The `proud' milestones

The Kargil war, 1999. By calling the Kargil war and the 1998 nuclear tests the party's milestones, the BJP seems to admit that the distinction between the party and the government was blurred during its rule at the Centre. - KAMAL NARANG

THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began its silver jubilee celebrations on April 6 unsure of the strengths that sustained the party the past 25 years.

For the year-long celebrations, the BJP has identified nine "proud milestones" in the history of its evolution, which will be revisited by holding rallies in different parts of the country. Ironically, the party could claim only one event as its own: the commemoration of the Ram Rath Yatra, launched by party president L.K. Advani in 1990. The others either belong to the days before its formation (prior to 1980) or were those of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), of which it is a constituent.

The BJP consideres the "martyrdom" of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, its progenitor, the 30th anniversary of the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, the liberation of Goa, and the foundation of the Jan Sangh itself as important milestones. To these, the party has added the birth anniversaries of the party icon and its former president, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, and that of the Janata Party leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, who influenced the BJP's political philosophy in different ways. The BJP takes pride in the fact that Jayaprakash Narayan did not consider the Bharatiya Jan Sangh a political untouchable when he invited it to merge with other political groups to form the Janata Party in 1977.

The nuclear tests in 1998 (Pokhran-II) and the victory in the Kargil War (1999) are events that any party should hesitate to include in its history, as their significance transcends party interests. By calling these events the party's milestones, the BJP seems to admit that the distinction between the party and the government was blurred during its rule at the Centre.

No doubt, the Ram Rath Yatra, led by Advani from Somnath to Ayodhya in 1990 demanding the construction of a Ram temple at Ram Janmabhoomi, was a significant turning point - it increased substantially the party's popular support across the Hindi heartland. However, the Ayodhya card soon began to pay diminishing returns, as seen in a series of electoral reverses the party suffered in the Assembly elections after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.

Speaking at the National Council meeting, which was organised as part of the celebrations, Advani pointed to the BJP's spectacular growth - from winning a mere two seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 1984 to securing 182 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1998 and 1999. It was only in 2004, he conceded, that the BJP faced a reversal, when its tally came down to 138 seats. He said the Ayodhya movement was one of the principal factors that helped the BJP to catch the imagination of the people, but he could not say whether the party was able to translate such support into votes in its favour.

Advani was perhaps aware that behind the BJP's spectacular growth, there were other factors, not just Ayodhya. One was its ability to build alliances. The "political untouchability" it suffered because of its role in the Babri Masjid demolition, as demonstrated by the fall of its first government at the Centre, headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996 within 13 days of its swearing-in, was a lesson in itself. By 1998, the party succeeded in wooing many potential allies. The fall of the United Front government owing to the withdrawal of support to it by the Congress created an atmosphere conducive to the BJP's revival. But in the process of seeking out allies, the BJP made several compromises, including the decision to keep its divisive core agenda - building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya, the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution conferring special status on Jammu and Kashmir, and the enactment of a uniform civil code - in suspended animation.

What seemed to Advani as the party's achievement in turning many of its earlier adversaries into allies and in winning new friends was marked by the politics of expediency. Advani claimed that the party stood its ground, increased its own strength through dedicated work, and broke free of political isolation, resulting in the formation of the NDA in 1998. But the fact that the party's debacle in 2004 could be attributed to the exit of many allies from the coalition shows that they considered their alliance with the BJP a serious electoral liability. Some of them, such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its partners in Tamil Nadu, and Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Jansakthi Party, were embarrassed to go to the electorate along with the BJP, which was tainted by the state-sponsored pogrom against minorities in Gujarat in 2002, an event which ought to have found a place in the party's history as one of its sad chapters.

The BJP was formed in 1980 after the Bharatiya Jan Sangh broke away from the Janata Party on the dual membership issue, which led to the fall of the Morarji Desai government in 1979. The refusal of Vajpayee and Advani to concede the demand of some Janata Party leaders to sever their links with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in order to keep the unity of the Janata Party left them with no alternative but to quit and form their own party.

Today they have reasons to feel vindicated in their stand. The party organisation has grown significantly during the past 25 years. From just 60,000 primary members in 1980, the party now claims a total primary membership of 1,36,83,189, of whom 2,78,588 are `active' members. (The active members are those who pay Rs.100 as membership fee and work full time for the party for two weeks, in order to qualify as active members.)

The party cadre, however, is a narrower group within this broad category of active members, borrowed mainly from the RSS on a full-time basis. It is this cadre that contribute substantially to the electoral outcomes by their sheer dedication and through the coordinated work of the network of allied organisations in the Sangh Parivar. The party suffers an electoral setback whenever the cadre remain displeased with the style of functioning of the leadership and show a lack of enthusiasm.

As the party enters its 25th year, the dual membership issue has returned to haunt it in the form of an issue involving dual loyalty. There is a growing feeling among the BJP cadre that the leaders are guilty of dual loyalty: that is, they want to be associated with the RSS, in order to reap electoral benefits, but once in power they tend to be more loyal to the spoils of office rather than to the goals of the RSS and the rest of the Sangh Parivar.

Party ideologue K.N. Govindacharya put it succinctly: "Ideology- and work-culture-wise, there is a difference between the perceptions of leaders and workers in the BJP; the former believe in posing as liberal social democrats whereas the cadre entertain strong nationalist moorings; the latter believe in the values of austerity and simplicity whereas the former consider them obsolete."

Even on the reasons for the party's debacle in the 2004 elections, the perceptions of the party leadership and the cadre differ. The party's central leadership apparently believes, as party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi suggested, that it was State leaders who were responsible for creating the gulf between the cadre and the leadership. Some of them thought that they were above the party, and above the workers, he alleged.

The cadre, on the contrary, think the State leaders, in collusion with some Central leaders and Ministers, mostly chose the wrong candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, without ascertaining the views of the block and district committees of the party as had been the practice earlier. This, coupled with the lack of understanding between party workers and the government, resulted in the failure to address constituency-level grievances of party workers, said Bidhan Chandra Kar, a full-time party worker at the central office in New Delhi.