This is a requiem for the failed ideology of Hindutva and for the party that made it fashionable. The Bharatiya Janata Party is not fully dead yet but is providing us with the astonishing spectacle of a major political party committing slow suicide in full public view. Its leaders appear to know that something bad is happening, or they would not be convening yet another Chintan Baithak (worry session), but they seem incapable of stopping the terminal decline. Reasons why are not far too seek.

The single most important reason for the sad state that our major opposition party finds itself in is a very old man who cannot believe that he has lost his last chance to become Prime Minister of India. So obsessed has Shri Lal Krishna Advani been with this impossible dream that after the BJP lost power in 2004, he seems to have done nothing more than sit at home, surrounded by fawning friends and family, and dream of 7 Racecourse Road. The BJP did not lose badly in the 2004 general election. It was defeated on account of choosing the wrong allies and because nobody expected Chandrababu Naidu to do so badly in Andhra. If Shri Advani had not been so self-absorbed, he would have spent the five years between that general election and the one just gone by building up the party and finding the right issues to take to the people.

Manmohan Singh’s first government provided enough ammunition. Jihadi terrorism and the Government of India’s namby-pamby response should have been enough to propel aggressive Hindutva back to the forefront. Then, there was the international credit crunch and its effect on the Indian economy, but Mr Advani appears to have been too self-absorbed to tackle these issues in a manner that would appeal to the average voter. And, everything depended on him since the BJP President, Shri Rajnath Singh, has never grown into a national leader. If he has opinions on national issues, nobody cares to hear them.

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