A Prescription for the BJP's Revival

It is natural for a political party to do some soul searching after an electoral defeat, such as the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered during the recent Indian elections. This soul searching has thus far been largely confined to internal bickering and various leaders blaming each other for the party’s defeat. One would expect this internal bickering to be followed by those “chintan baithaks” (introspective sessions) at 11 Ashoka Road in Delhi that the party is famous for. It is to be hoped that those introspective sessions will not be restricted to the usual tinkering and that the leadership will take some bold steps, both in terms of organization and policies, if the party has to revive itself as a national force. I do not subscribe to the BJP/RSS philosophy but I do believe that India will be better off with strong national parties than with weak ones dominated by single-agenda regional parties. It is in this spirit that I address the following suggestions to the party.


Go Back

The first thing that you need to do is to go back to the old Jan Sangh ethics when it comes to party discipline and motivating party workers. Even those who hated the Jan Sangh policies could not help but admire the Jan Sangh workers’ dedication, discipline and willingness to put in hours of self-less work on dry peas (sookhe channay) without regard to the result or the abuse hurled on them by the mainstream media. It was their hard work and sacrifices that laid the foundation for the future success of the Party. It may be difficult to inculcate that old spirit among your new workers but not impossible; for this, you may have to forgo the ambition of gaining power immediately and attract only those who are interested in the success of your ideology; or, as we say in vernacular, you need ‘khoon denay walay majnoon’ and not ‘doodh peenay walay’.

The more important need for your party is to define what it stands for. As of now, there is hardly any difference between your party and the Congress, except for your ‘hindutva’ agenda. There was a time when you were known as a right-wing party; however, both in power and in opposition, you have not broken any new path in liberalism and merely followed the path that your predecessor governments had embarked upon: you did not try to modernize labour laws nor did you try to end protectionist policies. While out of government, you have made vociferous opposition to the hike in the price of petroleum to reflect the new global reality in oil prices, which a true right wing party would have supported, and you opposed the nuclear deal with the US which, your own policy makers admit, you would have also pursued if you were in power. What is also noteworthy is that you listened to the same lot for economic advice, Montek Ahluwalia, Shankar Acharya, Surjit Bhalla and others that the Congress government listened to. And you did not raise a peep against the populist programs, such as NREGA or massive loan write-offs that no self-respecting right wing party would have supported. Your policy on fighting terrorism is no different from that of the Congress government, and your record on that front is as poor as, if not worse than, that of the Congress. Your foreign policy, too, is the same as that of the Congress and, despite your earlier aggressive stance towards Pakistan, your government did more to change the direction of Indo-Pak relations in a positive direction than any other government before yours. So, you should take a clear stand on various domestic and external policy issues and stick to them whether you are in the government or in the opposition.


Go Forward:

Going forward, you need to make some basic changes in your mandate or, to use a more appropriate term, your slogans. Your leaders have frequently described your vision of India as “one people, one nation, one culture”. This ideal ignores the current reality not only in India but also in most of the developed world. The developed nations are fast becoming a multicultural place, something that evolved naturally in India. Indeed, it would be hard to claim that your own party belongs to “one culture”: Can you say that your Vice President, Venkaiah Naidu, your General Secretary, Mukhtar Naqvi, and your Rajya Sabha leader, Arun Jaitley, share the same culture? There is too much cultural diversity in India even within each state to call it a uni-cultural society. Multiculturalism has worked well in India and you should not seek to impose an artificial single culture on it.

For a long time your party has been associated with three central issues: (1) Building a Ram mandir in Ayodhya (2) Uniform civil code , and (3) Abolition of Article 370 of the constitution giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir state. It is time to revisit those issues. Making a Ram mandir on a location where the famous Babri masjid stood was a shrewd tactical move on your part – it played well to the emotions of the Hindus who revere Ram as an incarnation of God, a reverence that was enhanced by a highly popular serial on Ramayana when you raised this issue. The issue helped increase your popularity over all of India, but especially in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state, and helped you obtain a majority government in that state. But you made a fatal strategic mistake in leading the demolition of the Babri masjid and killing the goose that laid the golden egg for you. The demolition of the masjid started your downfall in UP and your party’s fortunes in that state have continued to plummet since then. It would be best to gracefully leave this issue to be decided by the courts.

