BJP apes Congress, fails
By Koenraad Els
http://dailypioneer .com/177112/ BJP-apes- Congress- fails.html
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Right-wing parties all over the world have a common trait:
Once in or near power, they betray their own support base. The BJP is no different. It is needlessly described as a 'Hindu chauvinist' party which it is not. To prove its 'secular' credentials, the BJP chose to become the 'B' team of the Congress.
And was rejected by the voters With great satisfaction, the world has taken note of the defeat of the Hindu nationalists: "The Indian voter has rejected Hindu chauvinism." Subtleties such as the likelihood that the BJP has been abandoned by many of its supporters for not being Hindu chauvinist enough, don't come into the picture. The typically Indian failures of the BJP that explain its defeat, I now leave to Indian authors to discuss.
What has caught my attention is a trait the BJP shares with Right-wing parties all over the world. The label 'Rightist' is open to various definitions, the themes with which Rightist parties attract voters are different from country to country, and even on a single theme, their positions may differ between countries. But they have one behavioural trait in common:
Once in or near power, they betray their own support base.
In France, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy came to power on a distinctly Rightist platform, which he largely disowned once installed as President. Thus, he had promised to oppose the entry of Turkey into the EU, but the first thing he did was to nominate as his Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner of the opposition Socialist Party, a declared supporter of Turkey's entry.
In Britain, the Conservative Party is a copy of New Labour on all issues of consequence. People who favour its traditional positions now turn to the UK Independence Party or even the proletarian British National Party.
Those who insist on loyalty to the old party-line, even top-ranking veteran Norman Tebbitt, are threatened with expulsion. In the US, the real (so-called paleo-) conservatives have been frozen out of the Republican Party and are being starved by institutional boycotts. The party shuns matters of principle and limits its supposed conservatism to mindless flag-waving.
While the party base favours Christian politics, the part elite downplays ideology and promoted as presidential candidate the faux war martyr John McCain, a liberal in the Culture War. Like other plutocrats eager to suppress labour wages by exploiting illegals, he laughed at the party activists' demands for curbs on immigration.
Consequently, conservative mobilisation for the party during the elections was lacklustre and defeat inevitable. Doesn't all this remind you of the BJP? The party favours mindless flag-waving over ideology and takes its constituents for granted. It assumes that they have nowhere else to turn and will follow the party in all its erratic policy shifts.
Well, not really erratic, there is a transparent logic in the party's betraying its core party-line: It dreams of enjoying the warmth of approval from its enemies, who happen to dominate the cultural and media sectors. It tells its voters: Since you are lambasted as reactionary communalists, we don't want to be on your side.
But no matter what non-Hindutva postures it adopts, the hoped-for approval from the secularists remains elusive. In 1991 already, right after the election victory that made the BJP the leading Opposition party, it discreetly disowned the Ayodhya movement that had earned it this breakthrough.
The media scapegoated Mr LK Advani for the subsequent Babri Masjid demolition, though everybody knew that it had taken place in spite of him. He had gone there to demonstrate to the secularists that he was the one man who could control Hindu anger and prevent it from demolishing this symbol of secularism. When the crowd bypassed him, he broke down in tears, and ever since, he has been deploring the event as the 'blackest day' of his life. Disowning his role of flag-bearer of Hindutva, he should have bowed out gracefully.
Instead, his clinging on to the leadership reminds us of Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen, the aged French Rightist leader who has sacrificed his party to his own pitiable ambitions. While Ayodhya was 'merely' a symbolic issue, the more political demands were likewise cast aside. When in power, the BJP didn't make the slightest move towards a Common Civil Code, abolition of Jammu & Kashmir's separate status or Governmental non-interference in Hindu schools and places of worship.
The single attempt at doing anything pro-Hindu -- Mr Murli Manohar Joshi's exercise in rewriting the Marxist-distorted textbooks -- turned into a horror show of incompetence. During the latest campaign, the BJP downplayed ideology (except erratically in the Varun Gandhi incident) and betted all on 'good governance'.
