HVK Archives: Why the BJP has not become the national alternative
Why the BJP has not become the national alternative - Economic Times
Antony Thomas
()
May 30th 1996
Title : Why the BJP has not become the national alternative
Author : Antony Thomas
Publication : Economic Times
Date : 30th May, 1996
The failure of the BJP government to secure the confidence of the
House and its resignation from office has highlighted as never
before the the difficulties facing the party in its efforts to
become the national alternative to the Congress, something the
party has been trying to become for quite some time.
The BJP had quite correctly recognised the need to be perceived
and accepted as the nationalist party if It were to form the
government at the Centre. Interestingly, this was something
that the Congress too realised early on. In fact Jawaharlal
Nehru always opposed the Jana Sangh, the previous avatar of the
BJP, as an anti-national and undemocratic party. The
association of Mahatma Gandhi's assassin with the Sangh parivar
made the task of the Congress easy to paint the Jana Saugh as an
anti-national party. Mrs Gandhi too followed a similar policy
vis-a-vis the Jana Sangh and managed to retain the nationalist
ground.
The Jana Sangh got its first chance to get certain amount of
political acceptability in 1975 when Indira Gandhi clamped down
internal emergency on the nation, Its fight against the Emergency
in association with leaders such As Jayaprakash Narayan, Moraji
Desai gave the Jana Sangh/RSS the halo of being defenders of
democracy. By merging into the Janata Party the Jana Sangh
leadership gained certain amount of national acceptance. But they
were not going to lose their individual identity and so they
took the first opportunity to break away from the Janata Party
and form the Bbaratiya Janata Party. However, the party tried to
get broad acceptability by declaring its policy to be that of
Gandhian Socialism. Of course the supreme irony of it all was
nor missed by the electorate and in 1984 BJP got the drubbing of
its life when it won just two seats in Parliament.
So it was not enough to be seen as anti-emergency heroes. The
party still failed to occupy the nationalist ground. This is
something that Mr Lal Krishna Advani set about achieving when he
started airing the BJP's nationalist ideology which was nothing
but a nuanced version of the old RSS doctrine of Hindurashtra -
that every Indian is but a Hindu. Muslims are Muhammadiya
Hindus, Christians Isayi Hindus. There is only one nation and
one culture.
He set about building up a cadre based mass organisation with
'Nationalism' as its ideology. Therein lie the contradictions
inherent to his strategy. The cadre mobilisation was through the
time tested RSS strategy of anti-Muslim sentiments. Religion,
in the form of the Ayodhya agitation for building a temple at the
birth place of Sri Ram, the Maryada Purushottom, was used to get
a wider following. While arousing the religious sentiments of
the Hindus paid the BJP handsome dividends electorally its
definition of nationalism found many takers especially among the
influential middle class. Particularly since the Congress had all
but lost its ideological sheen.
However, shortly after the 1991 elections Mr Advani seemed to
have realised that any aggressive championing of the Hindu
rashtra concept would jeopardise its image of being a
"responsible" party and toned down the rhetoric. Instead he set
about widening the party's mass appeal: he shifted gears of his
rath and focussed on mobilising the Hindu society on the Ayodhya
issue with the disastrous consequences that is history. Far from
being accepted as the nationalist party, the BJP once again
became political pariah thanks to the destruction of the Babri
Masjid.
During the recently concluded elections the BJP once again tried
to occupy the nationalist ground - as also grab the stability
plank of the Congress - by advocating a uniform civil code, a
uniform culture, a strong and united Centre. All these have
resulted in just about one-third of the Lok Sabha seats for the
BJP and its allies, Though the number of MPs has increased
phenominally, the fact that the party received just about 20 per
cent of the total votes polled indicate that there are few takers
for the BJP version of nationalism even among the vast majority
of Hindus in this country.
The fact of the matter is that the BJP has failed to grasp the
changing reality that is India, Nationalism, national unity and
integrity were of serious concern during the early years of
Independence. But by mid seventies particularly after the victory
in the Bangladesh war and the bifurcation of Pakistan the people
of this country has felt much wore confident and so nationalism
as an ideology is not as moving a force as it used to be. Now,
after fifty years of independence with democracy having
percolated to wider and lower strata of society, people are more
concerned with regional development and value for money.
Regional groups are not willing to subsume their interests to
that of an overarching party or ideology. As democracy takes
deeper root in this country and wider sections are influenced by
it they will assert their right to their cultural individuality
and autonomy - but within the overall frame work of the
Constitution. It is this reality that the BJP has failed to
grasp and hence their isolation in Parliament. But then it is
not surprising that a party whose ideology is a perception of a
glorious past fails to grasp the rapidly changing realities of
the present.
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