Advani and Jaitley, though not mentioned by name, are the principal targets of the veiled attacks. Members of the older generation are angry with Advani for bypassing them. If the focus is largely on Jaitley, it is because they suspect his star is rising in the party. Their argument is that those who were responsible for the party’s defeat should not be rewarded - “inam” and “parinam” as Jaswant Singh terms it — appears contrived and motivated. The BJP’s electoral performance in 2009 has been very varied in different parts of the country, suggesting that local factors played a more decisive role than the central campaign and national issues. The party did very well in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Bihar and very poorly in Rajasthan, Haryana, UP, Uttarakhand, Orissa and Delhi.

Summing up at the end of the BJP national executive, spokesperson Venkaiah Naidu made it clear that the party believed in collective responsibility and not individual apportioning of blame. A bigger snub was administered by Sunderlal Patwa, a party veteran and former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. He questioned the dissidents’ bona fides by asking what contribution they had made to the organisation — a remark that hit home since none of the three men, considered part of the BJP’s intelligentsia, is looked upon as a team player or an organisation person.

While the lost generation, as it is now sometimes referred to, was at the forefront of the attack, whether openly or implicitly, Gen-Next, more in tune with the party’s ethos, has maintained a discreet silence. But that does not mean that its members are not active behind the scenes. The fact that Rajnath Singh waited 10 days to announce Jaitley’s routine resignation as party general secretary is itself suspect. The real reason that the knives are out in the party is over the question of who becomes the party president when Rajnath Singh steps down at the end of the year. Until now the party president’s role has been overshadowed by the two founding fathers, Vajpayee and Advani. Vajpayee has bowed out of active politics and Advani seems inclined to follow suit. The new president will play a key role in deciding the future positioning of the BJP and the form of Hindutva it will propagate. And no doubt the RSS, which may not interfere in the day-to-day functioning of the party, will have a major say in deciding who will steer the BJP out of these troubled waters.

... contd.