The Hindu : National : BJP rejects proposal to drop Hindutva agenda

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Wednesday, Jun 22, 2005

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National

BJP rejects proposal to drop Hindutva agenda

Neena Vyas

Party leader may lose his job for airing anti-RSS remarks

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday rejected with emphasis the policy "line" suggested by party national secretary Sudheendra Kulkarni that the party should secularise itself, give up the Hindu political agenda, adopt an inclusive approach to Muslims and, more importantly, by implication, distance itself from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

This new debate in the party has started even as the RSS is preparing for its four-day meeting of "prant pracharks" in Surat from July 1. Senior party leaders have hinted that they expect the RSS to take up the issue that has been plaguing the BJP ever since party president L.K. Advani made the "Jinnah is secular" remark during his Pakistan visit.

Thorough debate likely

"The issue is expected to be debated thoroughly... the RSS leaders are not at all happy that Mr. Advani has once again chosen to cast himself in the role of Arjun and seems to be determined not to retract his Jinnah statement although he was a party to the BJP statement of June 10 saying that Jinnah was responsible for the two-nation theory, the Partition of India and the resulting riots and killings," one senior leader said.

The RSS meeting is to be followed by a meeting of the BJP national executive committee in Chennai before the start of the monsoon session of Parliament. There are some in the party who believe that Mr. Advani may have to give up at least one of the two positions he is holding — party chief and Leader of Opposition — before the Parliament session.

Some senior party leaders have warned that a sacrosanct and important issue such as the BJP's relationship with the RSS "cannot be discussed and decided by one or two or a few individuals in the party... it would have to be discussed openly at some party forum ... and as of today there was no chance whatsoever of the party disassociating itself from the RSS."

Several party leaders — Jaswant Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi, Arun Jaitley, Prakash Javadekar — said Mr. Kulkarni's paper submitted at a thinkers' forum in Bhopal in March this year [the paper has now been reported in a section of the press in some detail] expressed "his own personal views" and nowhere at any party forum had the subject been discussed. In fact, it was pointed out that in April when the BJP began celebrating its silver jubilee year, Mr. Advani had talked about not losing sight of the party's "ideological parivar" and its "core [Hindutva] constituency."

"Not the party's views"

Dr. Joshi's view was that the BJP had not adopted a "Hindu only" policy and that it considered Muslims and other religious minorities to be as Indian as Hindu Indians. When asked by reporters to comment on this, Mr. Jaswant Singh said there was no need to respond to everything. "Mr. Kulkarni's views were not the party's views." On the question of the possibility of the BJP snapping its ties with the RSS, Mr. Singh said, "that is not the subject of this press conference." He was at the time talking about the Prime Minister's response to the former Prime Minister, Vajpayee's letter to him on the India-Pakistan peace dialogue.

However, there are some leaders in the party who are privately indicating that after this "paper" Mr. Kulkarni may lose his job in the party as Mr. Advani may drop him "to appease the RSS leaders" in an attempt to save his job as party chief. After all, there is no sign as yet that anyone in the party is willing to cross swords with the RSS on "fundamental ideological issues," according to one senior leader.

Party sources indicated that when Mr. Advani withdrew his resignation on June 10 and became a party to the "Jinnah was not secular" line of the BJP, he had only bought himself a temporary reprieve for an "honourable exit" later.

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