These days, I find myself increasingly thinking of Lal Krishna Advani. He was the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1990 when I returned to India and started working as a journalist. In those days, privately owned news channels did not exist. Doordarshan was a monopoly. The only way independent current affairs was possible was through video magazines. There were two that were best known: Newstrack and Eyewitness. I was the editor of the latter.
I did many interviews with Mr. Advani, probably more than I did of any other politician in that fin de siècle period. The common thread that ran through the interviews was a ploy I was rather fond of. Whenever my focus was on an issue or a decision that smelt of realpolitik and appeared less than ethical, I would counter Mr. Advani’s defensive answers with a set statement, which I delivered with a grin: “That answer may be okay for other leaders but how can it be acceptable for the president of a party that calls itself ‘a party with a difference’?”
There wasn’t a single occasion when this didn’t make Mr. Advani wince. It wasn’t just embarrassment that I could discern but pain, of the sort that’s self-inflicted and, therefore, more hurtful. Whenever that happened, I knew I had made my point. Mr. Advani was too shrewd a politician to verbally concede but the look on his face said it all.
Part of moral core
In those days, the BJP genuinely believed that it was different from every other party. This difference was its moral core. It convinced the party that it was superior to others. At that time, it had 85 MPs in the Lok Sabha but even when six years earlier it just had two, it drew its strength from its moral conviction as much as from its legislative numbers.
I wonder what Mr. Advani would make of his party’s behaviour today? Since the swearing in of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a second term, the BJP has been on an unparalleled — and, it seems, unstoppable — spree of luring MPs, MLAs and even corporators. This has happened in Karnataka, West Bengal, Goa, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. And it has happened by a variety of novel methods. On one occasion, two-thirds of a party’s strength in the legislature defected; on another, a sizeable number of MLAs resigned to enable the BJP to cross the majority mark.
Not only is the BJP unconcerned about what this has done to its moral image, but also, perhaps more surprisingly, it is indifferent to what this will do to its internal cohesion and ideology. Consider Goa. The 10 Congress MLAs who switched to the BJP had been elected to oppose it but three of them are now members of its government. One is the Deputy Chief Minister. Just two months ago, they were strong opponents of Hindutva. Today, they are its champions. No doubt this says a lot about them but it also speaks volumes about the sincerity of the BJP’s Hindutva message.
Embracing the defectors
Let me go one step further. Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate faces several serious criminal charges, including over the rape of a minor in 2016. This was forcefully raised by the BJP in the Panaji byelection just two months ago. ‘Save Goa from Babush’ was the party’s slogan. On that occasion, he won and defeated the BJP candidate. Today, the BJP has opened its arms and embraced him. His wife Jennifer is a Minister in its government. The charges he faces have been forgotten and forgiven.
It seems that in its inexorable march to a comprehensive domination of Indian politics, the BJP is trampling upon its own moral principles and ethical values. No doubt this first happened in Karnataka in 2008 with ‘Operation Lotus’ but, at the time, that was a one-off and the BJP was not proud of it. Now, there’s a brazen defiance of ethics and unconcern with the consequences. The party wants to form a government or gain legislative strength no matter what the cost. It’s the end that matters not the means. Success is its own justification.
So where does this leave the BJP’s vaunted claim of being a ‘party with a difference’? The truth is that under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the BJP feels like any other party. In 1980, when members of the Haryana Janata Party under Bhajan Lal defected en masse to Indira Gandhi’s Congress, Mr. Advani would have called it the worst example of ‘Congressisation of Indian politics’. Today we’re witnessing the ‘Congressisation of the BJP’.
There is, however, a deeper irony here. Few would deny that Mr. Advani is a founding architect of the BJP. He took it from two seats in 1984 to six years in power beginning 1998. During those three decades (1984 to 2004), the claim of being a ‘party with a difference’ was not just meaningful but, for many, an article of faith. A mere decade and a half later, Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah have taken the BJP to another level altogether. Mr. Advani could only have dreamed of where it has got to. But, in the process, the party’s proud claim of ‘being different’ has been scrubbed. Today, that is just a nostalgic memory for Mr. Advani’s generation. I bet the modern BJP doesn’t even know what it means or, if it does, considers it a foolish commitment.
Karan Thapar is a broadcast journalist