BJP`s DEMOCRACY DEFICIT

BJP leaders L.K. Advani and A.B. Vajpayee at a rally to commemorate the death anniversary of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, who founded the Jana Sangh.-THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY

THE Jana Sangh is the illegitimate child of the RSS, Jawaharlal Nehru said on January 5, 1952 (The Hindu, January 6, 1952).

Not even Nehrus worst detractors accused him of coarseness. He never used this expression for any other political party. He used it for the Jana Sangh advisedly because it was not established as a political party in its own right but as a political wing of the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which, in turn, sailed under false colours. Nehru bluntly told its supremo M.S. Golwalkar in a letter on November 10, 1948, that the Sanghs declared objectives have little to do with the real ones and with the activities carried out in various forms and ways by people associated with the RSS The activities according to our information, are anti-national and often subversive and violent.

Less than a year earlier, Golwalkar absconded when documentary evidence came to light with maps and all of his plans to stage a pogrom of Muslims in the United Provinces. The then Chief Secretary, Rajeshwar Dayal, revealed this in detail in his memoirs, A Life of Our Times (pages 93-94). This is the cultural organisation that disavows politics, professes it does not interfere with its progeny, the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but which ran the Jana Sangh and runs the BJP. It ejected three of their presidents from their office, Mauli Chandra Sharma, Balraj Madhok and L.K. Advani. It claims that every citizen is a Hindu but, in the same breath, speaks of the Hindus as the majority community, and claims, yet, to be nationalist and not communal. It has been censured by commissions of inquiry for complicity in riots but claims to be non-violent. It set up the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on August 29, 1964, which in turn set up the violent Bajrang Dal in 1984, but says that they are autonomous. It speaks of Hindu culture but it is religion that it seeks to impose. This is an illustrative list of eight palpable falsehoods, not an exhaustive one.

However, it is time that we rose above the immediate flow of events and reflected on the challenge such a political movement poses to our democracy and to our secularism. Large sections of the media, electronic and print, suspended disbelief and made the BJP respectable. Not only Atal Bihari Vajpayee but even Lal Krishna Advani became an icon. The Staines murders and the Gujarat pogrom were condemned. Vajpayee and Advani shut their eyes to the crimes and, in Advanis case, helped the criminals to escape media censure. The media spared both and were deeply moved by Vajpayees grief, in strict privacy. This shift in public opinion itself calls for reflection, as does the Sangh Parivars menace to democracy. How strong and deep is our commitment to secularism? Even Nehru did not enjoy such immunity from criticism.

Right now, the RSS has imposed Presidents Rule on the BJP, or, if you prefer, martial law. In Pakistan, squabbling politicians virtually invited the Army to take over. Men who ran constantly to the RSS headquarters in Jhandewalan in New Delhi for guidance sought its intervention.

Golwalkar acknowledged in February 1971: I have a number of old friends in Jana Sangh, people came to see me asking for my mediation for various things. His successor Mohan Bhagwats press conference in New Delhi on August 28 was a production in regal style, with all the minions in attendance. He said: We do not talk in terms of control and power, we talk in terms of love and persuasion (DNA, August 29). Have you ever before witnessed such an intense flurry of visits by BJP leaders to him to seek his guidance in the days that followed? Advani, the BJP president Rajnath Singh, the gang of four in a single batch Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Ananth Kumar and M. Venkaiah Naidu Murli Manohar Joshi and sundry others. The upshot was revealed two days later by Madan Das Devi: The Sangh got assurances from the BJP that a united party would overcome the present challenges and emerge stronger (The Indian Express; August 31).

Which other political party would give assurances of good behaviour to an outside body? But then, Bhagwat had declared as far back as on August 16 that the RSS, to quote The Hindu (August 17) would continue to use its influence to ensure that political leaders were on the right track.

It would be fascinating to study the RSS worldview and its modern outlook. Its organ Panchjanya provided a revealing glimpse of both on September 1: While Atal Bihari Vajpayees horoscope predicted that he would become Prime Minister, Advanis stars never gave such indications (Asian Age; September 2). Thus the stars influence the moonstruck RSS.

