This conversion was inevitable

The impediment is not just the lack of a majority in the Lok Sabha. Nor is it the arithmetic in the Rajya Sabha, whose character makes a two-third majority impossible for the BJP for the next 10-15 years, to be able to push through the abolition of Article 370.

The BJP has already gone beyond a mere acceptance of Article 370. The government offered to talk to the Hizbul Mujahideen waging a jehad’ against India without preconditions. This is no different from what Narasimha Rao had offered — anything short of azadi’. A unipolar world, changing geopolitical realities and the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir have their own logic for the government, whatever be the label it sports.

There are two schools of thought in the BJP. One, that India can be ruled only by consensus, and this requires compromise, give and take, flexibility, taking everybody along. This has been the Congress model. Vajpayee, Advani and many partymen subscribe to this view. The second group is still for the politics of ideology and feels it is possible for an ideology-driven, cadre-based party to come to power. It need not get limited to a pressure group, as others would have it believe. Ironically this group to which Govindacharya belongs is in a minority.

Power is changing the "chaal, charitra and chehra" of the BJP, to borrow the words of Govindacharya, even though the context would make him squirm. For the moment Vajpayee is the symbol of this change. But it is not just the prime minister who is donning the white Muslim prayer cap. His nominee Bangaru Laxman is welcoming Muslims into the BJP fold and Advani is trying to assure safety to the Christians. Realisation has dawned on the most hawkish of BJP leaders that it may be possible for the BJP to win an election but it cannot rule India if the minorities are hostile. The BJP’s rank and file are merely internalising this reality.

Vajpayee is the symbol of this liberalism today because he is at the helm of affairs. But the hard fact is that it would not be possible for the party to make the transition without the support of Advani, or of other leaders of the party. The BJP would have split by now.

The whole process is not going to leave the RSS untouched. The Sangh leadership has already accepted the reality that if the BJP is to be the epicenter of power today, it has to coexist with others and that has its own dynamics. The Sangh had to accept a Vajpayee today; they are all set to accept an Advani tomorrow and it is an Advani cast in the Vajpayee mould. Some of the rank and file is already getting coopted in the power structure with its system of spoils.

Govindacharya’s latest formulation is more all-encompassing than the RSS thinking has been in the past and it may give an insight into the RSS mindset. He advocates a proper mix of Hindutva, which he describes as "Hinduness and not Hinduism" — he has no objection to it being referred to as "Indianness, provided you don’t force your nomenclature on me" — and Antyodaya (national reconstruction based on the upliftment of the last person) to bounce back and rebuild the party. He elaborates Hinduness in five themes representing the country’s ethos: respect to all modes of worship; egalitarian sacredness of the animate and the inanimate; the idea that man is part of nature and not its conqueror, with an eco-friendly development and technology flowing out of it; special qualities of womanhood and a non-material goal of life, which give rise to morality and humanist values.

The "idealism" versus "ideology" streams may clash in the days to come, and may even part company. But the former, the consensus model, will dominate.

At the end of the day, Vajpayee has to run a coalition government in Delhi. He has to put up with the tantrums of a volatile Mamata Bannerji in West Bengal, woo Mayawati in UP, placate Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh and Bal Thackeray in Maharashtra. Keeping out of the turf of the regional bosses is the cost that any ruling party has to pay today for running a coalition at the Centre. That was one reason why the Congress weakened under Rao, even though he was the only non Nehru-Gandhi prime minister to have run a government for a whole term.

The BJP is becoming a BCP not because Vajpayee is a liberal and Advani wants to succeed him but because India is a plural society.

Power is changing the chaal, charitra and chehra’ of the BJP