Bharatiya Jubilee Party

As it celebrates its 25th birthday, the BJP could be forgiven for lingering too long in front of the mirror. It’s been a marvellous coming of age for the awkward young party that won two seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections. It is now a distinct ideological pole in the Indian polity, some would even call it the defining pole, forcing the others to define themselves according to the distance they keep from it. But can it credibly claim to be, as L.K. Advani put it, a ‘‘pole of hope’’? At 25, that is the question the BJP needs to reflect on urgently, even at the risk of spoiling its own party.

There are strong reasons to fear there has been an unhappy slide-back. The party that seemed to rapidly grow — from a marginal force to a movement, from a political untouchable to a party that is compellingly coalitionable, from a polarising juggernaut to a sober party of governance — has in recent times seemed increasingly at odds with its own evolution. This discomfort was magnified by the unexpected electoral defeat it wasn’t prepared for. But it goes beyond the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, and it will not be papered over by all the point-scoring off the Congress in the aftermath of the Jharkhand or Bihar polls. Congress mistakes, its ineptitude, can only be temporary comfort for the long distance runner. In the long run, the BJP’s continuing challenge is two-fold: to search for the more relevant symbol and slogan for its core base; and to strike a new equilibrium between galvanising its base and strengthening its credentials as an inclusive and responsible party of governance.

The recent signals are all depressing. The ‘‘back to basics’’ idiom recycled by L.K. Advani on the eve of the party’s national executive — particularly his renewed talk of the temple the NDA could have/would have built at Ayodhya — shows up his party as too timid, too unimaginative to undertake the search for new themes to re-energise its sagging cadres and constituency. The party’s irresponsible, and actually hypocritical, opposition to the Patents Bill and to VAT speaks about the BJP’s weak-kneed surrender to political grand standing. But most of all, it is, it continues to be, Narendra Modi. As the BJP president once again feels compelled to defend Modi, it is the Gujarat chief minister’s enviable staying power that best sums up the BJP’s inability to move on and ahead. A party that cannot summon the political muscle and the moral fibre to confront Gujarat 2002, has a lot of growing up to do before it can look good in the mirror.