Let us go back to the origin. Why was the Jana Sangh set up at all when its founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjees own party, presided over by his hero V.D. Savarkar, existed? Mookerjee believed that Bengali Muslims were, by and large, a set of converts from the dregs of Hindu society, Joya Chatterjee wrote in her classic Bengal Divided (page 189, citing his papers of 1945-46). The reason is that by the time he resigned from Nehrus Cabinet, over his pact with Liaquat Ali Khan in April 1950 on the minorities in Bengal, he had been privy to a lot in order to stay in power. The insertion of Article 370 in the Constitution was one of those matters. Another was the Constitutent Assemblys resolution of April 3, 1948, urging a ban on communal parties. Mookerjee asked the Hindu Mahasabha to open its doors to all, nominally. It refused.

His pact with Golwalkar led to the founding of the Jana Sangh on October 21, 1951, and its terms were recorded by a co-founder, Balraj Madhok, in his biography of Mookerjee. He needed cadre for his political platform. The RSS had the men, indoctrinated and amenable to its control, but it had also felt the need of a political organisation which could reflect the ideology and ideas of the RSS in the public sphere. The Jana Sangh merged with the Janata Party on March 1, 1977, but quit in 1980 on the issue of dual membership. The Jana Sangh preferred to break with Jayaprakash Narayans Janata Party rather than break with the RSS. They set up the BJP on April 5, 1980. On November 6, 1977, when he was Minister for External Affairs in the Janata government, Vajpayee said, When we joined the Janata Party, we had given up our old beliefs and faiths and there was no question of going back. In 1985, he asked, When did we get away from the Jana Sangh?

In 1980, the RSS had an honourable option revive the Jana Sangh. It preferred deceit. Very many dupes came forward to be seen among its standard bearers.

What has been the fate of the non-RSS men who joined the BJP after April 1985? Most fell by the way side, one after another. Some won handsome rewards (governorship, ministerial berths, and so on), some others did not. All were used to acquire a veneer of respectability.

In his presidential address, Vajpayee remarked, Some of our opponents, prominent among them our Prime Minister [Indira Gandhi], keep repeating that the Bharatiya Janata Party is only a new name for the former Jana Sangh. They feel disturbed over the growing popularity of the party

The Janata Party was formed because the inspiration of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash has disintegrated. But his vision of a glorious India is still with us. We shall not allow it to be obliterated. His dreams, his labours, his struggles and his unflinching commitment to certain basic values are part of an invaluable legacy that we have inherited. The Bharatiya Janata Party is pledged to pursuing his unfinished task (emphasis added, throughout).

However, at the Second National Conference Against Communalism held in New Delhi in January 1968, JP had said: The secular protestations of the Jana Sangh will never be taken seriously unless it cuts the bonds that tie it firmly to the RSS machine. Nor can the RSS be treated as a cultural organisation as long as it remains the mentor and effective manipulator of a political party. In 1975, JP unwisely took the RSS support in his campaign against Indira Gandhis policies. The RSS supremo M.D. Deoras (known as Balasaheb Deoras), who wrote cringing letters to Indira Gandhi from prison during the Emergency, met JP on October 30 and November 1, 1977, but reneged on his assurances. In the draft of a letter to Prime Minister Morarji Desai, JP expressed his bitter disappointment: Its efforts to upset the secular basis of Indian nationalism and the government should be opposed by all thinking individuals (Dinamani, a Hindi weekly, April 8, 1979, and Janata, a Bombay weekly founded by JP, on May 13, 1979). So much for the BJPs devotion to JP.

At its birth, the BJP professed Five Commitments nationalism and national integration, democracy, positive secularism, Gandhian socialism and value-based politics. Never before had the Jana Sanghs leaders lisped these words. If their conversion to the new credo was amazing, its impact on the rank and file was disastrous. The BJP won a mere two seats in the Lok Sabha in the 1984 general elections.

