Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

The rise and decline of the BJP

From a political pariah to the party in waiting to being exiled before it could occupy the throne -- that somehow sums up the Bharatiya Janata Party's rise and fall over the last decade of the second millenium.

Its decline is a little unusual, in that when one considers the progress of most other parties, they go into decline only after a stint -- however brief -- at occupying high office. Before the honeymoon could sour, the nuptials took place in Delhi, V P Singh being the most ready example that jumps to mind. And what the Congress party has been getting on all along before Singh queered its pitch irrevocably, was that when the electorate's honeymoon with it soured, there was no alternative suitor on hand who could command the nation's attention.

The BJP, on the other hand, has had the ignominy of seeing its balance from the political votebank decline, even before it was admitted to office.

It may also mean that although political machinations kept it out of office in 1991, the masses have judged it on the basis of the fortnight it governed the nation before submitting its resignation. For the party, then, all the high falutin' talk of not indulging in horse-trading but would rather be voted out of office may have made for good copy but little else.

For those who voted it within breathing space of a simple majority would have rather see it buy out a few members of Parliament rather than go down with its guns blazing. It is their disenchantment that will keep the party out of power in the new millennium as well.

Yes, 1996 will be the high point of the BJP's political existence; it will not cross that mark ever in the future. Unless, but we will come to that later.

More worrying for the party, subsequent incidents in 1996 have shown up the BJP to be made of no different stuff from its contemporaries. The loss of Gujarat to a rebel was bad enough, but the fact that it could not get even a simple majority on its own in Uttar Pradesh, the land of the masjid, is proof of the peculiar situation it finds itself in.

Has the new year been any different? Not if Rajasthan -- which it managed to retain by the skin of its teeth -- and the party's official stand in the civic elections to Bombay, the commercial capital of India, is any indication.

What the BJP has done is to surrender meekly before the Shiv Sena and agree for a lower share in the seat allocation with its alliance partner, even while the agreement between the two parties was clear that while the BJP would contest two-thirds of the assembly seats in the state, the ratio would be reversed for the civic elections in Bombay. Since the city consists of 221 wards, the BJP was entitled to around 72 seats. But it settled for 65, a decision that has angered its members no end.

And, for a cadre-based party that prides itself on its differences, with the more commercialised political parties, its members's actions in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Bombay will only give the lie to its claim to being different. And for an electorate that has shown time and again that it is long on memory and short on trust, such things cannot be brushed under the carpet.

So consider how the BJP is placed in the new year. It does not rule the Hindi heartland, it has lost the all important state of Gujarat, in Rajasthan it is hanging on, it is ruling minuscule Delhi, in Maharashtra it is clearly a junior partner in the alliance with the Shiv Sena. Its influence in the east, never much in the first place, has shown no sign of expansion. In the south it continues to be a rank outsider, with one of the parties that count for anything wanting anything to do with it. It this sign of party that is waiting outside the corridors of power

That also presents the picture of what happens to a political party that moves away from an issue that won the hearts of the electorate. When the BJP seriously began bidding for power, it was riding the crest of a mandir wave. True, official recognition was given to it by V P Singh who, in his eagerness to outclass Rajiv Gandhi., tied up with the BJP, pitchforking it into the mainstream.

Considering this, it is surprising that the BJP did not learnt from what happened to Singh when he moved away from the Bofors issue -- which rocketed him into the political galaxy - to Mandal, which no one really cared about anyway.

Similarly, when the BJP harps on the mandir factor but does sweet nothing for 10 long years but instead moves on to what it thinks are more crucial issues, its votebank is going to dwindle. The BJP may argue that it did succeed in pulling down the eyesore that was the dilapidated mosque, but what that overlooks is the fact that in the first place the operative part of the campaign that pitchforked it to power was mandir wahi banayenge and not masjid wahin girayenge.

There has been no sign of the temple coming up, and the people are not willing to buy the argument that factors like judicial intervention have come in the way because they voted the BJP expecting it to tackle these hurdles and not offer excuses like other political parties.

But the BJP's predicament is understandable, it does not want to be seen as one-issue party, it does not want to restrict its appeal to Muslim-baiters, and it realises that in the Indian ethos there really is no place for communal venom or at least it does not want to be held responsible for spreading it when the day of judgement comes. Hence its flip-flops over the masjid.

So what can the party do now? In my opinion, little. Barring Ayodhya, it does not have a brief that sets it apart from other parties. It ought to either accept that at best it is a north Indian party, and be happy with its lot. But, alas, politics is the art of the impossible, and the BJP would like to try and test that axiom.

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