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The importance of being
Vajpayee
By Ramtanu Maitra
An
air of change is blowing across the corridors of power
in Delhi. It is evident that the dominant party in the
24-party coalition that has reigned for three years, and
hopes to reign for another two, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), is in the process of preparing for the next
general elections in 2004.
In addition to the
usual problems all ruling parties face following a weak
and listless performance, the BJP has a few additional
ones. One of the most important is the fact that their
magnetic vote-catcher, Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, will not be contesting the elections. He may
lead some rallies, but it will not be the same as
leading the party. People in India always vote for the
leader, and then for his or her party.
Under the
circumstances, the responsibility of leading the BJP
falls on the perennial number two, Lal Krishna Advani,
the powerful home minister and now deputy prime
minister. Among the more important re-positioning of
leaders, the selection of Arun Jaitley, the youthful BJP
leader and the former Delhi University student leader,
as party spokesman, is most significant. No doubt, the
BJP has begun electoral preparations.
These
preparations, however, were not brought about by Alex
Perry, the Time magazine correspondent now infamous in
India, whose "Asleep At the Wheel" article about
septuagenarian Vajpayee was not only wide off the mark,
but showed some of the problems that the
firengees (foreigners) have in understanding how
Vajpayee, and some other Indian political leaders,
function.
Accustomed to high-profile Western
leaders often obsessed with physical fitness, and
possibly goaded by some of his well-wishers, Perry made
the mistake of believing that Vajpayee's slow reaction
to most events meant that he had lost control, or lost
interest, of the country's affairs. If Perry's intent
was to undermine Vajpayee and promote L K Advani, it was
an even bigger mistake. No matter what people may say in
private, the personal relationship between Advani and
Vajpayee is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar; one Time
magazine article cannot crack that bond.
Winds of change
What is happening
within the BJP cannot be labelled as a power struggle,
but rather the beginning of a process to put the "right
people" in the right places to assure that the large
vacuum created by the retirement of Vajpayee is filled.
If one keeps one's ears to the ground, one can
hear the rustling within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS), the so-called brain trust of the party and the
vanguard of propagating a philosophy of Hindu supremacy
in the country. Once a monolith headed and dominated by
the Chitpawani Brahmins from the Konkani coast of
Maharashtra, the RSS is only a shadow of the past. Like
every other political party in India today, the RSS is
nothing but a conglomeration of factions. The old guards
from Maharashtra are virtually powerless and the RSS's
strength has shifted far and wide, particularly to the
south. But the south does not have much to show
politically for the BJP, nor can the party boast of a
political leader of stature in southern India.
In addition, the RSS is faced with a much more
complex factor - that of the large lumpen crowd
belonging to its extremist and militant offspring
organizations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the
Bajrang Dal. The RSS cannot ignore this factor because
of the BJP's political exigencies - the two outfits have
"helped" the party before, by such acts as putting L K
Advani on a pilgrimage to stoke the fires of the Ayodhya
issue in the late 1980s.
Hardliners claim that
it was in fact this duo that brought the BJP out of the
mortuary and infused it with sufficient new life to form
a government. The failure of the party in the 1984
elections, when it won only four parliamentary seats,
and its success in the post-Ayodhya general elections of
1989, when it won more than 80 seats, are held up as
irrefutable evidence.
The hardliners,
particularly the VHP, celebrate the Gujarat riots that
have seen thousands of Muslims killed in sectarian
fighting, and want to use the incident to launch yet
another aggressive pro-Hindu political movement. But the
Gujarat riot is clearly more complex and definitely more
brutal than the Ayodhya campaign. Its use may cut the
BJP both ways. Nonetheless, one cannot rule out the
possibility that the tainted former Gujarat chief
minister, Narendra Modi, will emerge as the hardliners'
choice for the next leader of the BJP. That is only a
possibility if the BJP fares badly in the 2004 general
elections under the leadership of Advani.
