(The News International
30 December 2006)
BJP is back to Muslim-bashing
By Praful Bidwai (The writer, a former newspaper editor, a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi )
Such is the positive opinion of the Bharatiya Janata Party among Pakistan's mainstream circles that it's sometimes hard to convince even progressives there that it's basically a party of reaction, anti-modernity and Islamophobia, with a terribly conservative programme and a pitiably pro-Washington foreign policy orientation. This is so despite the BJP's Hindu-supremacist ideology, and its long history of Muslim-baiting and opposition to India-Pakistan reconciliation.
One explanation for this is the same as the reason why a significant chunk of India's upper-caste middle class strata backs the BJP: the Atal Behari Vajpayee factor! Thanks to his manufactured image, Vajpayee is seen as the BJP's "liberal", soft, "official", face, who is personally "secular" and who put energy into starting a dialogue with Pakistan.
Vajpayee is often described in Pakistan as "a man of peace" although his record speaks of belligerence and warmongering. It's Vajpayee who put South Asia on the course of overt nuclearisation, and who exactly five years ago precipitated a standoff involving a million soldiers that brought the subcontinent close to the brink of Armageddon.
This same man was to have helped the BJP sever its umbilical cord with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and pushed the party towards moderation. He failed to do so while he was in office in 1998-2004. It's ludicrous to expect him to do so after he's lost power
The BJP's national council meeting in Lucknow last weekend proved this (and more) with a vengeance. The party returned to its pet themes of Hindutva and hatred, focusing this time on what it believes is a great electoral plank, namely, "Muslim appeasement" by the United Progressive Alliance government through the Sachar Committee report on Muslims.
In Lucknow, there were raucous warnings about India's "second partition", appeals to build a Ram temple at Ayodhya, and bemoaning of the reduction of India's Hindus to the status of "second-class citizens". Leader after leader spewed venom on Muslims, condemned Islam for terrorism, and hysterically opposed a Kashmir "sell-out".
The BJP has been desperately looking for such an electoral "magic wand". It has been in steep decline since the 2004 Lok Sabha defeat. Its poor performance in by-elections, loss of power in Jharkhand, and demoralisation of many state units all point to this--no to speak of the fratricide of Pramod Mahajan, its brightest second-generation leader, and backward-caste (OBC) leader Uma Bharati's defection.
It's only in urban UP that the BJP has registered (modest) gains. During recent municipal elections, it won eight out of 12 large-city mayoral positions. (It won six even in 2001.) In smaller towns, it was defeated by the Samajwadi Party.
BJP leaders presented this as a triumph In reality, the local elections weren't representative because the Dalit-dominated Bahujan Samaj Party, UP's Number Two, didn't contest. It covertly backed select candidates, including many from the BJP, to defeat the SP.
The BJP benefited both from anti-incumbency against Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, and communal polarisation triggered by recent events. (For instance, Minister Haji Yakub offered Rs 50 crores to kill the Danish cartoonist who ridiculed Prophet Mohammed).
A strange confluence of interests has grown between the BJP and SP. The harder Yadav tries to woo Muslims (who are increasingly suspicious of him), the more the upper-caste Hindu shifts towards the BJP. Yadav offered 5-star hospitality in Lucknow to the BJP brass; they accepted it. Yet, the BJP's gains can at best only partially offset its long downslide in UP. Its Assembly strength has plummeted from the 1991 peak of 221 (of 419 seats) to just 88 (of 403).
The BJP should know that Sachar is no Shah Bano (a 1984 Congress attempt to please religious hardliners against paying compensation to a deserted old Muslim woman.) The Sachar report is a serious, solidly documented analysis of anti-Muslim discrimination. It pleads for pluralism--not sectarianism.
It's extremely unlikely that the "appeasement" card will work given the present national mood, which favours integration and respect for inclusion and equity. It also frowns upon paranoid notions of national identity. There is widespread support for a durable and just peace with Pakistan and a border settlement and broad cooperation with China.
It's even more unlikely that the Ayodhya plank will sell. As the Sangh Parivar's own countless futile attempts to organise yatras on the issue show, the public is simply not interested in this agenda of revenge. It doesn't earn votes even in UP.
The BJP's return to hardline Hindutva represents a terrible retrogression and a setback for Indian democracy. It cannot be in the interest of democracy and pluralism that India's largest opposition party should descend to such a narrow, divisive and communal agenda.
In line with this ideological-political shift, the BJP has also executed an organisational shift. It has moved closer to the RSS and amended its constitution so that all its secretaries at the national and state levels are pracharaks (full-time Sangh propagandists).
Party president Rajnath Singh, who has just won a new three-year term, has further strengthened RSS influence--not least because he lacks a strong independent base and needs the Sangh's crutches. The RSS in turn is only too happy that it can revive the three contentious issues--Ram temple, Uniform Civil Code, and abolition of Article 370--which were put on hold in 1998 for dishonourable reasons of "expediency".
The Lucknow conclave leaves the BJP's structural crisis unresolved. Ideologically, the party is trapped between orthodox, Islamophobic, Hindutva, typical of small-town traders and upper-caste groups, on the one hand, and pro-globalisation Big Business, on the other.
Politically, it's divided between its identity as an ethno-religious movement, and electoral compulsions which propel it into opportunistic alliances. Organisationally, it remains completely dependent on the Sangh Parivar.
As this column has argued in the past, the BJP's ascendancy from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s was founded on three mutually reinforcing factors. First, the Congress's long-term decline owing to its compromises with communalism and market fundamentalism. This, coupled with the Left's stagnation after the Soviet Union's collapse, shifted India's political spectrum rightwards.
Second, the BJP-VHP's mobilisation around Ayodhya in the late 1980s allowed Hindutva to percolate. For the first time, the BJP broke out of its narrow upper-caste Hindu-Hindi belt confines. And third, its "social engineering" strategy, of combining "Mandal" (OBC politics) with "Kamandal" (Hindutva), helped it attract OBC support in the Hindi belt.
None of these factors operates today. The Congress has revived itself. The Left has expanded. Regional parties with subaltern agendas have grown. And the centre of gravity of Indian politics has shifted leftwards. Ayodhya has been displaced by social justice. The BJP is completely disoriented by this. Until recently, it was in outright denial of its 2004 defeat It still lacks a political strategy--and leadership. Its president is a narrow-minded provincial politician, who isn't even remotely acquainted with the India that's outside the Hindi belt.
Lurking behind him is Narendra Modi, who, sadly, enjoys a high level of acceptance within the BJP as its de facto Number Two leader. The BJP is caught between aspiring leaders of such appalling quality, and ageing veterans who are out-of-sync with reality. It's likely to remain in this unenviable state for some time.