Historically the BJP, and earlier the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, relied on self-created sententious illusions: it alone has the individuals (RSS-minted) with the ideas, ideals, and idealism to serve of Bharat Mata. Gripped in the myth of its own superiority, the BJP and its minders in Nagpur have overlooked one aberration after another in its own ranks — be it a Babubhai Kataria or the MPLADS scandal or Bangaru Laxman. Internally, the party leaders endlessly practise a game of chess among themselves, not letting anyone sufficient elbow room. Debilitating factionalism at the very top has now come to define the BJP.

This factionalism can be traced to the party’s strategy of personalising the public space. In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the party deliberately reduced the contest to a Vajpayee versus Sonia stand-off. It thought by highlighting Mr. Vajpayee’s long public innings, it could easily knock Ms. Gandhi off the pedestal. Instead of a reasoned debate over rival, competing, political projects and views, the BJP reduces everything to ‘rashtra bhakti’ and ‘parivar bhakti.’

Politically, the BJP misjudged Ms. Gandhi. The party underestimated her capacity to keep the Congress intact and, what is more, when the moment came, to walk away from the crown. For a party that thrives on personality-centric antagonism, the BJP’s entire effort has been to bring Ms. Gandhi into every controversy.

The BJP has served two functions. First, it expediently provided a platform to all those who thought their ambitions would not get accommodated in the Sonia Gandhi-dominated Congress. The Arun Nehrus, the Varun Gandhis, the K.C. Pants, the Najma Heptullahs; all these neo-converts brought with them personal antagonism and encouraged the BJP’s organisational preference for personality-centred politics.

Secondly, the BJP came to power at the Centre in 1998-1999 because it was the chosen instrument of corporate India. The captains of Indian industry were sick and tired of the squabbling United Front. They were unwilling to be hobbled by the domestic upheavals; they needed stability at the Centre, demanded the support and indulgence of a protectionist state as they sought to engage and compete with a much more affluent, much more ruthless and protected global capital. Mr. Vajpayee’s BJP fitted the bill.

A sub-text of this historical role was the beginning of the middle classes’ disenchantment with the political class (as a natural corollary of its new love affair with the market). The BJP had led the country’s middle classes to believe that it had the finest set of upright, wise, patriotic, nationalist leaders whose integrity, wisdom, and sincerity were sufficient to meet the demands of any situation. This naïve belief was sufficiently exposed during the six years of NDA rule. The abiding problems of neither our national security nor of internal security nor of the ills in public life were sorted out; if anything, the problems of internal security got further aggravated.

Six years of the NDA and the events since the Vajpayee government’s defeat have put paid to the BJP’s assertion of being a party with a difference. The country will not be taken in a second time. The recent eruption of caste violence in Rajasthan was a classic example of how overstated the BJP’s political skills are; yet it did not prevent the party’s apologists from putting the blame on Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh’s quota politics.

Now, what distinguishes the BJP from other centrist parties are two factors: (a) ties of bondage to the RSS; and, (b) its attitude towards the Muslims and other minorities.

The BJP’s relationship with the RSS is rather old hat, yet never before was this bondage more institutionalised than it is now. According to one count, as many as 53 pracharaks are acting as political commissars at the national and State level in BJP affairs. The tutelage of the RSS has prevented the BJP from developing into a normal party. For example, it has never had elections to decide who will be the party president. Similarly for over a decade at the State level, too, the party has not been allowed to have elections. The choices are made in Nagpur. The result is that instead of grafting a separate political persona of their own, the national level leaders get reduced to competing for favours with the extra-constitutional bosses in Nagpur.

That is the BJP’s internal affair. But this relationship is at the core of the BJP’s existential crisis. Because of the RSS, the BJP leadership has been intransigently insistent that the party alone is moral, honest, and incorruptible. The result is that it has this funny notion that while everybody else pursues expedient choices (which it dubs vote-bank politics), its opportunistic or expedient decisions and choices can be explained away in terms of “national interest.” So far, the BJP has succeeded in using sections of the media to create storms and stories over non-issues in its favour.

The BJP’s second fundamental problem flows from the first: the internalised animosity to the Muslims and other minorities. Consider the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh elections — the BJP could not field a single Muslim out of 400-odd candidates. Or, take the cultivated and deliberate anti-Muslim politics being practised in Gujarat by Narendra Modi, and how the rest of the national leadership finds itself helpless to take any corrective steps. Because of the RSS, the party remains trapped in the Ayodhya mythology and no leader knows how to get out of that trap.

As an electoral strategy, this anti-Muslim stance is not without its usefulness but it does render the BJP vastly handicapped when it comes to governance. A visceral anti-minorities approach prevents the BJP from practising harmony, accommodation, and reconciliation. Without such qualities, no party will ever be successful in running the Indian state.

Except the RSS relationship and the built-in anti-Muslim bias, there is nothing to distinguish the BJP from the Congress. On foreign policy and economic liberalisation, there is nothing to mark one apart from the other, notwithstanding the BJP’s current opposition to the India-U.S. nuclear deal which is more out of habit than conviction. In matters economic, it did not depart from the direction Manmohan Singh had set in 1991-1992.

Should the BJP, then, wind itself up? The answer is a definite ‘no.’ Parties rarely fade away even when rejected by the electorate. In any case, the BJP fulfils, partly, the polity’s need for a healthy opposition to the Congress. The country can do without the arrogance that an unchallenged Congress treated all our democratic institutions with. The BJP will have to keep on playing this role till the Left or any other party is able to become viable enough to occupy the centrist political space. Secondly, the BJP provides a rallying point for all the small and regional outfits that feel crowded in by the Congress. This function has emerged as vital to the deepening of our federal structure.

The party may still benefit from the anti-incumbency syndrome and may stage a comeback at the Centre. That itself will not be sufficient to overcome the party’s deep structural problems. For now, the party resembles those classy characters in Ocean’s Thirteen — it would go to any lengths, commit any illegality, break any code or any lock just to have the satisfaction of getting even with a Sonia Gandhi. As a political party that seeks to rule an increasingly complex country, it needs to redefine its raison d’etre.

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