It is open season in the Bharatiya Janata Party. And most party leaders privately agree that there is more to come. The stakes are very high. With the Congress-led UPA-II down in the dumps, several BJP leaders fancy 2014 as the year of their tryst with destiny.
Since the prize is big, the catfights are not expected to end soon. It is a do-or-die battle for one of the world’s biggest jobs: leading the second most populous nation. However, one section of the party believes that once Narendra Modi, the ‘Hindu hriday samrat’, is formally declared the party’s prime ministerial candidate, all will fall in line. His authoritarian decisiveness will help the party’s survival instincts kick in and inject enthusiasm in the cadres—unless the wheels of justice grind him down in the riots cases.
The backlash to the phoney “reconciliation” in Mumbai on May 24 between party chief Gadkari and Modi, after Sanjay Joshi’s ouster from the party’s national executive, has now hit the streets of Delhi and Ahmedabad in a poster campaign against Modi’s “dadagiri”.
L.K. Advani, who sadly bears his unfulfilled prime ministerial ambition, cast the first stone in the post-Mumbai parivar war. What an irony! He saved Modi from losing his chief ministerial chair when Atal Behari Vajpayee wanted his head for the 2002 Gujarat massacres. Now, was Modi going to pip him to the post?
On May 31, Advani posted a blog. It was a thinly disguised attack on Gadkari, who had caved in and struck a deal with Modi: the party mood was “not upbeat”; “introspection” was needed; the induction of Mayawati’s tainted ex-minister Khushwaha into the party in the midst of crucial UP elections had “undermined BJP’s campaign against corruption”. The people, dissatisfied with the UPA, were also “disappointed” with the BJP. The veteran of cross-country yatras had made his displeasure felt in Mumbai itself, when, along with Sushma Swaraj, he stayed away from the public rally.
The post was a signal. The saffron press came out blazing, both for or against Modi. The next day an article appeared in BJP mouthpiece Kamal Sandesh. Its editor Prabhat Jha, known to have mentors in the RSS HQ, wrote that no organisation could function on the basis of an individual’s diktats. It was a clear reference to Modi’s demand for Sanjay Joshi’s head as the price for attending the Mumbai conclave and blessing Gadkari’s move for a second term for himself.
Then, the RSS-controlled Panchajanya joined the intrigue. An old-timer, Devendra Swaroop, could not have pointed more directly at the “overweening ambition to become prime minister” apparent in a number of party men. This was “not unnatural”, but the “better way” would be to choose the leader after the election. This only meant that Modi should not be named the prime ministerial candidate.
Then came psephologist-turned-party man G.V.L. Narasimha Rao’s article in RSS mouthpiece Organiser, fully backing the declaration of Modi as the party’s numero UNO in the run-up to 2014. Modi, he said, would deliver “huge (electoral) gains”, not only in “battleground UP”, but also improve vote-share in far-flung Orissa, Haryana, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and so on! Not that anyone takes Rao seriously. Advani admitted him to the party after he predicted a dashing win for the BJP in 2009!
Modi’s own track record in elections is not impressive beyond Gujarat. Vajpayee had suggested in 2004 that Modi won Gujarat but the BJP ended up losing India.
What of those posters? On June 5, leaders in Delhi and Ahmedabad found themselves staring at posters of a smiling Joshi outside party offices and in other parts of the cities. They attacked Modi without naming him. “Chhote man se koi bada nahin hota, toote man se koi khada nahin hota (A petty-minded man cannot become big, one with a contorted mind cannot stand),” they screamed. “Kaho dil se, Sanjay Joshi phir se,” they said, adding insult to injury.
Whodunit? The party remained clueless. Was it a vengeful Joshi? But that was most unlike the disciplined man they knew. It could not be Modi, surely, out to show that Joshi’s discipline was an eyewash? Was it Gadkari trying to get back at a person who had humiliated him in Mumbai? Or was it the handiwork of dissidents in Gujarat, including several ex-CMs and former Modi ministers, seeking to point at the dadagiri of the man the party seemed inclined to choose as leader? Or was Advani behind it? A Congress conspiracy?
The party’s normally articulate and aggressive spokespersons were left gasping for breath. They avoided the television channels, as they had “nothing to say”.
The truth is, in this fight, it was best to keep one’s mouth shut. Why take a potshot when nobody, even the top party brass, knew how things would turn out.
