Misunderstandings between Lal Krishan Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee are not a new phenomenon. People remember the tight expression on Vajpayee’s face the day his ministry was being sworn in, in 1998. It was a moment when he should have been flying high, instead tension was palpable between the two men sitting side by side in Rashtrapati Bhavan. In the early hours of that day, the RSS, backed by Advani, had ensured that the new prime minister would not get a finance minister of his choice.The differences between them cropped up many times during the six years of Vajpayee’s tenure as PM — on the role of Brajesh Mishra, the exit of K.N. Govindacharya, the continuation of Narendra Modi as chief minister.Even till three years ago it would have been possible for the two men to pick up the phone and speak to each other or to go across to each others’ house and sort out their differences. There would have been no need for endless meetings, go-betweens or protracted negotiations.This is now becoming increasingly difficult. The Khurana episode that has now ended with the revocation of his expulsion, has highlighted the growing problems between the BJP’s two seniors, who hold the party together. For days, neither side was willing to give in. When Advani sent Khurana the expulsion note, despite Vajpayee’s publicly expressed reservations, Vajpayee did his typical backtrack but without yielding ground. He did not refer to Khurana, only to his long-standing relationship with Advani, who ‘‘is my party president’’. It was like saying, ‘‘I am bowing to your wishes because you are party chief, even though you are ignoring mine, despite 50 years of our comradeship’’. Vajpayee avoids taking things to a breaking point. His ‘‘Vajpayee-ese’’ is an inimitable language which only Vajpayee can speak and like ‘‘diplomatese’’ or ‘‘politicalese’’ it has to be decoded for the uninitiated. It stems from an approach which is flexible, often results in flip flops which have become legion, and has given him a moderate image.Vajpayee, who stood solidly behind Advani during his isolation in the BJP over Jinnah, has felt cut out of the party’s decision-making process. Not consulted about the action against Khurana, excluded from decisions like the boycott of Parliament during the Budget session, which he did not favour, he has made his point: you cannot ignore me and yet hope for my support.For Advani, beleaguered as he has been, Vajpayee’s statement in defence of Khurana was a googly which would go to weaken his position — either way. If he were to relent on Khurana’s expulsion, he would be called a roll-back president, and it would open a Pandora’s box. As it is, his authority has been eroded with the Jinnah affair. If he went ahead with the expulsion, which is what he chose to do as the lesser of two evils in order to reassert his diminishing authority, he was taking on the challenge of contending with both the Sangh leadership, which wants him out, and with senior party colleagues who have come out openly against him — Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, Pyarelal Khandelwal, Jana Krishnamurthy, all led by party patriarch Vajpayee. The Sangh has shown no signs of relenting on its view that Advani must quit as party chief by year end, may be even before the Mumbai mahadhiveshan, though the BJP President may hope to manoeuvre the situation in such a way that it becomes difficult to replace him, either because of an NDA victory in Bihar or because there is no acceptable alternative to him. But the Sangh can be expected to up the ante in the weeks to come. Khurana may be a maverick, but even he would not suddenly mount an offensive against Advani without getting a sense that it would be approved by the RSS. The Khurana affair was symptomatic of not just a widening chasm between its two tallest leaders but of a larger problem afflicting the BJP today, and that is the identity crisis it is faced with. The party has lost clarity, confidence and cohesion because it does not know what it stands for anymore.Advani’s Jinnah remarks, which plunged the BJP into turmoil, were an attempt to redefine the party’s agenda, even though he may have chosen a place and a figure which neither the Sangh nor a large section of the party could stomach. But they were a sign that after a stint in power, he understood the logic of a plural India, and the compulsions of coalition politics; that he may want to go beyond Hindutva as the panacea for the country’s ills; and that he wanted to transform the BJP into a right of centre, mainstream and forward-looking organisation. The Sangh on the other hand has insisted on the BJP’s return to its core agenda, and a greater say in its affairs.These contending views need to be debated frontally within the party. Glossing over them is a bad option. It will only embroil the party in secondary issues, and the latest crisis is a case in point.
