Walking wounded

Any cartoon aficionado knows the stock situation where someones falling off a cliff,and remains suspended until made aware of his situation. And then,Splat! The BJP seems to be trying very hard not to notice its own dire situation right now,its sudden disintegration from a daunting and credible opposition party to Farce Central.

Unable to process the hard knocks of this election,the party has lurched from non-issue to non-issue. Instead of playing the role that befits it as the second-largest party with 116 seats entrusted to its care,the BJP has passed up every chance to intervene on crucial matters of economy or foreign policy. Many thoughtful voices among the party faithful have spoken out about its manifest failure to forge a new governing philosophy,but they have immediately been identified as cranks and outliers,and sidelined by the party leadership. Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie,Yashwant Sinha and well-wishers like Brajesh Mishra or Sudheendra Kulkarni are not out to gratuitously undercut the party their rational disagreement is not treason,it is the productive tension that animates politics. The BJP has definitely got itself into an intellectual and political cul-de-sac if it cannot acknowledge these inputs,and instead,turns on them so destructively. The BJPs brittleness is evident in the way it has lately disregarded institutional propriety from Jaswant Singhs unceremonious expulsion to the way the central leadership has appeared to abet state infighting,whether in Uttarakhand or Rajasthan. In Jaswant Singhs case,it displayed its existential confusion by taking offence at a thesis that is in no way insupportable to its ideology. And by doing so,it displayed how frighteningly narrow its intellectual horizons are becoming. Contrary to the reform-oriented,constructive positions it pitched in its manifesto,the BJP seems to be systematically silencing every freethinking voice. If this is the lesson that emerged out of its long introspection,it seems patently wrong-headed.

The BJP steered a solid coalition by enlarging its vision and accommodating a spectrum of centre-right opinion,not by focusing tightly on a core message,whatever that might be in its view. The most damaging fact is that the BJP has not been able to communicate a cogent politics to anyone,not even erstwhile fellow-travellers and supporters. And this new paranoid,inward-looking avatar is certainly unlikely to win it any more political ground.