(The Hindu
Apr 18, 2007)
The fringe and the mainstream
Vidya Subrahmaniam
The BJP retreats from Hindutva when it feels safe doing so. In the land of Mayawati, it has reasoned that it must pull out all stops or perish.
THE BHARATIYA Janata Party's "loony fringe" has got the blame for the scurrilous compact disc (CD) that has landed the party in trouble with the Election Commission. Through its battle with the Commission, the BJP's spokespersons sought to differentiate between the leadership and the rank and file, one responsible, the other irresponsible: The CD was a "mistake" committed by a lower functionary who had been punished for the offence. At a press conference in Lucknow, L.K. Advani laid into the ECI, calling its FIRs against party seniors Rajnath Singh and Lalji Tandon "stupid" and "anti-democratic." The BJP had disowned the CD and withdrawn it, and its culpability ended there, he argued, reminding the Commission that the party had ruled from South Block for six whole years. Arun Jaitley summed up the BJP position to Outlook magazine: "all parties have the loony brigade. Maybe there are a few more in the BJP."
As Uttar Pradesh shifted gear into phase II of polling, an inflammatory advertisement reared its head in Muslim-dominated Aligarh. Punning on the word Pak, the ad's tagline tangentially questioned Muslim attitude and intention: "Kya inka irada pak hai?" (Is their intention pure?). If the ad was an unintended coincidence — as BJP spokespersons quickly claimed — not everyone was buying it. Anchoring the exit poll for the second phase on his channel, the unfailingly polite Prannoy Roy suddenly turned on his BJP studio guest, severely admonishing him for the sectarian tone of his party's campaign. He had been to a few BJP rallies, the founder-president of NDTV said, and was shocked by the communal content of speeches made there.
This newspaper's account of the BJP's April 10 rally in Arnia, Khurja, would bear Mr. Roy out. Addressing it, Mr. Rajnath Singh poured scorn on the advocates of affirmative action for Muslims, wondering if the country had come to such a pass that "the son of Dawood" was being considered for reservation. A day later Kalyan Singh justified the provocative Aligarh ad in a sound bite to CNN-IBN: "Whatever we have stated in the advertisement is the truth. There is nothing objectionable in it." At the BJP's December 2006 National Council meeting in Lucknow, the party's Chief Minister-in-waiting had called all Muslims terrorists. That meeting had concluded with the release of a CD similar in content to the one currently under the ECI scanner. The question arises: If the second CD was the work of the fringe what explains the 2006 CD, released at an official gathering in the presence of the biggest BJP names?
So which is the mainstream and which is the fringe? History is witness to at least three landmark events when the dividing line visibly blurred — during the 1990-91 Ram temple phase; in the aftermath of the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid; and through the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002. Reflect on the lingering images from those times: Mr. Advani astride his Ram rath, urging his followers to shout "Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain (Say with pride that we are Hindus)." BJP volunteers in saffron bandanas beseeching voters to vote in the name of Ram: "Aap ka vote, Ram ke naam." Kalyan Singh, hand proudly on heart, asking to be arrested for allowing the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Uma Bharti calling December 6, 1992, "the most blissful day of my life." And Mr. Advani arguing that the manner of the Masjid's going was wrong but not the ideology behind it.
The only leader not to join in the Babri celebration was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He lamented the Masjid's demise, and offered to resign from the party only to retract and soulfully ask "Jaye to jaye kahaan (Where do I go?)?" Yet in the surcharged days following Gujarat 2002, the same man, now as Prime Minister, was to justify Narendra Modi's action-reaction theory. "Kisne lagayee ye aag (who lit the fire?)," he asked even as Mr. Advani chose that precise moment to tell his cadre not to be apologetic about their ideological moorings. With Mr. Modi triumphantly returning to power in the December 2002 Gujarat election, the parivar as a whole spoke darkly about replicating the Gujarat experiment, driving hysterical commentators to write off India's future.
