Politics sans values

THE EXIT OF Mr. Keshubhai Patel as Chief Minister of Gujarat (for the second time now) is yet another instance of the BJP's claims of being a party with a different political culture getting eroded. The immediate provocation for the BJP to effect a change of guard in Gandhi Nagar may be the defeat of the party's nominees in the recent byelections from the State. But then, there is clearly more to this change. There are pointers to the factionalism in the State unit and that Mr. Patel had landed on the wrong side of some influential members of the BJP high command. This fact - that Mr. Patel did not find any backers in the high command - seems to have been behind his unceremonious exit. And reports of Mr. Patel's comments that he continued to enjoy the majority support in the BJP Legislature Party (while on his way to New Delhi to attend to the summons by the high command) seems to have clinched the decision against him. The BJP seems to be settling into the high command mode - an organisational format that the Congress had put in place - with such perfection. And in doing so, the party is only displaying its fascination for politics without even democratic pretensions.

Mr. Narendra Modi, the new Chief Minister, may not be a greenhorn insofar as experience in politics is concerned. Apart from being one of those who was drafted into the BJP from the RSS, Mr. Modi's experience in building a party organisation is indeed substantial. And in this sense, the BJP could not have found a better person from its stable to steer the party in Gujarat where Assembly elections are only a couple of years away. The reverses suffered by the party in the elections to the urban and rural local bodies and the defeat in the recent byelections (to the Sabarkanta Lok Sabha constituency and the Sabarmathi Assembly segment) must have caused serious concern. But then, the fact that the reverses were the fallout of a culture that seemed to have marked the performance of the Keshubhai Patel dispensation - a culture where corruption and insensitivity towards the needs of the people were so pronounced - is a factor that Mr. Modi will have to tackle. And it is in this sense that the change of guard appears to be mere window dressing. That the BJP unit in Gujarat, despite efforts by the party managers to the contrary, turned out

to be a hotbed of a kind of politics innocent of ideology was revealed long ago when Mr. Shankarsinh Waghela managed to walk out with a majority of BJP MLAs to form his own Government in the State. And since then, the BJP's claims to value- based politics had taken a beating. That Mr. Patel's Cabinet too had men who were hand-in-glove with infamous civil contractors (and this was revealed in the collapse of several buildings in Ahmedabad on January 26, 2001) clearly sullied the party's image.

Be that as it may, the choice of Mr. Modi is a cause for concern in another context too. Mr. Modi's role in the BJP has been to ensure that the party did not dilute its Hindutva agenda. And it is a fact that he had ensured this through the State Home Minister, Mr. Haren Pandya, in the past couple of years. And now with Mr. Modi himself at the helm, fears about the State Government in Gujarat upping the ante on this front are very real. Mr. Modi, it may be recalled, was the manager of the affairs during that phase of the BJP when it revealed its rampant revanchist agenda when Mr. L. K. Advani set out on his `rath yatra' provoking communal strife across the country. Mr. Modi is also among those in the BJP high command known for his abrasive views against the pluralist traditions of civil society. By electing such a person as Chief Minister of Gujarat, the BJP seems to have decided to give up all its democratic and pluralistic pretensions. The impact of such a line on civil society in Gujarat where the social fabric is torn even otherwise - the violence against religious minorities in almost all the cities in the State - and the systematic terror campaign unleashed by several Hindutva outfits against Christian missionaries in the tribal regions in the State could be disastrous. It remains to be seen how much of a break Mr. Modi can make from his highly communalised politics of the past.

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