Tradition of debate and dissent not new to BJP

By Saba Naqvi

This is not the first time that characters from the Mahabharata have been evoked by BJP leaders in the midst of a spat. Former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha spoke of Duryodhan and Dushasan earlier this week, the day after the PM mentioned the lesser known figure Shalya (who apparently ended up helping the Kauravas against the Pandavas in the epic battle). The quick response from the PM suggests he is worried about projections of doom and gloom about the economy; if he were not, he would have just ignored the criticism. In saying that there are people who only sleep well after spreading pessimism all round, he is also sending a message to the rank and file, tired or retired, to hold their peace.

For although things have been quiet and more orderly in the BJP since Modi powered them to single party rule in 2014, there is actually a tradition of fierce debate and contest in the BJP. Modi would know better than most as he was the target of many overt and covert battles.

Today both Sinha and former Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie have little stake in the regime of Narendra Modi, from which they have been excluded, something that makes it a little easier for their voices of conscience to speak out. But let’s recall that the BJP actually has a history of fierce personality clashes, rivalries, inner-party debates and dissent. Not being a party dominated by a particular family as the Congress and several regional parties are, people in the BJP argued over ideas and contested each other. It was healthy and at one time made for great stories.

Indeed while putting the finishing touches to my book on the BJP that maps the journey from the Vajpayee to the Modi era, I have dug out old interviews with a range of leaders, from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to LK Advani, Jaswant Singh, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh et al, that deal with the debates that once rocked the party. There are several interviews with the irrepressible exiled RSS genius in the BJP KN Govindacharya (furious with the economic direction of the Vajpayee government); and RSS pracharaks who rose to be BJP president such as Kushabhau Thakre, Jana Krishnamurthy. All of whom are, in those interviews, soothing ruffled feathers, denying or conceding there are problems, both ideological and personal.

The Modi Way
Modi too appears in some of my early articles when he was in charge of organisation and based in Delhi. What is fascinating is the manner in which he says that the cadre is the key to electoral success and getting workers down to each booth the way to the BJP’s expansion, something he did in Gujarat and current BJP president Amit Shah does with extraordinary energy across India. Create a structure, then you will create a party, Modi tells me in 1999, in a story I had forgotten.

Modi has risen to the top, surviving the hostility, first, from a faction-ridden BJP state unit in Gujarat. Later he would deal with the misgivings of Vajpayee and then post 2004 the resentment of a true party builder such as Advani. He has negotiated machinations within the party and larger parivar that took its time to accept him as the Supreme Leader he has become today; no such challenge confronts those at the helm of parties led by political dynasties.

There is no debate as to where the power lies today; different from the age of Vajpayee, when Advani was at times seen then as the “real” leader of the party as opposed to the acceptable ‘mask’. The two veterans had a complex equation, while the second rung often openly slugged it out. Chaos notwithstanding, all of them did, with a bunch of allies, lead the NDA through the first complete term of a non-Congress regime in India.

Modi is more solitary in nature; but his corporate loyalty to the BJP remains. It cannot be ignored that there are individuals holding top cabinet posts in the Modi regime, such as Home Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who were once seen to be acting in tandem with those who were opposing his ascent. Equally, there is a rather quiet Uma Bharti, living out her days as minister — recently shifted from Ganga rejuvenation to sanitation and drinking water — who at one point abused the entire top rung of the BJP, from Advani to Mahajan to Jaitley. About Modi she said during a time when she was expelled from the party, that he does not bring vikas (development) but vinash (destruction).

As long as the BJP under Modi remains a politically successful project, the views of Sinha and Shourie will not really hurt. But if we are indeed in the midst of an economic disaster, then the two veterans (one of whom, Shourie, is no longer a formal member of the party) would have revived the tradition of dissent in India’s ruling party.

(Saba Naqvi is a writer and journalist)