Opinion - Editorials

From despair to hope

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s recent national council meeting showcased a party brimming with confidence about its future. The feeling is not entirely misplaced. Four years after it lost power at the Centre, the principal opposition party has bounced back, defying sceptics who were too quick to write it off. Just months ago, the BJP seemed in dire straits — riven by factionalism, without focus, and desolate after its rout in Uttar Pradesh. For former U.P. Chief Minister and party chief Rajnath Singh, the election in his home State was a personal test that he failed. So what accounts for the mood change? The emergence of Lal Krishna Advani as the BJP’s shadow Prime Minister followed by two successive electoral triumphs — in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. For Mr. Advani, the invitation was nothing if not sweet revenge: in 2005 the BJP-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh combine forced his exit from the party’s job on account of his appreciation of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s August 1947 secular vision. Two years later, party and parivar were unanimous that he should be leading the BJP into the next election. What better proof of this political mood change than the standing ovation he received from the 3000-plus delegates attending the national council?

Today with the leadership issue settled, and Gujarat retained by the new saffron hero, Narendra Modi, the BJP looks more united than in a long, long time. That the party is focussed on the 15th general election, and is in agenda-setting mode, is evident from its overture to the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK and the decision to reserve 33 per cent of party posts for women. The Congress has responded positively to the latter decision but seems unconcerned by the state of the United Progressive Alliance. Does all this portend a National Democratic Alliance victory in 2009? Not by a long shot. The BJP has visibly recovered from its 2004 defeat but the NDA is far from looking the winner. Since 2002, as many as nine constituents have parted ways with the BJP and the NDA. This does not include the Telugu Desam Party, which was the NDA’s biggest outside prop, and the Trinamool Congress, which seems on the verge of quitting the alliance. Should BJP stalwarts introspect on this, they will discover a pattern: the deserters uniformly cited the party’s anti-Muslim policy as the reason for quitting the NDA. To be sure, politics has made strange bedfellows in the past, and the BJP’s dream of expanding the NDA may yet come to fruition. But many of the Hindutva party’s former allies need the Muslim vote more than they need the BJP. Indeed, there is a lesson in this for those who are in a hurry to anoint Mr. Modi as the BJP’s next great white hope.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu