Ram versus Rajya

What should be the agenda? Hindutva, soft or hard? Or a larger, more mainstream — in fact even more secular — idea of better governance, even Ramrajya. The way the party’s brass has lately vacillated over the VHP’s shenanigans in Ayodhya would still indicate some confusion. Certainly, there are those in the party, and its ideological sister-organisations, who would rather look to Narendra Modi for inspiration. The Vajpayee-Advani formula so far has given us a mere coalition, but Modi brought us absolute majority, they will say, and so which route should now be preferred is a no-brainer. Then why did the latest march to Ayodhya fail so dismally?

The campaign has flopped but its leaders would say that is because the BJP brass did not warm up to it. That rather than join it, create real commotion even if it means sacrificing this NDA coalition and forcing early elections, and then ride that wave to a glorious Modi-like victory, they have chosen the easier option of joining hands with Mulayam Singh Yadav to maintain order. But could it also be that the campaign has flopped, as it has continued to flop each time the VHP tries to hijack national politics to Ayodhya, because people have seen through it? Politics may be run on rules more flexible than the business of banking, but even here you cannot encash the same cheque twice.

Those in the BJP who know better are not such a minority. They also include Vajpayee. They know the time for a Hindutva-led election campaign is now over, that India has moved on meanwhile, and the very fact that the economy has been growing so rapidly has given our people a much greater stake in peace and order. As a people become more prosperous, have more to do, they want to be at their work-places the next morning instead of sitting at home because of a bandh or a riot. They hate their children’s schools and colleges being interrupted, they want to make sure they don’t miss their tuition. You may say this is not true of all of India, that crores in our vast islands of extreme poverty have no such stake yet. But they are not the BJP’s voters anyway, and unlikely to join its bandwagon merely on the promise of a Ram temple or the opportunity to bash up their Muslim neighbours.

The BJP’s real supporters are the Hindu urban and semi-urban middle classes, which are now prospering and, to the BJP’s immense benefit, growing rapidly in numbers. The middle classes hate to shake things up. But they want the water in their taps, electricity in their homes, their children in the IITs and then in the US, dial tone in their phones. They certainly do not want a Muslim as their tenant. But they will not hop on to a train of kar sevaks to Ayodhya or join a mob burning the neighbourhood butcher-shop or bakery for that matter if it was owned by a Muslim just because the police would look the other way. Gujarat’s case was sui generis because of so many factors rooted in its peculiar history and sociology. This is what Vajpayee and other wiser ones around him understand but those in the Modi fan club cannot. If you don’t believe what I am saying, wait till readers’ mail arrives in response to this article which is, on balance, quite complimentary of the BJP and the NDA government. And yet I will get more gaalis than thank-yous from a certain vocal minority who believe, so naively but so touchingly faithfully, that, probably after Manu, Modi is perhaps the first Great Hindu to have written a definitive treatise which should govern our lives and politics for the rest of our history.

The truth is, even the BJP’s rivals privately concede that the coalition has somehow done enough to return to the polls with a fairly solid agenda of better governance, growth, modern infrastructure and national pride. In our politics, this is a rare opportunity. The last time somebody went to the polls with at least a part-positive agenda was Rajiv Gandhi with his promise of a modern 21st century India. So stunningly did it harmonise with the mood of national catharsis following his mother’s assassination that he achieved the biggest electoral victory in our history. In nearly four decades (going back to 1967), only twice has an incumbent gone to the polls with a positive agenda, Mrs Gandhi with Garibi Hatao in 1971 and Rajiv in 1984. Each one produced a huge majority. All other campaigns have been negative: against the Emergency (1977), against the Janata confusion (1980), to punish Rajiv for Bofors (1989), on Mandal and Mandir (1991), Rao government’s corruption (1996) and then against Sonia’s ‘‘272’’ blunder (1999), and so on.

Will the leadership of the BJP now have the instinct to trust its wisdom, or will it succumb to the temptation of submitting to the old instinct? It has plenty to talk about: the new highways, high growth, strengthening rupee, forex reserves, global support on terrorism, the Kashmir election, revival of Indian manufacturing, the rise of the global Indian and, of course, the falling interest rates and the booming Sensex. Not all of it has been entirely due to what it has done in its own five years — the main problem with massive structural reform of the kind that has been carried out in India is that the one who initiates it usually pays the price for the pain it brings initially while his successors then dine out on the boom times that follow much later. Taking the cue from its own ‘India Shining’ campaign, the leadership of the BJP has the choice of approaching the election with this happy report card and a promise of an even better future. This may bring them back in power without necessarily dividing the nation or spreading any more hatred. Or they can fall back to the VHP-Modi line and promise to build a glorious Ram temple at Ayodhya, throw out all the Bangladeshis, abolish Article 370 and so on. The choice is theirs and they will have to make it in a week or two. And as they do so, they would do well to consider one more fact: that promises made on the first, governance-oriented agenda, may even be possible to fulfill. But any commitments made on the divisive idea, from the temple to Article 370, are unlikely to be kept and the rest of the country (outside of Gujarat) is unlikely to be satisfied with a mere consolation prize like the opportunity to kill and burn a few of those they hate once in a while.

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