Varun was by no stretch the trusted insider in the saffron party. Nor was he being pampered and cossetted in the BJP. But with his outrageous speeches, he has certainly come to the centrestage. And in a manner of speaking, he has created a 'dharam sankat' for the BJP and NDA. On the one hand, by its very nature, the BJP must stand by anyone who takes an overt Hindutva position that actually involves abusing the minorities. Yet, this is just the sort of rhetoric the BJP, and L.K. Advani in particular, wanted to avoid.
Sudden strikes: Jaitley has trouble with Rajnath
Nothing in the BJP campaign is running according to script. First, the party was ditched by its oldest ally, the BJD in Orissa, then its chief election in-charge, Arun Jaitley, continues to remain in a stand-off with party president Rajnath Singh. In Maharashtra, reports suggest that all is not well between the BJP and the Shiv Sena despite a seat-sharing arrangement. And in Karnataka, the party is divided—with one faction supporting chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa and another owing allegiance to his rival H.N. Ananth Kumar.
To add to this, there is now confusion over whether l'affaire Varun is an opportunity for the BJP or an albatross round its neck. At a time when there was a change of guard in the RSS, with the ideologically rigid Mohan Bhagwat taking over as sarsanghchalak, the BJP could hardly not stand by the sort of rhetoric the cadres actually believe to be natural and worthwhile. Any regular shakha man would completely concur with Varun's stated postures—that Muslims should be sterilised, that they have terrible, fearful names, that all of them are potential terrorists, and that a good Hindu should chop off their hands if they raise them, and he should ensure they are shown and kept in their place.
Then there is the matter of the BJP's desperate condition in Uttar Pradesh. Jaitley is in charge of the state, where the party had finalised an alliance with Ajit Singh's rld. The idea is that the BJP should get some benefit of the Jat vote in western Uttar Pradesh. But across this belt and into the Terai region, where Pilibhit is located, there is also a large Muslim population scattered in towns and villages. It is a traditional BJP belief that a moribund cadre springs to life if there is an "emotional" issue around which it can rally. Yet internal BJP assessments have also concluded that raising the Ram temple issue had actually put off the traditional support base of the saffron party. So some sections of the cadre have seized on the Varun episode in pockets of Uttar Pradesh.
Indeed, there may well have been greater backing for anti-Muslim rhetoric if the BJP did not have to factor in the concerns of its allies. The JD(U) has gone public against the youngest Gandhi and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, assiduously trying to cultivate a Muslim votebank, has declared: "No one can be allowed to speak like that against any community." A senior JD(U) leader told Outlook, "This kind of nonsense damages us and the BJP knows that in a post-election situation, it makes them a problem for existing allies. New partners would also think twice."
So just who is this problem Gandhi? He and mother Maneka joined the BJP in February 2004, months before the Lok Sabha election that everyone had presumed the NDA would end up winning in a big way. The BJP had taken in the mother and son, perhaps only to make a point and cock a snook at the dynasty that controlled the Congress. As it turned out, the pollsters and pundits were all wrong. The Congress-led UPA alliance got installed in Delhi. As for Maneka and Varun, they were left twiddling their thumbs in the BJP.
Varun Gandhi has put the party in hot water
And as Atal Behari Vajpayee faded away and Pramod Mahajan died, Varun was left with no backers in the party. He, too, did not endear himself—by talking down to colleagues from more humble origins and revealing a naked ambition in an attempt to become general secretary in the BJP, a critical organisational post generally reserved for those who have put in years of service. He was politely told he couldn't be accommodated. In October 2006, he then reportedly made an bid to secure the ticket for the byelection to the Vidisha seat in Madhya Pradesh, considered one of the safest BJP seats in the country and from which Sushma Swaraj is contesting the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. He was again refused. Finally, it was mother Maneka who had to help him out: she left Varun the Pilibhit seat, which she has won five out of six times since 1989. She is contesting from nearby Aonla.
Now that Sanjay Gandhi's son has made a splash, the BJP will be hoping that Varun's rhetoric will have a ripple effect in mobilising the cadre in Uttar Pradesh. One party leader put it thus: "Varun Gandhi spoke like that because he was trying to exploit a sentiment that exists on the ground. Now that he has done so and we have to defend him, can't we also get some benefit from it?" There is hope but also a degree of uncertainty about whether a so-called "Hindu electrical charge" can really jolt some life into a party organisation some believe is terminally ill. The BJP was still trying to work out its strategy for dealing with the Varun controversy days after it broke. Opinion was divided on whether he should campaign across the state or be confined to Pilibhit.
That's why, after defending Varun and using his case to yet again attack the Election Commission, the BJP reverted to the line that the real issues of the election were economic—unemployment, the farmers' plight, and votebank politics 'soft' on terrorism. The party again intends to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares. It is a trapeze act the BJP has pulled off many times in the past. It's a struggle between its basic nature and what it aspires to be. With Varun hurling abuses against Muslims, the BJP is again wracked by its inherent dualism. Till now, the logic of this election had been determined by the fact that the BJP's best performers have been chief ministers Narendra Modi, Shivraj Chauhan and Raman Singh, all of whom have delivered on the development plank. And into this matrix of the party a screaming Gandhi has arrived.
