The current disarray within the BJP raises a profound question. Has its historical moment passed? During the ’90s the BJP managed to express and articulate a range of resonant sentiments. For starters, it was a beneficiary of an anti-Congress tide that lifted many boats. Strange as it may sound the BJP, the most divisive of parties, also represented a protest against a certain kind of divisiveness. Congress secularism had increasingly come to be seen as cynical rather than principled, premised on dividing citizens. Mandal was seen as another form of divisive politics. This divisive politics coincided with a moment of great national anxiety, a sense of India under siege and losing its place in the world. Hindu identity was being increasingly constituted through a sense of hurt to which the BJP gave concrete political expression in the symbolism of Ayodhya. The BJP also empowered a kind of vernacular politics that, rightly or wrongly, considered itself marginalised by the Congress’ pieties. Do these themes continue to be potent? Paradoxically, the BJP may be a victim of its own success. Culturally, it managed to shift India irrevocably to the right and mitigated the very thing that gave it succour: a sense of Hindu victimhood. The economic success of the last few years, the sense of growing importance in the world, has made politics less hostage to nationalist anxieties. Many Hindus found their manhood and have decided to move on. A distinction is usually made between a BJP tending towards a hardline Hindutva, and a more centrist BJP. This distinction is misleading if it suggests a choice between Hindu nationalism and governance. Both can co-exist. The more helpful distinction is between Hindu nationalism and Hindu communalism. Hindu communalism, an abstract and vicious hatred of minorities, can in principle be independent of Hindu nationalism. Conversely there are moments where Hindu nationalism needs the violent polarising energies of Hindu communalism and moments where it seeks to suppress it. Virulent Hindu communalism needs a framing context — Shah Bano, terrorism, Godhra — to yield political dividends. For the time being there’s none available. This is not to say external events or Congress’ political ineptness will not produce such conditions again. But Hindu communalism does not knit an enduring social coalition and the divisiveness it produces can backfire. Hindu nationalism will continue to resonate, serving as a resource for a politics of cultural esteem, as a counterweight to a cultural leftism. But the form of its political expression is uncertain. Ayodhya has been used once too often for it to be a potent symbol. There are two tensions within the Parivar. The first is between those who want to articulate Hindu nationalism without communalism and those who think this is impossible. The second is between those who think political corruption has cast a taint on the cultural project of creating Hindu self consciousness and those who think political power is central to this project. The BJP’s future as a political party depends on how the Parivar resolves these tensions. The most likely outcome is that there will be some splinter movements, but most of the Parivar will muddle through. The BJP’s edifice was more adept at fighting the Congress than it was at contending with its competitors for the anti-Congress vote. The BJP is still in relatively better shape in those states where it is in a relatively straight fight against the Congress. It has more difficulty in positioning itself in states where there are competitors for the anti-Congress vote. It was one thing to run against Congress, it’s quite another to position yourself in relation to Mulayam, Laloo and Mayawati. The BJP’s political vulnerability comes from the fact it does not have a strategy or an ideological message that can home in on these rivals. The success of any party depends upon the way it adapts to local social configurations. While the BJP’s key constituency was upper caste, it could potentially make significant inroads across the caste spectrum. When the time was appropriate the BSP was not averse to a coalition with the BJP. In Gujarat we saw evidence of even SCs and STs being brought within the ambit of militant Hindutva. And there is the curious fact pointed out by Samuel Paul’s study of trends in the latest Lok Sabha that SCs and STs constitute 26.8 per cent of all BJP MPs as opposed to only 22.1 per cent of Congress. This for a party that is supposedly upper caste and not pro-poor. This suggests two things. First, it is not a foregone conclusion that the BJP, in principle, cannot transcend its upper caste origins. But it will have to have a strategy for more forcefully empowering newly emerging social groups. Possibly the biggest casualty of the BJP’s over confidence was that it paid less attention to crafting a plausible strategy for incorporating a constituency that, albeit reluctantly, was knocking at its doors, and quite willing to use it as a means of empowerment. Second, it also suggests that the BJP’s “sanskritisation” model of empowering SCs and STs is not without its attractions. Secular intellectuals have often overestimated the degree to which empowering lower castes will have to depend upon the rejection of Hinduism. And they have often confused Sanskritisation with Brahmanism. In some ways the RSS was effective in creating a space for folding in tribals and Dalits without invoking the spectre of Brahmanism. The cultural possibility of empowering marginalised groups through the tradition rather than against it has by no means been exhausted. In UP ironically, the BJP is more likely to have trouble retaining its upper caste base. What has changed irremediably is the loss of the BJP’s comparative advantage on two dimensions: corruption (no longer a party with a difference) and credibility (diminished leadership). Sonia Gandhi has managed, for the time being, to wrest these away from the BJP. The BJP as a right of centre political party has a future only if it can articulate a Hindu nationalism without Hindu communalism, come up with a concrete strategy to link its ideology with a new social base and restore a sense of credibility to its leadership. But having tasted power, it is doubtful whether its leadership has the patience to work through this challenge. The BJP may now have to square a circle, but it can draw solace from the fact that even illusions can have a future.