It would be dishonest not to record moments when the BJP seemed to veer off the beaten track. Hindutva took a backseat to healthy pragmatism when Mr. Vajpayee ventured across the Wagah border in the spring of 1999, becoming the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the ultimate symbol of Pakistan's nationhood, the Minar-e-Pakistan. Post-Gujarat, Hindutva again receded, and more unbelievably, at election time. The theme of the BJP's 2003 election campaign for the Assemblies of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Delhi was `BSP,' acronym for bijli, sadak, paani (power, roads, and water). Ms. Bharti, Vasundhara Raje, and Raman Singh, all swept into office promising development.
And as the 2004 India Shining offensive took off, Gujarat seemed a distant nightmare, an aberration. This was also when Mr. Vajpayee, putting aside the betrayal of the Kargil war and the colossal failure of the Agra summit, made a spectacular peace overture to Pakistan, setting the stage for future cooperation between the hostile neighbours.
The party's May 2004 defeat brought the axe down on that mellow phase and with what effect was revealed when Mr. Advani made bold to utter the Jinnah word in Pakistan. Stripped of the party president's post, and publicly humiliated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Mr. Advani has since alternated between anti-Hindutva bravado and pure Hindutva-speak. In the course of many recent interviews, the former BJP chief has lamented his party's failure to seize the Jinnah opportunity for ideological reform. Yet he has remained unwavering in his support to Mr. Modi. And at last week's ECI hearing on the communal CD, he seemed every bit the old votary of Hindutva. Informing the gathered media of his party's intention to take full advantage of the CD's fallout, Mr. Advani said: "Tell me, if someone commits blunders and stupidities, are we, as a political party, expected not to take advantage?"
Experts have expended many column inches on trying to understand the BJP's mind. Are its retreats from Hindutva merely strategic and if so why? Why did the party after Gujarat 2002 adopt bijli, sadak, paani as its election slogan in 2003? Why did a party that was shrilly jingoistic in the 1999 general election bet on the less strident India Shining in 2004? If overt communal propaganda could be avoided in the recent elections to the Assemblies of Punjab and Uttarakhand, why has it become a survival tool in U.P.?
If there is a pattern in all this, it is probably this. The BJP retreats from Hindutva when it feels safe doing so. Gujarat brought the party ignominy and international censure at a time it was in power at the Centre and on a hattrick. The party could not afford to let the flames of hatred spread. Thus only a year after Mr. Modi's communally surcharged electoral victory in Gujarat, the BJP dropped the Hindutva card — first in the 2003 Assembly elections and then in the 2004 Lok Sabha election. In three of the four States that went to the polls in 2003, the BJP was also aided by strong anti-incumbency, which favoured a campaign focussed on development. The May 2004 general election was unique in that here was a Hindu nationalist party seeking a third term. Yet BJP strategists plumped for India Shining for apparently good reasons. The Indian economy seemed set for a boom thanks to a bountiful monsoon. But more importantly, a transformation was visible in the world's attitude to India — from a regressive country in the dumps for exploding nuclear bombs it had become a responsible emerging power. The BJP would have been foolish to fritter away the opportunity that enticingly loomed on the horizon.
Battleground U.P. is a far cry from that rosy possibility. In the land of Mayawati, the BJP must pull out all stops or perish, which was not the case in either Uttarakhand or Punjab where a focus on price rise and farmers' problems made better sense. The communal CD in the court of the ECI is of recent origin. The BJP's U.P. campaign was, in fact, launched in December 2006 at its National Council meeting held in Lucknow. The thread that held that meet together was Muslim bashing and for evidence just consider the speeches and the resolutions. In his opening remarks, Mr. Rajnath Singh warned of a second Partition and justified Muslim-specific anti-terror operations. Mr. Kalyan Singh described Hindutva as that volcano that would "kill" and "burn" Muslim appeasement. Then came the resolutions. One on "the UPA Government's vote bank politics," a second on " the Muslim appeasement steps of the UPA Government," and a third on internal security, focussed this — and no prizes for guessing this — on the internal threat from terrorism.
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