Yatra politics

Published : Nov 04, 2011 00:00 IST

L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at a public meeting before the start of the Jan Chetna Yatra at Chapra in Bihar on October 11. - MANVENDER VASHIST/PTI

L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and other BJP leaders with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at a public meeting before the start of the Jan Chetna Yatra at Chapra in Bihar on October 11. - MANVENDER VASHIST/PTI

Advani's rath yatra against corruption turns out to be an exercise to project him as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.

THE 40-day Jan Chetna Yatra led by former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani must rank as one of the most unique political campaigns in contemporary Indian politics. The principal message of the campaign has nothing to do with the professed central theme or subsidiary slogans of the yatra. According to the formal pronouncements of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the objective of the Jan Chetna Yatra is to mobilise public opinion against corruption of present [United Progressive Alliance] government and put the BJP agenda of good governance and clean politics before the people. While this theme is aired at all the events relating to the campaign, the yatra's larger political message came out loud and clear at its very commencement when Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar flagged it off.

The choice of Nitish Kumar as the inaugurator impacted both the larger polity and the internal dynamics of the BJP in multiple ways. Primarily, at the level of the larger polity it stated that Advani was the most acceptable leader from the saffron party to its biggest and long-standing ally in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Consequently, it also sent out a message to the hierarchy of the BJP as well as the larger Hindutva combine, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar, that Advani's candidature for the Prime Minister's position could not be negated against the background of such acceptance with the principal ally. More specifically, the message targeted Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who, too, had indicated his desire to build up a national profile through a sadbhavna (goodwill) fast in September.

This not-so-subtle political-organisational message has greater significance because, in many ways, the professed central theme of the yatra is not sustainable. The BJP was compelled to remove, in the last three months, two of its Chief Ministers B.S. Yeddyurappa in Karnataka and Ramesh Pokhriyal in Uttarakhand amidst corruption charges raised by different segments of society, including probity-watch institutions. Many other BJP leaders, including those not in offices of power, are facing one criminal allegation or the other. Indeed, in this context there is a stream of public opinion which holds that the yatra is incongruous. Frontline raised this point with Advani on the second day of the yatra and he responded by stating that Yeddyurappa was removed as Chief Minister as soon as the Lokayukta report indicting him was filed and that the Jan Chetna Yatra was against corruption as a whole and not against any political party. The ultimate aim of this movement is to transform society, not just change government, he said in response to the Frontline query.

Despite such assertions, what Frontline could see in the yatra's course was that the so-called anti-corruption message was not really garnering support or gathering momentum. In fact, at many places people even questioned the opulence of the yatra's arrangements. At Koilwar in Bhojpur district of Bihar, Frontline came across a group of self-professed supporters of the NDA who questioned the lavishness associated with the yatra. Why should a people's leader travel in a state-of-the-art rath escorted by nearly 100 vehicles in his cavalcade? If he really wants to give out the message of probity in public life, should it also not encompass austerity in politics? Should he not be travelling in a normal vehicle and without all this show? Advani is talking about the billions of rupees of black money stashed away in foreign banks. He has even demanded a White Paper from the Central government on this. But why is he not explaining the expenses incurred on such a huge show of vehicles? asked Rajiv Pratap Singh, a dhaba owner, who sat among this group.

Interestingly, Singh and friends were part of a group consisting of both BJP and JD(U) workers who had turned out to cheer the yatra. Across the two-day trip in Bihar, the yatra attracted large crowds. In most places, including its starting point at Sitap Diara, the birthplace of the late socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, the crowd had greater praise for Nitish Kumar. The success of almost all the meetings in terms of crowds has been analysed by a number of observers as having to do with a Nitish Kumar effect rather than the slogans of the yatra.

In a sense, this analysis was borne out in the first few meetings in Uttar Pradesh, which paled in comparison with the meetings in Bihar. While the last meeting at Ramgarh in Bihar drew a 30,000-strong crowd, the next morning's meeting, at Varanasi, hardly had an attendance of 5,000 people.

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharati, accompanied by BJP supporters, received Advani's rath as it entered the temple town of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on the third day of the yatra. Once again, the intended projection of Advani as the prime ministerial candidate was quite clear in the rhetoric. Uma Bharati asserted that whoever had taken a yatra through the holy town of Varanasi would certainly become Prime Minister and lead the nation. The sloganeering of the crowds also underwent a change here. Unlike in the previous two days in Bihar, there were now shrill shouts of Jai Shri Ram and Har Har Mahadeo.

Indeed, Uma Bharati insisted that the Jai Shri Ram chants were not loud enough and exhorted the cadre to shout with greater vigour. Senior BJP leaders Kalraj Mishra and Murli Manohar Joshi asserted that one should never forget Mahadev [Siva], Ram and Bharat Mata in battles, personal or political. Clearly, there was an effort to underscore the Hindutva dimension of the BJP's larger political ideology.

