archive: Cancelled revolution
Cancelled revolution
Vir Sanghvi
Telegraph
May 1, 1999
Title: Cancelled revolution
Author: Vir Sanghvi
Publication: Telegraph
Date: May 1, 1999
It now seems virtually certain that the Bharatiya Janata Party will
fight the elections on the basis of its record in government. It will
point to such successes (or what it considers successes) as Pokhran
II, the bus to Pakistan, the budget, the Cauvery water accord and the
absence of Hindu-Muslim riots. The campaign will focus on Atal Behari
Vajpayee and will seek to capitalise on his charisma. The theme will
be: Vajpayee started to do a good job; give him the mandate he needs
to finish that job.
It is not my intention to argue about the merits of the campaign. Some
will say that the successes are bogus. Others will claim that voters
are not interested in performance. Still others will question whether
the campaign will convince anyone. And so on. But my point is this: if
the BJP is going to fight an election on these themes, then, whatever
happened to -Hindutva?
You remember Hindutva, of course. It was a creation of a period when
otherwise normal people greeted each other by saying "Jai Shri Ram"
and exhorted crowds with such slogans as "garv se kaho, hum Hindu
hain". (Some BJP people believed in another slogan - "garv se kaho,
hum Hinduja hain" - but that's another story). During this phase, L.K
Advani was regarded as the BJP's most senior leader, K. N.
Govindacharya was its thinktank, Uma Bharati was its fastest rising
star and Sadhvi Rithambara was its secret weapon.
Hindutva was not, we were told, some nasty communal ideology. It was a
means of awakening pan-Indian pride and providing the nation with a
new confidence. And we were not to worry about the word Hindu because
after all, all Indians were Hindus. Muslims were Hindus too. So were
Christians. So were Sikhs. So were animist tribals.
People - such as my cynical self -who claimed that Hindutva was old
style communalism in brand new Toyota packaging were, it was said, out
of tune with the times. What nonsense we talked when we said that it
was pathetic for the agenda of the world's largest democracy to be
phrased in terms of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's obsession with a
medieval mosque. Didn't we realise that the Masjid movement (oh, all
right, the mandir movement or the domed structure movement if you
like) was the symbol of a national revival?
When we said that no, actually we didn't realise any of these things,
we were told: wait till the BJP comes to power. Then you'll know.
Well, the has come and (nearly) gone.
And guess what?
We still don't know.
Enough sneering. As it is, I feel quite sorry for the Advani groupies,
the Hindutva fans and the knickerlovers these days. Sorry boys, the
revolution has been cancelled. And you'll have to look for new
loyalties (if you haven't found them already).
My purpose today is slightly more serious. I have a question for the
BJP In the late Eighties when L.K. Advani launched his riot yatra, we
were told that the BJP had shifted gear The old style, "we are a
democratic alternative to the Congress's position" that A.B. Vajpayee
had evolved was now obsolete. The new BJP was an aggressive Hindu
party.
But, as any fool can see, the current BJP bears no relation to
Advani's Hindutva-BJP of the late Eighties. (And when there is any
resemblance, its members rush around frantically trying to gag Ashok
Singhal or hide Vinay Katiyar. Which reminds me: what did happen to
Sadhvi Rithambara?) In fact, the BJP's campaign theme for 1999 can be
paraphrashed in one familiar phrase: we are a democratic alternative
to the Congress.
Hence my question: was Atal right all along?
Certainly, the party that won power at the last election and which now
heads into another election is very much the Vajpayee-evolved BJP of
the early Eighties. There is no talk of national revival, of Muslims
who are really Hindus because all Indians are Hindus, of masjids that
have to be demolished and of Hindus being second class citizens in
their own country.
The party's agenda is one that looks forward, and not back to the
Mughal period for its direction. You may disagree with the decision to
go nuclear, you can argue that too much fuss is being made over Agni,
you can say that there is nothing new in Yashwant Sinha's budget and
you can laugh at the bus to Pakistan.
But what you cannot deny is that these initiatives - regardless of
whether you approve of them - represent an attempt to come to grips
with the serious business of governance. Gone is the rabble rousing.
Gone is the communal agenda. Gone are the Jai Shri Ram wallahs. And
gone -thank God! -is the Toyota rath.
Almost as significant as the change in focus is the change in
leadership. After the 1984 election, much of the BJP turned on the
unfortunate A.B. Vajpayee. We, in the media, may have thought that the
election was decided by a Rajiv-wave, powered along by a sympathy
factor. But that's not how the BJP saw it.
Many of its members decided that it was all Vajpayee's fault. By
betraying their essential identify (that is, knicker clad
communalists), Vajpayee had robbed the BJP of all meaning. His wishy
washy agenda (the man had even said he believed in democratic
socialism! Honestly! Socialism? Or even worse, democracy?) had led to
the collapse of the party Why, he had even lost his own seat and
broken his arm! What kind of leader was he?
Out of the rubble of Vajpayee's BJP arose a new party that the
knickerwallahs could love. It repackaged Muslim baiting as national
pride, went for the secular jugular, created communal tension,
benefited from riots and became a contender once again. Of course,
there was no question of Vajpayee leading this lot. They didn't like
him. And he was leery of their destructive vision of India. One
instance: he warned Advani that he was riding a tiger when he went off
on the riot yatra.
In his place rose his former protege, L.K. Advani. Though my guess
would he that Advani, who is essentially a decent man, now regrets it,
there is no doubt that he showed an unbecoming greediness during that
period by elbowing Vajpayee aside and becoming leader of the
opposition himself. The new BJP was Advani's BJP.
All this lasted till the end of 1995. It changed when it seemed likely
that the BJP would come close to power. Even before hawala, Advani had
recognised his limitations and proposed that Vajpayee become prime
minister And so, Vajpayee first headed the 13 day government in 1996
and then the 13 month government in 1998-9. With each passing month,
he has moved the BJP further and further away from the Hindutva agenda
and closer, and closer to his Eighties conception. When the
knickerwallahs have objected, he has simply ignored them.
Nobody will now seriously dispute that much of the BJP's current
popularity is due to Vajpayee's own charisma. In 1998 - if not in 1996
- the country voted for Vajpayee rather than the BJP. In 1999, the
slightest suggestion that he might not lead the party into the next
election causes panic at the BJP headquarters. The sangh parivar knows
that it does not amount to much without Vajpayee.
So was it necessary to have elbowed Vajpayee aside in the Eighties?
Did the party overreact to a defeat that had nothing to do with him
and everything to do with the wave in favour of Rajiv Gandhi?
My guess is: yes.
The BJP lost direction, patience and confidence in the Eighties. It
did not realise that Rajiv's popularity was certain to fade and that
any moderate alternative to the Congress would have gathered the
protest vote if it had the confidence to ------. Instead, it vacated
the middle ground
moved to the communal fringe. Because hat middle ground was empty, a
national alliterative had to emerge from within the Congress itself -
in the shape of V.P.Singh and the Jan Morcha.
The BJP did benefit from the Congress's decline. But it did not
benefit as much as V.P.Singh and
the new alternative. Worse still, its extremism made it a political
untouchable. Certainly, if did not benefit enough to forms a
government. Instead, it put off many moderate Indians, acquired a
reputation for mindless communalism and pushed India into the needless
trauma of the Ayodhya movement. To get into power it had to abandon
that extreme position and return to Vajpayee's vision.
So, would things have been different if the party had had the guts to
stick by Vajpayee in the Eighties? Would it have come to power much
earlier? And would we have been spared the communal tension of the
Nineties?
Perhaps these are questions that the BJP should ask itself.
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