Uncivil haggling

On the Tuesday after the Monday spent in frenzied parleys — involving a high-powered RSS delegation and prominent BJP seniors in the Capital — the BJP denied that the RSS had called for the head of its chief and asserted that L.K. Advani will not step down. The denial is not persuasive. The assertion is welcome but it may not be enough. It will do little to stanch the public speculation dramatically touched off by Advani’s comments on Jinnah, and cunningly nourished by all sides ever since. Though nearly all the BJP leaders remain tightlipped in public, it is well known that the party is in turmoil and that at stake is its future and its ties with the RSS. But, equally, it is beginning to seem that the ideas and the issues are being guided into a backseat. What has come to occupy the centre stage in the party and in the parivar, instead, is the uncivil haggling over the endpoint of Advani’s tenure.

This is tragic, for the BJP. Advani’s observations in Pakistan had promised a new politics, a take-off point for a reinvented party. At the very least, they provided the cue for a long-overdue rethink on its direction in the 21st century. All political parties need to occasionally review and revise their political agenda and priorities. The ones that don’t are the ones that fail to grow. The BJP has also been recently rebuffed by the people. This was the opportune moment, then, for the party to reassess its career with an eye to the future. Now, those possibilities look like they may all be surrendered. In narrowing down the debate to negotiations over the length of Advani’s tenure as party president, the BJP does immense disservice not just to its stalwart but primarily to itself.

There is yet another unseemly side to this drama. In the prolonged bargaining around the figure of Advani, it is the RSS that sits on the other side of the table from the BJP. And it is the RSS that seems to be doing most of the talking, or threatening. This is an extremely unhappy impression, from the BJP’s point of view. Were it to gain ground, the BJP stands to lose all the respect it has courted from the people as it powered its way from being a party of two parliamentary seats to one that aspires to become the natural party of governance. The BJP has only limited time — not just to retrieve the political initiative from a parent organisation that refuses to set it free, but also to be seen to be have done so.