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Meanwhile in delhi

Biryani and kababs were not on the menu at the BJP’s National Executive meet in Lucknow last week. It was back to RSS basics: all vegetarian fare that was high on calories, low on health. There were samosas, kachoris and plenty of Lucknow’s famed sweets, malai paan and balaai.

Not quite what the doctor ordered for a party whose senior leadership suffers from a variety of life-style diseases, with diabetes and hypertension topping the list. It didn’t seem to matter. There was reassurance of another kind in the deep-fried snacks and syrupy desserts. The RSS had returned to mentor its wayward child.

The Sangh was very much in play at the Lucknow meet, and not just in the choice of menu. It deputed a senior pracharak by the name of Ram Lal to direct operations from the wings, something the RSS has not done for a BJP gathering for a long time.

It was Ram Lal who pulled in the Sangh’s entire network in central UP to ensure a record turnout at the Lucknow rally addressed by BJP leaders to mark the meeting of the National Executive. He arranged to cart 18 trainloads of RSS workers and sympathisers and they filled to capacity all 15 lakh square feet of Lucknow’s Ambedkar Park. The BJP hasn’t seen this kind of crowd in UP since the heady days of its upswing in the early 90’s.

The euphoria may or may not translate into votes and seats in next year’s state assembly polls, but for the party, this show of support from the RSS is a huge shot-in-the-arm. It is now accepted wisdom that the BJP’s poor showing in UP in recent years was a consequence of the Sangh’s disenchantment with the party’s growing distance from Hindutva. Not any more. The BJP under Rajnath Singh is firmly back on the Hindutva path and the RSS has decided to pull out the stops on its behalf in next year’s do-or-die state polls.

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Saffron sentiments were clearly visible at the rally in the standing ovation the crowd gave to Hindutva’s most prominent symbol, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. BJP circles were taken aback by the cheers and applause he received in a state in which he is arguably an outsider. Modi may have even beaten son-of-the-soil Rajnath Singh by a whisker in crowd popularity. The BJP can only ignore the signals at its peril. It’s got to be Hindutva or bust. The campaign line is written in stone after the Lucknow meet.

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Ironically, while saffron was the colour of the day, Vajpayee was the flavour of the meet. For a man who never tires of announcing his retirement, the former Prime Minister had a very high profile in Lucknow on all three days.

He hasn’t spent so much time in BJP activities for some years now. At the last National Executive gathering in Dehra Dun, he flew in just for one-and-a-half days. It looks like Vajpayee and the RSS have decided to bury the hatchet for the UP polls.

The former has softened his antipathy to Hindutva (he was quite happy to share the dais with Modi who’s ouster he had demanded just last year) and the latter seems to have come to the conclusion that the saffron forces need Vajpayee’s Brahmanical appeal in UP. So, is Vajpayee back to being “neither tired nor retired”, as he once famously proclaimed? If his pro-active behaviour at Lucknow is any indication, it looks like we may see more of him in 2007 than we did in 2006.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net