Nitin Gadkari’s team may comprise young leaders such as Varun Gandhi and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur.
Senior BJP leader LK Advani ended the party’s three-day conclave in Indore by indicating that his generation was handing over charge not just to the second generation of leaders in the party, but a newer, younger “third or fourth generation”.
Advani’s statement gave a good indication that party president Nitin Gadkari’s new team may well be made up of an entirely new lot of young leaders like Pilibhit MP Varun Gandhi and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur, among others. This has discomfited many senior “second generation” leaders in the party.
While signaling the change of leadership, he also made it clear that he was not yielding his role as senior-most party leader, rather he was recasting himself as the man midwifing the change. With the RSS’ influence increasing in the party, Advani tried to give Gadkari a catechism on how to tread the fine line between the Sangh and popular politics. “Deendayal Upadhyaya, when he was president of the party, said the concept of akhand Bharat could be adapted to mean a confederation of India and Pakistan, rather than it being one entity,” he said.
This is clearly an attempt to tell Gadkari that too rigid a line on organisational or political matters is not a good thing. The inclusive line that Gadkari seemed to take in his speech on Thursday seemed to be an effort to toe the middle path in the heavily-divided party.
At the end of the three-day conclave at Indore, where the attention appeared to be more on tents than substance, Advani explained the rationale behind the camp approach. “We wanted a tent city not for austerity, but the feeling of camaraderie and togetherness that it engenders,” he said.
Advani’s speech was the last item on the agenda of the conclave, which may have ushered in a new deal in the party, but seems to have no easy answers to the problems plaguing it still. Infighting is still a huge issue, as well as a deep identity crisis, in terms of the party’s relations with the RSS and how much say should be allowed to the Sangh Parivar in its affairs. Gadkari’s middle path, of espousing soft Hindutva and following RSS’ organisational strictures, is a new experiment yet to be tested.
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