In March 1985, Vajpayee, then the BJPs president, set up a 12-member working group to probe the grave ills besetting the party. It comprised Krishanlal Sharma, former Chief Ministers Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Shanta Kumar and Sunder Lal Patwa, besides Makrand Desai, Pramod Mahajan, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, K. Jana Krishnamurthi, Murli Manohar Joshi, Suraj Bhan, Arif Beg and Mridula Sinha. It placed its review report before the BJP national executive in Bhopal on July 20, 1985.

It was a much more thorough and honest exercise than Bal Aptes probe. The group had circulated 4,000 copies of a questionnaire of 56 questions on past performance, ideology, the organisation, discipline, finances, the relationship between the legislative and organisational wings, election strategy, publicity agitations, and constructive activities.

That report is very relevant to the BJPs plight today. Vajpayee in his opening remarks had posed the following two questions to the party: 1. Whether the partys defeat was because of our decisions to merge Jana Sangh with Janata Party in 1977 and withdraw from Janata Party in 1980? Were these two decisions wrong? 2. Should the BJP go back and revive the Bharatiya Jana Sangh?

Predictably, the report certified: In the considered opinion of the Working Group, the answers to the presidents queries are: that the party had taken a correct decision when it decided to merge Jana Sangh in Janata Party, a wise decision when in decided to come out of Janata Party to form BJP and a right decision when it chose to be BJP. But it added a significant and inconsistent proviso:

The Group would like to emphasise that we are very much proud of Jana Sangh heritage, we have benefited by our experience when we were in the Janata Party and that we will march ahead by building up BJP, towards our cherished objectives.

Realising the limits of the BJPs appeal to the electorate, the report said, Assuming that our ability to secure votes gets fixed at a maximum limit of 15 per cent of the total votes polled, then it can be seen that if we are to secure power the party should be in a position to secure at least 42 per cent of total votes polled which Janata Party got in 1977, if not 49 per cent by Cong.(I) in 1984. Leaving aside a margin of 10 per cent vote swing at the time of elections for various reasons, then we must have an additional 20 per cent to 25 per cent of votes polled. How to go about securing this 20 per cent to 25 per cent of votes must be definitely borne in mind while deciding upon our ideological, organisational, electoral etc. approach for the coming five years. The highest percentage of votes the BJP could secure was 25.6 in 1998.

It could win power in 1998 only by drumming up a ramshackle coalition comprising allies who were prepared to sacrifice their convictions for the loaves and fishes of office. But that was not a prospect which the BJP entertained in 1985 or could reveal to its members.

The report said: The distinctive features of a political party are manifest in the organisational structure, its style of functioning, the degree of idealism in its workers and its ideology. It is ideology which generates the necessary fervour in a political activist and sustains his idealism and commitment to the cause. The role of ideology in shaping the personality of a party is thus well recognised. In fact a political party shall continue to have a separate identity so long as it is able to project its own ideology. The statement that BJP is a party with a difference means that the party, amongst other things, possesses an ideology which is not fully shared by others. In the ultimate analysis the strength and spread of a political party will also depend upon its ideological appeal.

The cadres, especially the ones seconded to the BJP by the RSS, could hardly be inspired by the bogus five commitments. They were fed in the Jana Sangh on a diet cooked in the RSS kitchen, which brings us to the most important passage in the report: By and large the adherents of the political movement which culminated into BJP have not been able to identify the BJP ideology as a derivative of the political philosophy which they so assiduously formulated. Persistence of this hiatus during the past five years is yet another shortcoming in the domain of ideological training.

In plain words, the cadres were confused by the five commitments which the leaders had dishonestly formulated in order to lay claim to JPs legacy. They wanted the real stuff, the Jana Sanghs ideology.

The report continued, Every party likes to have an organisation that suits its purpose. BJP, too, has an organisation to serve the objectives. We have succeeded in building up a cadre party. But this cadre party by itself will not enable us to reach our goal. Our being only a cadre party will limit our base to that extent. If we are to have a wide base then it should be only with the help and use of this cadre. We are to have a mass following so as to become a cadre-based mass party. Apparently cadre base and mass base seem to be contradictory in terms. However, there can be a happy marriage between these two. The cadre while widening their base should also see that they become capable enough to provide leadership for the masses. The RSS would provide the cadres. Vajpayee and Advani would provide the mass appeal.

