“Hamare yahan pravakta bahut ho gaye hain. Keval akhbar mein naam dekhne ke liye aur television mein chehra dekhne ke liye aatur rehte hain (We are having too many spokespersons in the party these days. They want to see their names in print and see their faces on television),” said Advani, speaking on the birth anniversary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

“They (this new breed of leaders, who are ever willing to hold forth as 24/ 7 spokespersons) don’t realise or understand the values that Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee stood for, and the sacrifices that they made for the ideology and the party,” said the senior BJP leader.

A large number of BJP leaders have held forth on reasons for the party’s election defeat, in the media, in the recent weeks, while other leaders have written to the party leadership on the party’s defeat, some of which found their way into the media.

With the BJP at the crossroads, and two competing strands of thought, broadly understood in terms of Hindutva and moderates in the party, Advani also cited Mookerjee’s life and times to stress the need for “alliance building”. “Mookerjee once said that he would have changed the country if he had four or five Deendayal Upadhyayas. He was also acutely aware of the need to end the hegemony of the Congress, a reason why he floated a 21-member anti-Congress alliance, called National Democratic Front, way back in 1952. Our own alliance — National Democratic Alliance — formed under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 was named after it,” said Advani.

Citing the examples of Mookerjee and Communist Party of India’s Hiren Mukherjee, who Advani said were the two best parliamentarians in the first Lok Sabha, the senior BJP leader said “today’s leaders perhaps didn’t believe in studying after joining politics”.

Crediting Mookerjee with ensuring the positive changes in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Advani, however, asked the party cadre not to lose heart after the recent defeat. “We have 116 members in Lok Sabha with 58 first timers; 47 members in Rajya Sabha; and state governments in eight states. Our defeat then was not that big. We had, after all, only two members in the Lok Sabha in ‘84,” said Advani.