The Hindu : An agenda that boomeranged

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 05, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

An agenda that boomeranged

By Inder Malhotra

The contrast between the BJP's behaviour during the election campaign in Himachal Pradesh and that after its shattering defeat in the State Assembly poll could not have been more striking. All through the electioneering, the saffron party's leaders strutting around in the Shimla Hills were cocksure about their victory because they were playing, with all the vigour at their command, the Hindutva card that had earlier worked so well in Gujarat.

In fact, in pursuance of their grand strategy to replicate Gujarat in Himachal (and later in other States scheduled to go to the polls this year), they had deployed, as one of the principal campaigners, Hindutva's latest icon, the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. He indeed formed a trinity of sorts along with the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani.

About the numerous ploys of Mr. Modi and others to widen the communal divide and thus give the polarisation in the country a dangerously divisive and religiously surcharged twist much need not be said. For the wide world has been witness to the fuss made about ban on conversions and cow slaughter and the carefully orchestrated escalation of the potential of conflict over the Ram temple at Ayodhya.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) took to the streets, demanding immediate commencement of the temple's construction, regardless of the court's verdict. The Vajpayee Government petitioned the Supreme Court to waive its ban on religious activity on the undisputed land close to the disputed site where the Babri Masjid once stood. Surely this petition could have been filed weeks if not months, earlier or on some later date. But there was purpose behind filing it on the eve of the Himachal poll. To cap it all, Atalji's own speeches on the subject were agonisingly ambiguous and tended to encourage the Hindutva hotheads.

None of this worked, however. The simple folk of Himachal Pradesh rejected the BJP's Hindutva agenda decisively. This has sent the party's top brass — spin doctors, publicists and apologists — into a tizzy of a different kind. They are all working overtime to claim that their party's disastrous defeat is due almost entirely to "disunity and discord" within its ranks, with the "incumbency factor'' adding to the party's discomfiture.

Now this statement is not inaccurate. But, unfortunately, it is a half-truth and therefore misleading. For, its main purpose is to somehow obscure the bigger reality that in Himachal Pradesh the party's Hindutva agenda has not just backfired but boomeranged on it.

How shaken the saffron camp is on this score is best illustrated by the curious logic of the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu. Implicit in his rejoinder to the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, is his contention that if the outcome of the Himachal election is a rejection of Hindutva, then the Congress party's defeat in Nagaland must mean the opposite.

Such sophistry, an integral and inalienable part of Indian politics, alas, need not detain us. What needs to be looked into with some care — and concern — is the vexed problem of dissent, dissension, indiscipline and internecine warfare within not just the BJP but also all other political parties. Come to think of it, the victorious Congress in Himachal is as faction-ridden as the vanquished BJP. The bitter struggle for the Chief Minister's "gaddi" between Virbhadra Singh and Vidya Stokes underscores the point. The story in other States is the same, if not worse. It is an irony though that not long ago, the BJP used to boast of being a "party with a difference".

The reason why almost every political party worth the name has become an arena for ceaseless infighting at all levels except the very top is not far to seek. It is the excessive, indeed oppressive centralisation of the party leadership from which arbitrariness, nepotism and even dynastic dispensation are but a small step away. This degenerative process began with the Congress, of course because for long years it was the country's predominant party, but has since spread to every other outfit, big, middling or small. Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam, Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, Laloo Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, Jayalalithaa's AIADMK and M. Karunanidhi's DMK are telling examples. So is the Bahujan Samaj Party that was founded by Kanshi Ram but is now tightly controlled by the feisty Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati. Only in the case of the BJP is the controlling leadership at the summit shared by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.

The party leader chooses the candidates for every Assembly and Parliamentary seat in all elections. Neither the party ranks in a constituency nor even the party's State units have any say in the matter. The party supremo also controls all the party funds that are collected; more often than not, from dubious sources and in black money.

Under the circumstances, what role does an MLA in a State have except to promote his or her own interests by becoming the camp-follower of one factional leader or the other and thus a foot soldier in factional fighting? The privilege of currying favour with, or even kowtowing to, "the Leader" in his or her citadel is available to very few.

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