Rajnath abridged

If opposing Sethu Samudram is BJP8217;s idea of post-UP politics, god help the party

In a post-election ritual, the losing party blames its defeat on a disembodied set of factors. The party thrown out of government will cite 8216;anti-incumbency8217; as if it is an apolitical law of nature that politician and party cannot resist nor change. The party that did not get a shot at forming government will point to 8216;organisational weakness8217; and other cliches with the same air of helplessness in the face of larger forces. In the first BJP national executive held after its UP debacle, Rajnath Singh has made impressive additions to the stock list of meaningless phrases: the UP setback, he says, is a signal for the BJP to become more 8220;alert and stable8221;, enhance 8220;feelings of mutual faith, collectiveness, credibility, principles8230;8221; The implication is clear: It is lack of these unbounded and faceless virtues that did the party in in India8217;s politically most crucial state.

Nothing political about it.

When other parties retreat into carefully apolitical obfuscations after a defeat, it is bad enough. But when the BJP does it today, it seems worse. India8217;s main opposition party seems to be out of sync with its own best version and with the fast changing political realities on the ground for far too long. And as it abdicates the search for the real reasons for it, there is a real danger that the marginal will assume political centrestage. What else explains the farce at the BJP national executive, with the party bosses disallowing any frank post-mortem of the party8217;s poll debacle in UP, but insistently masterminding a whole resolution on the party8217;s position on the Sethu Samudram project. A recent expose in this paper revealed how a fraud 8216;space scientist8217; who forged his credentials guided the RSS opposition to the project. Is the party telling us that this desperate attempt to dredge up faith and unreason is its poll strategy for 2009?

The BJP needs a makeover. It needs a new leadership, a new programme. But it needs to ask itself the tough questions first. Why is it that the UP voter couldn8217;t figure out what the BJP really stands for today? Why is the party reduced to that inchoate state of trying out all gambits at the same time 8212; a vicious anti-Muslim CD here along with some development talk there? Why are allies like the Shiv Sena and erstwhile allies like Jayalalithaa and Chandrababu Naidu progressively increasing the degrees of their separation from the BJP?