When an ideology that cannot work mothers a government that does not work, family strife is inevitable. The RSS and the VHP today feel betrayed by their prime minister but the truth is that the BJP switched sides the moment it joined the Government. It had to surrender ideology for power. It had no option.

India, by tradition, culture, history and the simple fact of infinite variety is an inclusive nation. There is no other way to ensure peace and social homogeneity. Hindu and Muslim need to find space for each other as much as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu need to accommodate, share and get on with life. The RSS applauds the generosity of the Indian spirit without understanding what it means in practice. Any fundamentalist ideology is exclusive and invasive. You can only rule India from the centre; you cannot do so from a saffron corner. Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee understands that the flamethrowers of the Hindutva Parivar are self-defeating and will hurt the BJP even more than they will hurt the country. What he will not publicly admit is that compromise is a temporary answer to incompatibility.

If you want an electrocardiogram of the breaking heart of the RSS, scan Jammu rather than Uttar Pradesh. The RSS has a question to ask of the BJP: if a Hindu party can't win the Hindu vote in the straight-line electoral demographics of Jammu, where can it win anything? The RSS has asked the right question but its blinkers prevent it from seeing the right answer.

The Hindu voter of Jammu knows what the RSS refuses to believe: that partisan interest is not necessarily synonymous with national interest. He was with Vajpayee after Kargil but turned contemptuously away from the BJP when a desperate Parivar tried to appease him with the silly lollipop of trifurcation. It is ironical that the BJP, which cannot say enough about minority appeasement, did not realise that majority appeasement was counterproductive too. Moreover the Hindu voter, like any other citizen, also prefers good governance to bombast, and will punish a party that confuses the two.

Since the RSS cannot distinguish between the Hindu interest and the national interest, it keeps pushing the Government towards what might be called its core mentality. In a very literal sense this direction is misguided. The BJP is succumbing to this pressure because, on political issues, Vajpayee has by and large chosen to stand still, and at precisely the point where he was defeated by the hardliners of his own party in Goa in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots. He is letting the victors of Goa enjoy their victory.

Goa was meant to be the start of a new round of celebrations for the party, as the hard ideologues, fired by post-Godhra enthusiasm, "rescued" the party from the namby-pamby Atalites. Instead there has been Jammu and schizophrenia. Suddenly, even the destiny of Gujarat seems less certain than it looked in March. Traditional anti-incumbency factors are appearing from lost corners of memory, and caste, which was meant to have been subdued by the rise of a uniform Hindu consciousness, is returning to trouble the political statistics. Narendra Modi may not lose this carefully nurtured election, but he is not going to win by the margins he imagined in the heat of the communal blaze.

The untold story of the past few months has been the recline, rather than the decline, of L.K. Advani. The man who was a natural leader in Opposition seems to have lost that touch in power. One of his problems is obvious. He has kept one foot in the RSS and the other in government, and as the gulf has widened his gait has become unsteady. He has let uncertainty drift into mismanagement. Domestic politics is a home minister's bailiwick. The revolt of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh took place under the home minister's nose and he could not sniff the stench. If Advani cannot control his party, how can we expect him to control his country, always a more difficult responsibility?

Nor was the revolt over policy or principle. It was about petty greed and colossal stupidity. It was a squabble for office and a scramble for future bribes by MLAs without loyalty or discipline, provoked by the thought that they were not being handed their share of loot from public coffers. The BJP in Uttar Pradesh has all the composure of a last-chance saloon. That can become contagious. A quick swot analysis:

Strength: This has become a wobble. The prime minister is under strain from ideologues of the coalition, the RSS/VHP to his right and the socialist/unionists to his left. The bigger danger is from the right.

Weakness: Sheep have become wolves. Smash and grab has become a philosophy.

Opportunity: Window now very narrow, but still open. Requires a major leap of initiative by the chairman of the board and the managing director, but neither is calling an AGM to take stock or give direction.

Threat: A Congress that has rediscovered its voice and might find its feet.

The author is Editor-in-Chief, The Asian Age.

