HVK Archives: What is special about the BJP?
What is special about the BJP? - Economic Times
Arindam Sen Gupta
()
5 June 1996
A letter entitled "Convoluted logic of BJP-baiters" was posted
earlier. This was in response to an article "What is special
about the BJP?"
Title : What's special about the BJP?
Author : Arindam Sen Gupta
Publication : Economic Times
Date : June 5, 1996
The day after Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee resigned as prime
minister, R K Laxman drew a cartoon on the 'historic'
event in The Times of India. Mr Vajpayee sitting
outside the PM's house, a bedding and trunk by his side,
a jhola and a flask near him, looking rather grumpy.
Although out, Mr Vajpayee is scarcely showing any sign of
moving - he has taken off his shoes, making it abundantly
clear that he is sitting in on protest. You could, if
you choose, take this as an expression of his indignation
at the denial of the 'people's mandate' by a 'motley'
group of 'power-hungry' politicians who ganged-up to oust
his government.
It's another matter that this 'mandate' which the BJP
claims to have won, and then 'illegitimately' denied, is
161 seats, plus 35 of its allies, making a total of 196
seats - a good 75 seats short of a simple majority in
Parliament. This apart, it has got 20 per cent of the
popular vote, exactly the same as it had garnered in the
last election, and with the vote of its allies this fig-
ure goes up to about 24 per cent. Either way, it is
nowhere close to a majority. You would have to stretch
the point a bit too, much than is healthy for
parliamentary mocracy to still insist that it is a
mandate. But put that aside for the moment. Coming back
to Laxman, there then is a grumpy Mr Vajpayee squatting
on the pavement outside the PM's door, and there is the
Common Man walking along the pavement wearing his
characteristic quizzical expression, and with him that
remarkably perspicacious lady from Laxman's world, the
Common Man's portly wife. And she is saying: "Remarkable
achievements! Restored Srikrishna Panel, finalised Enron,
endorsed liberalisation, became secular, rushed troops to
Assam, Kashmir polls carried out, kept quiet about
Article 370, Mandir ... all in ten days!"
The remark is obviously funny. But nothing in Laxman is
'funny,funny'; for his cartoons invariably carry a
pungent politic comment, too. The comment here is a
factual enumeration of what the BJP actually did in 10
days - how it discovered suddenly the virtues of the
Srikrishna commission probing the Bombay riots,
unceremoniously wound up by its ally, the Shiv Sena,
buried deep its swadeshi rhetoric, offered to 'freeze'
contentious issues like Article 370 and Ayodhya - all
juxtaposed in a manner to highlight the BJP's studied
effort during those 13 days to repudiate all that it has
stood for so far. But put that aside as well for the
moment.
Laxman's appraisal of Mr Vajpayee's brief tenure.- even
while discounting a cartoonist's yen to see the
absurdities in an otherwise 'normal' situation - runs
contrary to the general impression that the BJP leader
relinquished office in a blaze of glory. That while he
has now positioned himself as the future prime minister,
his party - to use the words of another satirist, Jug
Suraiya - has been "elevated to the pedestal of
patriotic martyrdom". This appraisal is largely based on
Mr Vajpayee's `sterling' performance in Parliament -
"gracious, witty, heart-warming, confidence-inspiring".
In mere 13 days, he and his government apparently' showed
that it could build a new nation.
Obviously, Laxman does not think so. His caricature does
not betray a shadow of remorse over the Vajpayee
regime's ouster, whereas the media at large - echoing
presumably the sentiments of the middle class - felt that
darkness had descended at noon. Why wasn't the BJP given
a chance to run the government for a while? It wouldn't
have been, after all, any worse than the 'rag-tag bunch
of shabby and spiteful opportunists'? In any
ease,wouldn't it have been better for these 'secularists'
to let a minority BJP government rule Delhi than a
majority one next time? Couched in these questions is an
unmistakable wish for a BJP government and
disappointment
that the rules of parliamentary democracy have undone its
sarkar.
