The past few weeks have tremendously magnified the importance of being Sudheendra Kulkarni. The only BJP member to accompany L.K. Advani on his memorable trip to Pakistan; the writer of his controversial statements. In the shadow battles that have convulsed the BJP since, Kulkarni has been accused of ‘‘misleading’’ his party chief. His name is now attached to an articulate thesis, a radical one in the context of the BJP. The ‘‘Kulkarni thesis’’ argues for a party that has a more secular, more plural view of itself and its constituency. It pleads for a BJP ready and willing to grow beyond the self-imposed confines of the ‘‘Hindu Vote’’ which defines itself in its strident antagonisms to the ‘‘Muslim Vote’’. It urges a sharper distance between the BJP and RSS, and between the BJP and VHP. The resignation of Sudheendra Kulkarni from the posts of party secretary and political secretary to Advani, and Advani’s acceptance of it on the eve of a crucial RSS conclave in Surat, is a consequential moment in the attrition within the parivar for reasons far more important than Sudheendra Kulkarni. For all those who have a stake in the BJP’s growth as a modern right of centre party, the message that goes out is grim. This round goes to the RSS. Advani has been pressured into appeasing the truculent men gathered in Surat. But a more patient reading could see it thus: the embattled BJP chief has bought time so as to continue his fight to turn around his party. If we persist with this second, more hopeful, reading then Kulkarni’s exit is only likely to enhance the challenge before Advani. How will he use the apparent reprieve to further the project he declared in Pakistan? The onus is on him to use the lull in hostilities to persuade his party of the gains of following him to the polity’s middle ground.Amid the thrust and parry, Advani and the BJP would do well to remember that the BJP has much more to lose from an extended sparring in public than the RSS. The RSS is a fluid and, most importantly, an unaccountable organisation. The BJP, on the other hand, is a political party that must go to the people periodically and represent their concerns at all times. An extended bout with itself and with the RSS will seriously deplete its cache of public respect and trust. The BJP has too much at stake for this battle to be long or inconclusive.
