Charioteer & his chase

BJP stalwart Lal Krishna Advani’s apparently sudden announcement that he would get on to a motorised “rath” or chariot and do a cross-country yet again — this time with the avowed intention of campaigning against corruption — has caught even his own party unawares. It should not have.
The decision fits perfectly with the recent declaration of BJP president Nitin Gadkari that his party will march under the leadership of Anna Hazare. In fact, it can logically be seen to be in furtherance of that line. The tactical direction flowed from the RSS — around which the Hindutva bodies revolve — and given to the
BJP as a political party to pursue.

As such, there is more than a hint of pre-meditation about Mr Advani’s explicit statement, not to say an opportunity for him to return to RSS’ favour, from which he had found himself displaced after his controversial pro-Jinnah statement issued from Karachi a few years ago.
Seizing on the depleted political capital of the Manmohan Singh government, the RSS tactically aligned itself with the Hazare anti-corruption campaign and, before that, of the yoga teacher-cum-businessman Ramdev. But it looked like the affairs of the Ayurvedic medicines entrepreneur of Hardwar might carry a smell. So, the RSS moved with agility to be with Anna Hazare, taking on the vital task of giving his movement the vital organisational thrust, while staying in the background. The Hindutva high command has formidable experience of that sort of thing.
It instantly knew it was on to a good thing. Even the Westernised sections of the middle class warmed to the rural reformer from Maharashtra with unsuspected enthusiasm, loving his farmstead homilies (which made him appear all the more authentic to the chic peddlers) and his jolly belittlement of politicians.
The political implications of this for the BJP can be extremely positive if the party plays its cards right, although it is hard to predict electoral outcomes at this stage. Whether the Hazare campaign leads to the whittling of corruption or not, it has succeeded in giving a singular morale-boost to the BJP as a party, which has been short of oxygen since the Atal-Advani duo repaired to a state of detachment thrust on them by circumstance.
Seizing the moment, the BJP for its part kept up a steady din on corruption through the Monsoon Session of Parliament, and kept trimming its stance on the proposed Lokpal law to be in accord with Mr Hazare’s, appreciating full well that this was the way to reclaim the middle-class constituency it had ceded to the Congress in the last Lok Sabha election.
The Hazare movement had an anti-government thrust all along; the genius of the RSS lay in effectively transforming it into an anti-Congress belligerence, although corruption in India is party-neutral, and indeed two BJP-run states, first Karnataka and now Uttaranchal, with an eye on elections, have had to torpedo their sitting chief ministers thought to be associated with taint.
The task set for Mr Advani is nothing less than to capitalise on the current anti-Congress mood unleashed under the aegis of the Hazare campaign and to neutralise the fires that could consume the BJP in some parts of the country on account of allegations of corruption.
Mr Advani has been pulled out of semi-retirement and tasked to wear the campaign commander’s mantle. This has unnerved the current crop of BJP leaders. They appear to entertain the anxiety that the party’s former top leader may willy-nilly be pitch-forked into such prominence by the role just given to him that he may eclipse them for the prime-ministerial stakes, if the occasion arises.
This is not an unrealistic fear, although the RSS had earlier stipulated — before instructing Mr Advani to become the mentor and no longer be the BJP’s prime practitioner of the art of the possible — that the time had come for generational change in the party’s hierarchy. But the very point of politics is to always remain braced for a change in dynamics, and not be surprised even if Bhishma Pitamah dusts off the years and rises to charge into battle.
In any case, did the RSS (or its handy man Mr Gadkari) have a choice? Who in the BJP is better equipped than Mr Advani for the rigours of a rath yatra in spite of his years? Indeed, who is a taller BJP leader recognised by the whole country? True, Narendra Modi could have kicked the door and walked into the show any time. But he has a state to run, day-to-day. He also remains too divisive a figure and might have kicked up too much communal dust even during a campaign ostensibly being run to fight corruption.
Especially since Mr Advani is likely to aim at transforming the juncture into one where mid-term elections become inescapable (this has been a recent refrain with him), the octogenarian, too, may be expected to engage in polarising semantics in the course of his rath yatra and sharpening communal cleavages in a manner that benefits his party in elections.
But, unlike Mr Modi, he may be expected to do so with a degree of wiliness or sophistication that others in the BJP top hierarchy may find hard to summon. He would also no doubt seek to stay close to the Hazare wind through the clever use of political instruments and by adjusting agendas and rhetoric as he goes along.