Quoting Vajpayee, JD(U) brings NDA to breaking point

The gloves are off. The JD(U) has warned the BJP that it would march out of the coalition the moment the party thought of projecting Gujarat chief minister (CM) Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate. A day after Bihar CM Nitish Kumar insisted that the BJP should choose a secular face to lead the party in the 2014 polls, there was further deterioration in the relations between the two parties, which are together ruling Bihar at present. 

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday defended both Modi and Hindutva. Addressing RSS volunteers in Latur, Bhagwat said: “Nitish Kumar has said that the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections should be secular. He has made the statement so that his vote bank remains intact.”

His comments have deepened the divide between the two warring NDA constituents with Nitish’s confidante and JD(U) spokesperson Shivanand Tewari emphasising that former prime minister AB Vajpayee wanted to sack Modi after the post-Godhra riots in 2002. The bitter acrimony affected the coalition discussions on the presidential nominee. BJP leaders have kept quiet as they do not want to add fuel to the fire.

It is clear that the NDA is struggling to give a coherent shape to its quest for a presidential candidate. Already, the Shiv Sena has jilted its partner, saying its decision to vote for UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee does not, in any way, reflect larger incompatibility issues. The belligerent JD(U) has been reluctant to vote for any nominee and has been demanding consensus on Mukherjee. The BJP believes it is being thwarted in its efforts to reach out to probable allies, the Biju Janata Dal and the AIADMK.

The focus has now shifted on who the BJP’s prime ministerial nominee would be after Nitish spoke out in an interview to a newspaper.

The BJP has been hoping to postpone making such an announcement because the party understands the difficulty of going with Modi at this stage. That will definitely alienate the anti-Modi middle rung in the party and the BJP hierarchy will be in utter disarray. The party plans to approach the 2014 polls under the dual leadership of Nitin Gadkari and Modi and will not want to precipitate a crisis by projecting anybody as its prime minister at the moment.

Bhagwat’s meeting was out of bounds for the media, but according to those present, the RSS chief stressed that Hinduism was “all-inclusive”. He even said that there was no reason why a “Hinduwadi” should not be prime minister.  He was quoted as having said: “Hinduism is a broad philosophy which propagates humanism.” He also said that it was accommodative of different points of view. It was obvious that Bhagwat was backing Modi.

Nitish’s outburst on Tuesday was waiting to happen. The recent rise of Modi and the party’s abject surrender to him by having the Gujarat CM’s bête noire Sanjay Joshi removed had been witnessed by the likes of Nitish with a degree of discomfiture. It has taken time for Nitish to wean away the Muslim support from a secular leader like Lalu Prasad Yadav. He does not want to give up the advantage which he enjoys in Bihar after a tremendous electoral effort. Till now, he has cautiously treaded the middle ground and kept Modi away from electioneering in Bihar. But the recent developments and Modi’s accommodation in the party have troubled him a great deal.

Tewari was equally abrasive as he hit back at JD(U)’s critics. He made it clear that the NDA could not hope to win a general election with a “fanatic face”. He felt that Vajpayee’s liberalism failed to garner votes because of popular disgust with the Gujarat violence. Tewari went on to assert that JD(U) has been part of NDA all these years because of a set of conditions which obviously excluded Hindutva. Now if those conditions were being changed, then the JD(U) would walk away even if it lost control of the Bihar government in the process.