The Lotus Eaters/CS/India Today, June 29, 2009

The lotus eaters

A tired and discredited leadership short on ideas and a demoralised cadre tak the BJP to a new low. A major overhaul is due if the party is to bounce back.

Cricket is a gentleman’s game where fielders are known to applaud an opposing batsman’s century or an exquisite shot. But last week, when BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley, ensconced on the balcony at Lord’s, was seen on TV applauding a boundary by Kevin Pietersen in the India-England T20 match, his detractors back home were busy circulating text messages.

One read: “He led his party to a debacle, and now he is a witness to the defeat of India”. Jaitley, a hardcore cricket buff, was in London with his family on holiday while his party back home was imploding, just like the Indian team. At the same time, his colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad was in New York while another spokesman, Prakash Javadekar, was holidaying in Europe.

It was clearly a good time to escape from the heat of Delhi and, possibly, the heat being generated by the internal wars that have reduced the BJP to a caricature of its disciplined “party with a difference” image and raised embarrassing questions about its future.

Just as success has many fathers and failure none, the BJP was left scrambling for scapegoats to blame for the party’s most debilitating performance since its phenomenal rise began exactly over two decades ago. Suddenly letter writing became a primary talent of party leaders and the purple prose came with a premium.

Individuals who formed the Losers Team started blaming ideology, or lack of it, for the loss. And those who had won decisively discovered new infirmities in the leadership.

Can't afford to miss

• Instead of rewarding the winners and others who worked hard for victory, Advani chose to reward those whom the party cadres sawas the architects of doom.


• The BJP’s mistake was in choosing to fight the 2009 elections around Advani’s personality and not its ideology.


• The party faithful could relate with senior leaders who sought an internal debate on the reasons behind the defeat.


• After back to back defeats, the party leadership which is a creation of the RSS is blaming the organisation for all its ills.


• For the first time, the BJP dispensed with the old RSSstyle campaign. Even key issues like Mandir and Article 370 were relegated to the background.
  The BJP is still blessed with an array of leaders who, given a meaningful role, can turn the party’s fortunes around.


• RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has so far chosen to be non-interventionist but is expected to play a more proactive role.

Appropriately enough, the first shot was fired by ex-soldier and veteran Jaswant Singh, considered to be one of the most disciplined leaders of the party. His furious fusillade in the form of a letter he circulated at a party meeting questioned the discriminatory punish-and-reward system in the party. Singh demanded some serious soul-searching in the party over the electoral defeat. He was quickly joined by many others, including former finance minister and senior leader Yashwant Sinha. It was clear that a fight was brewing between what is called the Byte Generation and the Substantive Generation, the Old Guard versus the New Pretenders.

Meanwhile, cadres watched helplessly from the sidelines as television studios and newspaper columns became convenient platforms for party leaders and functionaries to defend failure.
The leadership finally decided to fight back—clumsily as it turned out—by issuing a gag order on party leaders, exposing the communication gap and mistrust in its own ranks.

It is a pivotal moment in the 28-year-old history of the party. When the BJP lost the general elections in 2004, no one in the party held Atal Behari Vajpayee responsible for it. The election was fought in his name but the slogans, strategy and timing were decided by his anointed successor, L.K. Advani.
But there is one crucial difference between 2004 and 2009. Five years back, no one held the party’s ideology responsible for the defeat. Back then, there were also leaders who accepted responsibility for the defeat and offered to reign, like Pramod Mahajan. Turn the page to 2009. The party bagged just 116 seats. However, this time none of the top leaders accepted moral responsibility and offered to resign.

The absence of a leader like Vajpayee has eroded the BJP’s base and affected its fortunesAdvani made a token offer to resign but withdrew within 24 hours under pressure from those who took the party to disaster and were on the verge of losing their perks and posts. Instead of rewarding the winners and those who steered the party to victory in some states, Advani chose to reward the architects of the defeat.

Despite stiff opposition, Advani appointed Jaitley as Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha which carries the rank of a cabinet minister along with all accompanying perks. Jaitley is one of the best parliamentarians but his colleagues consider the legal eagle to be a part-time politician. His elevation was seen by many as Advani’s effort to consolidate his control over the party and deny any substantial role to other senior leaders.

For the first time, the party had no management role in the election, which was handed to a bunch of favourites in the party and outside. Eventually, the election was fought around Advani’s personality and not the party’s ideology.

The problem was compounded by Advani himself by not being clear about the line to follow—Hindutva or an extension of Brand Vajpayee. The ideological mismatch did not fool voters, not the least its middle class base. Little wonder then that the letter writers are insisting that the BJP should now be led by those who have an ideological stake in it.

THE CHALLENGE FROM WITHIN

The crisis in the BJP would perhaps have not assumed such proportions if the party had not been allowed to be hijacked by a handful of leaders, who have over the last decade or so got a stranglehold on it.

