I entered Parliament with BJP support. The Sena votes were not enough to see a second candidate through. Satish Pradhan was the official candidate. I came in as the second one, in the hope that the BJP may give me some of their extra votes. Balasaheb made an impassioned plea for me, an outsider to the party. So charismatic was his plea that I not only got the Sena votes but I also got the extra BJP votes. Satish Pradhan limped in last while Ram Pradhan (known as Sonia’s candidate) lost. Clearly the BJP was behind my victory even though Pramode Mahajan never quite liked me. But he listened to Balasaheb. So I have a soft spot for the BJP even though India looks all set to forget them.
My biggest disappointment with the BJP is that despite India voting it into power within a decade and a half of being a tiny two man party in Parliament, it stubbornly refused to meet any expectations. It picked up every cracked cause it found, from joining the rivers of India to building a Sanskrit supercomputer to wanting to replace the national anthem with Vande Mataram, to stitch together a political agenda so weird that even today people sigh with relief when they see the BJP out of power. It’s a party where everyone’s so busy putting the other down that no one has time for anything else. I suspect Vajpayee and Advani, the two who built the party from scratch, are as sad to see it go down the drain. But the real tragedy is that the very things the BJP (and India) hated about the Congress flourished most during its own regime: Corruption, ineptitude, nepotism, and nonsense masquerading as ideology. Sitting in the Central Hall of Parliament, I often felt like an idiot. All that I had spent a lifetime fighting was happening there-- right before my eyes. No wonder I did not seek re-election.
But I still owe the BJP. I owe Mahajan in particular. He was one of the party’s cleverest and most insolent satraps. There was nothing he wouldn’t stoop to but he was smart enough to know that to be in power the BJP had to master the art of sustaining alliances and he did that brilliantly. I suspect even Balasaheb misses him. The BJP certainly does even though no one will admit to it because the BJP loves fighting the enemy within, not the Congress. Every leader in the party hates the other and yet they all sit down together, laugh, joke, drink tea and eat samosas, pretending they are just a whisker away from power. Who know? They probably are. But it’s certainly not on merit. The only support that exists for them comes from people like you and I who want a powerful Opposition around just to keep the Congress in check.
But the truth is most people don’t think the BJP have it in them any more. The fact that some still vote for it and alliance partners remain is because there’s no real alternative in sight. The Congress is clever. They showcase young leaders like Rahul Gandhi so differently that you can hate the Congress and yet vote for Rahul and his candidates. In your mind they are entirely different propositions. The BJP can’t even do that. Barring Narendra Modi, no one in the party can stand apart and claim a personal following. Some crackpots may still buy their poison brew of Hindutva, Hate and Hysteria. But the BJP has nothing else to offer India. Not even an alternative economic roadmap to capture the nation’s imagination, burdened as it with spiralling prices, unrealistic taxes, and a Government constantly in denial of its failures.
The Congress may refuse to change. But at least it’s using its new mascot Rahul Gandhi wisely, to cleverly draw in the young and not so young to whom he stands as a sign of possible change. The BJP offers nothing apart from the notion of an alternative. But the face of that alternative can’t be an overweight leader who faints in the Delhi heat or a pack of wolves who tear into one of their own when he writes a book on Jinnah. The BJP obviously doesn’t like intelligent, capable, charismatic leaders. Not enough to give them prominence in the party. It offers no political roadmap, no economic agenda that can make them look like a real alternative. It speaks only through ill fitting dentures on issues India has long forgotten.
When 65% voters are under 35 and clamouring for change, the BJP looks like an anachronism. It has clearly lost the plot. What it needs is a fresh young face that can relate to the new generation of Indians and speak for the future. What it can do is challenge the old, tired clichés of the Congress by offering an imaginative new agenda that includes not just politics but smart economics and that dream of change that can inspire young people to take them seriously. To do that, the BJP must look at the future and stop harping on the past. Hate is so passé.
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