The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has long foxed analysts because of its remarkable resilience. Even when its positive appeal ran out it would uncannily capitalise on its opponents’ weaknesses.
But after its second consecutive national defeat, it’s in serious trouble — 90 Lok Sabha seats and 10 percentage-points in vote-share behind the Congress, deserted by two-thirds of its NDA partners, more isolated than at any time since 1996, and in retreat virtually everywhere. The BJP has lost a significant 7 per cent of its vote-share from its peak of 25.6 per cent (1998) and 3.4 percentage-points since 2004. It’s on a downslide. Equally, its ability to drive political agendas has greatly declined.
Can the BJP recover, or will it go into long-term, even historic, decline? The answer lies in understanding its peculiar characteristics and the multiple crises it faces.
The reasons for its defeat do not lie in inept coalition-building, campaigning errors or failure of caste/social-group arithmetic. The BJP abjectly failed to halt a rejuvenated Congress’s forward march. It had no alternative policies or new agendas. It came across as a negative, querulous, confrontationist party, which desperately clings to religious-identity politics and tired clichés about terrorism (read, Islamophobia) and security (read, reviving POTA).
The BJP proved no match for the Congress’s inclusive, broadly Left-of-centre, modernist-secular pluralism, which emphasised the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and farm-loan waiver. The BJP faces four crises: an ideological crisis, a crisis of strategy, an organisational crisis and a leadership crisis. It has few means to resolve them.
The party has failed to reinvent itself as a conservative Right-of-centre party free of sectarian Hindu supremacist thinking. It continues to reject the idea of a multicultural, multi-religious India and remains subservient to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), its mentor, political master and organisational gate-keeper. Its years in power haven’t moderated the BJP. It still occupies the grey region between parliamentary politics and the Sangh Parivar’s dark world. Its defeat will probably strengthen pro-hard-Hindutva “back-to-basics” advocates, not those who want to cut the umbilical cord to the RSS.
The crisis of strategy is equally serious. Unlike in the 1980s, today’s BJP has no strategy that translates its core-ideas into mass appeal — and votes. Its earlier appeal rose from three phenomena: the remarkably successful Ramjanmabhoomi campaign, its self-projection as an anti-Mandal platform, and the “victimhood” theme. The first greatly broadened the Jana Sangh-BJP’s traditional support-base and drew in Other Backward Castes (OBC), even Dalit, support in the cow belt. By the early 1990s, the BJP commanded over one-third of UP’s OBC vote.
The anti-Mandal appeal brought the BJP huge support from the upper castes, which resented affirmative action for the underprivileged. The BJP could once simultaneously juggle two balls, Mandal and Kamandal, through Kalyan Singh’s unique persona.
“Victimhood” and avenging “history’s wrongs”— the Hindus have always been subjugated — were eagerly lapped up by a rising small middle class with an inferiority complex.
That burgeoning class has since succeeded beyond its own expectations and developed new aspirations. It doesn’t need the crutch of victimhood and obscurantist belief in India’s past glories. Like the rest of India, it looks to the future.
Now if the BJP falls back on narrow Hindutva, it can regain coherence but only at the cost of ghettoisation and becoming a version of the Jana Sangh, which commanded less than 8 per cent of the vote and about 30 Lok Sabha seats. Jettisoning Hindutva means breaking with the Parivar which provides electoral-political sustenance.
The BJP’s organisational crisis is worsening. As the prospect of power becomes remote, fairweather leaders desert it and relations with the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Parivar organisations become tense. The BJP is highly faction-ridden, perhaps more so than today’s Congress, even in states like Gujarat where it has long enjoyed unchallenged power.
The BJP faces a leadership crisis as never before. Vajpayee is history. Advani is on his way out. The next generation is 60 or older. Modi (ouch!) was its top-runner. But his failure as a campaigner in most states, the one percentage-point loss in the BJP’s Gujarat vote, and dissidence at home means he’ll be confined to Gujarat for some time.
Even if the BJP’s top ranks cohere, they will always lack the appeal of a vibrant youthful leadership in consonance with India’s changing demography — which the Congress has.
Given this, it’s hard to see how the BJP can revive itself. It won’t be a surprise if it goes into long-term, historic, even terminal, decline.
The writer is a commentator on political affairs
Comments