#dnaEdit: Faustian dilemma

Sakshi Maharaj, BJP member of Lok Sabha from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, made headlines for the proverbial wrong reasons. He claimed Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, was a patriot and recanted when furore broke out over it. At a religious meeting in Meerut some time back he made another headline-grabbing comment that Hindu women should give birth to four children. He even dared to suggest what should be done with them.

He said that one of the kids should be given to ascetics. Perhaps, what he had in mind was to keep the tribe of ascetics like him growing. Another child, he said, should be sent into the army because there are ceasefire violations on the (India-Pakistan) border. It would be an understatement to say that the BJP was embarrassed. So, it had to finally act and act it did by issuing a show-cause notice, a prelude to disciplinary action, which could possibly lead to expulsion.

BJP-sceptics and BJP-critics are watching carefully the party’s response to the hotheads. The question BJP-watchers are asking is: Will the BJP rein in the lumpen right-wingers in its midst? There is the suspicion that the BJP is not too unhappy with the likes of Sakshi Maharaj because the party benefits from them electorally; their shrill emotional rhetoric appealing to the baser instincts of voters. The public rebuke dealt out to Sakshi Maharaj is perceived by many to be insincere. Senior BJP leaders, over the years, have argued that the party believes in making India a strong country and in pursuing a development agenda that will deliver the fruits of economic growth to everyone. But, on the ground and at the time of elections, the party leaders choose to maintain an ambiguous silence as the foot soldiers indulge in incendiary rhetoric. Sakshi Maharaj’s irresponsible statements reflect the deeper undercurrents of the BJP’s Hindutva ideology.

The party leadership, during the Vajpayee-Advani days in the past as well as at present — under the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah dispensation — subscribes to an unequivocal nationalist agenda. But at the same time the leadership is acutely aware of the red lines dictated by political prudence. The party has realised that Sakshi Maharaj has crossed one of the many red lines. It is, however, necessary to recall in this context that Sakshi Maharaj, the man from Etah, has been a party-hopper of sorts, who moved from the BJP to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and then to Kalyan Singh’s Rashtriya Kranti Party (RKP) before moving back to the BJP. He seems to be a permanent rebel and dissident. The party cannot hope to impose restrictions on him for too long.

What BJP critics are interested to know is whether the party is serious about keeping the unattractive aspects of its Hindutva ideology under wraps as it were, and put the best foot forward by harping on national development and national pride. The critics are convinced that the BJP will never abandon or renounce some of the provocative aspects of the ultra-nationalist ideology which verge on the pathetic and pathological. It is for this reason that it cannot get rid of the Hindutva hotheads completely. When the going is bad, it would feel the need to fall back on these unsavoury elements. There are some in the party who want to adopt a nuanced Hindutva, cleansed of its ugly aspects. Perhaps, it is time for the BJP to calibrate Hindutva — now that it has peaked electorally.