BJP fails the test

They say it has blown away for now, the storm the Manali musings stirred up in Delhi. There is no proposal to remove Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Venkaiah Naidu announced on Sunday, ‘‘at this juncture’’. That could mean: that the party’s leadership has decided not to decide; that a decision has been taken and Modi is on his way out, only later, maybe after Maharashtra’s assembly polls; that Modi will stay. Sunday’s outcome is deeply disappointing. The BJP was not brave enough to meet its opportunity.

Modi must go and he must go because of his regime’s proven abdication and culpability in Gujarat 2002. There must be no room for equivocation on that score. There may also be other reasons for removing him. His tenure has proved to be thoroughly alienating, thoroughly morbid on many counts and the near uprising against him in the ranks of the Gujarat BJP would seem to affirm that. But it would be a sad joke if Modi were to go in the name of one of his lesser crimes. It would be deeply unjust to those who perished and those who suffered during the rampaging violence two years ago in his state. And to those who continue to suffer for lack of closure. The Best Bakery retrial has only just begun in a special court in Mumbai this week. It is a reminder that Modi’s Gujarat is incapable of delivering justice.

Modi must go because of Gujarat for the BJP’s sake as well. In the battle that has raged unofficially in and around the party these last few days, one section has argued that Modi is being made scapegoat for the party’s dismal showing in the Lok Sabha elections. There is no clear evidence to link him to the party’s poor performance, especially after the BJP won a round of assembly polls after and including Gujarat. The party must identify the real reasons for defeat, goes the argument, and move on. This is a bad argument and a self-defeating prescription. Gujarat is a ghost with a much larger footprint than can be truthfully gleaned from one electoral scorecard. The BJP’s accountability for Gujarat is a larger one. It would be doing itself disservice by casting it in the narrow terms of electoral victory and defeat. BJP leaders needn’t go to a chintan baithak to figure out that nearly all roads to the party’s future lead back to Moditva. Rather, to its firm exile.