How the BJP failed Advani

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It took almost five years and a demoralizing electoral defeat for the Bharatiya Janata Party to realize the essence of what L.K.Advani has been emphasizing at every forum since the controversial Pakistan trip. The visuals of rabid karsevaks moronically climbing the Babri dome and demolishing the historic structure do not instil confidence in voters in a diverse India. They have seen what the insane Taliban did to the Bamiyan Buddha. Ram and religion can nudge your vote percentage to a bankable 25 but for the giant leap forward, you need a carefully crafted tolerant face, a face as crisis-absorbent and consensus-reliant as that of Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Advani knew that this was the only path available to the BJP but faced with unjustified criticism by lesser and intellectually deficient colleagues in his own party and the Sangh Parivar's fanatic outfits, he avoided taking the plunge. The party needed to move away from an unthinking conservative path. Mixing myth with history is not the justifiable way to carry a civilization forward. The BJP had to project itself as the sole repository of cultural nationalism, as the only party purposefully taking the country ahead to a century of inevitable greatness and glory. Instead, Varun Gandhi stole the show with cheap, uncivilized rhetoric. And the thunderous applause from the riff-raff in Pilibhit was misconstrued by BJP's inept leadership as a sure sign of a nationwide vote for Hindutva. The BJP went horribly wrong because it shunned its own leader, L.K.Advani.

Yes, a calibrated shift from one-dimensional Hindutva of the early and the mid-Nineties had to be accomplished long before the polls were due. The party needed to study the lowest common denominator in a country as large as India while defining its fresh perspective on Hindutva. Politics is also the art of survival in a changing society and the party should have drawn its inferences from the 2004 defeat and also from the determined Congress strategy to reach out to the countryside with its inclusive policies. The post-Mumbai vote in Delhi and Sheila Dikshit's historic triumph should have been lesson enough that the electorate was tiring of the Hang-Afzal-Guru line.

What the BJP also didn't take into account was the varying attitude towards hard Hindutva in different states. Gujarat and Karnataka are examples of provinces where a Narendra Modi phenomenon will be accepted without a majority expressing its sense of outrage or hoodlums belonging to Sriram Sene will get away with unthinking assault on pub-going women and still not be a negative influence on voters' preferences. The party needed to work out the statistical mean and accordingly frame its policy on Hindutva. Mere inclusion of the three core issues of Ram Temple, abrogation of Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code in the party's election manifesto was seen as tokenism, not a definite policy enunciation. To the extremist, it meant abandoning the strident line and to the practitioner of a milder version of Hindutva, it meant the BJP remained where it was in 1992. In short, the party being indecisive, failed to position itself as the party of change.

That is why, the party needed to back L.K.Advani with united boldness after he returned to India, having made that contentious remark on Jinnah. That remark had opened up the possibility of fashioning a completely new and relevant saffron perspective. But the BJP greeted him with ungrateful hostility, said that the iron in Lauhpurush had melted and the former deputy prime minister had softened beyond redemption. The BJP buried in its stale ideology and reluctant to shed its old habit of unnecessary Muslim-bashing did not see any future in Advani. The party reluctantly went along with him because promoting anybody from the second rung meant demolishing existing hierarchy and thereby fomenting dissent. The party chose the easy way out. Advani realized that his changing views were not yet acceptable to the saffron majority and he toed the party line as far as possible, never forgetting, however, to remind his audience that he had been misunderstood and misjudged on his Jinnah comment.

The likes of Ashok Singhal serve their purpose at a particular point and for a brief period in history. If they are allowed to push through their agenda, the BJP will suffer as it suffered recently in Orissa. The party's policy to back whole-heartedly the slain Swami Lakshmanananda and his rabid followers in riot-hit Kandhamal, simply backfired. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had the last laugh. On the other hand, Narendra Modi has already demonstrated that once he has adopted his development model, he can't risk being in the company of rabble-rouser, Praveen Togadia. Madhya Pradesh chief minister, a low-profile Shivraj Chauhan has been doing his utmost to reach out to the Muslim poor. Sushil Modi, Bihar's deputy chief minister, knows that in his home state, politics cannot be divisive; it has to embrace every faith, every creed. Advani has been advocating this big and profound change but his party refused to accompany him on that journey.

The BJP knows the nationwide mood was for a stable government. Good governance had already been rewarded before the general election in the BJP-ruled states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh. The electorate would have considered an alternative government at the Centre only if the BJP threw up new, credible ideas on development. Advani spoke optimistically on the campaign trail of the 21st century being the Indian century but his visionary perspective was laced with a tired Hindutva rhetoric which he should have done without.

The recently-concluded national executive showed that it's only Advani, who can seriously define new Hindutva and lead the party along that unexplored, uncharted path. In a country, which wants to take ownership of the next few decades and emerge as a superpower in its own right, he has to convince the aging ideologues that both Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP need to be guided by a new vision. The BJP has to position itself politically as the marginally right of centre party especially when the Congress has now grabbed the left of centre pole. The party needs to begin an honest dialogue with the Muslims. Advani's one major mistake during the run-up to the polls was his significant silence on the Varun episode. He should have taken the lead in disowning the ill-advised Gandhi.

Advani couldn't become the Prime Minister but he can still go down in history as the man who repeatedly injected new passion into India's largest Opposition party.