In 1980, Advani was prepared to dilute the ideology in order to acquire a wider following. He explained the problem to the RSS organ Panchajanya (Deepavali 1980): In India a party based on an ideology can at the most come to power in a small area. It cannot win the confidence of the entire country neither the Communist Party nor the Jana Sangh in the original form.

Panchajanya: But by ignoring the ideological appeal will you be able to keep together the cadres on the basis of these ideals?

Advani: Effort is being made to make them understand. That is why I want the debate to go on. In this context, some people have criticised me although even during the Jana Sangh days I used to advocate these ideas. I have already said that the Jana Sangh was initially built as a party based on ideology, but slowly it departed from that course.

Panchajanya: However, despite its ideological anchorage the Jana Sanghs appeal was steadily increasing.

Advani: The appeal increased to the extent the ideology got diluted. Wherever the ideology was strong, its appeal diminished.

Even this did not work, but he struck a gold mine. On January 31, 1986, the locks on the gates of the premises of the Babri Masjid were opened. On May 9, 1986, Advani became president of the BJP. He made building a Ram temple on the site of the mosque an election issue. I am sure it will translate into votes, he predicted on June 11, 1989, at Palampur when the BJP passed a resolution on the temple. The BJPs tally rose from two seats in 1984 to 85 in the 1989 elections.

Advani smelt power. If he could whip up Hindu feelings on the Ram temple issue, the BJP would be able to secure a majority in the Lok Sabha on its own steam despite the secular opposition and regardless of the Muslim vote, and as architect of the victory he would become Prime Minister. Allies would flock once they scented power. Advani felt bold enough to assert on November 19, 1990: Henceforth only those fighting for Hindu interests would rule India. It was the Hindus who put paid to his sordid designs and foiled his wild ambitions.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, whipped up emotions only momentarily. The Gujarat pogrom of March 2002 repelled most. The BJP cannot revive the themes of old. The souffle rises only once. Jaswant Singh is right when he says Hindutva was not projected as any kind of party philosophy until after Shah Bano. That was in 1986. Even here, the opening of the locks at Ayodhya would be a more accurate reference point.

Advanis presidential speeches at the national executive on July 24, 1987, or October 7, 1988, did not mention the Babri Masjid or Hindutva. Savarkars ideology of Hindutva (1924) became his war cry as he embarked on the rath yatra. It won kudos from some but odium from most. In November 1995, at the Mumbai session of the BJPs national executive Advani realistically, but reluctantly, yielded the palm to Vajpayee. The year 2004 dashed the long deferred hopes of succession; and 2009 wiped out all remnants of those hopes.

Three issues of a fundamental character remain the BJP-RSS nexus; the BJP as an acceptable conservative opposition even if it is not secular; and its impact on our polity, constitutionally and politically.

Advani told an RSS gathering in Coimbatore on March 17, 1990: There has been a conscious effort on the part of the Swayamsewaks who are working in the BJP to make each one understand the ideological base to which we belong, and our connections with inter organisations like the VHP, the ABVP, the BMS, the Seva Bharti and the Kalyan Ashram which are all based on the inspiration from RSS We have to intensify our efforts, we have to project the viewpoint of the RSS, which is not being reflected, so that with the instrumentality of the BJP in politics it gets more acceptance not only in terms of votes, in terms of parliamentary seats, in terms of assembly seats and in governments but also in that they come to be respected. The countrys intellectual climate had to be changed; its secular ethos had to be discarded.

Now, nearly two decades later, the links have become far stronger. Yet even to some secular circles, the BJP seems an attractive opposition party and its leaders men of high national promise. They are unlikely to be too disillusioned by the pantomime staged by the RSS-BJP troupe. They are not repelled by the deceit and the lies.

