After the shock of its electoral defeat last month it is time for the Bharatiya Janata Party to come to terms with reality.
The BJP's three-day meeting, which began on Tuesday at a scenic location on the banks of the Powai lake in Mumbai, will be looked upon by the rank and file with anxiety and hope.
The cadres, demoralised after the surprise defeat in the Lok Sabha election, await some coherent micro-analysis from senior leaders. Also, they look forward to a new agenda and direction that could enthuse the party.
Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's ire against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has been, to put it mildly, resented by the party's state units.
But, not so surprisingly, the negative fallout within the party has been contained by the encounter killing of four suspected terrorists in Ahmedabad last week.
"Ishrat [the Mumbai college girl who was killed in the encounter] has saved Modi. The way the media and the Congress criticised Modi over the killings has united the divided opinion within the BJP," a senior party leader told rediff.com
BJP leaders say ever since his defeat, Vajpayee has been feeling strongly over the issue of Gujarat.
Vajpayee believes the violence in Gujarat and Modi's inability to control it united Muslims against the party all over India. His own assurances that the riots in Gujarat would not be repeated and calls for friendship (his critics in the party call it appeasement) on the eve of the general election failed to soften them.
But Vajpayee is in a minority in the party on this issue.
The BJP leadership's argument is that Muslims were always against it and Modi's alleged non-performance during the riots has nothing to do with the situation.
In spite of the 'flaw' in his argument, Vajpayee could have won in his attack on Modi, but the police encounter and the reactions of the Opposition and Muslim leaders to the incident alerted the RSS, which intervened and prevailed upon the BJP leadership to retain Modi.
"We don't like Modi's pompous ways," said a BJP leader from Maharashtra, "but we cannot agree and will never agree with Vajpayee's argument that the BJP lost because of Gujarat."
On Monday, BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan told the media that the issue of Gujarat is a closed chapter. Analysts have added: Till the Maharashtra assembly election is over.
BJP sources say Gujarat will be just one of the many issues to be discussed at the national executive meeting. The others are:
- The reasons for the BJP's defeat in Election 2004.
- The reasons for the stunning defeat of the BJP's allies in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
- The BJP's political errors in Assam and Jharkhand.
- The upper caste's voting pattern (against the BJP) in UP and ineffective policies in Bihar.
- Polarisation of Muslim votes and its impact on the party's performance.
- The party's economic policy and rural votes.
The BJP will chalk out the possible options for the coming assembly election in several states. Party units in Bihar, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu expect directions from the national executive meeting.
