Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: March 22, 2004
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/220304-features.html
Why should a 77 year-old man endure
31 days of intense strain and considerable discomfort to travel across
more than 120 parliamentary constituencies to tell people that "India's
time has come"? This is a question that came readily to mind when Deputy
Prime Minister L.K. Advani announced his decision to embark on the Bharat
Uday Yatra. Granted that Advani has acquired a copyright over extended
journeys across the country, the logic of his recent yatra is still eluding
political pundits.
Even after the fantastic suggestion
that the yatra is aimed at resurrecting the Ayodhya movement has died a
natural death, other speculative theories have surfaced. Advani, say the
conspiracy- wallas, is positioning himself as a challenger to Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee immediately after the general election.
The logic of theories nurtured and
then junked by the media has eluded me. Travelling in the Swaraj Mazda
rath for the past four days, I have seen little evidence of an elaborate
conspiracy being hatched by sundry state leaders who accompany Advani.
Nor does the zippy tune of Bharat Uday Yatra's theme song, Anu Malik's
Bharat chamak raha hai/ Bharat damak raha hai/ India is shining/ India
is smiling indicate the makings of a palace coup.
Like the nuts and bolts of politics,
the reality is often very mundane. There were some 12,000 people at the
meeting in Thrissur, about the same number in Palakkad and mammoth gatherings
of some 30,000 in both Coimbatore and Bangalore. They were treated to a
mixture of political philosophy and blunt election campaigning. The philosophy
drew polite claps from the discerning and the gung-ho stuff about the NDACongress
fight being akin to a cricket match between Australia and us led to thunderous
applause.
Advani is more a parliamentarian
than a demagogue. His speeches are measured, anecdotal and laced with nuances.
He makes up with logic what he cannot do with emotion. Unlike the Prime
Minister whose sense of imagery is unrivalled, Advani is more matter of
fact and dispassionate. If Vajpayee is the poet, Advani is the essayist.
It is not his oratory that marks him out to the faithful; it his uncanny
sense of strategy.
Strategy in a sense is what the
Bharat Uday Yatra is all about. First, he has galvanised the BJP machinery
and kick-started the election campaign of 2004. The mobilisation effected
at each point of his journey has been preceded by organisation, publicity,
propaganda and mass contact- the precise elements that make for a successful
election campaign. Journeying through the parliamentary constituency of
Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, a seat the BJP has never won, I could witness
the mobilisation that had been effected by aspiring candidates. In Nagercoil,
the sitting BJP MP, Union Minister P. Radhakrishnan, walked many inches
taller after Advani described him as a rightful inheritor of a seat once
held by the legendary K. Kamaraj. I can appreciate how this gesture has
boosted his local standing.
Second, the yatra has cemented the
alliance. It is convenient to believe that Advani has an appeal only to
the committed BJP voter. Yet, he is the Deputy Prime Minister, a man who
is constantly in the news and on TV. He represents political authority.
When such a person travels through sleepy small towns and hamlets, delivers
a three minute speech and gets himself photographed with local dignitaries,
it becomes a local talking point.
To the editorial classes, for example,
Advani is a leader with an appeal confined to northern and western India.
Yet, when we were in Erode district of Tamil Nadu, Govindarajar the AIADMK
candidate for the Gobichettipalyam seat, was insistent that Advani stop
for two minutes at Ammapetai, his birthplace. It was a small gesture but
one that carried enormous significance. No wonder the AIADMK flags were
very much in evidence throughout the route and no wonder every local AIADMK
candidate stood with folded hands besides Advani.
If it wasn't directly beneficial,
why did Union Minister P.C. Thomas, who heads a one-man party, insist that
the course of the yatra be modified to touch his constituency? Why did
he pull out all the stops to make the public meeting in Christian-dominated
Muvattapuzha such a grand local event? Would he risk it if Advani's presence
was to cost him votes?
This is a Lok Sabha election that
is being fought on national issues. Like it or not, it is the alliance
partners that need the goodwill of the Vajpayee Government to rub off on
them. Advani's yatra is merely tilling the land for what the BJP believes
will be a bumper harvest in May. It is not a glamorous project but all
politics is not about glitz and sound bites. Behind every success, there
is a lot of hard work.
