Considering the current goings-on at the Centre, it may not be farfetched to suggest that the BJP has become a victim of self-hate. The last Lok Sabha election dealt the party a blow, pushing it from the power perch twice in succession. It is two years since then but the saffronites are clearly yet to take a lesson from the debacle. In some measure, the Lok Sabha defeat was attributable to the BJP’s intense factionalism and the leadership struggles within, although the rejection of its core ideology among broad sections of the electorate cannot but have been a factor.
In recent years, the compulsions of coalition politics have helped take the edge off the ideology to some degree, allowing for wider acceptance among voters. But the effort needed deft husbanding by the party’s top brass. This was available when the likes of Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani were at the helm. With the era of the stalwarts effectively over, it has been open season for infighting among the next rung of leaders. The party faithful may have hoped that those struggling for top leadership roles would put the wounds of faction-fighting behind them after a major defeat, and seek to consolidate. That appears to have been wishful thinking.
The famed cleavage between Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley is still on view, with none of the intensity ebbing. These second-level players have now been pushed into the top echelon and given top positions in the two Houses of Parliament, but do not appear to show an awareness of their new responsibilities. This is quite possibly because they see the current party chief, Nitin Gadkari, as a transitory figure, an interloper plucked from anonymity by the RSS — which continues to remote-control the BJP — and made BJP chief as a damage-control measure, in order to staunch the internal bloodletting after the departure of the stalwarts. As such, they still fancy their chances, working on the assumption that the stopgap cannot be in their way forever as his limitations would be exposed sooner rather than later. In the interim, the two contestants for the top job are jousting to pre-position themselves.
The BJP recently won key victories in Parliament by forcing the government — after months of blocking — to agree to a JPC probe into the 2G spectrum scam, and obliging the government to jettison P.J. Thomas as central vigilance commissioner. The government was on the back foot. And yet the principal Opposition party could not savour the day for long. The rifts within became apparent with Ms Swaraj tweeting that politics must move on after the Prime Minister had accepted “responsibility” in the matter of the CVC’s appointment. She may have taken a broad, generous view — the kind that appeals to ordinary people — but Mr Jaitley appeared determined to put her in the dock by all but denouncing her approach when he said that he wasn’t done yet with rubbing the Prime Minister’s nose in the dust. To make matters worse, Mr Gadkari openly sided with Mr Jaitley at a recent press conference, whose timing gave rise to the impression that he wanted to put the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha in her place. Properly speaking, in the Westminster system, the Leader of the Opposition is the Prime Minister-in-waiting. Never before in this country has someone occupying that position been publicly humiliated by her own party. So it’s an interesting question: was Mr Gadkari put up to the job by the RSS, or did he go solo? Either way, he has not enhanced his stature or that of the party he is privileged to lead.