In fact, this fits in with the common formula used in long-distance campaign shows such as rath yatras. The common formula is fundamentally twofold. The central theme of the campaign needs to be highlighted constantly, but mere repetition leads to a waning of interest among the public, so the lead campaigner and his associates have to keep on generating new headlines to sustain public and media attention. In the Jan Chetna Yatra's case, the first day's spin was on the contrast between the political and individual personalities of Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad Yadav: how one Bihar Chief Minister (Lalu) had arrested Advani and how the other was flagging him off on an important political mission.

The second day witnessed Advani's presentation on the flight of Indian capital through the black money route and the demand for a White Paper from the government. On the third day came the assertion of the party's Hindutva credentials, though the rhetoric came not from Advani but from his party colleagues. As the yatra progresses, more such themes and subsidiary slogans will emerge steadily.

There is, however, little doubt that the principal message of the yatra is focussed on the greater acceptance Advani enjoys, compared with Modi, with the BJP's principal ally. According to Sangh Parivar insiders, this message has accentuated the problems of the Hindutva combine in several ways.

To start with, it has significantly set back Modi's plans to emerge at the national level. The move also causes problems for the RSS' larger plans in relation to the BJP. Modi's name has been popping in and out of the headlines for the last eight years as a potential Prime Minister. And, of course, he knows that if he does not make an effort for 2014, he will fall way back in the race for the top post. Advani has not made it to the top in all these years. In fact, after the 2009 electoral drubbing it was generally believed that the veteran would not come into the arena again. In fact, the RSS top brass had even sent him a clear message prohibiting his re-entry into this sphere. Advani has thrown a challenge to the RSS top brass, too, said a senior Sangh Parivar activist from Bihar.

The central plank of Modi and his supporters has been to project the Gujarat Chief Minister as a leader who created a new, progress-oriented State, creating a model that is waiting to be replicated at the national level. This group has tried to underplay Modi's association with the 2002 anti-Muslim carnage. Yet, the ghosts of that pogrom keep coming back to haunt Modi. The unambiguous message from each of these episodes has been that Modi and his party will find it impossible to live down the carnage, however much they may try.

References to the carnage have come up most forcefully when Modi and his supporters have sought to advance the development man image. The BJP's National Executive in Patna in June 2010 is a case in point. A number of his close supporters had earmarked this conclave as the starting point of an aggressive campaign to project him as the prime ministerial candidate of the NDA. Advertisements were placed in several newspapers in Bihar extolling Modi's governance skills and personal virtues. These hailed him as a model administrator whose record in Gujarat was worthy of emulation in Bihar and the rest of the country. The message was: here is your future Prime Minister. But Nitish Kumar objected to this and even cancelled a dinner he had arranged for BJP leaders.

Clearly, Modi's candidature will not be endorsed by the JD(U). Potential BJP allies such as N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) may also not like it because of the Muslim support base they have. However, the potential ally All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) seems inclined to give him wholehearted support. AIADMK leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had sent emissaries to Modi's fast with her best wishes. Still the net balance of support versus opposition from the BJP's allies and potential allies weighs against Modi.

These factors are not unknown to the RSS. Still, when Advani announced his yatra, the RSS leadership called him over to its headquarters in Nagpur, apparently to give the message that he should not aim for the Prime Minister's post. For the record, Advani said after this meeting, on September 21, that he was not in the race for the Prime Minister's position. I have got so much from the party and the country ever since I started working in politics after being inspired by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee and it is much more than the Prime Minister's post, he said.

However, through the first leg of the yatra he has more or less refused to engage with questions on the subject. In Patna, he said at a press conference that a decision on the Prime Minister was taken by the parliamentary party after the Lok Sabha elections.

According to a senior leader from Bihar, the RSS top brass was clear that Advani's candidature should not get primacy. This despite the fact that many in the RSS leadership do not like Modi's style of functioning. In fact, the RSS view was that Advani should at best play the role of a mentor to some younger leader, not necessarily Narendra Modi.

But that is not how Advani himself perceives the contemporary political situation. Many in the Sangh Parivar are apprehensive as to what turn the tussle between Advani and Modi will take in the days to come. The leader from Bihar jocularly added that in a sense the party's leadership had even maligned the Indian tradition that the party proudly speaks of: According to Indian tradition, fasting and pilgrimage yatras are pious activities that denote sacrifice of material allurements leading to a higher spiritual life. But in our party, which claims to be the political force in India with the greatest adherence to Indian tradition and even the spiritual way of life, fasting and yatras have literally become tools for capturing the highest material allurement of all, namely power.

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