BJP unable to cope with poll debacle

Former BJP vice president Yashwant Sinha and senior leader Jaswant Singh have written letters asking why there is no accountability for defeat by the BJP leadership. Why is no one taking the blame and why are leaders who were in charge of the failed campaign being given top jobs? Clearly this time, it targets Arun Jaitley.

The question that was being asked on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: War within the BJP: Is the party unable to come to terms with its defeat?

To try and answer the question on the panel of experts were: BJP National Media Convenor, Nalin Kohli; Political Scientist and author of The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Christophe Jaffrelot; Professor Political Science at Brown University, Ashutosh Varshney; and Political Editor of the Hindustan Times, Vinod Sharma.

At the beginning of the show, 82 per cent people said yes, the party was simply unable to come to terms with defeat, while 18 per cent disagreed.

PSYCHOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN?

In 2004, there was a psychological breakdown within the BJP after their poll debacle. Their Shining India campaign had been defeated. After that came the expulsion of Uma Bharati and the Jinnah controversy with L K Advani at the center of it. This time there has been another withering defeat.

Christophe Jaffrelot kickstarted the debate by saying, "A new Pandora's box is being opened here. The party has always been in a dilemma - should it stick to its identity and be the party for Hindus or should it open up and make allies in order to be in power. The party has always oscillated between these two poles. What is new is senior RSS ideologue M G Vaidya writing in the local Marathi daily Tarun Bharat that the BJP should forget about the Hindutva plank and try to become acceptable to allies again. This can be seen in two different perspectives - either the RSS is really trying to make a true move and enable the BJP to become a ruling party again or it can be also interpreted as the fact that the RSS does not want to be affected by this mess and wants to refocus on non-political issues, which is really its cup of tea."

"But the main question is," he continued, "is it possible for the BJP to sever its links with the RSS and I really doubt that that is a possibility."

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Ashutosh Varshney took up the point saying that Jaffrelot was absolutely right. "The BJP needs to ask itself whether it wants its political fortunes to improve or whether it wants its ideological rectitude to continue. The ideology which it has embraced - which comes from Nagpur and which comes forth in almost every text that we have read, says that it is an anti-Muslim, anti-Christian party and in India, these stipulations have a very ambiguous role and that is putting it mildly. If that is what the ideology of the RSS is and the BJP is embracing it, then obviously it is going to lose alliance and thus lose elections."

He said that as India's middle class becomes larger, there is also a certain kind of fatigue at this anti-Muslim, anti-Christian bashing. He said that the BJP was an extremely inward looking party.

"There are alternatives outside India, parties which have faced this problem outside India and it is very clear that the right-of-centre model is the model to go for. And there are three variants of this model in the world. Either you go the Tori way as in UK, or go the Christian democratic way as in Western Europe and Latin America or you go the Republican way as in the United States," Varshney said.

However, according to outside observers there are a number of people within the BJP who don't want it to be a right-wing party. These are the people who don't believe in right-wing economics and that is another dilemma that the party finds itself in.

GEN NEXT IN BJP

BJP's Generation Next leader Arun Jaitley is brilliant, English-speaking and suave. However, when he was in charge of the Uttar Pradesh campaign, he did not go to the state even once. One never sees him out there with the aam aadmi. Some feel that the Arun Jaitley model within the BJP stifling the growth of team spirit within the party.

Vinod Sharma however, vetoed this saying that in a political party the size of the BJP, it was never the role of the individual which counted.

"What cripples the BJP today is the lack of a de-facto leader. Vajpayee was a de-facto leader of the BJP regardless of whether he held a position or not. L K Advani too was a de-facto leader during the peak of his political career, at the time of the Ram Temple movement. Party presidents have come and gone but these people were the constants in the scheme of things of the party. Advani decided to re-invent himself with the Jinnah statement - maybe he chose the wrong statement - but he did try and he was not allowed to do so by the RSS who thought Jinnah was the worst thing to have happened to India," he stated.

