Date:21/06/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/06/21/stories/2004062100660800.htm

Back BJP at sea?

DESPITE the BJP's attempts to present a semblance of solidarity to the outside world, there is no doubt that the party is in for further churning in the months ahead.

The most mystifying of all puzzles is why, of all persons, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, perhaps the sagest and shrewdest of all leaders in any party, should have washed dirty linen in public by coming out with the kind of statements he did while holidaying at Manali.

If he really felt so strongly that the reverses suffered by the BJP and NDA in the recent Lok Sabha election needed to be gone into critically and in depth, with particular reference to the role played by the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, he could have got it arranged by just putting in a quiet word to the party president, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, and/or his senior and trusted colleague, hitherto regarded as his alter ego, Mr L. K. Advani.

Instead, he uses the inappropriate public forum of successive media conferences to pronounce his own verdict on what went wrong and who was to blame, and stakes his own prestige and authority to impose it on the party.

Mr Vajpayee has often proclaimed his admiration for Jawaharlal Nehru, and even adopts the great man's tone and style of speech. Can it be that Mr Vajpayee decided to take after Nehru in giving a shock treatment to his party?

Nehru, you will remember, shook off the ultra-conservatives in the Congress who, he felt, were hemming him in following the election of Purshottam Das Tandon to the post of president, by threatening to resign both from the prime ministership and the membership of the Working Committee.

Whatever it is, time alone will tell whether Mr Vajpayee's timing and manner would lead his party to engage in a genuine self-introspection or an agonising reappraisal of its policies and strategies. For the moment, he may prevail by virtue of his stature and the TINA factor. The conclusion is at the same time inescapable, however, that he has only engendered divided loyalties in a disciplined party like the BJP.

And the wonder is that it should be Mr Vajpayee, once hailed as the mukhauta, the appealing mask of the party. One can be sure that the question of who has torn whose mask will long be debated.

B. S. Raghavan