BJP: That sinking feeling

But the events,after its defeat in the 2009 elections,have been nothing short of cataclysmic. Attempts have been made to shred reputations built over decades; myriad factions used every possible means to downsize each other; and affairs in state units have been used to settle scores with rivals in the Central BJP.

With the intense churning in the party,BJP Parliamentary Party leader L.K. Advaniwho may now slip into Vajpayees role,after drawing a succession plan for the party in consultation with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwathas had to face the most vicious attacks from his own people.

Only last week,Yashwant Sinha strongly seconded former national security adviser Brajesh Mishras observations,made during the course of a series of interviews given through Thursday,that Advani indeed knew about the entire chain of events during the Kandahar hijack,and that the recent expulsion of Jaswant Singh from the party was unfortunate.

In an interview to Shekhar Gupta,Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express,on NDTVs Walk The Talk early this year,Mishra had said much the same. The timing of the reiteration of his statement,and it being strongly seconded by Sinhanow known more for his proximity to BJP chief Rajnath Singhwas extremely significant. While Mishra was always known for his closeness to Vajpayee,Sinha,too,was earlier close to the former PM. Jaswant Singh,too,once formed an inseparable part of the Vajpayee group in the party.

Expulsion and after

The new wave of discontent in the party was,however,triggered by Jaswant Singhs summary expulsion from the BJP over his recent work,JinnahIndia,Partition,Independence. A former Union minister in the Vajpayee cabinet and one of the few leaders without an RSS background who went up the party ladder,Jaswant argued that while he had supported Advani on his observations on Jinnah during his 2005 visit to Pakistan,Advani didnt stand up for him in his hour of crisis. Lalji didnt even call me, is what he kept on saying.

By then,Jaswant Singhs expulsion had already reduced the BJP chintan baithak at Shimla,which was to go into the reasons for the partys defeat in the elections,to a sideshow. The act of Jaswants expulsion from the party,however,had many facets. One,he was among the first to write a letter to the party president demanding accountability in the running of the party and questioning the elevation of Arun Jaitley as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha,when the party,under him,came a cropper in the general elections. Two,BJP was faced with by-elections for seven seats in the second week of September and Sardar Patel would have come in handy. Three,RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had recently talked about restoring some order and discipline in an extremely fractious BJP leadership (and the expulsion would have suggested that a leadership was very much in place).

The act of Jaswants expulsion was supposed to have served all these objectives at one go. That,however,was not to be.

The BJP,however,argued that Jaswant had been expelled for writing something that went against the core ideology of the party.

The faultlines

The chintan baithak also saw unpleasant scenes over the leaking of an internal document that listed the reasons for the partys defeat in the elections. Advani,Jaitley and Narendra Modi were among those indirectly indicted in the document. While every faction eyed the other with suspicion over the leak,Rajnath and Jaitley stuck to the line that no Bal Apte Committee report ever existed.

Its not that faultlines in the party had developed overnight after its election defeat. They existed through the entire NDA election campaign. In their feedback to party observers,most BJP respondents in various states cited the Rajnath Singh-Arun Jaitley rivalry as a key reason for the partys defeat. The problems were not limited to that alone,though.

There were problems amongst staunch Advani loyalists themselves,most of whom,incidentally,strongly disapproved of key Advani aide Sudheendra Kulkarnis running of the Advani campaign. Kulkarni,who was also the man behind Advanis 2005 Pakistan visit,had come to be known as the key aide to the PM-candidate,besides his speech writer,by then.

When it was not an Arun Jaitley vs Rajnath Singh stand-off,there were problems between Rajnath Singh and Advani,or Murli Manohar Joshi and Advani and Jaitley,or Sushma Swaraj and Jaitley. Rivalries,as also comradeships,were driven by a ruthless cost-benefit analysis on any given issue. The multilayered faultlines thus resulted in the Shimla disaster and the party now faces a veritable implosion.

the RSS and BJP

It was natural then that the RSS would have to step in to restore a semblance of order in a virtual free-for-all. At his press conference in Delhi on Friday,sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat made two pertinent points. One,that Jinnah was directly responsible for Partition. Two,he said he had asked BJP President Rajnath Singh to take everybody along when he came here to seek my advice.

The sarsanghchalaks message was clear. One, a powerful repudiation of Jinnahs two-nation theory would always be at the core of the Sangh philosophy. Two,while the BJP shall take its own decisions,an inclusive approach is a must while deciding the partys future.

Advani and Bhagwat are known to have excellent relations,but a known Advani-basher in the extended parivar,ideologue-columnist Devendra Swaroop,went to the extent of writing in the current issue of RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya that Advanis very projection as the PM-candidate was faulty and that his Jinnah remarks in Pakistan in 2005 were ill-thought out.

RSS watcher Dilip Deodhar said the manner in which the Advani camp blew up the Jaswant Singh episode clearly showed that the intention was to endear itself to the RSS. Its not for nothing that the RSS,which reacted sharply to Advanis utterances about Jinnah,distanced itself from Jaswant expulsion by saying it had nothing to do with it, he said.

In Nagpur,M.G. Vaidya,former RSS spokesman and senior Hindutva ideologue,told The Sunday Express,Time and again,the Sangh has said it doesnt proactively indulge in the internal affairs of any of its affiliates,forget the BJP. It only gives its opinion if it is asked for.

And them,he said,For all the media talk about the kind of relationship that we share with the BJP,the fact is that we really feel sorry about the pathetic state of affairs in the party. Its nobodys wish that the BJP should suffer what it is suffering today.

(With inputs from Vivek Deshpande)