WHERE IS THE BJP GOING WRONG

Where is the BJP going wrong? From all the news that you read in the print media and watch on the idiot box you would believe that the worst problem that the BJP faces today is the infighting in its ranks. I beg to differ.

Let us look at what happened just before BJP came to power. Let’s look at how BJP behaved just before it came to power.

The stage is just before 1989. Rajiv Gandhi commits the ultimate foolishness of his career (not that this was the only one; the man must have been the king of all foolish people ever to have come to power in India. Look at IPKF – what can be a bigger blunder and a product of utterly muddy thinking. Look at what he said in Parliament when the Bofors issue first broke, MY GOD! Look at the Shah Bano case and judge for yourself. Look at his dolphin saving show – I mean the man may have had completely noble intentions in his heart but do you completely forget, even after being a politician for some time, how it would be looked back at home? Or just hear back in your years his classic “Nani Yaad Dila Doonga” speech! That was just wonderful. It made you laugh outright and brought home the point that the man was basically foolish). He allows the gates of Ram Lala Temple to be opened for offering prayers. He thinks he is being smart. He thinks that having played the Muslim card in the guise of the Shah Bano case, he is now playing the Hindu card and will get votes from both the sides. He probably had never heard of the old Hindi couplet (not that anyone in the Gandhi family, save Nehru, can ever be accused of being a bibliophile)

Dono thaur say gaye Pande
Na halwa mila na mande
(you get worst of both the worlds)

You go out to get the best of both the worlds, you must remember that you can get off getting the worst!

The BJP capitalized on this immediately. It set the agenda right then and there. The cry was “Mandir wahin banayenge.” I do not like temple building etc. It is a retrogressive agenda. You can make far better things with the same money and that makes economic sense too. But in politics often what makes good economic sense does not make political sense. And in a completely emotionalized politics that we have in India, rational issues never make any sense (otherwise how would have the NDA lost the last election after the nation made all round progress under the regime?). BJP realized the emotional power of the issue that Rajiv Gandhi had handed over to it on a platter. BJP SET THE AGENDA THEN.

When Bofors came, the BJP combined corruption with the Hindu card that it has a copyright on. VP Singh walked out. BJP made him play in its lap. When Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections, it may have come as a surprise to some, but it was actually a foregone conclusion. The two emotive issues – corruption and temple – could never have made him come even to smelling distance of victory.

Then Advani came up with the biggest flash he has had in his life – the Rathyatra. That firmly put BJP in the position of agenda maker. It was this party that made the agenda and it was the other parties that reacted to the agenda. It was for other parties to be increasingly shrill in branding BJP communal. It was for BJP to go ahead with what it was doing and keep making the others dance to the agenda it set.

Till 2004, till it lost power, BJP had the savvy to be the maker of the agenda of Indian Politics. After 2004, it has utterly lost it.

People stick to magic. If you have magic in you, they will stick to you. Fissiparous tendencies grow when the magic ceases. You try finding magic elsewhere and you fall apart gradually and then increasingly. In politics the magic is agenda. You know how to set it, you will keep your people together. Not just that, your allies will stick to you. You have the magic. You cannot set the agenda, your allies leave first and then your own people start rebelling.

The infighting that you see is not a disease. It is a symptom. It is a symptom of the disease that is called loss of agenda making ability.

What is BJP doing today? It is dancing to whatever agenda is there. No. Other parties still do not have the ability to set any agenda. Congress is just pathetic. It is the governing party and it still does not know how to set the agenda. The other parties too are the same. The agendas are not really agendas. They are events that are taking place. But since the events are controlled by the ruling combination most of the time, by dancing to events, reacting to events, BJP is dancing to their tunes. This is what has principally gone wrong with BJP. This is the reason why there is infighting. This is the reason why its allies are increasingly belligerent and are deserting it either overtly or covertly.

Till the day BJP gets back its ability to set the agenda once again, it will remain in the doghouse. Look at the situation. The Congress is back to its foolish behaviour. The Left has always been made entirely of strident negative and persistently coughing gents who are even otherwise on the verge of extinction (only they don’t know it and their success in the past election makes them conveniently blind to their future). There is a situation which is tailor made for opposition that is BJP. But will BJP wake up? Will it get back its ability to set the agenda?

It is just this. Everything else is secondary and rides on this central aspect. So. Do you see BJP getting back its ability of setting an agenda? Or do you think it has lost it permanently like the Congress has? On this question rides the fate of the Indian parliament and who will form the nest government.