Commentary/Janardan Thakur

Vajpayee is no longer the BJP's automatic choice for the prime ministership

If the Bharatiya Janata Party were to come to power at the Centre again who would be the prime minister? Would Atal Behari Vajpayee be the party's choice again? ''That's a hypothetical question,'' a senior party leader said, obviously trying to duck the question. Off the record, his answer was, ''We don't know.''

Until not very long ago, Atal Behari Vajpayee's moderate line had been absolute anathema to the Bharatiya Janata Party. More so to the larger Sangh Parivar. In December 1992, Vajpayee had walked out of a meeting of the BJP national executive in sheer disgust, and there hadn't been any ripples in the party. Indeed, at one point some hardliners had thought of organising an agitation against him, and some even wanted him thrown out of the party if he refused to recant.

But then it dawned on the party leadership that the aggressive agitational line was harming the BJP's image of being a responsible, disciplined party, and was creating suspicions in the minds of the elite and the middle class in the country. What was even worse, it had begun to suffer in the eyes of the world. What hurt the party's overblown ego was that world leaders should visit India and return without meeting its top leaders. They, of course, blamed it on the Narasimha Rao government that leaders like John Major, Helmut Kohl and Boris Yeltsin were 'not allowed' to meet the BJP leaders.

What had probably jolted the party even more was the report of the Carnegie Foundation on India and America after the Cold War. While it cast no direct aspersions on the BJP, its drift was clear. In its chapter, 'Is India Stable?' the report said: 'Predictions of political paralysis proved unfounded, during the first eighteen mouths after a minority Congress government assumed power in June 1991....The Congress party maintained unity in its own ranks while neutralising its principal opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, by playing on the division between its moderate and hardline factions. This strategy worked until hardliners took control of the BJP following the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992, provoking what is likely to be a protracted confrontation between the Congress and the Hindu right...The emerging struggle between secular and Hindu revivalist forces could make it more difficult for India to implement rapid economic reforms and to cope with the Pakistan-supported insurgencies in two key border states dominated by non-Hindus...'

The BJP leadership could hardly have failed to notice that one of the main participants in the group which prepared the report was Walter Andresen, who until some years back was posted in the US embassy in Delhi and with whom the BJP had been in close touch. He was the author of The Saffron Brotherhood, a book that was sympathetic to the RSS.

The BJP has always been highly sensitive to Western perceptions of Indian politics. Interaction between the party and Western diplomats has grown in recent days, but the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the countrywide riots and disturbances which followed had shaken their confidence in the party; they felt that the 'responsible leaders' in the BJP had lost their initiative to the 'firebreathing hardliners' who might not stop at anything to achieve their goal of turning India into a 'Hindu Rashtra.'

But just when the more rational leaders of the party were beginning to see the need to slow down and give the party the image of being a responsible and disciplined party, there came the strident decision of the then party chief, Murli Manohar Joshi, to defy the ban on their rally in Delhi. Left to L.K.Advani or Atal Behari Vajpayee, this open challenge to the State authority which only reinforced the party's image as irresponsible law-breakers, would probably never have come.

They were left with little choice but to go ahead with the party's decision, but it must have convinced them even more that they needed to change their strategy and style. This, above all, had been the rationale for a change in the party presidentship: That Murli Manohar Joshi had come to be identified with the unrepentant hardliners, not only in the BJP but in the Sangh Parivar as a whole.

But a real change was hard to bring about. The forces of militant Hindutva had tasted blood and it was not easy to put them down. They had taken the driver's seat in the BJP, virtually silencing the old and established leaders of the party. Came the elections in Gujarat and Maharashtra and the tide of Hindutva was on the rise again. The Vaghela revolt in Gujarat was essentially against the vice-like grip that the RSS had come to have on the administration.

It brought into sharp focus the divide in the party, its vulnerability, and its limitations. If it wasn't clear to the party leadership before the crisis in Gujarat it became evident after it that there was no way they could win power at the Centre on their own. A coalition was the best it could hope for, and for this they needed to project a leader with a wider acceptability. Atal Behari Vajpayee was the obvious man.

Vajpayee had for years been considered prime ministerial material but until not too long ago he was he was usually diffident about it. ''I don't believe in it,'' he often said. ''I can't become prime minister because I don't belong to the Nehru dynasty.''

The dynasty is out, and the battle now is between near equals. Atal Behari Vajpayee became the prime minister, albeit briefly, and if he gets a chance again it is unlikely that he would refuse it. In his 13 days as prime minister he impressed a lot of people in the country. Vajpayee certainly has big plus points.

What sets him apart from the general run of politicians is his charm, which has become such a rare commodity in politics. Vajpayee can charm even birds out of trees, simply by being what he is: A charming human being. Even the Communists who detest the BJP, and more so the RSS, change their tone when they speak of him: ''But oh, Vajpayee in different. He is a liberal, nothing of the Hindu fanaticism about him. He is not trusted by the RSS.''

Which is Vajpayee's real problem in his party - the fact that he is not very popular with the 'Big Brother' of the Sangh Parivar. Even so, whenever attempts have been made to highlight his 'separateness' from the RSS Vajpayee has been quick to correct the impression and assert that he is part and parcel of the Sangh Parivar.

What was perhaps difficult was to contain Vajpayee's wider view of life and polity into the straitjacket of the RSS. Perhaps at the root of the Sangh's allergy towards Vajpayee was his view of the proper role of the organisation.

After the break-up of the Janata Party government in 1979, Vajpayee had written an anguished article on the RSS role in the Indian Express: 'It is possible,' he wrote, 'that some people genuinely feel apprehensive about the RSS. A certain onus accordingly devolved on the RSS, an onus that has not been discharged effectively by the RSS. Its repudiation of the theocratic form of the State was welcome, yet the question could legitimately be asked .. Why does it not open its doors to non-Hindus?'

Flexibility and reconciliation, as one commentator put it, are among Vajpayee's notable qualities as a politician. Which make him acceptable to a much wider spectrum than most other politicians in the country today. If some had reservations about him it was merely that he belonged to the 'wrong party.' He was seen by some as 'the right man in the wrong place.'

Many wondered why he was where he was, and if he wasn't suffocated. Even so, it must be said that whenever attempts were made to emphasise his 'separateness' from the RSS, Vajpayee was quick to assert that he was part and parcel of the Sangh Parivar. However, the perception that he was not very acceptable to the RSS hardcore remained. Which could be Vajpayee's real problem in the party next time, whenever that is.