Opinion - Op-Ed   

The lost generation of the BJP

— FILE PHOTO: N. SRIDHARAN

JASWANT SINGH: Objecting to inam for those who did not bring in the desired parinam.

For nearly six decades — from the early-1950s when the Jan Sangh was born through 1980 when it was re-born as the Bharatiya Janata Party up to the present — the party leadership has remained firmly in the hands of two gentlemen, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. This was irrespective of who might have been the party president at any given time.

Now that Mr. Vajpayee is no longer active because of ill-health and Mr. Advani is 80-plus and well past his prime, he is certainly to be counted out as a prime ministerial candidate for Lok Sabha election 2014. For two or three decades, the party failed to put a younger leadership in place. That is now the source of great anxiety and also the cause of a lot of heartburn. Those in their sixties and seventies are now doomed to become the “lost generation” like Hemingway’s characters in The Sun Also Rises. For them the sun is about to set, and they are fighting to take their place under it.

The struggle for leadership has just begun. It is expected to become intense ahead of impending changes that will include Mr. L.K. Advani giving up his position as Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha by year-end to make way for a younger leader. The change will almost certainly bypass those currently in their sixties and seventies.

It is this fact perhaps that led veteran party man Jaswant Singh to make common cause with colleagues Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha to attack the BJP general secretary and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley at the core committee meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday. Mr. Singh questioned the party’s wisdom in giving inam (reward) — in the form of the position of Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha — to Mr. Jaitley who was virtually in charge of the party’s failed election strategy. The BJP’s electoral harvest in 2009 was the lowest it has been since 1989.

Behind the counter-offensive lurks the fear that ‘youngsters’ in their fifties — the list includes Rajnath Singh, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar, and Venkaiah Naidu — will seize the reins of leadership, leaving the “lost generation” out in the cold. This seems to have brought together Jaswant Singh (71), Yashwant Sinha (72), and Arun Shourie (67).

Unless they stand, fight, and be counted now, they would meet the fate of Hemingway’s characters. This feeling may have triggered Mr. Jaswant Singh’s verbal attack on Mr. Jaitley at the party’s core committee meeting here on Wednesday. Time was of the essence; a few months later it would be too late. A party president with a fresh tenure of three years and a new Leader of Opposition are expected to be in place by the end of December.

The BJP is already conscious of the youth factor and the changing demographic profile of the Indian electorate. Five years from now, when the next Lok Sabha contest is expected to take place, the battle for the top slot will not be between an 80+ Mr. Advani and a 75+ Manmohan Singh. It is no secret that the new face of the Congress would be a 40+ Rahul Gandhi because by then Dr. Singh would be 80+.

The party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh seem to have made up their mind to promote the leadership of those in their fifties. That perhaps explains why Mr. Jaswant Singh, who circulated an “open letter” to all members of the party’s core committee on Wednesday objecting to inam being handed out to those who did not bring in the desired parinam (results), later told a television news channel that Mr. Advani should continue as the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. He would be saved the embarrassment of seeing a much younger leader take over as Leader of Opposition.

Mr. Jaswant Singh possibly hopes that Mr. Advani still has the clout with the RSS to prevent the perceived threat of leaders like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, and Arun Jaitley elbowing him out of the race for the top honour: projection as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in 2014. Apparently, he was supported by Mr. Sinha and Mr. Shourie in this venture. It was Mr. Shourie who cast the first stone at the parliamentary party meeting the previous day when he objected to “insiders” like Mr. Jaitley and Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni, political aide to Mr. Advani, analysing the reasons for the electoral defeat of the BJP through articles in the print media instead of the party offering a structured and formal analysis.

Former general secretary Pramod Mahajan foresaw all this a year or two before he was murdered (in 2006): “I have become a grandfather. I would have retired as a school teacher if I had not joined politics. Our turn [to be leader] will not come because the two top leaders — Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani — are still there. We are too young to be considered but they assumed leadership when they were in their thirties.”

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