Question Mark Over An Old-Timer

Now that the BJP has come to the centrestage, relatively lesser known party leaders have come into focus, those who are most likely to shape the course of the partys politics. In less than a decade, it will be leaders like Narendra Modi, Govindacharya, M Venkaiah Naidu, Sushil Modi and Jagdish Shettigar who will be at the helm of affairs, replacing the likes of Atal Behari Vajpayee, L K Advani, Kushabhau Thakre and Sunder Singh Bhandari. The old establishment is still in place, but there are already signs of the Congress-isation of the BJP. It is this tussle between the young-with-old-values and the young-with-new-values that has led to Modi being virtually sidelined in the party even though he has been an unqualified success, judging by most political criteria.

The BJPs carefully cultivated image of being a cohesive, close-knit unit has already gone for a six. Personal ambitions and groupism now rule, the latest example being Vajpayees council of ministers. With the party, Modi has become a victim of this culture, notwithstanding the fact that he has delivered impressive gains to the party in the recent elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The talk is that from the position of a BJP secretary, he would be elevated to the rank of a general secretary in the new party set-up under a new president to take over later this month (expected to be Kushabhau Thakre).

Modi symbolises the practice of the RSS loaning some of its pracharaks to take up key responsibilities in the political field with its creation, the BJP. Modi has been a product of Gujarats Navnirman movement in the late 70s which later inspired the JP movement. Of the many books on the Emergency written by RSS/pro-RSS men, Modis book Sangharsharat Gujarat has been one of the most widely read. When he took over his first political responsibility as the organising secretary of the BJPs Gujarat unit, the party had 18 MLAs in the state assembly. Since then, Modi is widely considered to be responsible for building the party from the grassroots in traditional Congress country. Today, the BJP is the unquestioned party of governance in the state, and has won a near two-thirds majority in the state assembly twice, in 1994 and 1998.

Known for his organisational skills and honesty, Modi came into conflict with leaders like Shankersinh Vaghela, who once threatened to wreck the BJP, but drew a blank in the recent elections. Many who revolted against Modi and the BJP leadership in October 1995 have returned to the party fold. One of the reasons for Modis confrontation with Vaghela has been the latters close involvement with a major Mumbai-based industrial house, which also has key men in the highest echelons of the partys central leadership. The same men are again opposing Modis elevation as general secretary.

Says a close aide of Modi: He feels he has been unnecessarily punished by those close to Advani. Everybody in the party knows that Vaghela conspired with Pramod Mahajan to get Modi out of Gujarat. But wherever Modi was sent