When an ideology that cannot work mothers a government that does not work, family strife is inevitable. The RSS and the VHP today feel betrayed by their prime minister but the truth is that the BJP switched sides the moment it joined the Government. It had to surrender ideology for power. It had no option.

India, by tradition, culture, history and the simple fact of infinite variety is an inclusive nation. There is no other way to ensure peace and social homogeneity. Hindu and Muslim need to find space for each other as much as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu need to accommodate, share and get on with life. The RSS applauds the generosity of the Indian spirit without understanding what it means in practice. Any fundamentalist ideology is exclusive and invasive. You can only rule India from the centre; you cannot do so from a saffron corner. Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee understands that the flamethrowers of the Hindutva Parivar are self-defeating and will hurt the BJP even more than they will hurt the country. What he will not publicly admit is that compromise is a temporary answer to incompatibility.

If you want an electrocardiogram of the breaking heart of the RSS, scan Jammu rather than Uttar Pradesh. The RSS has a question to ask of the BJP: if a Hindu party can't win the Hindu vote in the straight-line electoral demographics of Jammu, where can it win anything? The RSS has asked the right question but its blinkers prevent it from seeing the right answer.

The Hindu voter of Jammu knows what the RSS refuses to believe: that partisan interest is not necessarily synonymous with national interest. He was with Vajpayee after Kargil but turned contemptuously away from the BJP when a desperate Parivar tried to appease him with the silly lollipop of trifurcation. It is ironical that the BJP, which cannot say enough about minority appeasement, did not realise that majority appeasement was counterproductive too. Moreover the Hindu voter, like any other citizen, also prefers good governance to bombast, and will punish a party that confuses the two.

Since the RSS cannot distinguish between the Hindu interest and the national interest, it keeps pushing the Government towards what might be called its core mentality. In a very literal sense this direction is misguided. The BJP is succumbing to this pressure because, on political issues, Vajpayee has by and large chosen to stand still, and at precisely the point where he was defeated by the hardliners of his own party in Goa in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots. He is letting the victors of Goa enjoy their victory.

Goa was meant to be the start of a new round of celebrations for the party, as the hard ideologues, fired by post-Godhra enthusiasm, "rescued" the party from the namby-pamby Atalites. Instead there has been Jammu and schizophrenia. Suddenly, even the destiny of Gujarat seems less certain than it looked in March. Traditional anti-incumbency factors are appearing from lost corners of memory, and caste, which was meant to have been subdued by the rise of a uniform Hindu consciousness, is returning to trouble the political statistics. Narendra Modi may not lose this carefully nurtured election, but he is not going to win by the margins he imagined in the heat of the communal blaze.

The untold story of the past few months has been the recline, rather than the decline, of L.K. Advani. The man who was a natural leader in Opposition seems to have lost that touch in power. One of his problems is obvious. He has kept one foot in the RSS and the other in government, and as the gulf has widened his gait has become unsteady. He has let uncertainty drift into mismanagement. Domestic politics is a home minister's bailiwick. The revolt of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh took place under the home minister's nose and he could not sniff the stench. If Advani cannot control his party, how can we expect him to control his country, always a more difficult responsibility?

Nor was the revolt over policy or principle. It was about petty greed and colossal stupidity. It was a squabble for office and a scramble for future bribes by MLAs without loyalty or discipline, provoked by the thought that they were not being handed their share of loot from public coffers. The BJP in Uttar Pradesh has all the composure of a last-chance saloon. That can become contagious. A quick swot analysis:

Strength: This has become a wobble. The prime minister is under strain from ideologues of the coalition, the RSS/VHP to his right and the socialist/unionists to his left. The bigger danger is from the right.

Weakness: Sheep have become wolves. Smash and grab has become a philosophy.

Opportunity: Window now very narrow, but still open. Requires a major leap of initiative by the chairman of the board and the managing director, but neither is calling an AGM to take stock or give direction.

Threat: A Congress that has rediscovered its voice and might find its feet.

The author is Editor-in-Chief, The Asian Age.