INDIA’S mainstream parties have a special knack — of quickly losing popular support which it took them years to garner.
Three weeks ago, this column regretfully noted that Hindutva’s opponents, especially in the United Progressive Alliance, seemed intent to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Maharashtra. Now, the Bharatiya Janata Party too seems to be in self-destruction mode because of factionalism.
In last week’s elections to 10 municipal corporations in Maharashtra, the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party failed to ally with each other in nine cities. They lost a chance to deliver a knock-out punch to the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition, now in its worst-ever crisis.
The Congress and NCP shouldn’t pretend that the coalition’s victory in five cities wasn’t a bad setback because their seat-tally and vote-shares have grown. In truth, the secular bloc didn’t win a decisive, comprehensive victory, when it could have.
Disunity wasn’t the sole reason for this. The voter wasn’t impressed by the Congress-NCP’s elitist plans to turn “Mumbai into Shanghai”. The eviction of thousands of families from city centres to make way for shopping-malls, and the growing urban crisis, highlighted by recent floods in Mumbai, also played a role.
The election result should serve as a “wake-up call” for all secular parties. If they don’t get their act together through pro-people policies and coalition-building before 2009, they will erode the advantage they today collectively enjoy.
According to an end-January Hindustan Times-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, the UPA enjoys a 43-to-28 per cent lead over the NDA. (An India Today poll also gives the UPA an edge, albeit smaller.)
However, the secular parties have one reason to be happy. Just when recent municipal elections have rejuvenated BJP cadres, party president Rajnath Singh has poured cold water over their enthusiasm through a reshuffle of office-bearers, triggering discontent.
With full Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh backing, and with Atal Behari Vajpayee’s endorsement, Singh has marginalised his rivals, and weakened the pro-Advani grouping in the party. Having declared a month ago that he too aspires to lead the party’s return to national power, Singh was in an unseemly hurry to establish himself as first amongst equals within the second-generation BJP leadership.
This includes Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and M Venkaiah Naidu. Of these, Modi — the sole wielder of state power — is pre-eminent. Jaitley is his close ally and friend.
Singh struck at the duo. He removed Modi from the parliamentary board, the party’s highest decision-making authority, and the central election committee. And he replaced Jaitley as the BJP’s chief spokesperson.
Singh has forcibly and artificially altered the internal BJP power-balance. But he didn’t want to antagonise Modi too much. Thus, he removed Keshubhai Patel and Kashiram Rana, Modi’s main detractors in Gujarat, from the national executive committee.
Singh also removed Sanjay Joshi as general secretary (organisation) — who is always nominated by the RSS. Joshi was a bitter critic of Modi. Modi’s supporters, in turn, had tried to discredit him by circulating a probably doctored videotape on his sexual escapades.
Singh thus attempted a “balancing act”. However, this was heavily tilted against Modi and Jaitley. Removing a few irritants to Modi — who has centralised all decision-making powers in Gujarat — doesn’t compensate for his removal from the parliamentary board.
Nor does Jaitley’s “added responsibility” as secretary to the board neutralise his removal as chief spokesperson. The PB meets once or twice a year. The spokesperson is on TV screens virtually daily!
Singh’s larger game-plan was to strike at the silent authority behind Modi — LK Advani. Advani has long represented Gujarat’s Gandhinagar constituency and is close to Modi. Because Advani clearly nurses prime ministerial ambitions, Singh sees him as a potential rival. That’s why he needled Advani by inducting Advani critic Yashwant Sinha as party vice-president.
When Advani’s relations with the RSS soured after his speech in Pakistan extolling Mohammed Ali Jinnah as “secular”, he got even closer to Modi, who has become unpopular with hardcore sanghis.
There are no ideological differences between Modi and the RSS. Indeed, no other chief minister has implemented the RSS’s communal agenda with greater fanaticism. No other state rivals Gujarat’s status as “Hindutva’s laboratory”. The RSS hates Modi because he has become larger-than-life, defiant, super-authoritarian; it disapproves of his “character”.
The VHP hates Modi because he doesn’t take its sadhus seriously and because he and Pravin Togadia revile each other as “lunatics”. But the RSS knows that Modi remains indispensable to the BJP’s election agenda in Gujarat (where Assembly polls are soon due).
Singh has no worthwhile following anywhere. His closest supporter, Pramod Mahajan, is dead. But he shrewdly exploited RSS-Modi tensions to his own ends. He behaved like a petty provincial politician. Schooled in district-level manipulation, he cannot understand the limits of his own authority.
Tomorrow, if Modi or Jaitley publicly insults him, Singh wouldn’t know where to look. If Singh had a less demeaning and sordid purpose — not to speak of a secular one, which he’s incapable of — he would have still deserved support for marginalising Modi.
What really stands out is less Singh’s pettiness than Vajpayee’s. There’s no doubt that Vajpayee was consulted before the reshuffle. He defended Singh’s new team as “balanced” and “formed after a lot of thought”. Vajpayee backs Singh out of petty factional calculation. He too wants to cut Advani to size. He dislikes Modi and prefers to keep the BJP in disarray so that he can “rescue” it.
The BJP isn’t democratic enough to have/accept factions contending with one another on ideological, organisational and tactical issues. It’s only unified by Hindutva and denial of India’s greatest historical assets: multicultural plurality, religious diversity, and inclusiveness. The BJP today is rudderless. Rajnath Singh isn’t capable of leading a national party.
Yet, for secularists, this may not be quite time to rejoice. Modi could strike back at Singh after the Gujarat elections. He could use dirty means, including communal violence. Already, Mangalore, Gorakhpur and Bangalore show what low-intensity communal violence can do. The BJP may stoop to such violence — while further brutalising Indian society.
