Citizen Vajpayee

What road should I go down, asked Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in one of his more poignant poems. 8216;Do I make my final move, or ...

What road should I go down, asked Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in one of his more poignant poems. 8216;Do I make my final move, or do I withdraw from battle? What road should I go down?8217;

When he rose to speak at the meeting of the national executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Vajpayee joined the battle and chose the right road. He did not speak as a sectarian representative of his party8217;s so-called 8216;core constituency8217;. Instead, he spoke like a true citizen of India.

Citizen Vajpayee declared that religion and religious sentiment cannot be exploited to garner votes in an election. If the media quoted him right he was learnt to have said, 8216;Hindutva is a way of life and it cannot become a political agenda. Religion cannot become the basis of a rashtra8217;.

More to the point, Vajpayee conceded that the election campaign in Gujarat had generated poison in the minds of men which the BJP must learn to swallow as Lord Shiva did after the 8216;manthan8217; of the oceans. That mythological manthan had generated both nectar and poison and so had the Gujarat polls. The poison must be swallowed and not allowed to spread.

Those who see the so-called 8216;Gujarat model8217;, what has come to be dubbed 8216;Moditva8217;, as the means of winning more elections must reflect on Citizen Vajpayee8217;s words. His assurance that it will be the BJP8217;s special endeavour to 8216;carry all sections of our diverse society with us8217; will be widely appreciated by all those who believe in a syncretic Hinduism and a secular constitution. There is also a larger issue raised by Vajpayee that the BJP must ponder. While the Moditva strategy of creating a majority community grievance against the minorities paid off in Gujarat, the BJP8217;s future as a mainstream national party can only assured if it moves away from the narrow sectarian moorings of the past and emerges as a broad-based, centrist political force. Despite years of misgovernance the Indian National Congress was able to win elections for a period of four decades precisely on this basis before the legacy of bad governance finally caught up with it.

The BJP came to power promising 8216;an able and stable government8217;. Stability it has ensured, but on the ability front it is still found wanting. If the BJP and its allies want to return to power in 2004 they must turn the economy around, generate higher growth and pursue economic policies that improve the well-being of the many. For this the BJP must eschew sectarian politics and take the high road that Vajpayee has pointed to again.