Jaswant Singh

In the process, many others, genuine winners who carry more conviction with the cadres, were sidelined. And it is they who are now challenging the establishment and the “Cosmetic Generation”. When former ministers Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie chose to break their silence and demanded inner party debate on the reasons for the unprecedented defeat, the party’s core constituents connected with them.

Their credentials were impeccable: all of them were top performers in the Vajpayee government, were torch bearers of reforms and represented the party’s modern face.

Yashwant Singh

And unlike those who held the party in a vice-like grip without ever having won a popular election, two of the three leaders had successfully fought Lok Sabha elections. Their query, which so far has elicited no response, is simple: when it is time to take stock and introspect, why is the leadership running away?

Shourie and Jaswant particularly had reasons to be livid since both were staunch supporters of Advani, yet were kept out of the party’s election machinery. It is this attitude of those who led the party to its worst humiliation that the three senior leaders are determined to fight. Jaswant was blunt in his twopage letter to Rajnath in Sanskritised Hindi.

Koshiyari

“Our party resembles a football ground where no rules apply and anyone can kick anyone else without any fear of punishment,” he averred. Sinha went a step further and in a five-page letter to the 11 members of the core group sought a debate on the issues, policies, and faces that were projected during the election and which boomeranged.

He sought the resignation of all the office-bearers of the party for the electoral debacle, but when no one was ready to oblige, he offered his own as vice-president, which Rajnath promptly accepted.

Murli Manohar Joshi

They found support from ex-party chief M.M. Joshi and former Uttarakhand chief minister B.S. Koshiyari. Now, as the leadership gets ready to hold its first post-election meeting of the 130-member national executive, the challengers are set to force a wider debate on the debacle.

Arun Shourie
The volcano, as Sushma termed it, is waiting to erupt. But the tired and the discredited will most likely outlive the volcanic eruption and continue to demoralise.

IN POWER NOT IN CONTROL

By the end of the year, Rajnath’s tenure as the BJP president will come to an end and it is unlikely that he will get another term. As he leaves office, the man who has had the second longest tenure as the BJP chief—next only to Advani—will be remembered more for the decisions he didn’t take than those that he did.

Rajnath will be remembered not for what he did but for what he didn’tWhen the RSS anointed him as the party chief in 2005 after Advani was forced to step down following the Jinnah fiasco, Rajnath was expected to transform a demoralised party into a winning unit.

A former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, state BJP chief and an ex-Union agriculture minister, the Thakur had everything going for him. Ultimately nothing went right for him in four years, rendering him the weakest party chief ever. People like Ananth Kumar, Arun Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu never considered him as “their” chief; he is the president who is in power but never quite in control.

Last week, confronted with the most delicate task of his tenure, he was found wanting. When senior leaders demanded that the party introspect over the reasons for the defeat, he issued a gag order to silence the dissenters. Marxists would have loved to adopt him, except that it was seen as an attempt to keep Advani and his supporters on his side so his tenure would get extended.

Since then he has been at best a captive president. He was the chairman of the central election committee, but only nominally since the campaign was managed from elsewhere. When Jaitley, secretary of the all-powerful parliamentary board, boycotted election committee meetings in protest against the appointment of Sudhanshu Mittal as an election-in-charge, Rajnath was simply cowed down. His only success has been to keep a powerful section of the RSS happy by obliging them with small favours. For these reasons the buck should stop at his desk.

RETURN TO THE RSS ROOTS

Raman Singh

It seems cruel irony that the dashed hopes of a leader who wanted to become the prime minister of India have led to a confrontation with an organisation that created him and made him what he is today.

Advani himself has not spoken against the RSS, but his aides, both known and anonymous, hold the RSS and all that it represents responsible for the humiliating electoral defeat.

Yeddyurappa

Some Advani acolytes even proposed that the BJP abandon its Hindutva image and tell the RSS to stop interfering in the BJP’s affairs. The key question then is: can the BJP survive without the RSS? For over 57 years of its existence, the BJP (earlier the Jan Sangh) derived its moral authority, discipline and ideology from the RSS which was its lifeline, guide and philosopher.

Chouhan

It also provided the BJP an army of foot soldiers to achieve its dream of a Hindu Rashtra. But after two successive defeats, the same leadership is holding the RSS responsible for the current mess. With over 55 million active members spread across the country, the RSS has provided the BJP with an ideological framework and a dedicated workforce to fight and win elections. In the past, the RSS deputed full-time Pracharaks to mobilise workers and manage polling booths. As one senior RSS leader put it: “The BJP without the RSS is like an engine without fuel.”

Election 2009 changed it all. The high powered e-campaign launched to propagate the Advani-For-Prime Minister message meant that the old style RSS campaign was conspicuous by its absence.

