In a virtual indictment of the BJP for indifference towards the growing anxieties and legitimate aspirations of the Hindu community, the RSS has officially advised its political offspring to set up its own organizational base. While it is too early to say if this marks a genuine parting of ways between the two, it is certain that the Mangalore session of RSS’ All India Pratinidhi Sabha has made an eloquent appraisal of the leadership of the so-called saffron party.
The BJP is wholly responsible for matters coming to this pass. It frittered away a six-year opportunity provided by a benevolent providence, and resisted honest introspection after the defeat of May 2004. More shamefully, the top leadership took advantage of the disarray among the cadres to close ranks and silence any possible criticism of its performance after the electoral rout. The swift filling up of Rajya Sabha vacancies with defeated ministers and rank outsiders checkmated all dissent, while a strident insistence upon secular-minority politics completed the demoralization of the rank and file.
The writing on the wall was already visible at Haridwar last year, when VHP leaders Ashok Singhal and Pravinbhai Togadia pointedly boycotted an RSS conclave for the duration of Mr. L.K. Advani’s visit. But it was water off a duck’s back. The momentum of the BJP’s “Hindu–minus” approach was too strong to be overturned by teasers like the removal of Veer Savarkar’s plaque from Cellular Jail and the aggravated provocation of the arrests of Kanchi Shankaracharya Swami Jayendra Saraswati and Bal Perivaar Swami Vijayendra Saraswati.
The incarceration of Swami Jayendra Saraswati on trumped up charges was, as Mr. Ashok Singhal rightly observed, a far greater challenge to Hindu society than Ayodhya. This is because the Ram Janmabhoomi, symbol of the return and rightful coronation of the Indic civilization as the foundational ethos of the Indian nation, cannot come before its time. Nor can we get it through the agency of reluctant warriors. That is why it was no accident that the BJP dropped even the formality of adherence to this cause after the Archaeological Survey of India conclusively proved that Babri Masjid was built over the foundations of a twelfth century temple, with ‘re-worked’ temple materials being fashioned into a mosque structure.
The Kanchi Shankaracharya, however, is one of the most important spiritual preceptors of our times, and an articulate spokesman of Hindu concerns on matters such as the social and religious empowerment of Dalits; the conversion offensive of missionaries abetted by State indifference or active connivance; and the return of the Ram Janmabhoomi. His arrest was part of a political conspiracy to terrorize and silence the Hindu community and facilitate the breakneck speed at which evangelization is currently proceeding in the southern states.
As an open insult to the Hindu community, it should have been met upfront. If public opinion (that did not need to come on the streets) could compel a Congress retreat in Jharkhand and Goa (even if only temporary), genuine anger by the BJP could have made a former actress eat crow in Chennai. But from the start, the party revealed a disgraceful disinclination to take up the issue; its formal positioning on the arrest later was false and duplicitous.
One of its Rajya Sabha nominees struck the first blow with a piece that suggested that His Holiness may well be guilty of some misdemeanour, if not the murder itself, and hence public opinion should await the unfolding of the case in court. Another worthy worked zealously to pressurize the Shankaracharya to abdicate while in jail, and only the most arduous efforts by extra-vigilant devotees averted this disaster, which would have amounted to a tacit admission of guilt.
In Delhi, the party maintained a stony silence, until former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was cornered by journalists at his own Iftaar party. He responded with some inanity about food and medicines for the aged saint, as if jail amenities, rather than the arrest, were the key issue. Under pressure from the cadres, Mr. Advani tried damage control with a partial hunger strike (a dharna between lunch and dinner). The turnout should worry him about his hold over the rank and file, since any state unit chief can bring more people on the streets for an anti-price rise rally. Had Asaram Bapu not graced the occasion, it would have been a complete wash-out. Even the pretence of agitation was dropped thereafter.
Even from a purely political viewpoint, the post-defeat BJP has been so out of tune with the general mood that its top leaders had no clue of ground realities in the States that recently went to the polls. Far from seizing the opportunity to return to a Hindu-centric agenda, the BJP charted a shrilly secular path to keep the NDA intact, in the vain hope of returning to power as per an astrological prediction. Worse, it’s President spent months disowning responsibility for expected defeats in Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand, even before elections were officially announced! Only the determination of dedicated cadres at grassroots level gave the party a fighting chance in Jharkhand and an honourable performance in Bihar.
It bears mentioning that the BJP’s election planning was deficient in many respects. The cadres had to fight the central leadership’s propensity to perpetuate favourites, rather than field winning candidates. This cost the party dearly in Patna and Ranchi. The Jharkhand imbroglio could have been avoided altogether by better selection of candidates, which would have given the BJP–JD (U) combine its own simple majority. In Bihar, too, it was only after the first phase of polling that party managers realized the groundswell of opinion against Laloo-Rabri misrule. They did their best thereafter, but the killer instinct was missing. One party upstart pompously intoned that the serial kidnapping of school children should not be made an election issue, as if this was not symptomatic of the thriving extortion industry and complete breakdown of law and order in the State. Yet this psychological fear of striking when the iron is hot best sums up the present state of the party.
Though the results of Bihar and Jharkhand have put some spunk back into the party, insiders lament that the leadership is both tired and unwilling to yield to a younger generation. This finds expression in a hardening of attitudes towards the Sangh Parivar, from where there has been pressure for a generational transition. The argument is offered that consensual leaders are needed to reach out to a larger audience, which can be attracted only by eroding issues of Hindu political assertion.
Thus, the BJP refuses to demand abolition of Article 370, or to speak up against continuing jihadi activity in Jammu & Kashmir despite so-called peace moves. The Kashmiri Pandits have been abandoned, and there is no resistance to UPAs dangerous plans to route gas pipelines through hostile nations. Above all, the party has chosen to ignore the Maoist anarchy in Nepal and synchronized its position with the UPA and Western nations, when India’s security demands siding with the monarch. Given such fundamental differences, the RSS has done well to ask the BJP to take responsibility for its own grassroots appeal and political success. Amicable divorce is often the best solution to marriages that do not work.
The Pioneer, 22 March 2005