From: The Asian Age
Modi will get BJP eyeballs, not power
Feb 01, 2013
by Bharat Bhushan
Modi could be the natural choice. But it presumes a paradigm shift in the BJP’s political strategy which Vajpayee helped fashion.
There are two posts in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which are decided in Nagpur — the president of the party and the party’s prime ministerial candidate. After the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders take a decision, the BJP carries out a democratic charade of choosing its leaders. Once this is understood, Yashwant Sinha proposing Narendra Modi’s name for Prime Minister can be seen for what it’s worth.
For one thing, Mr Sinha does not represent the RSS or anyone from Nagpur. Mr Sinha is a repentant socialist and one-time acolyte of Chandra Shekhar. Some suggest that he harbours ambitions for the top job himself and hopes to get Mr Modi out of the contest by creating a controversy well in advance. Such machinations will not work in a party where the puppet masters are immune to this kind of politicking and may be more than suspicious of an outsider like Mr Sinha. It is, therefore, quite possible that Mr Sinha has merely read the straws in the wind and wants to curry favour with someone who might become the future leader of India.
More importantly, Mr Sinha’s statement on Monday that “if BJP declares Mr Modi as its PM candidate, then BJP will benefit hugely in the elections”, begs the question whether the BJP plans to contest the 2014 general election on its own or as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). It is this crucial question that will determine the BJP’s candidate for the post of Prime Minister.
Mr Modi could be the natural choice for leading it in the polls if the party plans to go it alone. But such a choice presumes a paradigm shift in the BJP’s political strategy which Atal Behari Vajpayee helped fashion and which led it to power in New Delhi. Consider that the BJP and its erstwhile avatar, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), not only lost the elections of 1952 while going it alone (by that time the ideology of the RSS was already 27 years old!), but also 1957, 1962, 1967, 1971, 1980, 1984, 1989, 1991 and 1996. The “politics of exclusion” cost the BJP and its predecessor the BJS, 10 general elections. It first tasted power in 1977, when it opted for inclusive politics and formed an alliance with all those political forces which were opposed to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency — indeed only after merging its identity with the others to form the Janata Party.
That was when leaders like Mr Vajpayee realised that democratic politics required making pragmatic compromises for governance. One must recall that Mr Vajpayee made it a point not to go to Ayodhya when the Babri Masjid was being demolished by the Hindutva brigade. He never openly defended those who participated in that divisive act and in 1997 argued that three contentious issues — the revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution, imposition of a Uniform Civil Code and building of a Ram Temple at Ayodhya — be put on the back-burner to form the National Democratic Alliance. He went on to become the Prime Minister of India.
The lesson that inclusive politics alone allows for government formation in a polity fractured by caste, class, community, religion and regional divides has also been learnt well by the Congress and brought it to power in 2004, and in 2009. Recall how Sonia Gandhi wooed Sharad Pawar who had split the party on her foreign origins, how she went to meet M. Karunanidhi and pulled the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) towards the Congress; she walked to Ram Vilas Paswan’s house to seek his support although he had only one seat in the Lok Sabha; she weaned the National Conference away from the NDA and got Mamata Banerjee back into the fold. She even wooed the communists.
It is this important lesson that some voices in the BJP want to negate. Do recent political developments justify a rethink? After all, two partners have opted out of the alliance with the Congress — Ms Banerjee and the Left parties — and Mr Modi has performed a hat-trick in Gujarat Assembly elections.
But if Mr Modi is projected as the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister, a potential ally like Ms Banerjee is likely to opt out because of her Muslim vote base in West Bengal. The Janata Dal (United), an existing ally of the NDA, will also walk out of the alliance. Its leaders — especially Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar — have made it clear that they see the anointing of Mr Modi as a return to BJP’s politics of exclusion based on staunch Hindutva and that they want no part of. It is quite clear that the NDA alliance would be the first casualty of
Mr Modi’s candidature as potential Prime Minister. It is precisely his projection as a strong votary of Hindutva who brooks no dissent that attracts his fans although some in his party are afraid of a nightmarish scenario with “one PM, rest PNs (peons)”.
However, assuming Mr Modi’s projection as Prime Minister helps the BJP emerge as the largest single party in Parliament in 2014, what are its prospects for government formation? In 1999, with alliances in place, Mr Vajpayee at the helm, and a surcharged atmosphere post Kargil, the BJP won 182 seats. That was the best case scenario for the BJP. Mr Modi might improve upon
Mr Vajpayee’s performance by five to 10 seats although this will not be easy because there is every chance that with communal polarisation minority votes would go to the Congress. Even so, where will Mr Modi get the extra MPs required to form the government? Therefore, the need of the party is to expand alliances instead of shrinking them.
It is the ability to stretch your tent and include others within it that wins elections. If Mr Vajpayee, who was genial, accommodating, sometimes showing flashes of brilliance but often displaying feet of clay, was right, then the BJP needs a serious rethink about Mr Modi’s brand of politics. But who can prevent it from taking a lemming-like leap?
The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi
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