A HINGE OF FATE

India: Soul-searching at the top (Sultan Shahin, 6/13/03, Asia Times)

According to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani will lead India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2004 general elections. According to Advani, it will be Vajpayee.

With such confusing signals coming from the two titans, it's little surprise that the party been rocked in the past fortnight by a controversy that refuses to die down. [...]

In order to understand the scenario and its implications for Indian politics in the days to come, one needs a little perspective. The BJP is a Hindu fundamentalist party that was in its earlier incarnation called the Bhartiya Jana Sangh. Vajpayee helped found the original party almost half a century ago, but he has been at odds with it since early 1980s, while also remaining its unchallenged leader.

This contradiction has its genesis in the experiences of the mid-1970s. Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi declared an emergency (a sort of martial rule) in 1975, suspending all democratic freedoms, including freedom of expression and the right to life, to get around a court ruling depriving her of membership of parliament on account of electoral misconduct. She sent to jail most opposition leaders and many political activists, including some dissidents from her own party.

They were let out in 1977 for what was clearly going to be a sham election to satisfy world opinion, while the emergency continued. Out of jail, opposition leaders realized that they had just two options - unite, forgetting ideological positions to win the elections, or go back to jail. They chose the first option. And much to Indira Gandhi's consternation and surprise, they united overnight, helped also by the shared agony of a two-year jail stint. All parties merged their identities into a secular, socialist, democratic Janata Party.

The Janata party won the elections and a Congress faction leader, Morarji Desai, became prime minister, with Vajpayee taking the foreign affairs portfolio and Advani became information minister.

Though a life-long member of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the fountainhead of Hindu fundamentalism, Vajpayee found his vision broadened. He spent most of his time traveling the world and learning the virtues of pluralism and secularism. He became the first Indian leader to open up to Pakistan, relax visa restrictions and so on. This made him the only Hindu fundamentalist leader popular among Muslims, who benefited the most from the relaxation in travel restrictions to Pakistan. He has regularly obtained Muslim votes since - the only Hindu fundamentalist leader to do so. Branded as a dove, despite his hardline Hindutva (the philosophy of Hindu domination of the sub-continent) background, he became acceptable to the secular parties as well.

But this also made him suspect in the eyes of his fanatical Hindu supporters. When Vajpayee founded the BJP after separating from the Janata Party after Mrs Gandhi came back to power in 1980, he described the party plank as Gandhian socialism. But both Gandhi and socialism are anathema to Hindutva. Indeed, Mahatma Gandhi had been killed by a Hindu fundamentalist, Nathu Ram Godse, who remains a Hindutva icon to this day, after Gandhi proposed peaceful relations with Pakistan.

The BJP didn't have any choice. Vajpayee was irreplaceable. No one had the gift of gab with which to enchant the masses. He was the only orator in the party. Advani could not even win his own elections and had to be brought to parliament through the backdoor of the Upper House, where members are nominated. The BJP and its mentor RSS had to even sideline more committed Hindutva leaders like Balraj Madhok when they started opposing Vajpayee. [...]

On his part, Vajpayee is no longer willing to merely lend his voice to be exploited by the party. He wants to win and win on his agenda. He has left socialism behind, but he wants to hold on to Gandhi and his vision of a secular India.

Whether India secularizes and desocializes or turns further inward is far more important to everything from world peace to the global economy than the Palestinian question, but will receive one billionth the coverage in the Western media. But if a hardcore Hindu fundamentalist leadership eventually takes control and pursues war with Muslims at home and in Pakistan, we'll get the solemn editorials from columnists asking why we weren't paying any attention. We should really be playing on Indian insecurities by offering to demand for them a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and holding out trade and defense deals so long as they continue liberalizing. Make it clear that if they act like a mature nation they'll be treated like one, by America at least. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 12, 2003 9:30 AM