After poll slaughter, suicide by BJP

The disagreement is not of degrees either but total. The former deputy prime minister fired the first shot. In those measured tones that always make you think he has something profound to say, he pronounced before TV cameras that it was his considered view that the ‘India Shining’ campaign was one of the reasons for the party’s defeat.

Then it was our former prime minister’s turn to give us his opinion, en passant, as he took off for summer holiday with family. The Gujarat violence had gone against them, he said, and this statement caused more damage to the party because it unleashed a fanatics feeding frenzy. How dare he, shrieked the VHP angrily. Tell him to shut up at once, said the RSS with cold fury. And from the Bajrang Dal, ever the most virulent, came a tirade of abuse against ‘‘old men’’ needing to retire from politics.

The last thing we people need is a reminder that the old fools who control the RSS, and thereby the Sangh Parivar, are still in a position to control the BJP. If the BJP is to survive its humiliating defeat it is going to need to stay as far away from the Parivar as possible or suicide is certain.

You and I may know that the RSS consists mainly of a collection of toothless old fanatics who have not had a new idea since the ’20s, but to many Indians (Hindus included), the RSS remains a sinister organisation that thrives on spreading hatred and poison.

If the BJP wants to remain a force, it needs to continue the process, so abley initiated by Atal Behari Vajpayee, of loosening its links with Jhandewalan or Flag Staff House, as it is sometimes called. The RSS, for its part, needs to stick to cultural matters, like for instance modernising its khaki knickers.

Since most of its cadres are spindly old men with spindly old legs, they must opt for longer shorts or something. Perhaps, Gudda or Tarun or Ritu could help. What about saffron harem pants with one of those t-shirts of Vishnu or Shiva? Might attract young people.

The BJP, meanwhile, has more things to think about. There needs to be serious analysis of the defeat. If there is, it will not take long for it to become clear that it had nothing to do with India Shining or Gujarat. Certainly, the violence in Gujarat was abhorrent and certainly it convinced Muslim voters to stay away from the BJP, but they were convinced of this long before Narendra Modi came along.

The RSS and its ugly sister organisations have over the years played such a stellar role in this department that you will not find a Muslim wandering about in khaki knickers. So, it was not the loss of the Muslim vote that caused the defeat.

Ditching the DMK in Tamil Nadu and teaming up with Jayalalithaa helped, as did unwisely abandoning Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. So, she was a bit ‘tainted’ and tried to turn the Taj into a shopping mall, but is Jayalalithaa not a little ‘tainted’ too?

This time the BJP needed her particularly badly because of that ghastly incident in Lucknow which made it clear that India could not be ‘shining’ if women in UP’s capital city could stampede each other to death to get a free sari.

Serious analysis will reveal other reasons. As Shekhar Gupta pointed out to me during a recent afternoon of political punditry, 65 per cent of sitting MPs lost their seats. The BJP had more MPs in the last Lok Sabha and so ended up losing more seats.

Further analysis of this phenomenon will reveal that on account of an almost total collapse of local government (and that is a whole column on its own) the MP gets blamed for everything from dirty drains to a new airport not being built. If the MP is foolish enough to try and point out that municipal problems and major infrastructure do not fall under him, he gets dumped for being a shirker.

There is then much that the BJP’s senior leaders should be mulling over, many things that need urgent change, but in the view of your humble columnist, the biggest mistake the party could make would be to revive Hindutva and rebuild its links with the RSS. The old men in it belong to yesterday even if they switch from khaki knickers to saffron harem pants.