Opaque session

Electoral strategy is important, of course. With elections scheduled in four crucial states later this year and with general elections coming up next year, the BJP must work out ways of reaching its stated 300-seat goal on its own. In the past, the party has shown a keen awareness, much keener than its main rival at any rate, of the strategic imperative to forge alliances to expand its geographical and social reach. No, the BJP needs no more chintan on how to increase its tally by making allies and keeping them. What it does need to urgently think through, though, is its equation with its own sister organisations, especially vis a vis the unending Ayodhya issue. On this, the baithak has yielded little. Ayodhya is not an election issue for the party, Naidu says, but a matter of faith. The BJP wants to have good relations with ‘‘nationalist organisations’’, he said, certifying the VHP as one. So what else is new? There is nothing here that sheds any new light, or even old, on an issue that has again been pushed back onto centrestage. With the VHP and the RSS making daily threatening noises, ruling out a settlement through negotiation and through a court verdict, we are none the clearer on the BJP’s position. How much does it agree, to what extent does it differ, with the VHP’s prescriptions?

Amid the humdrum noises made on toning up the party organisation and accelerating the government’s developmental policies, one unequivocal announcement stands out. The BJP’s baithak has demanded a countrywide ban on cow slaughter and asked the Centre to exert pressure on state governments to pass legislation banning conversions. From this vantage point, Battleground 2004 already looks like an unhappy place.