THE shrewdest way of defeating your opponent, they say, is to flatter him to death. Lal Krishna Advani did exactly that to his old-time friend-senior Atal Behari Vajpayee by demanding that he be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour. Advani succeeded in all but sending Vajpayee packing out of his stewardship of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Advani’s letter on the issue treated Vajpayee as if he were about to go into oblivion: “Sadly, there have been instances when the award was not given even when such illustrious Indians existed in our midst or when their names were suggested for posthumous recognition.”
Advani’s gambit was linked to his own bid to become the BJP's nominee for the Prime Minister's post should the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) win the next national election. Advani has long nursed this ambition. Vajpayee has repeatedly thwarted him. Vajpayee was the NDA’s unquestioned Numero Uno. He wouldn’t name a successor. Advani could rise in importance — only at Vajpayee's pleasure. This was a paternalistic relationship typical of the RSS “principle” of a single leader’s absolute rule. Vajpayee appointed Advani Deputy PM in 2002, but only under intense RSS pressure. In 2003, Advani acolyte and party president M Venkaiah Naidu famously described Advani as Loh Purush (Iron Man) and Vajpayee merely as Vikas Purush (Development Man), projecting them together as the BJP's “twin mascots”. This was an attempted palace coup during Vjpayee’s absence from India.
Vajpayee snubbed it. He threatened to “retire” and resorted to blackmail by declaring that Advani “would lead the party in the next election”. Naidu had to apologise abjectly. This time around, Vajpayee has yielded. By all accounts, this took a lot of persuading by RSS secretary Mohan Bhagwat. A major consideration was Vajpayee’s extremely poor health. Yet, he remains the BJP’s most acceptable public face.
Advani is in a hurry to become prime minister. That's why he put the BJP into election mode in December by setting up an “informal group” of camp-followers, including Sushma Swaraj, Arun Shourie, Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu.
Advani was also eager to get himself anointed as the NDA’s candidate as PM. At its January 22 meeting, held after the BJP's morale-boosting victories in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. This was attended by the presidents of all the NDA constituent-parties barring the Trinamool Congress, and the chief ministers of all the nice Alliance-ruled states. It sounded a clarion call against “the failed… corrupt and ..divided … United Progressive Alliance.”
However, the NDA is in too much of a hurry. The UPA government isn’t about to collapse. The Left parties, which threatened to withdraw support if the UPA pushes the India-US nuclear deal, have changed their stance partly because of the Nandigram and Taslima Nasreen episodes. The UPA is averse to an early election.
True, the Left parties will increasingly demarcate themselves from the UPA ahead of the election, in which they would confront the Congress as their adversary in the three states in which they rule. But that might not produce an early rupture.
The NDA’s Advani gamble is risky. He’s no substitute for Vajpayee. Advani is an apparatchik (organisation man) and deal-fixer. But he's no strategist. He has started issuing statements on international issues, but he’s out of his depth on these.
Advani’s intellectual horizon is extremely narrow. His all-time favourite book is the trashy How to Win Friends and Influence People. He’s not an orator or mass leader. In his recent election meetings in Gujarat, he had to be content with audiences as small as 30-strong, while Narendra Modi drew thousands, as did Sonia Gandhi.
Compared to the 30 per cent-plus approval ratings for Sonia Gandhi and Vajpayee in various opinion polls, Advani's score is nine per cent. Four years ago, Advani’s elevation to Vajpayee's level wasn't acceptable to several NDA constituents, including the Telugu Desam, Trinamool Congress and even the Shiv Sena.
Today, the NDA allies are making a mistake by bowing before the BJP’s internal choice. This is markedly different from their attitude towards the Vajpayee leadership, which was never determined by the BJP's organisational calculations, but shaped by the man’s (misleading) image as “the right man in the wrong party”.
Vajpayee has never been an apparatchik of Advani’s rank. Advani has always been happy controlling the party or going around in his rath (chariot) whipping up base passions.
Advani temporarily lost the RSS’s confidence and control over the BJP because of his remarks praising Jinnah. But he’s back in favour, and in greater command of the BJP than its Uttar Pradesh-centric lightweight president, Rajnath Singh.
The BJP has reason to feel pleased at the Gujarat results. The NDA doesn’t. After all, the Janata Dal (United), led by the NDA’s best-performing chief minister, Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, contested the Gujarat elections independently of the BJP.
The BJP retains its sullied image as an intolerant, sectarian party which uses communal violence for political mobilisation and cannot provide Constitutional governance. Bilkis Bano had to go out of Gujarat to get even a modicum of justice.
Compared to 2004, the NDA isn't better placed than the UPA in the overall balance of forces. It— rather, the BJP through Modi, of all people — is making an overture to Jayalalithaa. But it has lost a major ally in the Telugu Desam and will lose the Trinamool if that party allies with the Congress in West Bengal.
India’s political situation is less bipolar than in 2004. The regional parties have come together as a bloc. The Bahujan Samaj Party has emerged a major force in UP and is making inroads elsewhere. Besides, there's a distinct possibility that the Samajwadi Party's hostile relationship with the Congress will change because both feel threatened by the BSP. The NDA faces the burden of incumbency in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where elections are due soon. It's unclear if the BJP can retain power there, and highly unlikely that it can recoup its big losses in Uttar Pradesh.
In this uncertain situation, betting on Advani may be a costly gamble for the NDA.
