BJP's dilemmas

BJP will have to choose between de-emphasising its Hindutva agenda or embracing it wholeheartedly

The Bharatiya Janata Party won 137 Lok Sabha seats in the 2004 general elections. Five years later, the party’s strength has declined to 113 on account of by-election losses in between, and expulsions. But considering that no other major political party saw such a sharp decline in the number of seats during the tenure of the current Lok Sabha (the Congress, for instance, increased its tally from 148 to 150), the BJP leaders should examine its falling numbers to find out what could have gone wrong and what should be done to set things right. Such introspection is even more appropriate as, in the last week alone, the party saw one of its major allies, the Biju Janata Dal, walking out of the alliance and another, Shiv Sena, threatening to follow suit if its demands were not met for a larger share in the 48 Lok Sabha seats from Maharashtra. With the Telugu Desam Party, its erstwhile partner, having already decided to join hands with the Left Front, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is a noticeably diminished force. The question that has to be faced is whether the BJP is getting isolated because of its Hindutva agenda and has, therefore, lost its appeal as an acceptable leader of a broad-based coalition of parties that feel they can co-habit without doing damage to their respective political bases.

One likely trigger for this isolation could be the fading out of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. As prime minister in the NDA government, Mr Vajpayee offered comfort and assurance to the BJP’s allies that he would be accommodative of religious minorities’ concerns and play down his party’s Hindutva agenda. For allies like Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP (which faces a substantial number of Muslim voters in Andhra Pradesh), such an assurance was critical. With Mr Vajpayee having retired from politics and Lal Krishna Advani anointed as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate, the same alliance partners may have reason to worry about facing their voters in a new context. In other words, despite all his efforts in recent years to present a more moderate face, Mr Advani’s long-established image as a Hindutva hard-liner could have put off several of BJP’s erstwhile allies and led to their eventual snapping of ties with the party.

This will immediately result in a substantial curtailment of the alliance’s national footprint and certainly affect its presence in the 15th Lok Sabha. This may push the BJP leadership to ask itself whether it can expand its political base while de-emphasising its Hindutva agenda. Can it pursue coalition politics without a Vajpayee-like leader, acceptable to its allies? Or will it make more sense for the party to embrace the Hindutva agenda more wholeheartedly, and go it alone in national politics? The real answers will come after the Lok Sabha elections.