The Hindu Business Line : The road ahead for BJP

IT IS back to basics for the BJP. If losing the Lok Sabha elections was the first major shock, its inability to oust the Congress-NCP regime in Maharashtra has been the last straw on the camel's back for the party which was celebrating with such fanfare a shining India not so long ago. But while reviving the BJP's fortunes will be an uphill task for its new chief, Mr L. K. Advani, the immediate relief to the people of India is that you no longer see the former BJP president on every television news channel. By the time Mr Venkiah Naidu was ready to quit as the BJP president, the media and, through it, the people of India, had had an overdose of the man and what had once been considered his pithy one-liners.

These, like "ek hath mei BJP ka jhanda, doosrey hath mei NDA ka agenda" (In one hand the BJP's flag, in the other the NDA's agenda), had soured after a while and one distinctly got the impression that he kept addressing the media more to get attention than because he had anything significant to say.

But Mr Advani is another entity altogether and barely needs to address the media at the drop of a hat. So, for some time at least, there will be some relief from the BJP's reaction every time an opposition — particularly Congress — leader sneezes.

With Mr Advani at the helm, will the BJP go back to its Hindutva hard line? At the party's National Council meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday, Mr Advani once again reminded all and sundry that the BJP under his leadership, and with the blessings of the entire Sangh Parivar, would not hesitate to revive the Hindutva card.

So, we had Mr Advani describing Ayodhya as the "most potent mass movement in post-independent India" and announcing that a Ram temple will be built at any cost. Neither leading a coalition government nor facing any major election in any important State for the time being, it is natural for the BJP to shed its mask of being an inclusive party, and for its leader to proclaim: "Our commitment to the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is intact and unwavering. The nation eagerly looks forward to the day the makeshift temple at Ram Janmabhoomi is replaced by a structure befitting the greatness of Lord Ram."

Clearly the gloves are off. The BJP is not in power at the Centre, either alone or in a coalition government, and so does not need to speak the language of national integration or inclusiveness. Surely it was with wistfulness that Mr Advani admitted at the BJP's National Council that the circumstances that had made Ayodhya the "most potent mass movement" had changed. "We must be candid enough to recognise that the Hindu anger that exploded on the streets in the early 1990s has given way to a patient wait for the new temple whose construction is, I feel, inevitable."

The last thing this nation, under the throes of communal hatred and violence in the last few years, needs is the explosion of any more anger — Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or whatever.

How politicians change colours with changing political equations can be seen from the fact that the BJP's top brass, which till yesterday was urging patience to the more fiery elements of the saffron brigade by saying that as the matter was in court and, after all, courts have to be respected, can today turn around and say, as did Mr Advani, that the Ram temple issue was caught in an "infuriatingly complex" legal tangle.

What he added is even more significant; that hitherto political parties had only paid "lip service" to the need for a judicial verdict on Ayodhya, because it saved them the embarrassment of making a decision. Surely, he and his colleague, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, should know the import of this statement.

It is doubtful that Mr Advani will embark on yet another rath yatra, as people of India have tired of these stunts, and with the last yatra of the BJP sanyasin Uma Bharti — the Tiranga Yatra — turning out to be a flop, surely the BJP's loha purush will pull out some other card from his sleeve.

More than any other BJP leader, the seasoned Mr Advani knows only too well that it was the Congress(I), led by Ms Sonia Gandhi, that made the BJP bite the dust in the Lok Sabha elections. In the BJP's innermost circles there are enough taunts of the "videshi mahila" pulling the rug from under its feet and, hence, it is for the Congress, rather than any other party, that the BJP leadership reserves its ire.

So Mr Advani too has lashed out at the Congress(I), accusing it of adopting double standards in dealing with the "so-called" secular Hindus, while it wooed the minorities with "a surreptitious and silent approach to forestall any countervailing mobilisation."

Mr Advani's agenda is clear enough: To wean away the "so-called secular Hindus" from the big, bad Congress and into the BJP fold. While this is his agenda, his hope — or wishful thinking — is that the "limping" United Progressive Alliance government will oblige the BJP by collapsing soon, giving it one more shy at returning to power.

The UPA Government and the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, busy keeping the coalition going and facing a host of problems on the economic front, may soon have their hands full tackling angry sadhus and sants who will any day give the `Chalo Ayodhya' call. Those who don't have a short memory will recall that it was the mass movement of sadhus, sants and ordinary Ram sevaks to Ayodhya in trainloads in early 2001 that acted as a cinder in igniting the bogey of Sabarmati Express that resulted in the Godhra tragedy and its subsequent horrendous fallout in Gujarat.

Remember the intemperate language some of the Ram Janmabhoomi stalwarts had used against the then Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee, even as saffron outfits such as the VHP cheered on? And what Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav does to tackle the law and order situation such actions entail in UP remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, the Muslims of this country, be it in the All India Muslim Personal Law Board or the Babri Masjid Action Committee, do not have the foresight, the wisdom and a dash of generosity to take the steam out of such movements by coming forward to thrash out a sensible and workable solution to the Ayodhya imbroglio.

If they had, thousands of innocent Muslims would not have died in various communal riots, the Godhra carnage would not have happened, and the ghettoised Muslims in many pockets of India could have shaken off their dismal and depressing past, shrugged off their status as vulnerable vote banks and looked forward confidently to a prosperous future in an India on its way to becoming an economic powerhouse.

Those Muslims with more secular credentials could then make an occasional pilgrimage to Ayodhya, as do thousands of Hindus to the Ajmer or Nagore dargahs, and both Hindus and Muslims, as well as other minorities, could then compel the rulers to talk the language of development, education, progress and true nationalism.

At the moment this might sound like a dream, but more fantastic dreams have come true!

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)