The Election Parivar

Unfortunately, Advani spent most of his time sermonising on development and governance, on India’s imminent superpowerdom. No doubt these are worthy issues. They don’t, however, make for crackling copy. In the autumn of the patriarch, there can’t be a sizzling summer.

The BJP’s Vision Document follows the logic of the Bharat Uday Yatra and, indeed, of the prime ministry of Atal Behari Vajpayee. It demonstrates that the party is acutely conscious its opponents waited through its first full term in office for its oppositional instincts to take over, for its government to self-destruct, for it to fail.

To its initiators, the Atal-Advani experiment has been a success, qualified perhaps but success nevertheless. It has helped the BJP graduate from theory to practice, from agitprop to administration. Election 2004 will, really, answer the question if the rest of the country thinks so too.

In a sense, the BJP’s preparations for election 2004 — and this is where the Uday Yatra’s discourse and the Vision Document come in — are an attempt to institutionalise the party’s evolution.

It is not always easy to divorce oneself from incubators or instincts. The Vision Document has been scoffed at as a Vajpayee “photo album”. More substantively, the RSS too had some misgivings on the overall pre-poll package becoming a “personality cult”.

In the case of the peace initiative with Pakistan, the BJP would rather focus on Vajpayee’s reputation as a “problem solver” than explain its kid-gloves treatment of the Islamabad junta.

The cleavage is sharpest when it comes to religio-political Hindutva. Advani’s recent public admonition of Bajrang Dal activists is only further evidence that a meeting of the BJP’s two elder statesman and the more truculent adherents of the Ram movement is near impossible.

Perhaps there was always a perceptional difference here. What the BJP saw as coming into government, the VHP interpreted as regime change. The relationship will adjust to new verities — but this is more likely in a post-Vajpayee, post-Advani era.

This election is an illustration of the changed inner configuration of the Sangh Parivar. The BJP has pushed through its individuality, its idea of where India is headed, or should be. The rest of the parivar just has to live with it. On economic policy — which the RSS historically scarcely had any views on — the party has insisted on primacy.

The question is: why has the RSS given in? Why did it ask the VHP to pipe down, tell discordant voices in the Pratinidhi Sabha to hold their peace? This, when as recently as before the November assembly elections, there was talk of a “showdown”.

Consider the times. In November, nobody expected a BJP sweep in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The Lok Sabha poll was scheduled for October 2004. Anti-incumbency was a given. The election year was to be spent with the VHP, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and elements of the RSS bargaining with a tentative BJP.

The triple victory changed the mood. Suddenly, the Lok Sabha election looked a more immediate and winning prospect. The logic dawned that the BJP government may not have conformed to every excruciating sub-chapter of Ram rajya but was still more friendly to the Hindu constituency than any other practicable alternative.

It was realised the BJP’s formula of a leader who may overwhelm the organisation but still draws the incremental vote — combined with the promise of a better life for the voter — best reflected the contemporary political idiom. In a sense, to quote a BJP leader, “The RSS had to decide whether it wanted to influence the BJP’s internal politics — or India’s politics”.

So, if the BJP wins the election will the Sangh-BJP equation be settled for good? Not quite. The RSS’ shakhas are ageing, the VHP’s mass support is temperamental and context-based, yet they constitute important sources of mobilisation for the BJP. Just as the Christian Coalition and Colin Powell both make up the Republican Party, the VHP and Jaswant Singh are both essential ingredients for the BJP.

In the coming years, the big challenge for the party will be managing the generational change before the 2009 election. Vajpayee and Advani will be in their eighties and out of it.

If the BJP has to be true to its template of going to the people with a prime ministerial candidate, it will have to make up its mind: Pramod Mahajan, quintessential party boss, uber politican? Arun Jaitley, upright but urban appeal, in the old Jana Sangh mould? Narendra Modi, never likely to be a media favourite but still running a fairly successful, swindle-free government in Gujarat? Sushma Swaraj, everybody’s first-choice compromise candidate? Murli Manohar Joshi, his own first-choice compromise candidate?

Various aspirants will seek support from various lobbies, in the Sangh and in the India beyond. For instance, any BJP second-rung leader taking a strong stand on terrorism will see the VHP — which has a contrarian view of the detente with Pakistan — as an ally.

Yet no prospective BJP leader can afford to go back on the mix of economic hope, national well-being and global aspiration that is the party’s platform for 2004. For the BJP’s own identity, that must be non-negotiable. The rest is mere politics.