The square peg of the BJP in the round hole of our secular democracy. Will it ever be a fit?

That’s been the classic criticism of the saffronists as they attempted to reinvent themselves every time there was a clamour from our multi-ethnic nation for a leader who reflects the intricate mosaic that makes up India, intertwined between its Hindu, Muslim and Christian strands.

And clearly, as Mumbai has shown this week, within the BJP, there’s no replacing the poet-politician Atal Bihari Vajpayee — the one BJP leader who nailed his over-arching pennant of inclusiveness to the mast, but failed, incomprehensively to find a flag around which the masses beyond our cities could rally, even though he stood head and shoulders above ‘em all.

The triumvirate that held the party together when it reigned over Raisina Hill has been in terminal decline for some time. Vajpayee, face of the party, fabled mukhauta is battling old age. Advani, who captured the imagination of the majority Hindus with his yatra and the deeply divisive destruction of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya, is being nudged to the sidelines. Mumbai could be his last gasp. Jaswant Singh, a mere shadow of himself. As for the others, does anyone even remember their names, a fast fading memory.

So who do we have in the here and now? Nitin Gadkari. Narendra Modi. The first, a party chief who has, without much fanfare, manouevred a second term. The second, the prime ministerial hopeful, muscling all others aside. Two ambitious men who see benefit in their mutual alliance. This is as it should be – a BJP, preparing the ground for the bruising electoral test of 2014. Gadkari has looked around and seen that he has nobody of the national stature of Vajpayee to counter the Congress or the third front that is gathering force. But is Modi, the one?

With Modi, the conflicting narratives on the so-called butcher of Godhra versus the man who rebuilt Gujarat collide. Mass murderer? Or the darling of the corporates? It is something the BJP can selectively build on. Reject Godhra. Retain the pro-industry image. And given Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s loosening hold on an economy in rapid nose-dive, denting the economist prime minister’s halo like no other, Modi’s image as the darling of big business could be a definite draw; More so, as it raises the prospect of the corporate czars funding the BJP’s electoral machine, (as they are suspected to have done the first time around.)

Whether Modi can become to the BJP what Vajpayee once was, is the big question. Advani is clearly neither Gadkari’s or Modi’s cup of tea. The octogenarian may share Modi’s Hindutva line of thinking. It was his rath yatra to reclaim Ramjanmabhoomi after all that catapulted a party on the fringes of the national discourse to centre-stage. But his age, and the party’s reluctance to project him as their prime ministerial candidate post the ‘08 debacle are factors that have long made his position as the face of another electoral battle untenable.

Where that leaves Karnataka’s adopted daughter Sushma Swaraj, who has been quietly groomed by Advani as his nominal successor – and has never hid her prime ministerial ambitions – is another matter. The manner in which she buried the one skeleton in her closet – the Reddy mine barons – that could have rattled her entire claim to the top job showed how many steps ahead of everyone else she is.

Sushma’s links to Karnataka are what bring her and Ananth Kumar together, and pit them against the former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa whose slow reflexes on what to do about the Reddys’ widening money taint are at the heart of his current challenges in court.

As a top BJP strategist said “Sushma lasered the Reddys.” Some Tayee ! BSY was not quick enough to wash his hands off them, although it must be admitted he did try. He – and for that matter the rest of the state unit, and some say, the central party – took the Reddy largesse when it was convenient, and ditched them when the cash scorched their fingers. But, who’s keeping score!

Sushma, therefore, cut from the Advani cloth, and a demagogue in the mould of the old school politician, sloganeering, shrill, may not be what Gadkari believes, the party needs now. A female Advani. Gadkari’s instincts are to move towards someone, whom, at one level, after the Godhra test, is trusted by the hardcore right-leaning Hindu voter and around whom the party rank and file can coalesce, and who, better than most, could get the Mumbai moneybags to loosen their purse-strings. Cash and carry.

Arun Jaitley, the party’s top strategist has long been a votary of Moditva. And B.S. Yeddyurappa, who bows to Jaitley’s superior wisdom could not have taken any other line except to support Gadkari-Modi, and position himself for a post 2014 world, when he hopes he will have faced down the worst of the corruption charges. Curious how the move to sideline Advani began with the sustained attacks by BSY against the so-called patriarch that many now say may have been prompted by someone within the BJP hierarchy. That BSY has not been publicly pulled up even once for saying the unsayable is interesting.

Does anything in the BJP – or for that matter in any political formation – happen by accident? BSY’s attacks will be put down to his anger over being denied his rightful place in the sun, his remarksbrushed aside while the real hatchet is wielded by another. Ceasar, Brutus, Antony. Advani. Jaitley. Modi. Almost Romanesque.

Karnataka, which the BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi has given a new moniker – India’s new Bihar – has a well-meaning chief minister in Sadananda Gowda who cannot allow the state to slip on his watch. But if Mumbai saw the sidelining of a key member of the old guard, it also saw BSY sheathe his claws, and come to a possible arrangement over the legislative council elections this coming June, where the former CM threatened to play spoiler.

If reports are true, and the BJP has bought peace within the BSY and Sadananda Gowda camps for now, then the Congress will have to do more than just wait around for the BJP to self-combust. Just as the Mumbai dust-off showed power shifting from under the old guard’s unsuspecting and unsteady feet, and foolish questions about how the BJP was becoming more and more like the faction ridden Congress – show me the difference – Karnataka’s Congress preparing for the arrival next week of the Gandhi scion must address whether caste politics rather than competence will predicate their own path ahead.