When they begin they begin

When they begin they begin

Is the Chief Minister of West Bengal a little touched? Perhaps she is, because she conducts herself like Idi Amin Lite addled by Banquo’s Ghost. Which in this instance is no apparition in armour, but stamped in red and coming for her with hammer and sickle at the ready. The resultant paranoia is overwhelming her common sense and the benighted people of Paschimbanga are paying the price. It appears as if the toxicity induced by the lengthy affair with Leftism in the State will take at least a generation or two to leach out.

Back at the national capital, the BJP has won all three sections of the trifurcated MCD and retained its hold on the municipality, as it did when it was one large, unwieldy entity. This repeat MCD win, added to the growing number of states run by the BJP and its limited set of allies, suggests it is time to change gears to prepare for the main prize in 2014.

But here you’ve got camps within the Sangh Parivar. The ideology camp says Hindutva brought the BJP and its like-minded allies such as the Shiv Sena, all the way from two seats in Parliament to Principal Opposition Party with a full turn in power at the Centre. And that’s without mentioning the MCD, the Mumbai Municipality, and the States under its stewardship.

The change wallahs say this is all very well, but Hindutva puts off a lot of potential voters and cannot take the BJP any further, particularly in the active absence of a charismatic and inclusive leader like AB Vajpayee. So even though Centrism is the mantra to this lot, the unexciting roll out of such a thing lacks traction. The issues and stances that might show the BJP as Centrist are difficult to turn into emotive voting issues. Besides, it is all mainly about economics.

In contrast, it is argued, what are the chances of a political party that lets go of its core beliefs for electoral gain? This counter argument is indeed emotive and chooses to ignore the twists and turns of all parties in power in the name of pragmatism, whether they professed one belief or another in their manifestos or at the hustings.

Nevertheless, what is clear for the looming general elections in 2014, is that the BJP must build alliances based on quid pro quos well before the elections. Otherwise, it is going to find itself about a 100 seats short of a shot at the brass ring.  To get beyond a somewhat wobbly alliance with the JDU and another with the Akalis, albeit reinvigorated by the recent win in Punjab, is an unavoidable requirement.

Many analysts have indeed been saying this, but it is a tiger changing its stripes conundrum. The worry is that it won’t work with the voting public. And what if even the loyalists and faithful mistake it for a Zebra, stripes still intact, but quite a different animal nonetheless.

The answer might lie, as it does for the rival UPA alliance, in the pampering, finessing and assuring of regional aspirations. For the BJP, it also means a blunting of anti-minority rhetoric, even a ramping up of minority candidates, which saw it to victory in Catholic South Goa recently.

It is a model that can work very well elsewhere, with Muslim BJP candidates in Muslim majority areas and so on. This, along with a studied silence on the Hindutva shibboleths and a gag order to the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, the sadhus and mahants et al to cease and desist till at least the national elections are done with.

Sure, such strategic silence might be interpreted as no more than a temporary abeyance, but it might prove to be a good enough platform for moderates and fence-sitters to climb on board. And a postponement of Hindutva war cries such as the temple at Ayodhya, and the revocation of Article 370 in Kashmir, may not necessarily be regarded as abandonment of core beliefs for the ideologues.  Even those that argue that the overwhelmingly Left-Liberal-Secular Media are not necessarily representative of the actual voting public. They too can also take comfort in the fact that this is exactly what the Vajpayee led NDA did to both form itself, and stay in power for the full term.

But who in the BJP can be credible in delivering this series of messages to a national public? The name that springs to mind immediately is the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mr. Arun Jaitly. And reports state he has made up his mind to contest for a Lok Sabha seat at last. Mr. Jaitly certainly has the necessary articulation and could well be a Vajpayee-like consensus builder given his head.

And in a fragmented polity, a consensus builder is the crying need of the day whichever national formation one belongs to, lest both be held hostage by the regionals. They would then have no one to blame but themselves.

Other stalwarts in the Party, such as the redoubtable Mr. Narendra Modi, can be selectively deployed, along with Ms. Sushma Swaraj, Mr. Venkiah Naidu, veteran war horse Mr. LK Advani, Party President Mr. Nitin Gadkari, young firebrand Mr. Varun Gandhi. All of them and others can be tasked to manage various aspects of the consensus building and be committed to the need to not pull in different directions at once.

State satraps too can be very useful in building up this operation “Raft”. Amongst the allies, there is Mr. Nitish Kumar and the Badals and one time familiars to be wooed back such as Mr. Patnaik and Madame Jayalalithaa. The question of the PM’s gaddi can be left till after the elections are won and be arrived at by consensus too.

It may seem like a tall order given the demonstrated inability of the Sangh Parivar to work in unison after the retirement of AB Vajpayee from active politics. But if the DRDO can launch an ICBM with just three years of sustained effort led by a lady scientist, Ms. Tessy Thomas, dubbed the “Agniputri”; it is by no means impossible.

The peculiar lack of hunger for capturing power at the Centre that some of the fractiousness suggests however, is that perhaps many in the party are content as they are. They have power and influence while the UPA carries the can. It is a having one’s cake and eating it too stratagem. But for those of us who back the BJP and vote for it, we surely deserve better treatment by our leaders.

(1,094 words)

20^th April 2012

Gautam Mukherjee