BJP truce uneasy but Gujarat polls cementing factor

But both the ostensible truce and the conspicuous assertion rest on some seething predicaments and fragile pacts. There are at least three versions of the truce,for one.

According to sources close to Gadkari,the decision to relieve Joshi of all party responsibilities was taken with the decision to ask him to resign from the national executive at Mumbai itself. In other words,the BJP president did bend to Modi’s wishes but it was a one-time affair,in the interest of the party — not a prolonged and embarrassing capitulation.

Sources close to Joshi contest this version. If the decision had been taken in Mumbai itself,why would Joshi have subsequently gone to Lucknow,Meerut,Ghaziabad and Agra to involve himself in corporation elections there,they ask.

The third version is of the RSS. Joshi,Sangh sources point out,was given an implicit message to step back from all party activities at Mumbai,and then,when he showed no signs of fading away quietly,explicitly asked to step back from party activities four days before he made a public show of doing so.

In the Sangh perception,both sides — Modi as well as Joshi — are playing to the gallery. Both men are ego-driven and impatient,unwilling to take the long-term view,RSS seniors say.

In this case,the long term that is weighing on the Parivar’s mind is December,when Assembly elections are due in Gujarat. The electoral test forms the backdrop to the current theatre in the BJP.

For Gadkari — who was the RSS’s choice to calm a party in which the centre of authority had withered away after Advani’s downsizing in the wake of his Jinnah speech,and in which the Delhi leaders were waging an unchecked civil war — the choice was clear. As he began a second term as party president,he could not afford to let hostilities with Modi build up to a dangerous point.

If Gadkari did not remove Joshi,Modi had threatened to resign from the national executive and the national council,according to sources,if not the chief minister’s post.

Gadkari was already faced with multiple challenges. L K Advani has not stopped resenting him for his closeness to the Sangh,which he holds responsible for the erosion in his own stature in the party. Advani refuses to subside into the symbolic role of mentor the Sangh has marked for him.

Therefore his controversial blog blaming Gadkari for decisions taken in UP,Karnataka and Jharkhand — Gadkari supporters insist these were taken after wide consultations in the party.

Then there is the persistent distrust between Gadkari and other Delhi leaders,including Sushma Swaraj,Rajnath Singh,Yashwant Sinha,Murli Manohar Joshi and to a lesser extent Arun Jaitley. In mannerism and style,Gadkari remains self-consciously the Delhi outsider.

By resisting Modi,Gadkari would have been seen to be undermining the party’s electoral prospects in an important state,apart from contributing to an unending spectacle for the media — and his Delhi detractors in the party — to relish.

By letting Modi have his way,Gadkari has won himself some room for manoeuvre as his second term begins and also unsettled the Delhi leaders. But in the end,this is not about Gadkari. It is about Narendra Modi and his increasing assertion that most members of the Parivar are uneasy with. However,RSS insiders say the CM would be foolish to read a longer or larger victory in his winning the upper hand.

The sacrifice of Joshi,they point out,is not unprecedented — Govindacharya had to go into exile after his “mukhauta” remark about Atal Behari Vajpayee and in Rajasthan,RSS-appointed organisation secretary Prakash Chandra was forced out of party work after Vasundhara Raje insisted on his exit.

The RSS looks upon Modi with an increasingly strained tolerance combined with the hardheaded calculation that in an election year,Joshi is more dispensable than Modi. Meanwhile,several BJP leaders are also hoping that Modi may have finally overplayed his hand,and lost the support of the ordinary karyakarta by his uncompromising hounding out of Sanjay Joshi.