The French scholar, Christophe Jaffrelot, an authority on the Sangh Parivar, warned recently that if Hindu nationalism is not at its best in the political sphere, the saffronisation of the state and society has made progress in the last 15 years. The Hindu Rashtra is in the making along the societal lines the RSS has always valued (The Times of India; March 22, 2009). Former editors of two mainstream English dailies, with the largest circulation nationally, lauded the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Pankaj Mishra, an intellectual of deep commitment, perceptively described the state of political discourse today: During two decades of vicious anti-Muslim campaigns and terrorist retaliation, the Sangh Parivar has not only given Indian nationalism a hard majoritarian cast; it has also infected Indias state and civil society with the illiberalism. Fundamentalism in the cause of secular ideals has proved even more noxious than its religious counterpart, as the 20th centurys extraordinary ideological violence reminds us.

The secular fundamentalists, who are determined to nail their cherished idea of India into Kashmiri hearts and minds, seem to forget the many political leaders and intellectuals who rationalised totalitarian brutality and imperialist wars by pointing to the garishly virtuous nature of their secular ideologies (nation-building, economic prosperity, freedom, democracy). The spectacle of American liberal intellectuals cheerleading the war for human rights in Iraq has more recently underscored the grotesque irony of what Albert Camus called massacres justified by philanthropy.(Outlook; October 6, 2008).

The soft secularist yearns for the BJPs survival as an opposition party because, after all, a democracy needs a strong opposition. He does not ask whether the BJP-RSS combine will sustain democracy or impair, if not wreck, it. Is it such an opposition that India needs?

South Asia has been under a curse the split polity. A leader in power turns populist (Indira Gandhi, Z.A. Bhutto, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman). Inebriated with his/her rise to power and popular acclaim, he/she turns autocratic and flouts constitutional norms and is assassinated; the tragedy spawns a dynasty; and the polity is split between the dynasty and the erstwhile opponents of the slain leader. The middle ground shrinks. Institutions suffer. The judiciary, the civil service, the media and civil society at large are infected with the virus of partisanship. The polarisation debases discourse.

In 1969, Indira Gandhi split the Congress and provoked a bitter political conflict. In its wake came the doctrine of committed judges, civil servants and even the media. With Rajiv Gandhis loss of power in 1989 this phase ended. But in 1989 another phase, insidious and destructive, began. That was the year when the BJP passed the Palampur resolution on the Babri Masjid. It won the BJP six years in power at the Centre.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar insightfully warned on November 25, 1949, that political parties can have an impact on the working of the Constitution. However good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called to work it happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may turn out to be good if those who are called to work it happen to be a good lot. The working of a Constitution does not depend wholly upon the nature of the Constitution. The Constitution can provide only the organs of the state such as the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of these organs of the state depend are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics. Who can say how the people of India and their parties will behave? (Constituent Assembly Debates; Volume XI, page 975).

A democratic Constitution cannot be worked by political parties that function undemocratically. Nor, if political morality is weak. Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru said in the Constituent Assembly on June 16, 1949: If we cannot expect common honesty from persons occupying the highest positions in the discharge of their duties, the foundation for responsible government is wanting, and the outlook for the future is indeed gloomy (Constituent Assembly Debates; Volume VIII, page 920). Nor can a Constitution which establishes a secular democracy work well if a major political party is a front of a fascist communal body. It will be exposed to severe strains when such a party is in the opposition and risks worse when it is in power.

We have witnessed the BJPs behaviour in Parliament since 2004, flowing from its adamant refusal to accept its rejection by the electorate. Not many have noted its injection of communal poison in the realm of foreign policy as well. On March 14, 2004, during the election campaign, Advani, then Deputy Prime Minister, wantonly communalised the issue. The BJP alone can find a solution to our problems with Pakistan because Hindus will never think whatever we have done is a sell-out.

He did not expect defeat at the elections. When the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power, the BJP did not reciprocate the restraint that the Congress had shown during all its zigzags. Instead, it pursued a two-pronged strategy. At home, the refrain of sell-out was kept up. Simultaneously, Pakistan was asked not to settle with the UPA government. In New Delhi on February 20, 2007, Advani advised its Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri, against any haste in the peace process. Vajpayee repeated the line the next day. Sotto voce Kasuri was told wait till we return to power, implying you will get better terms from us.

