On A Rut Yatra

Even at 79, Advani remains tireless. The problem is, large sections of his own parivar and party say his yatra obsession is becoming rather tiring. Moreover, insiders say there are signals that the RSS is not in a mood to mobilise support for someone who they have been trying to remove as BJP president for the latter half of the last year. VHP president Ashok Singhal said: "I doubt if he’ll get support from the Hindu samaj." The Sangh vision, meanwhile, is that it is time for younger leaders to come into their own. Not for the old guard to take to the streets.

Most party and parivar members were caught unawares by Advani’s sudden declaration of intent at a hurriedly called press conference last week. Sources say Advani merely informed the leadership (including A.B. Vajpayee) about his plans. Rajnath was also telephoned and told about the plan. Although the latter did agree, his supporters now see an Advani plot to overshadow the new president.

Advani’s purpose is quite obvious: put the Jinnah fiasco behind him and push back retirement by again seizing what he obviously perceives as a "Hindu" moment. And to show himself as a bigger leader than Rajnath Singh. "In the present global context, minorityism has dangerous repercussions," he said, adding: "If there’s one constant in the UPA government’s approach, it is that they should somehow get the minority vote back." He then went on to list examples of the "appeasement": the attempt to give job reservations to Muslims in Andhra Pradesh (struck down by the HC); the change in the Foreigners Act; the creation of a ministry for minority affairs under A.R. Antulay; the attempt to have a Muslim headcount in the army; the U.C. Bannerjee Committee report on the Godhra train fire. Add to this, the visible Muslim protests against George Bush and the Prophet cartoons, and Advani clearly believes he has a readymade recipe for some old-fashioned Hindutva muscle-flexing.

And he’s not alone in sensing what some commentators have described as a "Hindu disquiet". The cries of Har Har Mahadev in Parliament was evidence of this. Yet, as one BJP MP puts it: "When something is hot, it does not mean it is boiling." There are genuine fears that Advani’s yatra could be making a major strategic blunder. Instead of allowing the Hindu discomfort to gradually build up, his over-reaction can prove counter-productive. "Politics is all about timing," says a party strategist, "In recent years, Advani hasn’t had good timing. Let’s hope this journey is not another miscalculation."

There are some hard-nosed political calculations being made in the parivar and party. There is a view that the Congress could suffer politically because of the Bush visit in terms of minority vote. This scenario paints Sonia Gandhi’s party landing between a rock and a hard place as it tries to appease minorities with more sops. The BJP logic goes that in doing so the party would also lose some Hindu support. That, naturally, is the opportunity the party of the faithful is looking for. As ex-Union minister Murli Manohar Joshi says: "I believe the Congress and Left are creating a pre-1947 situation in the country." This is the sort of rhetoric BJP leaders have returned to.

There is another version of this scenario put out by BJP insiders. As an MP puts it: "We don’t really care if the Left or SP gains...which seems likely after the Bush visit. Many commentators make the mistake of thinking this whole Hindu-Muslim question is about UP politics. It is not limited to one state, however important it may be." The larger strategy, he says, is to reclaim ground in small towns and urban centres across India, where there is "genuine unease" at the sight of Muslim assertiveness. In simpler words, if the Congress voteshare goes down, the BJP’s rises. This is reportedly the Advani thesis as well.

But given the current health of the economy and fatigue with the politics of confrontation, it may well be a case of wishful thinking. The fear within the BJP is that the constituency that Advani is hoping to reach out to may well be repelled by his blatant opportunism as well as fatigued by his rehashing of a tired theme. Indeed, the same commentators who had been writing forcefully again the religious mobilisation of minorities have cautioned Advani against trying to make political capital of it.

There are therefore genuine worries over whether the proposed yatras could be a damp squib. There are also logistical problems that the BJP will have to sort out. If the yatras travel through the poll-bound states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and West Bengal, resources would have to be diverted from the election process. That is why there is some confusion over whether these states will be part of the itinerary. But since the BJP has minimal presence in the states (except for Assam), the other argument is that the rath yatras can hardly hurt the party. As Prakash Javadekar says, "He’s a senior leader, a stalwart who knows exactly what he is doing. Why be sceptical about the rath yatras. There is a genuine feeling against minorityism and terrorism."

Indeed, the best case scenario for Advani would be that the yatra hits a genuine chord, and unwilling partymen and parivar cadres are left with little choice but to go along with the mood. Yet there is a high degree of cynicism in the BJP about this happening. Moreover, his last yatra, undertaken during the 2004 election campaign, was hardly a grand success. The party made no gains in the areas through which Advani travelled.

At that time, the other reason trotted out for the exercise was that it rejuvenates the cadre. But this time round there is no general elections for which the cadre needs to spring to duty. Moreover, the RSS stand vis-a-vis the yatra remained ambiguous at the time of writing although it would support Rajnath’s enterprise in UP. The more likely scenario is that in order to avoid embarrassment to themselves, the BJP local units will try to rise to the occasion to give Advani a few decent photo opportunities.

The other purpose of the yatra is to create a communal polarisation or increase an already existing divide. This sort of strategy could provide dividends in the short term, perhaps in Uttar Pradesh and Assam. But it would be short-sighted in terms of the larger innings the BJP must play before the next general elections in 2009 (although since the 2004 defeat Advani has repeatedly offered scenarios of the UPA government collapsing "next year").

To use a cricketing analogy, Advani could lose the advantage by bowling too many bouncers. The last time he set out on an independent journey to Pakistan to reinvent himself as a secular leader, it proved to be an unmitigated disaster. The Jinnah misadventure hastened his departure as party president although he declared his intention of remaining in active politics even as he quit the post. Now there is proof of further activity on the Advani front. Carried away by reports of growing "Hindu resentment", he has again jumped into the fray.

The rhetoric against ‘minorityism’ is likely to be shrill. The BJP formulation is simple: the UPA is playing communal politics; they are marching out to protect the secular Hindu ethos of India. They are again attempting to launch a movement based on the thesis that Muslims are appeased, hence they are terrorists. The rhetoric about pseudo-secularism and minorityism is reminiscent of 1990. The only problem is, this is 2006. The only danger is that some passions in India are easily stoked.