Parrikar

Even the BJP’s election manifesto relegated all volatile issues like the Ram Mandir, Article 370 and the Uniform Civil Code to a few paragraphs on the booklet’s last page. For the first time since 1952, the top leadership of the RSS was not even consulted on formulating strategy or in the selection of the candidates.

A far cry from the ’80s and ’90s when leaders like Nanaji Deshmukh, Sunder Singh Bhandari, Kushabhau Thakre, J.P. Mathur, all ideologically committed and with a high moral quotient, were deputed to manage the party’s political thrust as well as keep a check on the individual aspirations of BJP leaders.

Dhumal

The decline of RSS influence in BJP affairs began with the NDA assuming power which also coincided with changes at the top in the RSS which saw those junior to Advani and Vajpayee at the helm in the parent organisation. Vajpayee’s liberal policies infuriated the RSS leadership which, however, could do nothing. When the NDA government sought to amend the Indian Patent Act in line with the international environment, the RSS bluntly told him that 60 of its MPs would oppose the Act.
But when Vajpayee dared them to bring his government down by advancing the passage of the Bill, the RSS backed off. Yet, all through the Vajpayee regime and later, the RSS had periodically tried to reassert its authority. It forced Advani to quit after his infamous Jinnah remarks and when he tried to make Venkaiah Naidu his successor, the RSS stalled it and got Rajnath in to carry the RSS ideology forward with the help of GenNext leaders. The move backfired since the second rung leaders never accepted Rajnath’s authority.

The gap between Advani and the RSS has only widened since and matters have reached a stage where the RSS is expected to review its relationship with the BJP at its pratinidhi sabha in July. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, a non-interventionist so far, is likely to play a more proactive role. That leaves the RSS with two options: it can either wash its hands off the BJP or fully take over the party. A senior RSS leader said they would be very keen to restore to the BJP its original tag of “the party with a difference”. How successful their mission is will be reflected in the choice of the BJP’s next president. One thing though is certain: the BJP doesn’t have much time to save itself from oblivion.

BUT THERE IS STILL HOPE

Notwithstanding the current crisis of identity and leadership, there is hope for the party. It still has solid votebanks in most of the states and also boasts of powerful state leaders who can steer the party to victory in the next general elections. Those who are blaming the ideological confusion at the top for the electoral losses forget that the same party has trounced the Congress in Bihar, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Jharkhand which accounted for over half of the 116 seats the party won.

Gopi Nath Munde

These states have leaders who are committed to Hindutva and development. Even Madhya Pradesh was able to retain a majority of the seats because of Shivraj Singh Chouhan—a young chief minister with an RSS background. Former and current chief ministers along with deputy chief ministers like Raman Singh, Narendra Modi, Prem Kumar Dhumal, B.S. Yeddyurappa, Manohar Parrikar and Gopinath Munde are capable of turning around the fortunes of the party if they are given a meaningful role in party affairs and are not ordered around by those who can’t win their own elections.

The combined credibility and influence of these comparatively young, successful chief ministers can be a formidable threat to the Congress which has none to match them. Since the future of the RSS depends on the new allies it can gather in the future, only a credible leader can carry conviction. The party under Advani could get an ally in the south and lose one in Orissa because lightweight emissaries with no political experience were chosen as interlocutors instead of former chief ministers. In the south, the party couldn’t retain a single seat in the three states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and it has failed to grow in Uttar Pradesh which once sent 59 BJP members to the Lok Sabha.

Narendra Modi

There are also those in the party who feel that Varun Gandhi can revive the party in Uttar Pradesh as its traditional voters feel that the BJP let them down on the Hindutva plank. Varun won his own seat with one of the highest margins in Uttar Pradesh, more than the victory margin of the party’s prime ministerial candidate. Those who are rooting for the silent majority feel that the days of the personality cult are over. With both Advani and Vajpayee about to retire from active politics, the BJP has to establish a collective leadership to steer the party in the future.

And in the new dispensation, the Byte and Cosmetic Generation will have to pave the way for those who are performers and can carry the masses and not just the classes. The message from verdict 2009 is quite clear.The voters want a party with a genuine difference and not differences based on personal animosities. They want a leader with an ideology and not a leader with mere aspirations. The decline of the BJP is also a cause for concern. In the absence of a cohesive opposition, the country may face an autocratic ruling party, blinded by arrogance and lack of political restraints.

The BJP flirted with the idea of individual superiority over ideology under Vajpayee and won the mandate. But the same voters rejected Advani who had no definable ideology. Now, the party has to find itself a face which looks more like Bharat and less like India. To achieve that, it has to first replace the drawing room strategists who walk the ramp of political fashion shows with those who can survive in the heat and dust of the India the party forgot.

—with Bhavna Vij-Aurora