The Hindu Rate Of Growth

The last few days of February won't be easy for the ruling BJP: the budget session of Parliament begins, Himachal Pradesh goes to the polls and then there's the vhp's dharam sansad. In the early years, any one such event would have been enough to make the government look shaky. But four years into power and the Vajpayee-led BJP coalition is a supremely adaptive creature, with claims of being poised to replace the Congress as India's natural party of governance.

After Gujarat and the recent cabinet reshuffle, the party looks more muscular, organised and dynamic than ever. It has adjusted its ideology to a level more kosher with the mainstream, and been adroit with its brand of social engineering, while the leadership appears to be pulling along harmoniously. Says BJP president Venkaiah Naidu: "The cabinet reshuffle was intended to increase efficiency which it will do. Everything was done harmoniously, we are a disciplined party." Even Congressmen privately admire the manner in which egos were brushed aside and high-profile second-rung leaders packed off to do their bit in the states or the party organisation. The Vajpayee-Advani relationship also appears to have worked out a painless division of labour.

The party also seems to have found the right vocabulary to position its ideological bent. While the Ram temple movement had a stridency which even sections of the Hindus found repellent, the national security and anti-terrorism planks is more in sync with the middle-class mood. Says sociologist Dipankar Gupta: "In a country like India, such a line will always work well at times when the nation appears to be under threat. During field studies we have found that even very poor people who have so little get worked up about national sovereignty."

Increasingly, Hindutva ideas are claiming a more central space. For instance, a national bill banning conversions or cow slaughter will undoubtedly kick up a storm but it will also put its opponents in a bind about taking on anti-Hindu postures. Clearly, the BJP along with the Sangh parivar has pushed back the frontiers of Nehruvian secularism. As general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi says: "So much so that it is the psuedo-secularists who are now on the defensive. We are not."

Convinced that moderation is still the safer course, the BJP's top leaders now boldly equate Hindutva with "Bharatiyata", but also pay lip service to secularism. Last week, for instance, deputy PM L.K. Advani spoke of Deen Dayal Upadhyay's ideology of integral humanism in the morning; while in the afternoon he delivered a speech where he spoke out against fascism which he said "hates the very concept of secularism, of multi-culturalism". With the exception of Narendra Modi, most BJP leaders now prefer to leave the rabble-rousing to the vhp, a deliberate good cop-bad cop strategy that leaves no space for a traditional opposition, in this case the Congress.

But where the BJP has really got the better of the Congress is in harnessing social blocs. Dismissed till recently as a Bania-Brahmin party, it has circumvented the label by systematically projecting obc leaders like Vinay Katiyar and Uma Bharati. It has also entered tribal India on the back of the rss-run Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams, which have done considerable social work in pockets, largely to offset the work of Christian missionaries.

And though it's yet to make a dent among Dalits, the party hopes to fill the vacuum through Mayawati and the bsp. Though the BJP's state unit is in disarray due to the alliance with the bsp in UP, the party high command has displayed a steely resolve to continue with the arrangement in the interests of a larger cause. The leadership believes Mayawati can help them defeat Digvijay Singh in MP by cutting into his Dalit vote.More crucially, the BJP would like an arrangement for the general elections where they would support the bsp in the assembly; while Mayawati would in return support the BJP in all of Uttar Pradesh's 81 LS seats.

It's a long-term plan which may not even work out. But it shows the BJP as a party with a clear blueprint for the future—while the Congress still gropes in the dark.