A great deal has been written about the Bharatiya Janata Party, both before and after the meeting of the national council in Gandhinagar last week, which, in my view, lacks a clear focus and perspective.
Contrary to the popular impression, the central long-term or even medium-term issue before the BJP leadership is neither its own unity nor its attitude towards the Congress Government, especially the Prime Minister, however important these questions may be in the immediate sense. It is in need of a new self-definition and a programme of action which can help it consolidate and expand its popular base in the new situation.
The world has changed beyond recognition in the past three years and continues to change rapidly. India has to cope with this turbulence and uncertainty. Surprisingly enough, the Congress is demonstrating far greater resilience and capacity for adaptation than the opposition parties, including the BJP.
Seen in this perspective, it should be obvious that the question of “lack of unity” in the leadership, as illustrated by the Uma Bharati-Govindacharya episodes, and of a viable approach towards Mr PV Narasimha Rao and his Government, got blown out of proportion precisely because the requirement of a new self-definition was not met.
The leadership has “patched up” in Gandhinagar whatever differences might have existed between the supposedly moderate faction headed by Mr LK Advani and the hardliners led by Dr Joshi. It has also settled on a policy of total opposition to Mr Rao and his Government. In fact, the BJP leadership did not have much of a choice after the Tirupati session of the Congress which denounced it in no uncertain terms. But the requirement of a viable and coherent self-redefinition has still not been fulfilled. The BJP leadership was till recently at pains to emphasise that the Congress has stolen its economic policy.
This was too tall a claim to be sustainable. Liberalisation which the BJP has, on its own testimony, favoured is a very different proposition from the market-friendly and market- determined economy Mr Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh are trying to establish. In any event, to the extent the Congress has stolen the BJP’s clothes, the latter must be in need of a new wardrobe.
The two-in-one ghost
The BJP is perhaps sensitive to this problem. That is perhaps why it has fallen back on old slogans such as swadeshi, self-reliance and the third path. But these sum up what the BJP leaders claim to have opposed for years – the Nehruvian approach. No one can deny either that the Congress has promoted cottage industries or that import substitution was intended to keep India self-reliant, and the mixed economy to provide a middle ground between communism and capitalism. The mix did not work. The failure was patent long before the Cold War drew to a close and the Soviet Union disintegrated under the weight of central planning. That failure – and not the World Bank and the IMF – has necessitated the new economic policy.
The BJP has invented a two-in-one ghost – an invasion by multinationals and globalisation of the economy. The ghost will not materialise, the world is desperately short of capital. Even Germany and Japan have run into serious difficulties. India will be lucky if it can attract a couple of million dollars every year by way of foreign investment. The new economic policy, even if (a big if) it is implemented successfully, will lead to considerable hardship for the poor and the lower-middle class in the short run. It is, therefore, plausible that the BJP wants to place itself in a position where it can hope to take advantage of the backlash when it materialises. That is natural and legitimate in competitive politics. But it does not entitle the BJP to claim that it has a viable alternative to offer. It does not.
Championship of the cause of the country’s unity and integrity has been one of the BJP’s strong points and main attractions. Even its worst critics, who accuse it of communalism, chauvinism and fascism, have not been in a position to question its patriotism. But it is one thing to undertake a yatra to draw attention to the looming threats in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, as Dr Joshi did recently, or to organise another unity week, as the BJP proposes to do in the coming months, and quite another to propose concrete plans of action to cope with the dangers. The BJP has nothing radically new to suggest. Its criticism of the Government may have been valid and useful in the past. It is in danger of sounding shrill in the new context.
As for foreign policy, the BJP can at best seek to give expression to the resentment the American behaviour (on the issue of the NPT and threat of retaliatory action on the question of protection of patents rights and the agreement with Russia for the supply of cryogenic engine for space programme) is creating among sections of the intelligentsia. It cannot formulate a long-term policy for the good and simple reason that no one else can; the world scene is too uncertain and turbulent to admit of clear-cut formulations. Indeed, no country, not even the US, can claim to possess a viable foreign policy.
Running out of steam
After the conclusion of the national council session, Mr Advani recalled that the Rajiv Gandhi Government fell on the Bofors issue and the VP Singh Government on that of Ayodhya, and said that the present one was vulnerable on both counts. Bofors is a loose cannon; it is difficult to say when it may go off and whom it may hit. As of now, all one can say is that the Solanki episode has hurt Mr Rao, but not seriously enough to bring his survival into question.
As for the Ayodhya issue, the future looks more troublesome for the BJP than it does for the Union Government. Mr Narasimha Rao does not need to take any initiative in the matter. He can leave it to the Allahabad High Court and the litigants to keep the BJP Government in UP immobilised. The State Government cannot, for a variety of reasons, either demolish the Babri masjid structure or allow it to be demolished; and that is all the Union Government need be interested in. Indeed, if the BJP leadership were shrewd, it would have by now been playing down the importance of the proposed construction.
Mr Advani appears to be inclined that way. That is how I read his statement that the political message from Gandhinagar is that the BJP is keen to prove itself in the four states where it is in power and to play its role as the Opposition at the Centre. Surely, in the case of UP, it must mean much more than the construction of the proposed temple. Indeed, a preoccupation with the temple can turn out to be a distraction which may no longer win many votes.
The BJP has been a counterpoint to the Congress theme. That has been its significance. That theme has been played out. Socialism is dead as a dodo; no one can possibly say what non-alignment is supposed to mean in the post-Soviet world; secularism cannot remain a euphemism for self-contempt under Mr Rao’s leadership; the Nehru-Gandhis too have departed from the political scene. All this must pose for the BJP a more formidable challenge than any it has faced since its birth four decades ago under a different name. Old slogans cannot help its leadership meet this challenge.
The Pioneer, 11 May 1992