The issue of a uniform civil code is an important issue in its own right and, in the hands of any other party, would have been considered a worthy cause. But in your case, the message cannot be separated from the messenger because your party is viewed as against the Muslim community and the uniform civil code is largely viewed as being aimed at that community. The Muslim civil law affects almost exclusively Muslims and it is for that community to seek reform in it. If you are sincerely interested in the reform of that law, you should support sections of the Muslim community who want to bring about that change. You may support but cannot lead that change.

Abolition of Article 370 is a natural goal for any Indian political party that regards Kashmir as an ‘atoot ang’ (integral part) of India and especially for your party as the founder of your predecessor party, Shyama prasad Mukherjee, died in a Jammu jail for the sake of achieving that objective. However, a wiser course would be to accept the reality that Kashmiris will never accept that change; indeed, the mere leasing out of the state land for a Hindu pilgrimage caused an earthquake in that state whose tremors were felt all the way in New Delhi.

You should give up these issues as central to your party, if only for the sake of retaining some credibility. Over the last decade or more, you have made political alliances with other political parties who do not share these goals and, without exception, you have surrendered these objectives as the price of that alliance. How central can these issues be to your party if you are willing to abandon them for the prospect of adding a seat or two in a state legislature?


How about Hindutva?

There has been considerable discussion both within and outside your party on whether your commitment to hindutva has caused you the loss of support in the recent elections. I do not think that hindutva was a major issue in the elections and probably did not play a significant role in your defeat. Still, this is a good time for you to clarify what you mean by hindutva and its practical implications for Indians, especially religious minorities. There was a time when hindutva was considered a fairly benign concept of cultural nationalism and even the Supreme Court refused to term it as “communal”. In wiser hands, the concept could have been a winner, but the actions of your leaders such as Modi’ massacre of Muslims in Gujarat and Varun Gandhi’s vitriolic speech in Peelibhit in recent elections have firmly established it as an anti-muslim agenda.

So, should you abandon your support of hindutva, too? I think that this would be throwing the baby with the bath water. So, my advice to you would be not to abandon hindutva but to decommunalise it. Take the ‘h’ out of hindutva and make it “indutva” or “Bhartiyata”. The concept of “Bhartiyata” would include the story of the Indian civilization from the time of the Moenjodaro to the modern joining of India in the human race to explore the mysteries of space. The story of that civilization before the advent of Islam in India is known largely through foreign travelers or European Indologists. It is time that sons of the soil discover their own past. You should promote research in that part of our history, not with a view to proving preconceived notions of a glorious past but to get a better understanding of who we are and what we are; this attempt should not involve rewriting history to demonise any community. You should also take this opportunity to redefine hindutva to give priority to cleanse sacred rivers like Ganga and Yamuna and to rejuvenate forests dearly beloved of ancient rishis and munis.

When it comes to electoral strategy, you should get rid of your obsession with making regional alliance at whatever cost. This obsession may have been necessary at a time when you were considered a pariah party and an untouchable for other political parties and indeed for anyone who did not want to be labeled a communalist. Those days, happily for you, are in the past now and you should only accept regional allies on your terms. In your seeming desperation to seek regional allies, you always seem to be willing to play a second fiddle, whether it is to the BSP in UP, to the JD(U) in Bihar, to the BJD in Orissa, to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, to the Akalis in Punjab or to the Lok Dal in Haryana. In almost all cases, the alliance has benefited you less than it has your regional partners who have frequently dumped you after their purpose was served. So, if you want to have a long-term future for your party, you should agree once again to be in a position of “splendid isolation” even if it means losing occasional opportunities to share power with a regional ally with whom you have nothing in common except a desire to rule. Win or lose, you will gain the respect of ordinary voter.

Last but not least, you should try to introduce true internal democracy. Let your members at the constituency level decide their nominees through a secret ballot instead of the Party headquarters deciding who gets the party ticket for elections to various legislative bodies.