: The Times of India, 6 September, 1996)