NATIONAL POLITICS
Rajni Kothari on BJP's Future?
The message of 1996 seems to have gone almost completely unregistered in the case of the BJP. Advani's claim to return to power made after the election sounds no different from the one he made before the election, the only change in thinking based on a realistic assessment being that in its march to power in New Delhi it will have to count on the support of a few other parties (most of them local or regional) and individuals, but all of them under the dominant imprimatur of the BJP.
President Shankar Dayal Sharma's invitation to Mr. Vajpayee to try and form a Government because his party had got the largest number of seats was an extremely clever move that exposed the BJP, showed its severe limitations when it came to transforming the "single largest" number into a majority, demonstrated its complete isolation with not only no other party but not one more individual... Instead of drawing additional support the BJP invited strong reactions from quarters it may not have expected. First, from Mr. Narasimha Rao, the former Prime Minister who for the first time and better than anyone else underscored the sharp polarization between the BJP on the one hand and the Congress and the United Front on the other. Second, not one of the regional parties (beyond Haryana Vikas Party and the Akali Dal) was available to join with this party of the Hindi heartland. Third, for the minorities and the Muslims in particular the BJP quite clearly emerged as a party detrimental to their interests. All the points that Mr. Vajpayee made in the course of the two confidence votes that the BJP stood for a more genuine form of secularism, that the Muslims had injected a minority complex among the Hindus who were in fact a majority and that the concessions that he had made by not including demands like the abrogation of Article 370, the building of the Ram Temple and the insistence on a common civil code in the President's Address to Parliament were only because his party had not been given a majority by the electorate and once it gets the majority, it will revert to its old position went against him as far as the Muslims are concerned. As the debate moved from the opening of the first confidence vote to the closing of the second one, Mr. Vajpayee was visibly seen to have hardened his stance and become more combative, almost falling in line with the RSS-VHP- Advani line of thinking.
His tributes to the RSS established Vajpayee's return to the RSS bandwagon despite some continuing differences that he might have had with its advocates, both on the Babari Masjid issue and on handling the affairs in Gujarat.
The BJP's real problem is that despite its growth in votes and even more in seats thanks largely to the vacuums created by the collapse of the Congress its core identity is still drawn from the past. From the heart- rending stories about the Muslim conquests in the camps organized by the RSS shakhas to Nathuram Godse's denunciation of Gandhi in a powerful defense speech before the trial court vindicating his vision of a Hindu rachtra to the most recent accusations about appeasement of the Muslims by the Congress and other secular forces is one continuing threat of Hindutva which designs change in this. Even from the point of view of its desire its identity and self-definition. There has been little to assume the reins of power in this highly diverse and complex and both regionally and socially varied land of ours. No thought has been given to how and why the Congress could wield power for so long or how and why into being and get the better of the BJP and all its a baffling phenomenon like the United Front could come attempts to expand its socio-linguistic base and its ideological appeal. The strategy that seems to be emerging, namely to (a) fill up the vacuums left behind by the Congress, (b) wait for, work for and take advantage the downfall of the UF, (c) revamp the organization and the mobilization base to coopt the Dalits and the backwards, (d) also coopt vulnerable individuals (Fernandes, Hedge, Parvati, Jayalalitha, having already coopted or contained Mayawati). (e) fomment further fissures in the social justice alliance and target at leaders having large followings among the lower classes and middle classes and the media abhor and, (f) to present castes like Mulayam Singh and Laloo Prasad whom the "Hindutva" as a forward-looking model of governance, is not likely to pay much dividends... It will not work fo the Congress in the corridors of power is not one simple reason: Such an ambition of almost replacing accompanied by the necessary ideological mutation that this calls for. The RSS imprint is too powerful to live down. Hindutva has lent it an edge that has made it still more doctrinaire. And whatever Vajpayee's moderate pretenses be, he is already failing to carry conviction. With the passage of time, he is more likely to fall in line.
(Source: The Hindustan Times, 12 July, 1996)
BJP: Views of L.K. Advani
It is a fact that in India, besides the BJP, every party's share of votes and the seats have gone down continuously. In the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress received a severe drubbing. The Party's percentage of votes and seats declining; the same is valid for the Left and the Janata Dal. But the BJP has grown from two seats in 1984 to 86 in 1991 to 161 now. The BJP's growth is phenomenal. Yet, the tendency on the part of many people is to generalize that the BJP has declined.
(Source: The Hindustan Times, 28 July, 1996)
