The News International (Pakistan)
February 06, 2003
by Praful Bidwai
Even the staunchest critics of the Bharatiya Janata Party must concede that it is a driven and extraordinarily focused party which rarely does anything without a purpose, however narrow, sectarian or malign. Its will to power is today unmatched by any other force in India. As is its deviousness and communal passion.
The latest reshuffle of the Vajpayee cabinet bears ample testimony to this. It sends out many signals: the BJP is likely to steer India into an early general election, before October 2004, when the term of the present Lok Sabha ends. The power balances within the BJP have shifted further in favour of its rightwing, led by Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. Non-BJP parties in the National Democratic Alliance have been further squeezed and marginalised.
Worst of all, the BJP is about to revive the Babri mosque/Ram temple issue in Ayodhya by trying to legally manipulate the transfer of land to a Vishwa Hindu Parishad-controlled trust on which to start building a temple -- to erase the mosque's memory for good.
The land, consisting of both disputed and undisputed plots, was taken over by the government through a special Act in 1993, with a view to facilitating either an out-of-court settlement between all concerned parties, or adjudication. The BJP-VHP manoeuvres will subvert that purpose and widen the communal divide.
Advani was the principal architect of the re-allotment of portfolios, most detailed decisions pertaining to which were made while Vajpayee was away from Delhi, mainly in consultation with party president M Venkaiah Naidu, himself an Advani man.
Among the important decisions were the dropping of Telecom and Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan, re-induction of Arun Jaitley as Law Minister with additional portfolios, further expansion of Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie's powers and the sacking of Vijay Goel as a junior minister in the Prime Minister's Office.
Shourie's ascendancy is explained by the BJP's anxiety to project a strongly neo-liberal, pro-business, pro-privatisation image. Shourie is the cabinet's sole "foreign-educated" minister, with his World Bank background duly matching his neo-liberal zeal.
Jaitley was brought back partly because of changed corporate-power equations related to the mess over mobile phones, but mainly because he is expected to "manage" to get a judicial order to transfer the so-called "undisputed" part of the taken-over land to the VHP.
This is part of the BJP's design to rake up the temple agenda after the Supreme Court last March thwarted the plan to permit a VHP pooja there. The entire rationale of taking over land adjacent to the site where the Babri stood was to ensure that an eventual dispute settlement wouldn't be made infructuous with the construction of new structures on the surrounding plots.
The VHP is bent on acquiring those plots and start temple construction. It is being encouraged by the BJP which is trying to put up a "neutral" party to start a process of judicial manipulation. Discussions have already begun through the mediation of Jayendra Saraswati, the Kanchi Shankaracharya. Reviving the temple issue is the BJP's desperate way of trying to extract political mileage from rank hatred. It is playing with fire.
Jaitley's re-entry into government is inseparable from this design. This was to be "balanced" by Mahajan's shift to the party. In reality, the shift has more to do with Advani's distaste for Mahajan and his role in favouring certain mobile operators, whose competitors are close to Advani, besides some personal controversies. Mahajan, a capable second-generation BJP leader, stands badly demoted. All this leaves Vajpayee few trustworthy allies in the cabinet, barring Murli Manohar Joshi.
This reshuffle further tilts the balance within the NDA between the BJP and others. Over the years, the non-BJP "secular" parties have got marginalised. Since 1999, their share of cabinet posts (nine) has remained stagnant, but the BJP's has risen from 14 to 23. Of the 39 Ministers of State, 33 are from the BJP.
Mr Vajpayee has also hinted at a reshuffle of non-BJP ministers in the NDA, probably in April. This is a strong-arm tactic to secure their tacit or explicit compliance with the BJP's divisive agenda on Ayodhya.
In this reshuffle, Vajpayee has yielded a lot to Advani. But Vajpayee's biggest gain is that he will lead the BJP in an early election. Vajpayee is already trying to recoup his losses. He had the Central Bureau of Investigation hived off the Department of Personnel portfolio given to Advani, and transferred back to himself. After the next Parliament session, he might even ask Advani to devote himself to party work, and appoint Joshi as Deputy PM.
For the moment, Vajpayee has tried to give his cabinet a broad-based election-oriented profile, important in a diverse and big polity like India's. Thus, there is more nominal representation for non-upper caste communities like the Dalits in Uttaranchal, Adivasis in Chhattisgarh, Bhumihars in Bihar, Patels in Gujarat and Meenas in Rajasthan. These are the only faces of "multiculturalism" which the quintessentially upper-caste BJP can show.
After the Gujarat results, Vajpayee has hardened his soft-Hindutva stance and articulated rabidly anti-Muslim positions. The next few months will see a sharpening of the Vajpayee-Advani rivalry, understated and covert as it is. Politically, Vajpayee may have the better of his rival. But ideologically, he will have to yield ground to the Right.
The BJP is set to evolve with a strong communal orientation, in which terrorism is equated with Islam, divisive Hindutva with nationalism, and the sangh parivar as India's sole guarantor of "security". In the coming state elections, the party will do its utmost to capitalise on prejudice (against religious conversion), ignorance (of Islam and pro-reform currents in India's Muslim communities) and on paranoid hatred of India's multi-religious, multi-racial identity.
If the BJP wins in Himachal, where elections are due later this month, it will unleash a virulent communal campaign nationwide, as well as capitalise on the anti-incumbency factor in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. However, its Lok Sabha election plans will depend critically on what happens to its uneasy alliance with Dalit leader Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. Its top priority in UP is to keep her on its side.
The BJP's ability to manipulate public opinion will be compromised by its elitist economic policies. The Planning Commission wants the government to extend Rs134,000 crores in budgetary support to programmes largely related to basic services. But the government only has Rs100,000 crores to spend. So, social sector programmes will be drastically cut. Cooking gas and kerosene prices are set to be jacked up sharply.
Luckily for the BJP, its opponents haven't yet got their act together. They are unable or unwilling to mount a serious ideological challenge to Hindutva. If the Congress adopts a principled stand on issues like secularism and national security, it could frontally challenge the BJP. But it seems more inclined to do "cow-protection" politics, as in Madhya Pradesh.
All this bodes ill for the future of South Asia. A rabidly Hindutva government in New Delhi will create horrible enmities in the neighbourhood, as the ugly happenings at the India-Bangladesh border clearly suggest. One can only hope, pray and work for the BJP's electoral defeat in the coming round of elections.
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