It
would, however, be naive to assume that the hardliners
will have their way no matter what. There are also
others, such as cabinet minister Pramod Mahajan, a
Maharashtrian, who will vie for leadership of the
less-orthodox members of the party. Regional
factionalization within the RSS will also play a role in
determining who would wear the mantle if it was passed
on by Advani following an election fiasco. But at this
point in time, L K Advani is the undisputed leader (and
Vajpayee's input over the years in this must not be
underestimated).
It is almost a certainty that
the BJP, now a much weaker political party than it was
during the 1999 general elections, will be tugged and
pulled in different directions by various factions
within the party. These directions are not very
difficult to foresee. On one end will be the aggressive
and orthodox pseudo-religious groups who believe that
the party will do much better at the hustings if the
campaign espouses pro-Hindu abstract nationalism. They
are even willing to put forward a confrontational
posture against Muslims and Christians. According to
them, garnering more and more Hindu votes is all that
matters, and revving up Hindu chauvinism is the best way
to do it.
Vajpayee, on the other hand, has a
different approach. In his Independence Day speech last
week he condemned the riots in Gujarat. But he is also
aware that the Godhra incident, in which a group of
disenchanted Muslims attacked railroad coaches, burning
alive Hindu activists and their families returning from
Ayodhya, was the key to solving the mystery behind the
riot that followed. In other words, he believes that the
riot was triggered to destabilize a BJP-run state and
the Muslims were used as fodder.
While the VHP
and the Bajrang Dal want an aggressive anti-minority
campaign, Vajpayee may seek a political alliance among
the Hindus of all castes and creeds. An attempt has
already been made in that direction in the state of
Uttar Pradesh, where the Dalit-led Bahujan Samaj party
rules the state with BJP support. Vajpayee makes it
clear that the success of the BJP in the future depends
on bringing all castes and religious groups under the
party banner. But unlike the Congress party, which
promoted atheism earlier, Vajpayee believes that the
Hindutva (the Hindu soul) should be the basis of
governing the Indian people.
The Vajpayee
factor
The Vajpayee factor will continue to cast
its shadow over the BJP throughout the preparatory
period, and even after the man leaves the scene. Like
the long shadow that Jawaharlal Nehru cast within the
Indian National Congress, which shaped and challenged
later Congress leaders, Vajpayee's shadow will also be a
determining factor in making or breaking the future BJP.
But as long as Vajpayee remains on the scene,
domestic and foreign policies will remain very much
under his control. That does not, however, mean that the
policies will be dynamic or radical; it means that no
other policy maker, in the real sense, will prevail. For
instance, if disinvestment is given a stronger push in
the coming days by minister Arun Shourie to cure the
ills of the failing public sector enterprises, one can
be certain that he has the blessings of Vajpayee. If
such a policy is abandoned, it means that the premier
Vajpayee has changed his course and has asked Shourie to
go slow.
Often, Vajpayee acts immobile.
Reminiscent of the sphinx-like former Indian premier
Narasimha Rao, he also believes that the most important
decision is often not to make any decision. He believes
that such a pause is the essence of statecraft, and may
often act as the healer. This inaction must not be
mistaken for confusion or lack of direction or a sign of
failing health. The non-policy option is by no means a
guaranteed success, but it is an intentional political
choice, the result of which evolves only over a period
of time.
On the Kashmir issue, some tend to
believe that the tough line that New Delhi recently
adopted was generated by Advani. While there is no
gainsaying that Advani has a major input in the matter,
the final policy is always Vajpayee's. Vajpayee was
India's foreign minister from 1977 to 1980. He visited
both Pakistan and China - two of India's hostile
neighbors at the time. He came back from both places
with flying colors. It is no secret that he wants to go
down in history as the one who "resolved" the Kashmir
issue. Whether he succeeds in his mission depends on
many slippery factors, but it is a certainty that he
will not let control over the issue pass into some other
hand while he is still in power.
A leading
Indian journalist, M J Akbar, in a recent article in the
Karachi-based daily, Dawn, pointed out that Vajpayee was
not a high profile activist. Vajpayee, he observed, will
"involve himself with decisions that open or shut doors,
and are therefore correctly known as key decisions. He
takes time over them, for rumination and consideration
are of necessity time-consuming."
(©2002 Asia
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