HVK Archives: Vajpayee's assignment - BJP's token liberal
Vajpayee's assignment - BJP's token liberal - Indian Express
By Amulya Ganguli
()
26 June 1996
Title : Vajpayee's assignment
BJP's token liberal
Author : By Amulya Ganguli
Publication : Indian Express
Date : June 26, 1996
REALISING that the "right man in the wrong party" epithet
was beginning to reflect poorly on the BJP, its prime
ministerial candidate has now chosen a new description,
presenting himself as the fruit of a tree and saying that
if the fruit is good, the tree also has to be good. =
In the process of this transformation into being the
"right man in the right party", Atal Behari Vajpayee may
be gradually eroding the difference which seemed to
exist, at least in the public mind, between him and the
organisation he represents. If this continues, he may not
remain the moderate which he appears to be at the moment.
Such a change, however, is perhaps unavoidable for,
although Vajpayee was projected to highlight BJP's
moderate image, the party's as well as the sanghparivar's
close identification with him will increasingly compel
him to articulate views which cannot but undermine his
liberal visage.
It has to be remembered that this is the first time that
Vajpayee has taken charge of the BJP since it left the
anti-Congress alliance in 1990 and struck out on its own
with its hard line Ayodhya policy. Vajpayee was the
discredited man then, having led the party into a blind
alley with his "Gandhian socialism". L. K. Advani was
the man of the moment.
In his second run as the BJP's foremost leader, Vajpayee
has been entrusted with the task of making the party more
widely acceptable. To all appearances, he has taken up
his new assignment with gusto. Perhaps the earlier
failure still rankles and he wants to re-establish
himself as the leading man in the organisation, as he was
for a long time till Advani overtook him with his
Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra. Perhaps he genuinely wants
to mould the BJP in his own image and is not merely
carrying out an order from the Nagpur bosses for
tactical reasons, to be rescinded once the job of
deceiving the people about the BJP's real nature is
accomplished.
But whoever undertakes the task of superficially
altering a perception runs the risk of transforming
himself in the process. It is not impossible that
Vajpayee, too, will become a victim of such a change.
Instead of giving the BJP a kinder, gentler face, the
moderate may become the hardliner. Some signs of this
mutation are already visible. For instance, Vajpayee's
first instinctive reaction to the Manohar Joshi
Government's summary abolition of the Srikrishna
Commission was that of a genuine liberal. He had no
hesitation in expressing his disapproval of the move
although his party men parroted the Shiv Sena's
explanation that the commission's work was aggravating
the communal differences.
A few weeks later, however, Vajpayee changed his tune,
saying that although he had opposed the abolition, he
had subsequently come to know about the supposed ill-
effects of the commission's work. Since this is the first
time that such an explanation been offered for
terminating the work of any commission, its absurdity is
obvious. But Vajpayee, the BJP's prime ministerial
candidate, had no option but to to the party line. What
is more, when as Prime Minister he called for the revival
of the commission, he gave the impression that he was
merely fulfilling his earlier wish whereas the main
objective apparently was to avoid the imminent judicial
strictures against the Joshi Government's decision. The
familiar political games of subterfuge and half-truths
are clearly in evidence even when the Vajpayee Government
was yet to find its feet.
Again, when asked in Mumbai about the recent
felicitation for Nathuram Godse's brother and a fellow
accused in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case,
Vajpayee expressed relief that BJP workers had not
participated in the function which he felt should not
have taken place. But one would have expected a much
more forthright condemnation from the celebrated orator
and poet about a meeting where Gandhi's assassins were
praised by representatives of the BJP's ally in
Maharashtra.
But the most significant change in Vajpayee's attitude
relates to the demolition of Babri masjid, that crucial
episode in sangh parivar's politics. Vajpayee's anguish
immediately after the event was apparent to all. "I was
personally against Advaniji's rath yatra," he said in an
interview at the time. "I was always against the decision
to collect so many people in Ayodhya. But the BJP leaders
were confident that they would be able to control the
crowds."
He had no hesitation in admitting then that "I have
far too many reservations on several issues and continue
to feel differently from the party on many questions."
But the time when he felt "completely isolated" is over.
He still acknowledges that the demolition should not have
taken place, but the from the rath yatra and the BJP
leadership failure to control the crowds to the law's
delay in solving the Babri tangle.
What is more ominous, Vajpayee now seriously advances the
argument of the kar sevaks justifiably losing patience
because of prolonged legal wrangling to predict a similar
fate for the Mathura and Varanasi shrines. Evidently, the
earlier differences between Vajpayee and the party "on
many questions" are gradually being narrowed, presumably
because "despite shortcomings and failures, the BJP and
the RSS are relatively honest and take care of their
members as part of a family".
In essence, the RSS is much like the Broederbond, the
ultra-right white brotherhood of South Africa during the
apartheid period which provided the philosophical
underpinning and motivating force to a community Which
felt threatened in a black continent. The saffron
brotherhood fosters a similar spirit - a minority complex
in a majority community, as Vajpayee has been candid
enough to admit - by articulating identical fears about
the Hindus being under threat in their one and only
country from religious groups which have other
motherland as well.
But the difficulty of i implementing the sanghparivar's
objective of safeguarding the Hindus is partly that not
all Hindus feel threatened and indeed take pride in their
country being home to so many cultures and religions, all
of which contribute to the creation of a vibrant
atmosphere so different from the closed societies. Having
failed in its frontal assault on pluralism through a
highlighting of the Hindu identity ("Garv se kaho hum
Hindu hain") and demonisation of the minorities ("Hum
panch, hamare pachas"), the parivar has changed tack and
pushed Vajpayee to the forefront.
In his less constrained days when Vajpayee would have
preferred to " stand by the seashore or by the high
mountains covered with snow and mix with people who do
not know me", he might have had a better chance of
success in his mission to woo the unreconstructed Hindus
to the parivar's cause, for then his liberal views might
have been seen as his own, and not a tactical ploy. His
current task, however, of projecting these as his party's
is an archness one.
When he holds forth, therefore, with his customary
eloquence on tolerance being the essence of Hinduism, he
will be believed insofar as tolerance is undoubtedly the
essence of Hinduism, but is it also the essence of the
parivar, given Golwalkar's anti minority tirades: "Have
those (Muslims) who remained here changed at least after
that (partition)?
Has their old hostility and murderous mood ... come to a
halt at least now? It would be suicidal to delude
ourselves into believing that they have turned patriots
overnight after the creation of Pakistan."
And this about Christians. "So long as the
Christians here ... refuse to offer their first loyalty
to the land of their birth.... they will remain here as
hostiles and will have to be treated as such.
What kind of a fruit will such a tree yield?
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