Thorny issues — Moderates have the last laught

CHENNAI, DECEMBER 29: The moderates in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had the last laugh at its national council meeting that concluded ...

CHENNAI, DECEMBER 29: The moderates in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had the last laugh at its national council meeting that concluded here on Wednesday as even hardliners’ leader Lal Krishna Advani admitted that the contentious issues had been abandoned forever.

"The party workers should not understand that it is a temporary phase and the party would return to the old agenda once it comes to majority on its own," he said. The Home Minister, however, tried to rationalise the move by saying that the party was undergoing transformation and abandoning contentious issues was part of the process.

The party had only two constants: patriotism and character while other virtues had to be changed with changing circumstances, said Advani. He even detailed BJP’s history since Jana Sangh days and extensively quoted party’s ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay to buttress his point.

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Advani’s speech at the national council meet is being viewed as capitulation of the hardliners backed by the RSS before the moderates led byPrime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Home Minister, however, preferred to call it as BJP’s transformation from being opposition party to the ruling party – transformation that began in 1996.

“From Jana Sangh to BJP, the party has undergone many a transformation. Jana Sangh was an ideological party while the Congress was an aggregated party – representing confluence of several ideologies. The BJP being a ruling party had turned to aggregative politics. The ruling coalition was a "wonderful blend of national and regional aspirations", Advani said.

Earlier, the council adopted party’s policy document called Chennai Declaration in its amended form while disapproving the proposed constitutional amendment for a nine-member advisory council to coordinate between the party and the Government at the Centre.

Advani praised Chennai Declaration, which triggered a tug of war between hardliners and moderates during the past three days, as a fine document. "We are not apologetic about it and it showed that theparty was alive to changing circumstances," he claimed.

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Explaining the need for putting the contentious issues on the backburner, the Home Minister said, "Smaller parties in some states do not agree with the BJP ideologically but had to ally with it because BJP was an honest party which does not ride roughshod on their regional aspirations." He also claimed that BJP has increased its tally in 1989 not because it had given up issues like Article 370, Common Civil Code and construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya but because of "perverse politics of the Congress". Congress is party of the past while BJP is that of the future, he said.

He quoted Deen Dayal Updhyay’s speech at a RSS convention in Jaipur in which the late Jana Sangh leader is supposed to have differentiated between ritual and region. "Somebody’s religion does not change only because he does not perform rituals," Advani quoted Upadhyay. The declaration was a policy document supposed to guide the party cadre on putting the political developments inchanging context, he added.

Advani again invoked Upadhyay’s name by claiming that the late leader’s call for an Akhand Bharat was misinterpreted even by Jana Sangh cadre.