The Hindu : "Vajpayee versus ?"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 14, 2004

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"Vajpayee versus ?"

POLITICAL CONVENTIONS ARE designed primarily to generate excitement and optimism about the party, its leadership and, in an election year, its electoral prospects. The Bharatiya Janata Party's two-day National Executive meeting in Hyderabad more than achieved those purposes. The conclave fired a potent opening fusillade in a psychological offensive against the principal political rival, the Congress. If the most tangible outcome of the exercise was the announcement by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that a new government would be in place in New Delhi by April, the central propaganda theme was the irresistibility of the Vajpayee Force, an interesting departure from the party's cultivated disdain for the personality cult. The refrain was that under Mr. Vajpayee India has come close to achieving its national dreams of glory and prosperity and that voters would be doing themselves a favour by seeing the party back to power so that Mr. Vajpayee could continue the good work. In other words, the BJP will market itself as Mr. Vajpayee's political instrument rather than the other way round. This is certainly a turnaround in the affairs of a party that only two years ago was caught in an internal leadership struggle.

At Hyderabad, the BJP did its best to reconcile Mr. Vajpayee's widely perceived preference for `development' with the party's traditional commitment to Hindutva-centric issues. The party spokesmen were being disingenuous in suggesting that Hindutva was nothing but a programme and pledge of `good governance'. India's voters have, in successive general elections, refused to give the BJP a clear mandate. This has forced the party to look for a hodgepodge of allies who are less than comfortable with its core agenda of Hindutva. Political pragmatism has obliged the BJP to push highly divisive issues such as Ayodhya, the abrogation of Article 370, and the demand for a uniform civil code to the backburner. The party's strategists are proceeding on the assumption that the national electorate will buy its latest `development' sales pitch — just as the voters of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh did recently. The speeches heard at Hyderabad suggest that the party has even internalised its own media hype about `India shining' — what its political resolution calls "an unprecedented peacetime resurgence in national pride." The additional hope is that the Vajpayee Government's peace making with Pakistan, creditable in itself, will win some electoral dividends. Not surprisingly, the party chose to ignore a major political development — the defection from the National Democratic Alliance of all its Tamil Nadu allies.

An elephant, so the proverb goes, has one set of teeth for showing off and another for chewing. The BJP may dream of winning one day a majority on its own, yet knows that there is no question of any party emerging with a majority in the coming general election. Politically speaking, the BJP's singular achievement over the past five years has been to convince a majority of its allies that the NDA agenda is indeed the preferred agenda of the largest party in the coalition. At the same time, the party has had a difficult time keeping the Sangh Parivar in good humour; after all, its ideological kin like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad are equal and much-valued partners in providing organisational energy and foot-soldiers. No wonder then that Hyderabad turned out to be another exercise in being different things to different constituencies. In its quest for power, the BJP's greatest asset — Vajpayee aside — is a confused and somewhat disoriented Congress Party under Sonia Gandhi's helmswomanship. The Opposition camp has a major problem on its hands: it has, as yet, no prime ministerial face to offer for a campaign that the BJP will do its best to convert into a presidential style contest.

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