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In a country where individual worth is often measured against the proximity to power, it is difficult for Opposition stalwarts to grab headlines.
For the past year, individuals in the BJP have adopted innovative methods to keep themselves in the news. Unsigned letters, angry walkouts and cryptic one-liners are the tried and tested methods. | Also read: A year of dilemma, differences in BJP |
But if there is one thing guaranteed to make editors salivate, it is the sheer delight of finding yet another BJP functionary getting stomach cramps over Narendra Modi.
It is fashionable to hate the Chief Minister of Gujarat. For secularists, Modi-hate is a badge of conviction. For American diplomats, kicking Modi is an expedient diversion from the outrageous desecration of the Koran by American military personnel. For sundry bureaucrats and disgruntled policemen, attacking Modi is the recipe for winning awards rather than facing disciplinary action.
What about the BJP? Here is a man who is the party's Chief Minister of an important State, elected with a resoundingly popular mandate in 2002. Here is a man who has presided over the most dynamic State Governments in the country and whose skills in governance are exemplary.
Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that had it not been for his image problem, arising from the post-Godhra riots of 2002, Modi would have been the natural choice to lead the BJP after Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani.
Yet, Modi is being repeatedly tormented from within. A confused leadership has tied itself in knots by neither accepting him nor disowning him. If it is the considered view of the party that Modi is a political liability, he should be asked to go.
Alternatively, the party must take a dim view of attempts to undermine him from within.
It is not that the Modi issue hasn't been debated threadbare within the party. Vajpayee made two attempts to remove him - first, during the national executive session in Goa in 2002 and, subsequently, with his Manali statement after the Lok Sabha defeat in 2004. On both occasions, the party chose Modi over petulance.
Despite this, the issue has been needlessly kept alive. From starlet Smriti Irani threatening an indefinite fast, allegedly at the behest of a senior leader, to critical articles in the party's official organ and an unprovoked outburst by veteran Sundar Singh Bhandari, the anti-Modi pot has been allowed to keep boiling. No wonder frustrated ministerial aspirants in Gujarat feel encouraged to unfurl the banner of revolt every now and then. Abusing Modi, it is felt, transcends discipline.
It all boils down to the squeamishness over the 2002 riots. While the party is entirely right in regretting the wave of butchery that followed the pre-meditated killing of Hindu activists in Godhra, it should have been categorical about the fact that the question of political culpability was definitively resolved in the Gujarat Assembly election of 2002.
This may be unpalatable to the tribe of ambulance chasers who make a living by fuelling minority insecurities but it also happens to be the reality. The legitimacy of Modi was settled by the only way possible in a democracy -through a popular verdict.
This is not to suggest that the Gujarat riots did not play a role in shaping the verdict of the 2004 General Election. They did but not the least because the BJP failed to draw a firm line between civil unrest and political culpability. In any case, that is now history. What happened in Gujarat three years ago was born of exceptional circumstances that, hopefully, won't recur.
Playing the Godhra card now follows a law of diminishing returns, as Lalu Yadav discovered to his cost in Bihar. The BJP need not fear its future revival unless, of course, it wilfully resurrects the issue through the churlishness of its own people.
Modi needs an image makeover which
casts him as a 21st century reformer and not a medieval bigot. Ironically,
it is spoilers in the BJP that are trying their utmost to see the transformation
doesn't happen.
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