In other words, this is one subjective view of the
formation and the fall of the BJP government. And Laxman
has another. Consider it for a moment. How glorious
really was the 13-day rule of the BJP government? What
did it really do apart from what has been enumerated by
Laxman?
First there was Mr Sikandar Bakht refusing to join the
government because he felt that he deserved a better
portfolio. For five full days he stayed away from office
and sulked, and then the BJP did what it has accused all
other parties of doing. It 'appeased' the minority leader
and gave him the external affairs ministry. And the
worthy took it, too, knowing full well that the
government would last only a week more.
Then there was Mr Ram Jethmalani who as law minister
forgot he had to be impartial, and on his second day in
office, pronounced Mr L K Advani innocent in the hawala
case even as the court was seized of the matter. He also
assumed the role of a thanedar and said he would arrest
Mr Narasimha Rao. There was Ms Sushma Swaraj, too,
who
brought in a frightening dose of social conservatism into
the. I&B ministry - she found Doordarshan lady news-
readers exposing too much body, frowned at I&B women
staff for wearing any other dress than saris, lashed out
against the corrupting influence of foreign media on
Indian viewers and Indian culture, and promised
a healthy' diet on DD.
On the economic front, it grabbed at these 13 days to
clear the Enron project, the very project it had accused
of cost-padding, and quietly allowed Enron to jack up the
project cost by Rs 1,580 crore, and take the Dabhol bill
back to the original amount. The finance minister, Mr
Jaswant Singh, got hyperactive as a caretaker minister,
and by his own admission, cleared as many as 3,000 files.
He also ordered action against Reliance and East West,
two companies for which he has never had much love.
Meanwhile, even at the height of their glory, BJP
factions were at each other's throats in Gujarat, and a
septugenerian minister was stripped in public by the
'disciplined' RSS cadres.
Is this the government and party which will build a new
India? Still, it might be argued that any growing party,
as the BJP is, would have its quota of dissenters and odd
balls. Too much should not be made of their 'excesses',
born as they are out of enthusiasm. But then why take
the moral high ground and accuse the 'motley' crowd of
misbehavior? Just because it does not have a leader like
the gracious Mr Vajpayee? Well, perhaps Mr Vajpayee and
his 'sterling' performance could also be viewed from a
different perspective.
Even before his 'historic' speech in Lok Sabha, Mr
Vaipayee's performance has been stunning. A man of 40
years experience in the hurly~burly of Indian politics
proclaimed himself a poet and decided recite poems at
every invitation. It did impart a soft touch to the man
- the sensitive leader-philosopher. Besides, he was
reasonable, too; his government would not scrap Article
370, enact a uniform civil code, or build the Ram temple
- all electoral pledges of his party and the very issues
which has made the BJP 'distinctive'.
In Parliament, Mr Vajpayee said none of the contentious
issues would be raised by his regime. Why? Because it
did not have a majority. So, without a majority he
wanted the BJP to rule as another version of the
Congress, albeit a more efficient one.
And that is precisely what appears to have appealed to
the middle class - the 'tempering influence' of Mr
Vajpayee. But look at it from a different perspective,
is not Mr Vajpayee's radical watering down of the BJP's
essential beliefs an opportunistic ploy for winning new
friends, all for the sake of power? Never mind how
opportunistic the 'secularists' are, why was the party
with alleged integrity doing the same? Does not Mr
Vajpayee's 'virtuoso performance' represent an act of
political immorality as well? The fact that he
repudiated his past and all that his party has stood for
- and will stand for in the future, now that it is
unburdened of power?
So what is special about the BJP? That is, apart from
its Muslim-baiting that goes by the name of 'rare
political plain speak'. It is special only because some
people wish it to be special. Otherwise, the 13-day won-
der wouldn't be seen as a promise of a new India.
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