Party, Government and the gap

IT WAS A simple programmatical mix-up which provoked the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, to bemoan the growing distance between his party and his Government at the BJP's national council meet, held to celebrate 50 years of its existence. Given the noticeably widening gap between the two entities, there is bound to be considerable speculation about Mr. Vajpayee's plaintive lament. Was it an oblique expression of his not-so-secret disaffection with the BJP president, Mr. Jana Krishnamurthi? A grudging acknowledgment of the difficulty of reconciling the party's sectarian platform on Ayodhya with the somewhat iron-clad compulsions of running a hydra-headed coalition Government? Whatever the truth, there is no doubt about one thing. At the end of the day, the real gap has little to do with averting communication snafus or reining in obstinate Hindutva hardliners. Rather, it has everything to do with the basic contradiction between leading a National Democratic Alliance Government and achieving the majoritarian goals of the BJP.

Mr. Vajpayee's description of the relationship between the NDA and the BJP as complementary rather than contradictory glosses over the conflicting pressures created by the exigencies of electoral politics, on the one hand, and the compulsions of Government, on the other. Such contrary pulls have become all the more acute in the face of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's March 2002 deadline for the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya and the looming shadow of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election. It is significant that the resolution adopted at the special session of the BJP's national council has squarely taken the Ayodhya issue on board. After making the ritual distinction between ``positive secularism'' and ``pseudo-secularism'', it eulogised the `movement' to build a Ram temple in the town as having had ``a massive national impact'' and having ``changed the mindset of millions''. The resolution, coupled with the Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani's assertion that the BJP's political progress was a direct result of the very strategy which resulted in the destruction of the Babri Masjid, suggests that the party will try and cynically exploit the Ayodhya issue for whatever it is worth during the Uttar Pradesh poll campaign.

In a way, such an attempt may have already begun. The recent attempt by VHP leaders to break into a restricted area of the disputed site and the organisation's grandiose plan of holding religious meetings in every Uttar Pradesh village between the Dusshera festival and March 12 (the D-day set by the Dharam Sansad for temple construction) seem part of a carefully- calibrated electoral gameplan. The forthcoming U.P. election is critical for the BJP which has seen its political fortunes plummet in the country's most populous State over the last couple of years. Its recent electoral record does not hold out much hope. A dismal performance in the last Lok Sabha election (which saw its seat tally in the State plunge by almost half) was followed by an even gloomier showing in last year's panchayat elections (in which it finished a poor third after the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party). With a section of the party attributing the downslide to the decision to place the Ayodhya issue on the backburner, the pressure to rake up this contentious but ostensibly electorally rewarding issue is considerable. Against such a background, one can only hope that the gap between party and Government - which Mr. Vajpayee referred to as if it were a matter for deep regret - remains exactly as it is. It would be a tragedy if the compulsions of the Uttar Pradesh election lead to a closing of the gap in favour of the party. The last thing this country needs is for the majoritarian impulses of the party to prevail over the less parochial exigencies of Government.

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