He said that the problem was simply that the RSS was out of sync with the realities of India, the BJP is a jaded party given the faces that it has to demonstrate towards India. "It is not a party which has a second generation to offer to the country."

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There seems to be no leader within the party who is articulating a vision. With Vajpayee there was a vision, but at present there was none.

Nalin Kohli jumped in at this point to try and defend the party saying that the BJP was a responsible political party which had been winning elections in states for the last 25 years despite all the so-called-blunders that people spoke about.

"Every political party will evolve with time and there will be discussions within every political party to evolve. I think that is a natural process and there has been no party which has been an exception to it. How a party will evolve is how its leadership will arrive at a consensus, which is what the collective leadership of the BJP is doing. This is not something that can be done by reading a few books written by people who have never been on the ground," he retorted.

Jaffrelot chose to ignore jibes choosing instead to talk about the chief ministers of BJP-ruled states like Shivraj Chauhan, Khanduri, Raman Singh and Narendra Modi, who were the ones - he said - that the party needed to mobilise in order to gain mass support.

"The problem however is that these people are all emerging from the RSS. How can one possibly promote people like Chauhan and Modi and then think of severing links with the RSS? It is completely contradictory," he said, adding, "My interpretation of what is now happening in the BJP is that for years now they have benefited from the term 'an exceptional configuration'. Vajpayee was both an RSS man and acceptable to allies. Vajpayee retired, Advani could not play Vaypayee's role and this is one of the reasons why there is a crisis in leadership in the party. To build a new Vajpayee will be very complicated for the party and thus its dilemma of either continuing an organic relationship with the RSS or becoming a righteous party. And the BJP can never be a righteous party if a Modi takes over."

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WHAT SHOULD THE BJP DO?

Ashutosh Varshney stuck to his point saying that the BJP should adopt a right-of-centre approach. He said, "Right-of-centre parties are typically defined by three ideologies - social conservatism which is defence of family values and marriage and institution; extremely muscular defence policy - not trying diplomacy, but sending the entire army to sort out a problem with neighbours; and the third is fiscal conservatism - lower taxes and embracing a market-oriented policy."

Vinod Sharma said that the BJP has been in power for just about six years, but at no stage did the party add value to the national discourse on serious issues.

"This is a party which always relied on emotional issues. There are never serious political debates within or outside the party simply because they lack an intellectual reservoir. It doesn't have leaders with vision. It is a party to make people emotional. It has never scored more than 25 per cent vote within the country and it claims to be a Hindu party," he said.

Some analysts feel that it may be time for the BJP to self-destruct and then emerge as a new party.

Jaffrelot said that he saw two problems here. "The first problem is that this is not the initial identity of the party. The party was more a shopkeeper party than a capitalist party when the Jan Sangh was up against the Swatantra party. It was a more populist party than a lead role party and it is much more popular than elitist to begin with. The roots of the party are there. And they are much more so in the Hindu identities. If they have to become a right-of-centre party, then they have to change this initial identity completely. And the other problem is that the Congress party is already occupying that space."

At this point, Nalin Kohli - who had been sitting quiet - suddenly snapped out at the other panelists saying, "I think that is grossly unfair. You are running down the largest, most complex democracy's entire intelligence in terms of who they would like to elect when you have professors coming as saying on your panel that we should take lessons from the UK and give us definitions of right-wing politics. I think the BJP for a large extent satisfies that. Aggressive muscular policy - I think we showed that when we went ahead with the nuclear tests. We have always spoken of nationalistic interest of the country, of security. And how can you say that the party doesn't have vision? Do you mean to say that Mr Vajpayee had no vision? National highways, development was not a vision? Economic opening up was not a vision?"

"The vision now is that we are the second pole of Indian politics. We are here to stay. The way the party has been run down is ridiculous. Just let the BJP be," he concluded angrily.

FINAL SMS/WEB POLL RESULTS

War within the BJP: Is the party unable to come to terms with its defeat?

Yes: 83 per cent

No: 17 per cent