Former BJP president LK Advani is set to remain as a millstone round the neck of the party, with the freedom to pursue, to the extent possible, his new mission to derail the growing eminence of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Although Advani failed to reverse Modi’s elevation as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign committee chief, or to ensure some parallel position for his new protégé Nitin Gadkari, he signalled a truce by withdrawing his resignation from the party’s National Executive, Central Parliamentary Board and Central Election Committee on Tuesday, June 11, 2013. He reportedly accepted (reconciled to) Modi’s new status, but continued to sulk by refusing to attend the press conference at his own residence, where Rajnath Singh announced ‘resolution’ of the crisis.
With this tactical retreat, the wily old warhorse lived to fight another day. He retained his position as chairperson of the NDA – which he could not have retained as an ordinary member of the party – and thereby hung on to the critical seat from which he could encourage existing allies to take potshots at the Gujarat strongman and discourage potential allies from climbing on to the Modi bandwagon. He is also well positioned to help allies make difficult demands on the BJP, should it be in a position to stake claim to lead a new coalition at the Centre in 2014.
Not surprisingly, Advani was able to accomplish this mission thanks to the RSS’ status as major equity holder in the BJP, and its willingness to ‘interfere’ in the functioning of the political party. This was achieved through the good offices of his old friend, S Gurumurthy, an RSS backroom strategist who has in recent years emerged as a frontline actor and link between the party and the Parivar. This vindicates the writer’s assessment that Advani always derived his power from the RSS, and when the generations and equations changed in both the RSS and the BJP, he needed his surviving support base within the RSS to survive within the BJP.
Further evidence, if needed, can be found in his autobiography, ‘My Country, My Life,’ published in 2008, prior to the general elections of 2009. Here Advani revealed that in 2002, former RSS Sarsanghachalak Rajinder Singh asked the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to step down from office, doubtless to make way for Advani!
Thus Advani’s allergy is not so much to RSS interference in the BJP, but to some individuals (Suresh Soni and Ramlal) who disregard his wishes. It remains to be seen if he can have them removed from their present positions and replaced by more amenable leaders (read, those who would help realise his ambition to be Prime Minister).
This suggests that Advani intends to contest the next Lok Sabha elections whenever they are held. He will not risk returning to Gandhinagar, because even if Modi does nothing to disturb him, it is a safe bet that the Gujarat voter will not again make the mistake of re-electing the man who can puncture Modi’s drive to Delhi. So he may have to shift to Bhopal or some similar safe seat guaranteed by the RSS, though here again, he may be judged by the voters by through a different prism.
Little wonder that Narendra Modi wasted no time in false emotions. In a tweet seconds after Rajnath Singh announced that Advani had withdrawn his resignation, Modi responded: “I had said yesterday that Advani ji will not disappoint lakhs of Karyakartas. Today, I wholeheartedly welcome his decision!”
It now remains to be seen how Rajnath Singh addresses Advani’s so-called “concerns” about the functioning of the party. What is certain, however, is that ‘leaders’ close to him or propped up by him (Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Anantha Kumar, Uma Bharati, Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Venkaiah Naidu, and now Nitin Gadkari) will henceforth be publicly viewed with a jaundiced eye. This can only lead to greater pressure from the rank and file for a revamp of the Parliamentary Board and weeding out of ‘rootless wonders’.
Rajnath Singh’s greatest challenge will be to manage the party in such a manner that Advani is permanently defanged and unable to manoeuvre allies or potential allies against the party and its most charismatic leader.
One strategy could be for active politicians to continue with their routines, leaving the ‘old uncle’ to rant and rave at windmills. This happened on Monday when Advani submitted his surprise resignations from three party posts, but retained chairmanship of the NDA to allow outside parties a say in BJP’s internal affairs. But Rajnath Singh went off to attend a scheduled programme in Banswara, Rajasthan; Narendra Modi attended a conference on livestock & dairy development in Gandhinagar; Arun Jaitley left for his annual holiday to Europe. This left Advani acolytes with no choice but to invoke the RSS to provide a face-saver.
Advani’s invocation of the original stalwarts of the Jana Sangh went down badly. Syama Prasad Mookerjee died mysteriously while fighting for Jammu & Kashmir’s total integration with India, Yet the BJP, in recent years has flirted with close associates of dangerous separatists and terrorists like Yasin Malik. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya tried to articulate a non-Congress ideology that could reach out to every citizen (integral humanism), but it was never given a chance by successive BJP regimes anywhere until Shivraj Singh Chouhan consciously worked it into his government’s welfare programmes. And Nanaji Deshmukh, once he felt he had exhausted his positive contribution in politics, devoted himself to social work for the rest of his life.
Advani does not measure up to any of these stalwarts by any yardstick. By invoking them, he inadvertently admitted that the party was not the creation of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, but a legacy from a previous generation. As a ‘grandson’ of those founding fathers, Narendra Modi is entitled in Hindu law and tradition to seek his share of family property (eminence) in the lifetime of his ‘father’. There is no room for resentment on that score.
NitiCentral.com, 12 June 2013