Of betrayal and realpolitik

Is there more than meets the eye in the summary dismissal of BJP stalwart Jaswant Singh from the “privileged” lot that today rules the saffron party? The apparent reason is that the old guard has to make way for the young, who anyway are not so young on the wrong side of 60.

Party patriarch LK Advani continues to be given strong doses of this bitter medicine labelled You-are-too-old .

But leaders from Uttar Pradesh, the State that catapulted the BJP from a non-performer to the seat of power in Delhi on the wings of the Ram mandir movement, have got the worst taste of it recently. From Murli Manohar Joshi to Kalraj Mishra, the BJP’s old guard has been either shown the door or cut down to size.

But Jaswant Singh doesn’t fit into this group of has-beens. His horror and distress, on full public display, when he was denied a Lok Sabha ticket from the Barmer constituency in Rajasthan, has fetched him some unpalatable advice.

The piece of advice came from the man in the inner circle, BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley, who asked Singh on his blog to swallow both the pain and the bitter medicine. In the overall interest of the party, of course!

The suave, soft-spoken and comparatively moderate Singh, who has faced adversity within the BJP before, has decided to rebel and filed his papers as an independent candidate from Barmer.

Addressing his supporters on Monday, Singh complained bitterly about how he had suggested Vasundhara Raje Scindia’s name for Rajasthan chief minister and Rajnath Singh’s name for party president and how they had now “betrayed” him.

The one person who will be laughing out loud at Jaswant Singh’s consternation is the Rajasthan chief minister.

Remember how the BJP headed by her lost the State assembly elections in 2008 due to the severe infighting in the party? Singh and his mentor Bhairon Singh Shekhawat have never been on the same page as the lady from Gwalior’s royal family.

There was also this bizarre incident of a party hosted by him being raided during Raje’s earlier regime, on the charge that drugs were being served! The rivalry between the Shekhawat-Singh and Raje groups is no secret.

So, with some of her own party stalwarts working against her, Raje, who had provided decent governance in Rajasthan — the highlight of which was several schemes for the girl child in a state notorious for its sati pratha — lost the battle to an undeserving Ashok Gehlot.

But now Raje is not only firmly in the saddle; she had made politically astute moves such as seeking Narendra Modi’s help in canvassing for her, and he did so extensively in the 2013 assembly elections, helping her sweep the polls.

That the Barmer seat went to former Congress MP and MLA Sonaram Chowdhry, who was barely a few days old in the BJP, is significant. But more significant is the defector’s triumphant statement, as Singh fretted and fumed, that he had the “blessings” of Raje and would score a big victory from the constituency.

How Jaswant Singh weathers this storm and how Barmer treats its prodigal will be interesting to watch. The man who was thrown out of the party during the BJP’s Shimla meet for his book on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who has proved to be the kiss-of-death also for Advani, managed a re-entry.

His position and importance, or rather earlier importance, in the BJP goes back to AB Vajpayee, who was very fond of him and gave him important portfolios such as finance, defence and external affairs.

But this time around, it might be difficult for Singh to return to the BJP, having called its present leaders “fake”.

His son, Manvender, a BJP MLA in the Raje regime, is likely to quit the party too. Neither the RSS, which was livid with Singh for his favourable comments on Jinnah, nor any other leaders, might come forward to play Santa for him.

Anyway, he is already 76, and had made it clear that he would be contesting for the last time.

Much more than Singh’s exit, what will be much more difficult for hardcore BJP supporters to reconcile with is the unseemly speed with which the party, which claims to be very different from the “corrupt, dynasty-driven and decadent” Congress, is embracing defectors from other parties, particularly from the Congress, and rewarding them with tickets; Sonaram was accommodated at the expense of Jaswant.

And then there was this fiasco about the Shri Ram Sena chief Pramod Muthalik’s entry into the BJP. He was welcomed into the party with huge fanfare by the Karnataka BJP chief and other leaders, before a virtual storm on the social media recalling the obnoxious role he had played in attacking young girls in a Mangalore pub put an end to that drama.

Within four hours of joining the BJP, Muthalik’s membership was cancelled, leading the maverick to claim that he had neither “murdered nor raped” anybody.

This tweet from Salman Anees Soz (@SalmanSoz) has an adequate response: “Muthalik says ‘we didn’t murder or rape’. We did such a ‘small thing’. I agree. Beating helpless girls is too small a deal for your type.”

Giving credence to the grapevine that Muthalik was slipped into the BJP through the backdoor by Advani loyalist Ananth Kumar, writer Madhu Kishwar, a huge Modi fan tweeted: “Karnataka friends should know — Is it true that Muthalik drama was Ananth Kumar’s mischief?”

But the prize catch for the BJP has been the entry of veteran journalist MJ Akbar who has been a strong critic of Modi for the Gujarat 2002 killings. True, he has been a sharper critic of the Sonia-led Congress too.

Even though Akbar’s explanation on why he joined the BJP is weak at best, this former Congress MP and a close friend of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is going to make at least a section of educated and thinking Muslims take another hard look at the BJP and see if they stand to benefit by voting for it.