Why BJP should thank Advani

It was a good move, in my humble opinion, and it will be an even better move if the BJP now severs its links with the RSS and its fanatical offspring. They have no role to play in today’s India and would probably have faded away by now if they had not piggy-backed on the Vajpayee government’s ride to power and having done that if they had not interfered often and publicly in so many policies.

They know nothing about economics but patched together a policy they called swadeshi, much of it borrowed from Gandhiji. Forgetting, of course, that when he advocated it he was fighting a colonial power and that the idea makes no sense in an India that the rest of the world is beginning to be afraid of because of the high quality swadeshi goods and services we currently export. Despite being a bunch of aged ignoramuses the RSS managed to interfere enough in economic policies for them to decide who Vajpayee’s first Finance Minister was going to be. Jaswant Singh was cancelled on their account.

As an organisation that prides itself on promoting India’s ancient civilisation, the RSS should have known something about education and how our mass education systems could be changed to incorporate a civilisational pride. Every country, every culture attempts to do this. But, even here they goofed and all we got from their favorite minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, were a couple of stupid attempts to change history and an ill-conceived plan to introduce Vedic mathematics. Indian mathematicians invented the idea of zero, Indian numerals traveled via the Arabs to the West to become the numerals of mankind and all Joshi succeeded in doing was to make mathematics seem somehow related to religion.

There is no question that Hindutva has failed and that the BJP’s future lies in shaking off excess baggage and spending the time between now and the next general election redefining itself as a party capable of challenging the Congress Party from the right. Congress cannot survive without its Marxist friends so increasingly we are seeing a return to the days of big government, of governmental interference in everything from dance bars to parcelling out forest land to Adivasis. The fringe benefit tax, the cash withdrawal tax, the abolition of the Disinvestment Ministry, the visible slowdown in building roads and power plants are all of a piece with a Leftist approach to governance. If you still have doubts take a look at the number of Lefties on Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council reconstituted last week for another year.

If the BJP can redefine itself in the mould of say the Republican Party or the Tory Party it is capable of posing a serious challenge to Congress. If it dumps its collection of Hindu fanatics it also takes away the main weapon Congress has against it. By the next election the usual anti-incumbency factor will kick in as well and even if the BJP cannot win on its own a coalition led by it could easily win.

This is probably what Advani was thinking when he made his remarks in Pakistan. What matters now is for the BJP to remain on course. There are many in it who continue to believe that they cannot survive as a political party without the RSS mother ship. They are wrong. The opposite is probably true. I can see the BJP building up its own cadre of party workers but try as I have I cannot see the faintest possibility of the RSS building itself another political party. It is often pointed out that India has the largest number of young people in the world, many of these will be voting for the first time in the next general election and I cannot think of a single aspect of the RSS ideology that would appeal to someone under 25. Can you?

Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com