BJP’s inertia

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari hit the right notes all right: homage to BR Ambedkar, tough words for squabbling senior leaders and crooning the Manna Dey number from the Hrishikesh Mukherjee-directed 1970 vintage film Anand about life being a teaser. He has, however, stayed within the familiar parameters of rhetoric and gesture. This may not be enough to get the party out of the rudderless state it has slipped into after it was shocked by the 2004 Lok Sabha poll debacle. The party accepted the 2009 defeat with less fuss. There was a sense of resignation, which was more passive than philosophical. There is the proverbial silver lining — the party rules in several states, on its own as well as with allies and retains a chunk of political space if not mind space in the country.

Gadkari’s task of reviving the political fortunes of the party at the national level will have to wait till 2014. He is not exactly self-deprecatory when he says that he is an outsider to the hothouse of party politics of Delhi. He wants to leverage his image of the humble worker who used to paste party posters in town and is now leading it. It is a good advertising story for the party, but the BJP cannot rest on those laurels. 

For the moment, it is not clear whether BJP’s romance with Hindutva is over or not. Its leaders tend to return to ideological certitudes when the big, bad world of politics proves to be difficult even as they recognise that Hindutva has lost its resonance. Perhaps, what is needed is for the party to get out of the myth conjured up by LK Advani: that he brought the BJP to centrestage because of his successful Hindutva-driven rath yatra of 1989-90.
The truth may be different. In the 1990s, people were looking for an alternative to the Congress and its jaded ways. The third front governments crumbled and it was then that BJP appeared to be a viable alternative. Social forces were also mobilising for and against the Mandal report. The mandir agitation helped the BJP to harness temporarily favourable winds to build momentum. The Tina factor helped. The BJP could again ride to power on this factor alone, if not in 2014 then in 2019. But this is passivity at its worst. If all the party can do is wait till the tide turns away from its political rivals, then it cannot build a long-term future. No party can be built on inertia.