In his introduction to the second edition of Baghehots classic The English Constitution, A.J. Balfour astutely observed, Let the political parties be reduced to two (admittedly the most convenient number for Cabinet Government), but let the chasm dividing them be so profound that a change of Administration would in fact be a revolution disguised under a Constitutional procedure. Does not this illustration show how delicate is the political machinery whose smooth working we usually take as a matter of course?

The harsh truth is that India has failed to evolve and sustain a viable, functioning party system. Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were defeated by ad hoc coalitions. Ramshackle coalitions were drummed up in 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

Nationalist sentiment poured scorn on the dicta of British authorities on parliamentary government. Now more self-assured, we might reflect seriously on propositions adumbrated in the Report of the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (Session 1933-34): Parliamentary government, as it is understood in the United Kingdom, works by the inter-action of four essential factors. The principle of majority rule, the willingness of the minority for the time being to accept the decisions of the majority, the existence of great political parties divided by broad issues of policy, rather than by sectional interests, and finally the existence of a mobile body of public opinion, owing no permanent allegiance to any party and therefore able, by its instinctive reaction against extravagant movements on one side or the other, to keep the vessel on an even keel. In India none of these factors can be said to exist today. There are no parties, as we understand them, and there is no considered body of political opinion which can be described as mobile. It proceeded to refer to communal differences and to the rigid divisions of caste.

The report was an illiberal document on the reforms. But no Indian concerned with democratic governance should ignore those remarks.

Right now, Mohan Bhagwat is master of all he surveys in his bailiwick. His vision is global, his ambition unbounded, and his confidence is charged with a divine mission. As general secretary of the RSS he had declared, Politics has never been considered an untouchable area by the Swayamsewaks (Organiser; October 22, 2000). To Swayamsewaks who had collected in Nagpur, it was claimed, from 38 countries around the globe, he said, God has given the Hindus responsibility to take the peoples of the world to the pinnacle of human glory . The whole world is looking at India with hope (The Indian Express; January 3, 2001).

The RSS holds that Homer adapted Valmikis Ramayana into his Iliad while Jesus Christ roamed across the Himalayas and drew inspiration from Hinduism. These historical discoveries and many more figure in textbooks taught in RSS-run schools (The Telegraph; November 18, 2000). Are you at all surprised that the modern Hindu is not attracted by these jokers? Yet, it is a body led by men of dazzling brilliance like Mohan Bhagwat and K.S. Sudarshan which decides the fate of the BJP and the men who run it. Some are motivated by ideology some by power.

Kalyan Singh, former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, spilled the beans at Aligarh on February 8, 2000: I have spent a greater part of my life in this organisation [RSS] and I can say that right from the distribution of election tickets [to candidates] in BJP to selecting Cabinet Ministers, it is only the RSS which calls the shots. What else is political activity?

L.K. Advani is acclaimed by his admirers on TV channels for building up the party. In truth, organisationally the job was done by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Nana Deshmukh. Advani acquired a grip over the party machine much later. Until 1985 the BJP was nowhere. He built it up from 1989 only by spreading the poison of communal hate, the promise of a Ram temple and a recast of our polity. He succeeded only in the first. It would be well worth the while of any research scholar to bring out a compilation of his brazenly communal speeches From 1989-1999: The Thought of L.K. Advani. He has avoided accountability to the courts which have found him guilty prima facie of complicity in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He was an administrative disaster in the Home Ministry, making gaffes which would have made Inspector Clouseau blush. What was his stand on the Gujarat pogrom and on the Staines murder except to stand by the culprits?

No tears need be shed for his imminent and inglorious departure from a position of high rank in the BJP, his second humiliation in five years. Ghalibs famous couplet described his lot accurately: Nikalna Khuld se Adam ka sunte aye hain lekin/ bohat beabroo hokar tere kuche se hum nikle (One had heard of Adams departure from the Garden of Eden/ But it was in utter disgrace that I left your quarters).