Some BJP State Governments have provided that, to be sure, and in these States the BJP has been rewarded. But it could never be a decisive election-winner because Congress hasn't done too bad in that regard either.
Ever since Mr Manmohan Singh read out the 1992 Budget, the world sees his signature written all over India's economic success. Even BJP contributors to that success, like erstwhile Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie, won't deny him that honour.
In these circumstances, only a clear ideological profile, mature but distinct, could have won the election for the BJP. If it didn't want that ideological distinctness and was content to remain the Congress's B-team, the party could have learned from Mr Sarkozy to show this only after the election. Before, it should at least have kept up the pretence of being a party with a difference. -
The author is an Indologist based in Brussels.
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I had this strong lingering question about BJP in this election" What has changed since 2004 except the exit of Vajpayeeji".
Have they worked towards restoring idealogical clarity and have they worked towards educating the masses on what they stand for ? It is the desparation of the Hindu organisations who were looking for someone to stand up for the HIndus and they wanted to believe that BJP would do it...and hence many karyakartas worked for them.
But, the difference lies in TINA ( There is no alternative) mindset and a mindset of conviction. I noticed that though many of us did work for them, the lingering question remained...
Have they changed for the better ? On a question on BJP and erratic behaviour of some of their leaders, Sudarshanji responded ( a few years back)..."kya hamen unse agrah karne ki shakti hai?" You would notice that in most places, where the Sangh/ Vividh Kshetras are in a position of strength, the BJP leaders necessarily fall in line.
Not only the BJP leaders, many non- BJP leaders in those areas, also speak the language that we desire them to speak.The Congress's gain was more to do with the shifting of the Muslim votebank to them from SP and other regional parties...Xtians have always been with them. In addition, I personally notice an erosion in the urban base of the BJP.
Except for Bangalore, they have lost in all metros and major cities..which means that there is a fundamental lack of awareness among the urban youth about what BJP stands for. it also means that the concept of Hindu Rashtra or Hindutva has to be better articulated by the Sangh and Vividh Kshetra karyakartas.On the plank of development, all states where the BJP and Congress have performed, have stood by them...the difference has been in the shift and idealogical clarity.
தன்யவாத்
Ayush ஆயுஷ்
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Most importantly people of a state respond better to a local leader who is charismatic and jells with them.That is why Naveen Patnaik could win even in the face of a three-cornered fight.So even the concepts of Nationalism and Hindu Dharma should be articulated by a brilliant,aggressiv e and charismatic local leader.
The National level leader can supplement him by providing an image of the party.That is what Congress did in the times of Nehru.with Nehru at the National level there were giants like Kamaraj in Tamilnadu, Nijalingappa in Mysore, Sanjivayya in Andhra Pradesh,S.K. Patil in Maharashtra, Atulya Ghosh in West Bengal and so on.
They were no mean personalities themselves.They commanded great respect from the people and so all the states kept voting for the congress. So at least in the southern states, Orissa and Maharashtra the BJP needs to have such leaders who can at once carry the masses with them.Urgent surgical action is needed now.
All the leaders should give up ego,bad temperament, speaking out of turn to the press,envy etc. They should be disciplined, genial,calm, gentle and magnanimous and must be ready for any sacrifice for the sake of the party.They should always keep in mind that the BJP is a movement and not a party .It has a Mission- The Mission of relieving our Motherland from the clutches of corruption,terroris m,poverty and above all the anti-National forces which get a soft treatment from the communal Congress and other such parties.
And finally to restore Bharat to its rightful place as the Vishwaguru of the world.So the BJP has a Mission and not a mere goal- the goal to assume power. Power is only a means to achieve the above and not an end in itself.They must remember that the BJP was started by the great Rishi Guruji Golwalkar with a view to correct the skewed course of politics carried on by the congress.
And not for some individuals to enjoy power and the crumbs that go with it.
the leaders of the BJP remember and follow this then the Party and the Nation will gain enormously.
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