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An ideological family in ferment

In the shadowy world of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party, nothing apparently can be ruled out. A favourite, deposed in full public view, can be recalled and bestowed the highest party honour. A “super hero,” feted as the definitive Hindutva warrior, can be denounced as a deviant who must be taught a lesson.

The stories of Lal Krishna Advani and Narendra Modi, one called upon to captain the BJP in the next election, and the other sought to be undermined in the middle of a crucial State election, are stories of an ideological family in deep ferment.

The patriarch knows as do the wards that the halcyon days of the joint family — where the father dictated and they obeyed — are over. Mr. Advani has stepped into Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s shoes without having to retract his appreciation of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s 1947 secular-liberal vision. Similarly, whether Mr. Modi wins or loses, he will never again be the unsung pracharak who did as ordered.

In the summer of 2005, Mr. Advani, then BJP helmsman and beloved of the RSS, crossed the line of control into Pakistan — and thus snapped the link between guru and shishya. Within two months of applauding Jinnah, Mr. Advani was stripped of his party post. In the eyes of the Sangh, and indeed the party, there could be no greater sacrilege than praise lavished on Jinnah, creator of Pakistan and destroyer of the parivar’s dream of Akhand Bharat.

Today even as Mr. Advani returns to the Sangh’s reluctant embrace, Mr. Modi, another of its protégé, has come under fire — this time for flouting its ideals of obedience, self-denial and commitment to ideology. Mr. Advani and Mr. Modi were the RSS role models. If the former felt umbilically connected to the Sangh, the latter was its ultimate, unrivalled hero. One clambered atop a rath to stoke dormant Hindu passions. That cataclysmic journey pushed his party, for years a distant also-ran, to the centre of power politics.

The second went farther than anyone thought possible. Mr. Modi took Mr. Advani’s metaphorical rath to its inevitable, logical destination — to Gujarat and to the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002. Mr. Advani laid the foundation and Mr. Modi built upon it. The conflagration brought Mr. Modi unprecedented popularity in Gujarat even as it damaged him nationally and internationally. Through all this, Mr. Advani stood by him.

Had the Advani-Modi combination continued on this destructive path, none should have been happier than the head of the family. Alas each had a mind of his own, and each was ambitious, wanting a future larger and brighter than what was allowed in the Sangh’s scheme of things.

Mr. Advani was at the peak of his career, when in 1995, he handed the party on a platter to Mr. Vajpayee. He himself stepped back for the most obvious reason. As party ideologue, he could deconstruct Hindutva and deliver it to the common people in an idiom they understood. But there still existed a gap between the core vote which he brought to the party and the seat of power which only the persuasive charm of Mr. Vajpayee could bridge — which he did by wooing those that swore never to sup with the BJP. As ally after hesitant ally smashed through the ideological barrier to join Mr. Vajpayee, his acceptability grew, and as opinion polls were to show later, he remained without a rival through the six-year rule of the National Democratic Alliance. Mr. Advani trailed in the popularity stakes, polling in the region of three to five per cent to Mr. Vajpayee’s consistently scored 70 per cent.

There was a lesson in this for the hardliners. There was only so far an ideologue could travel in India. Mr. Vajpayee was as much a swayamsevak as Mr. Advani. He was as apt to take a sectarian line as anyone else in his party. Yet there was about him an aloofness, a certain laidback charm, not to mention a haziness over where he stood on any issue. He read indifferent poetry, changed, edited and overturned his statements, emerging the better for it. Indeed, the wishy-washy liberalism — cultivated, his critics fumed — added to his appeal. The leader of the BJP-led NDA folded Nawaz Sharif to his chest, and made bold to visit Minar-e-Pakistan, the first Indian leader to do so. The Sangh seethed at this daring but could do nothing to the teflon Prime Minister.

Mr. Advani was stuck with the opposite image, and he despaired of it. As early as 1980, he spoke of the limitations of ideology and the inverse relationship between ideology and electoral appeal. Years later, he would reiterate this in interviews given as Deputy Prime Minister. Finally the image shattered and how. Hindutva’s most faithful adherent praised Jinnah on Pakistani soil and paid for it with humiliation and opprobrium. The Sangh extracted his resignation from party presidency, though it grudgingly allowed him to continue as parliamentary party leader. Through this time, an amazing thing happened. Just as Mr. Vajpayee was ever the liberal, Mr. Advani was ever the Jinnah man — no matter how much he harked back to Hindutva and how much he defended Mr. Modi, that hate ideology’s most recognised face.

In 2005, the Jinnah adventure looked like a gamble horribly gone wrong. Yet today, Mr. Advani must feel vindicated. He has been invited to lead the party by the same RSS that banished him from its hallowed quarters. Before 2005, there was a huge question mark over whether the BJP’s allies would accept the transition from Mr. Vajpayee to Mr. Advani. That doubt has been cleared with the NDA constituents giving him the go-ahead.

One question remains, though. The BJP has always flaunted its second generation. Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Venkaiah Naidu were all Prime Minister material, the party said, contrasting this large pool of talent with the stifling presence of the dynasty in the Congress. But when the time came, the Sangh picked the 80-year-old Mr. Advani over the younger stars. At the time of the next general election in 2009, he will be almost 82. Admittedly, Mr. Vajpayee is a hard act to follow. Yet the years have not robbed Mr. Advani of his intellect. He was and remains the BJP’s only ideologue.

But there was another reason why the Sangh hastened with the promotion of Mr. Advani. None in the BJP’s second generation commanded a popular base. Far from it, they were all in comprehensive danger of being beaten in this department by the phenomenon called Narendra Modi.

An iconic figure in his home State, the Gujarat Chief Minister towered over his peer group, and indeed, on the campaign trail showed how easily he could overshadow them. Thin attendance greeted anyone who went to Gujarat to campaign for Mr. Modi. BJP chief Rajnath Singh of course drew little response. But the smallest of crowds awaited even Mr. Advani — and in his own constituency of Gandhinagar. The audience chanted Narendrabhai, Narendrabhai to the former Deputy Prime Minister’s embarrassment.

Whether Mr. Modi designed for this to happen would never be known. What matters is that the RSS thinks so. The Sangh abhors the personality cult, believing the individual to be always beneath the organisation. The saffron outfit’s official stand — decided in 2005 by a resolution — is that it would stay neutral in elections. Yet in Gujarat, it has looked the other way as pracharaks campaigned against Mr. Modi. The unofficial message is that the Gujarat Chief Minister needs to be brought down a notch.

Mr. Modi was made into a cult by the RSS. Up until 2001 he was just a backroom operator providing the logistics for the BJP’s unending campaigns and yatra. The Sangh parachuted him into Ahmedabad knowing his taste for communal politics. Today, he has grown into a Frankenstein’s Monster that it cannot control.

The Gujarat Chief Minister has his own agenda — be it marketing himself as the development man to win national and international approval or reverting to virulent Hindutva for the purpose of winning this election. He has tasted power and adulation and he will not do as told. Ditto for Mr. Advani, who has wrested a near impossible victory from the Sangh. Of course, he would compromise with Hindutva and such to buy peace. But having personally experienced the limitations of Hindutva, he would also keep in mind the larger picture.

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