Now let’s look at how the BJP had gained ascendancy in the late nineties. At least two broad phenomena helped power it to Raisina Hill. First, the historic decline of the Congress. But the 2004 General Election, which saw the Congress win 145 seats — as opposed to the 114 it had won in the 1999 polls — indicates that the Congress’s downward spiral has hit a pause. At the national level today, the Congress appears far more convincing as a political force than it had in the second half of the nineties even as the BJP has lost the potent appeal of unfulfilled promise that it seemed to embody in the 1998 general election. Some within the Sangh Parivar would argue that this is precisely why the BJP needs to return to hardline Hindutva as represented by personalities such as the Modi of today, and the L.K. Advani of the early nineties.

Which brings us to the second phenomenon that brought the party to power at the Centre: the increasingly forgotten moderation of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The combination of Advani, with his hardline politics, and Vajpayee with his more fuzzy appeal, did the trick. Neither leader could have achieved power on his own terms. L.K. Advani knows this well. That is why as PM-in-waiting he tries to be both hardliner and moderate by turns.

Christophe Jaffrelot has argued that if the BJP wishes to remain an all-India party, it needs to do at least four things: one, stick to its moderate line, given the compulsions of its allies; two, be generous with its regional allies in terms of seat adjustments and portfolios; three, ensure the allies continue to consider the Congress as its rival to power, and not the BJP; four, rein in the political ambitions of its own cadre in these states. Modi, who having presided over the 2002 post-Godhra progrom in Gujarat and who went on to win an election on the passions it had unleashed; Modi, who has never lost an opportunity to brandish his Hindutva credentials — as he did on Wednesday at the National Development Council by attacking the PM’s plan for minorities — is not the man to achieve such a sync. Advani has at least stated publicly that the day that saw Babri Masjid demolished was the saddest day of his life; Modi has not deigned to do even this vis-à-vis the 2002 pogrom.

... contd.