Who’ll do the dirty work now?

 

NEW DELHI: The most troubling question for the BJP has always been: “Who after Vajpayee and Advani?” Today, the party is struggling to answer another one: “Who after Mahajan?”

 

Mahajan had a unique position in the BJP. He was at once its chief fundraiser and leading strategist, a skilled organiser and an interlocutor, valuable in the current era of coalition politics. In addition, he had the most important qualification for a BJP leader: a hotline with the RSS, which had started to appreciate his value as a man for all seasons, despite his ‘Shining India’ blunder that cost the BJP General Election 2004 and his lavish lifestyle.

 

It is a position few can fill.

 

None among the BJP’s second-generation leaders can match Mahajan’s impressive array of skills. All have their talents, but not the versatility that made him an invaluable lieutenant, first to Advani during his rathyatra days, then to Vajpayee when he was Prime Minister, and now to party president Rajnath Singh. Arun Jaitley has an impressive network across the political spectrum, but he has shown no inclination to tackle the nuts and bolts of managing a party. Sushma Swaraj has chosen to box herself in a saffron corner.

 

Rajnath Singh is largely seen as an interim president, with little appeal outside his North Indian thakur caste. Venkaiah Naidu is better known for his garrulous appearances on television. And Narendra Modi, who could perhaps claim to match Mahajan’s many talents, is a non-starter for a national role because of the communal stain he carries.

 

Of all the varied ways in which Mahajan served the BJP, it was his fundraising prowess that the party will miss the most. Sample this: On the day he was shot by his youngest brother, Mahajan was to have given funds to BJP vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu for the poll campaign in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. For a couple of days, as Mahajan battled for life in hospital, the BJP’s campaign risked coming to a halt, till a leading industrialist bailed it out. It underscored the importance of being Mahajan.

 

Mahajan was once quoted as saying in an interview that collecting funds was like cleaning bathrooms: nobody likes to do it, but somebody has to get the job done. While most of his contemporaries took the moral high ground on money matters, he had no qualms about getting his hands dirty. He, who started as a small-town schoolteacher, made his way easily into Mumbai’s corporate world to establish close connections with leading industrial houses like the Reliance, Essar and Bharti groups, the Tatas and the Singhanias.

 

It is a moot point whether Mahajan would have been BJP president one day, or indeed, whether he would have been the party’s candidate for Prime Minister. His untimely death has left many questions unanswered. But Vajpayee put his finger on what Mahajan meant to the BJP when he dubbed him the party’s Lakshman.