It is 14 years since the BJP's first yatri L.K. Advani climbed onto his Toyota rath and sought to mobilise political Hindus. And there are few who will doubt Advani's success in achieving what he had set out to do, though a demolished masjid was not what he had wanted to see. On the brighter side, the BJP increased its Lok Sabha seats from 85 in 1989 to 119 in the 1991 polls, hitting triple digits for the first time ever. Since then, whenever the party felt the need to reach out to its hardcore vote bank, it has resorted to yatra, but with varying degrees of success, as the irrepressible charioteer himself discovered in May 2004 when his Bharat Uday Yatra turned out to be a travesty of the first.

PICTURE SPEAK

SHOW OF STRENGTH: BJP leaders at a rally in Bangalore

And now, once again, the BJP has decided to replay its yatra politics. The mascot has changed, though. A somewhat jaded Advani has now given way to the fiery Uma Bharati, the BJP's pin-up sanyasin. That Bharati should climb onto a rath and wave the tricolour is a natural culmination of the recent resignation-arrest-incarceration-and-release drama. In Bharati, the BJP has found a new generation mascot, whose appeal extends to the hardline Sangh Parivar as well as the NDA soft-peddlers.

That the sanyasin's 15-day Rashtriya Tiranga Jhanda Yatra would be given the go-ahead at the BJP's office bearers meet in Bangalore was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps that is one reason why the spinmeisters in the party shifted the venue of the largely administrative office bearers meeting from Delhi to Bangalore, the theatre of Bharati's drama. And suddenly a routine meeting became a media event. Atal Bihari Vajpayee praised Bharati's sacrifice. Advani, who always tries to put things in perspective, claimed that her sacrifice was a turning point for the BJP and went on to list earlier benchmarks: "Pehle tha Jayaprakash ji ka andolan, phir Ayodhya ka andolan aur ab Uma ka tyaag (First there was the JP movement, then the Ayodhya agitation and now we have Uma's sacrifice)."

There are those within the BJP who may not equate Bharati's agitation with the Jayaprakash Narayan movement but Advani and his strategists have a reason for marketing it as such. Bharati's tricolour drama has come at a point when the BJP was under attack from the RSS for neglecting its Hindu vote bank while the NDA allies were accusing it of talking in strident tones. But with one stroke the feisty sanyasin managed to straddle both extremes. Her flag-waving nationalism appeased the hardcore Parivar whereas her resignation boosted the NDA's campaign against Laloo Prasad Yadav and other tainted ministers. Hindu nationalism, combined with the Veer Savarkar campaign, will be part of a Hindutva package that will come in handy during the Maharashtra assembly polls. Bharati's political martyrdom will be effective ammunition in the Bihar assembly polls due in February-March 2005.

While Bharati's arrest proved to be a catalyst for a party that thrives on the politics of confrontation there were other issues at hand. Such as the recent census data that claims the rise in the Muslim population is the highest amongst all religious groups.

What more could a BJP that had just received a drubbing at E-2004 ask for? "Hamari to kismat hi khul gayi (Our luck has really turned)," said a jubilant party worker. Even Vajpayee, the ultimate moderate, did not raise a murmur at the office bearers meeting in Bangalore when party President M. Venkaiah Naidu suggested that the party should play this up to woo its Hindu vote bank. The party's deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, said, "This is a national problem and should not be looked at as a Hindu-Muslim issue."

WHEN IN DOUBT GO ON A YATRA    The BJP has always depended on yatras by its high-profile leaders as an    instrument of mass mobilization

1990 ADVANI'S RAM RATH YATRA Launched his career as a yatri. Began from Somnath on September 25 and was arrested in Bihar. The communal agenda of the yatra was glibly explained away as a move to revive cultural nationalism. 1991 MURLI MANOHAR JOSHI'S EKTA YATRA The 47-day Ekta Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir was aimed at "dousing flames of separatism fanned by Pakistan". It was another of the BJP's desperate attempts to raise patriotic fervour but was intended to woo the Hindu vote bank. 1997 ADVANI'S SWARNA JAYANTI RATH YATRA Ostensibly to celebrate the golden jubilee of India's independence. Began from August Kranti Maidan, Mumbai, and ended in Delhi. But in reality the BJP was anticipating mid-term polls and wanted an early start to its campaign. 2004 ADVANI'S BHARAT UDAY YATRA A flop show. Advani covered 4,125 km to cash in on the feel-good factor but fell victim to his own party propaganda. Not only did the airconditioning in his rath break down, he failed to translate his yatra into votes.

The BJP also chalked out its political agenda for the next few months, using the yatra as a cornerstone. Bharati's 3,500 km yatra will cover parts of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab. She will spend five days addressing 20 meetings in the poll-bound state of Maharashtra. Bharati will also spend three days and address 10 meetings in Haryana where assembly elections are due next year.

The party think tank has decided to balance its hardline politics by giving Bharati two other sarathis (charioteers)-the party's Muslim poster boy Shahnawaz Husain will provide secular cover to Bharati's rhetoric while Karnataka BJP chief Ananth Kumar will be the southern face of the yatra.

It was also decided that BJP MPs, under the leadership of Swaraj, would court arrest in Port Blair on September 21 to protest against the removal of the Savarkar plaque. Chastened by the RSS for substituting the word "Hindutva" with national pride (a phrase more palatable to its NDA allies) at the party's Chintan Baithak in Goa in July, the BJP is now reverting to agitational politics such as the yatra and satyagraha to shore up its Hindutva credentials.

This agenda fits in very well with the RSS' view of the BJP which feels that the party's top leadership was soft-peddling the Hindutva agenda in an effort to placate its NDA allies. Says RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav: "It depends on the BJP if it wants to win back the Hindu vote or occupy the centre space which is normally occupied by the Congress."

There is a view in the Parivar that the BJP has vacated the right wing space in Indian politics and is inching towards the centre. Says Praful Goradia, former editor of BJP Today, who recently quit the party complaining that it had abandoned Hindutva completely: "There is no Hindu party on the national canvas." This view is echoed by the RSS and will be raised at its annual national executive in November. The VHP has already threatened to float a parallel political party in November. The fact that the BJP office bearers stayed at a five-star hotel will only add to the RSS' resentment against the party. Just three months ago, the Parivar had criticised the BJP for holding its National Executive at a Mumbai five-star hotel.

The BJP is all too eager to have a new identity and that may explain why it is banking on Uma Unbound. Battlefield Maharashtra will be the first testing ground but the war has to go much beyond.

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