Asia ReView

BY SUDHIR K SINGH

BHOPAL

Sept. 1: Mr Govindacharya, the BJP’s home-grown Chanakya who went on "long study leave" a decade ago in the aftermath of the famous mukhauta (mask) controversy, and stayed back, says that the sooner Mr Arun Jaitley is handed over the mantle of party president, the better it would be for the party’s long-term future. "Rajnath Singh is sabotaging. Appointing Arun will send out the right message." All things considered, he remains the most acceptable face of the BJP. More than Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, whose appeal is largely confined to urban areas and the middle class. "He is like a banyan tree under which nothing can grow." The bitter reality, however, is that the combined numbers of the BJP and the Congress may not cross the 250-mark in the 2009 Lok Sabha poll. "So expect a weaker Centre, much more corruption, and greater instability," he said.

In a brutally frank chat with select mediapersons in the state capital on Sunday, Mr Govindacharya said the BJP was passing through one of its most difficult phases in which the central command had weakened and the Sangh was barely able to keep its flock together. The working axis of Mr Modi, Mr Jaitley and Mr Naidu stood seriously ruptured, especially after the recent CD scandal, and things were falling apart. The three were working at cross-purposes, he said. The obvious beneficiary of the infighting was the "non-performing" Rajnath who once confessed having always got more than he deserved, the saffron leader said.

Under the circumstances, Mr Advani remained the safest choice to lead the party in the next poll. "But today’s Advani is not the same as the Advani of the 1990s." Well into his ’80s, he is more dependent on the family (especially the daughter) whose proximity to power would sooner or later open the floodgates to influence peddlers in a "mutually encashable" environment. In fact, it was way back in the ’90s that Mr Advani had admitted his inability to curb the lure for power and pelf among partymen. Bristled the lahu-purush: "Stop tom-tomming that the BJP is a party with a difference; Congress with a saffron tinge is all it is."

In spirit, felt Mr Govindacharya, the BJP had still to outgrow its Delhi-centric mindset. The party’s understanding of the political dynamics in the cow belt, i.e. UP and Bihar, was still poor. Its combined Lok Sabha representation from the six north Indian states of Jammu, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Punjab was less than the total number of seats in Bihar. This anomaly, he argued, was reflected in the composition of the working committee whose discussions rarely dwelt on non-north Indian issues. Electorally, since the party’s numbers in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan were also bound to decline given the anti-incumbency factor, there was no way in which the BJP could hope to improve on its 2004 tally, it was felt. And the Congress, if anything, was in worse shape. Which is why the mandate of 2009 would be far more fractured.

Mr Govindacharya ruled out the return of his political disciple, Ms Uma Bharti, to the BJP.

"They won’t bring her back with honour. And she won’t come without proper positioning." But it served everybody’s interest to keep talking about her impending return.

He said he didn’t foresee a revival of her political career before 2010 when he expected a paradigm shift in Indian politics under the groundswell of muscular nationalism (prakhar rashtravaad) with a distinctly pro-poor hue.