The Predicate

Today is an important day for BJP as it debates whether L.K.Advani should step down as its President, following intense pressure from The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Ever since his controversial remarks about Jinnah in Pakistan, the RSS has gone for Advani's throat. As the  Hindu article states, there is a lot of activity going on at the party headquarters. Whether L.K.Advani would come out of this unscathed is to be seen.

Over the years, we've seen BJP act like a schizophrenic. The ideology touting persona, pretty much in tune with the hardliners in RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, forms the core of the party. It supports the Uniform Civil Code, supports building of a temple at Ayodhya and mocks the pseudo-secularists. That ideology has mostly taken BJP from a party without any significant presence twenty years ago to one that captured power and became the most powerful opposition to Congress-I in a long time. This is the faction that the Western media is always too eager to portray as a bunch of "right wing Hindu fundamentalists".

Then there is the moderate faction of BJP, often personified in A.B.Vajpayee, that tries to move to the center. Since it formed the Government at the Centre, BJP has been forced to put its hardline issues in the back-burner. It has not made progress on the Uniform Civil Code, said publicly that Ayodhya would be resolved through the courts and has done several things to appeal to the minorities.

As Vajpayee (and Advani, if I may) reach the end of their political careers, the competition among the next rung of leaders to capture the party has been fierce. While BJP cannot move away from its ideology easily, there are more signs that the RSS/VHP powercenter is not as powerful as it was before. Over the next few years, BJP stands to undergo a radical change, and these years will be crucial in determining whether BJP will remain a potent political force or not. It has a tough balancing act to do. To reach out to the urban moderates, it has to distance itself from its hard political beliefs, but that may result in the erosion of its core vote base. I think it will also depend on who gets control of the party (Venkaiah Naidu / Pramod Mahajan / Rajnath Singh / Sushma Swaraj) after the Vajpayee/Advani era.

So, what will happen to Advani? I think he will weather this storm. It won't be easy to dislodge him from the top, without properly grooming the next-in-line. RSS' stand that Advani violates the one-man one-post principle also probably won't be enough to push Advani out. BJP requires him at the helm at least till the next general elections, since there is no second rung leader who is as well known as him. Soon, BJP will have to get rid of its dual personality and let the real BJP please stand up.