Family versus Parivar

The BJP’s journey was more comprehensible — it was, simply, a slide from defeat to defeatism. If May 13 meant the loss of the 14th Lok Sabha, May 18 was a huge early warning signal for the 15th Lok Sabha election.

In refusing to become prime minister, Sonia had achieved three things. One, she had preserved the Gandhi family mystique. Two, she had ensured that whatever the failures of the Manmohan Singh government — and any government will have at least some failures — none of them will taint Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. Three, she had rectified the strange predicament the Congress found itself in on May 13, the day it won more seats than it wanted to.

That last point needs elucidation. Consider the Congress’s election objectives. It sought to somehow, anyhow keep the BJP out of power. The optimistic idea was the Congress and its allies would win about 180 seats. The Left would pick up another 40-45. A compromise, non-Gandhi prime minister would be used as bait to draw the remaining 40-50 “secular” MPs.

It was expected that this government would last two odd years, enough time for the Congress to recover ground in Uttar Pradesh, present Rahul as a viable leader, sew up the Muslim vote. The next election, then, would see Rahul taking on the BJP’s second generation.

On May 13, instead, the Congress and its allies won 217 seats and the Left Front another 62. This meant the number of MPs committed to Sonia’s leadership constituted a majority.

This “problem of plenty” threw the party’s longterm plans awry. A Sonia prime ministry was fraught with risks. The “foreign origin” issue had put even some Congress voters into a quandary. If and when anti-incumbency kicked in, the usual hostility to a government would have acquired an emotional edge.

That aside, a government backed by the Left and such mavericks as Laloo Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan had unpredictability written all over it. If it collapsed, Sonia would become the first Nehru-Gandhi prime minister to not end her term at a time of her choosing.

These scenarios may be speculative. Yet any of them could have scuppered the Congress’s grand plans for the Gandhi heir. He would have ended up being disadvantaged by the legacy of his mother’s government. By stepping back, Sonia has allowed him to make a fresh start whenever the next election takes place.

No wonder the BJP is worried. It realises the Congress can call an election at a moment it sees appropriate. That apart, the Congress already has a leader for the next round, the BJP is still grappling with the future. It could play safe, not effect a generational change and stick to, say, L.K. Advani. In that case, the 15th Lok Sabha election will be a contest between an elderly gent pushing 80 and a youthful rival not yet 40. The semiotics say it all.

So what can the BJP do? Other than pray for a huge slice of luck, it needs to adopt a three-pronged strategy.

First, internalise the lessons from the recent drubbing. The party’s organisational structure was creaking, in key states its cadre was not quite enthusiastic, mobilisation was not going to be easy.

The BJP sought a quick-fix solution — use a towering leader to paper over the cracks, hope his appeal brings you that incremental vote to make up for any local antipathy. If it was the Vajpayee factor nationally, it was the Kalyan Singh factor in UP.

Both failed. Don’t repeat the trick, simply by changing the face at the top. It will fail again.

Second, focus on UP, if not for the next election for the next decade. UP’s polity is defined by caste. Every party has a core vote around which it builds itself. The Congress’s revival in the state will probably centre on a Muslim-Brahmin alliance. Who is the BJP’s target voter?

There is the argument that the BJP should go back to social engineering, reforge the non-Yadav OBC social coalition that served it so well in the early 1990s. That process will throw up a leader, just as it did Kalyan a decade and a half ago. Even so, that process will need someone to play selfless sheet anchor. Perhaps there is a role for a K.N. Govindacharya here.

Finally, unite the Parivar. Post-defeat, the Sangh Parivar has resembled a bunch of headless chickens. The RSS top brass is mum. It has its own fixations, from rural uplift to naturopathy to renewable energy from the cow. If politics fits in, well and good; if not, too bad.

The BJP’s two elder statesmen have locked themselves in. The younger lot are taking their own initiative, sometimes in a fashion more petulant than perspicacious. The VHP is sulking, telling friends privately, ‘‘The BJP needs Hindu samaj, Hindu samaj doesn’t need the BJP.’’

There is an element of truth there. If everybody in the Sangh keeps doing his or her own thing, the net loser is the BJP. It has to recognise that while in office it has alienated its traditional voter as well as large sections of the Parivar. The mandir issue is only a symptom, the affliction is elsewhere — the BJP’s inability to combine its growth as a modern party with adept political management of its natural allies.

The Hindu consolidation of the past decade — whether born of religious identity, national security concerns or important as a political end in itself — has been frittered away. You can criticise this consolidation, but the fact is, its absence has brought the BJP to its knees.

Since cricket analogies are the norm these days, one may be in order here. If a batsman breaks his bat while out in the middle, he has two options. He can enter into a philosophical discussion on whether the gardener who planted the sapling that became the tree that was cut to make the bat knew his job. Alternatively, he can get a new bat and continue his innings.

The choice is the BJP’s.