Only in the event of the RSS managing to force Modi into accepting a consensual candidate, will the party not continue to 'being' the 'next Congress', observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The choice of the new Bharatiya Janata Party president, whenever she or he is 'elected', will indicate whether the party continues being on the path to being the next Congress, or not.
Because this may make little sense without providing the backdrop, let us step in the past, 34 years to be precise, to the days after all constituencies voted in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, hyphenated by Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.
This election, for the first time, drew considerable media interest on the BJP's prospects. There were speculations galore, if the party's performance in the previous poll, in November 1989, was a 'fluke show'.
After all, it registered an astounding 42.5 times growth from its 1984 tally of two Lok Sabha seats, to the startling mark of 85.
The added interest was because the BJP chose to contest the elections sans allies, unlike in 1989 when it made tactical seat adjustments with the Janata Dal and several alliance partners.
The interest was also due to the highly divisive Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra led by its then president, Lal Kishenchand Advani.
It was stopped in October 1990 by Lalu Yadav as Bihar chief minister leading to the BJP withdrawing support from the V P Singh-led National Front government, eventually, triggering the 1991 polls.
Had the Ram temple issue become an electoral issue, this was a major point of deliberation.
One evening, several journalists in Delhi, including this columnist, were cloistered around K N Govindacharya, then a key BJP functionary known for frank informal chats with scribes.
He listed out the BJP's likely tally from various states and as the numbers swelled, one colleague intervened: "So, you may even replace the Congress as the largest party?"
Known for off-the-cuff remarks, Govindacharya retorted with a laugh, "not replace, we WILL BE the next Congress".
Eventually, the BJP fell short of his expected tally although it emerged as the largest Opposition party and Advani assumed the position of Leader of Opposition and declared the party to be a 'government in waiting'.
But Govindacharya's jocular remark of 'becoming the next Congress' appeared true from 2014 onwards, insofar as dismantling the gravitas of the BJP's organisation set up was concerned.
To understand the change in the character of the BJP after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014, one has to step further back into the political era before 1969 when Indira Gandhi seized control of the Congress party and faction identified as the Syndicate established the Congress (Organisation).
The unified Congress party prior to this watershed year remained a strong organisation with an independent voice and at par with the legislative wing of the party or the government, headed by the prime minister of the day.
Although Jawaharlal Nehru seized control of the party for four years from 1951 to 1955, he eventually relinquished the presidentship to organisational strongmen like N Sanjeeva Reddy, K Kamaraj and S Nijalingappa as a result of which it regained its distinct identity.
But after Indira Gandhi split the Congress and assumed control of the breakaway faction, Congress (Requisitionists), the distinctness between the government and organisational fold of the party disappeared.
Although Jagjivan Ram and Shankar Dayal Sharma were party presidents in the early 1970s and provided a semblance of distinctness, complete subservience of the party came during Devkanta Barooah's tenure during the Emergency when he made the absolutely sycophantic remark that 'Indira was India and India was Indira'.
The Congress since then, never reworked the postulation that the 'government was the party' in the years it was in office, be it during the tenure of Indira Gandhi, her son Rajiv Gandhi (he was party president too from 1985 to 1991) and even P V Narasimha Rao (simultaneously party chief, between 1991 and 1996).
Barring the two years thereafter, when Sitaram Kesri helmed the party in the late 1990s and the period after 2022, when Mallikarjun Kharge became president, it has been the Gandhis all along, Sonia for almost twenty years till 2017 and Rahul Gandhi for the next two years, after which his mother again held the fort.
Despite 10 years in Opposition, the party hardly has an organisational network worth its name.
In contrast, the BJP from its inception in April 1980 was noted for a collegial style of functioning and well-oiled organisational machinery.
Even sharp differences of opinion were openly debated and resolved amicably through charchha or discussions.
Although the party president was clearly the first among equals, the BJP was never a one-person led party.
An early divergence of viewpoint was over the party's decision to adopt Gandhian Socialism as its principal credo.
At the first plenary meet of the party in December 1980, Vijaya Raje Scindia was publically highly critical of this idea and demanded that the party should retain its old values rooted in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.
She was assuaged and senior leaders politely explained to her that after the acrimonious collapse of the Janata Party, mainly over the 'dual membership' issue in which erstwhile Jana Sangh members were accused of being primarily loyal to the RSS and not to the party, it was 'tactically necessary' to mark a degree of separation from the RSS and its ideology.
Even during the height of the Ayodhya agitation, there were differences between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani, but these were amicably discussed and ironed out.
In the run-up to the 1991 polls, although Advani remained the campaign spearhead, party workers spread the message that the BJP was fortunate to have 'ek mayan mein do talwaar (two swords in one sheath)'.
The party retained its distinct identity during Vajpayee's tenure as prime minister and there were issues on which the party expressed reservations.
Intra-party committees met regularly and in meetings of the national executive, discussions were held frankly.
The party witnessed some very significant differences and eventually one group deferred to the majority.
One such instance was in the Goa meeting of the national executive in the summer of 2002 when Vajpayee wanted Modi to resign as Gujarat chief minister, whereas he had the backing of Advani and several others.
Finally, Vajpayee had to bow to the majority view despite continuing to disagree. He expressed his dissatisfaction after the BJP's defeat in 2004 by attributing it to the Gujarat riots.
This style of the BJP's functioning ended within weeks Modi becoming prime minister when in July 2014, the BJP's central parliamentary board unanimously approved Amit Shah's appointment as party president.
Because Shah was an undisputed Modi loyalist, all power of both government and party, got vested in one hand. Intra-party democracy became a casualty soon.
In November 2015, Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Shanta Kumar and Yashwant Sinha (he was in the BJP then) issued a joint statement hitting out at the leadership over Bihar debacle.
The statement stated that the party has been 'forced to kowtow to a handful and its consensual character had been destroyed.'
The veterans, all of who had been sidelined by Modi, also claimed that the party was 'emasculated' after the Modi-Shah combine took charge.
But there was no response from either the party leadership, or from Modi. The Union government, from the first day till date, remains a PMO-centric enterprise with most ministers merely being implementing agents or file pushers.
Likewise, in the party the office bearers, including the president, especially after 2019 when J P Nadda took over as president after Shah relinquished charge, have remained merely to pay lip-service to what has already been decided.
The redundancy of very important party fora is best understood by the fact that after the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict, neither the party's parliamentary board nor the parliamentary party, formally elected Modi as its leader to once again become prime minister.
While his selection was inevitable or even unpreventable, but even the formal procedure has been done away with.
Just as years of sycophancy in the Congress has destroyed the party organisation, in the BJP signs of its complete destruction is visible.
Over the last year, J P Nadda has continued being the party president even while being a Union minister, thereby violating the principle of one-person-one-post which was followed almost without fail, especially for lesser mortals.
Nadda has continued because the Modi-led clique remained at loggerheads with the RSS leadership.
The disagreement is over the choice of the next president -- the RSS wants to have an independent person as party president, while Modi has been insistent on another loyalist like Shah and Nadda.
Only in the event of the RSS managing to force Modi into accepting a consensual candidate, will the party not continue to 'being' the 'next Congress'.
If Modi has his way, Govindacharya's words will continue to resonate. This will necessarily raise questions over the party's capacities in the post-Modi era, but that is another question.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay's latest book is The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project.
He is also the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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