Then he came to the point. “What do you mean by saying Sonia versus Modi in the next general elections? Have we all disappeared? Do we all wear bangles? You think we have spent decades in politics to now hand it all over to somebody who walks in through the backdoor?”

I tell this story because, while the advanced 2004 poll distorted the emerging political scenario then, it is incredible how it is promising to play out exactly the same way now. If Modi wins on Sunday, the stage will be set for an ultimate Modi versus Sonia battle for national power, even if Advani continues to be the BJP’s shadow prime minister. Modi will then be the key campaigner, his kind of politics, his style of campaigning, his lexicon of cryptographic saffronism and even his short-sleeved kurtas will then define the BJP campaign in the next general election. In the long run, too, he will emerge as Rahul Gandhi’s main challenger. He will unite the parties that need the Muslim votes, thereby strengthening any Congress-led coalition. He will put under great strain the members of any BJP-led coalition, particularly those that still value Muslim votes. Nitish Kumar is a key example. But even his worst critics won’t deny that if he wins on Sunday, he will pretty much define the agenda for national politics in the near future.

It is also for this very reason that his re-election will worry many of his party’s national leaders exactly the same way his rise had worried Mahajan in 2002. It is not just because he will then make an immediate bid for the national leadership. On the contrary, chances are that he will let Advani be the prime-ministerial candidate for the next round. But his style and persona will cast a larger than life shadow, not just on the BJP, but on the entire universe of saffron politics. Two important factors that have marked the BJP’s national politics so far will then change. One is the fact that whatever their commitment to RSS ideology and classical Hindutva, most senior leaders of the BJP have risen from the parliamentary system of the fifties and the sixties. They have, therefore, conducted their politics within the broader parameters of constitutionalism and parliamentary sobriety. Vajpayee has sparred with Nehru, and Advani was on talking terms with Indira Gandhi and Rajiv, even after she jailed him and his entire party leadership during the Emergency. Also, whatever their private views, you have never heard any senior leader say nasty things about Muslims in any public discourse. The second factor to have defined the BJP’s politics, so far, is the political leadership’s remarkable servility to the kingmaker of Nagpur, the leadership of the RSS. So strong has that hold been that even at the peak of Vajpayee’s power most key decisions, even privatisation of PSUs, had to be cleared with Nagpur.

... contd.