WHAT A HEADACHE: Advani, the organisation man, is helpless

When L.K. Advani took over as the BJP president for the fifth time in October this year, Hindutva's long-distance yatri was asked to compare the moment with the time he first became the party boss in 1986. He sighed, paused, wrung his hands, and admitted, "More complicated." That could go down in India's political history as one of the most unintended understatements. The BJP today is the worst-case scenario of political death wish. After losing India, it is losing itself. The mood in what was once the right hope of the nation is pretty funereal.

Advani, though, can't afford to accept this doomsday scenario; he is the chosen redeemer after all. Take this: "I have toured extensively for the past two months. The mood of the workers is buoyant. The party is in good shape.'' (see interview.) There is a resurgence from which the media is totally disconnected, he adds. What Advani does admit to is the BJP's disconnect from its own constituency, be it the party workers, the Sangh Parivar or the voters. The communication failure is being gradually addressed, he says, and the BJP is well on the road to revival. This rosy scenario exists only in his mind, not in reality.

THE ASCETIC AND THE ACTOR: Bharati (left) got herself suspended for her emotional outburst while Irani (top right) went ballistic against Modi

The new struggle of the lost party is not about revival. It is the power struggle within, where every victory is the party's loss, and where enemies are invented for the perpetuation of the paranoid. It is implosion in slow motion. Ideologically confused-when in doubt, chant Hindutva-and biologically tired, the party is making itself irrelevant in state after state. The party has ceased to be a counterpoint to the newly ascendant Congressism. The enemy is no longer elsewhere-it is within.

DEFINING MOMENTS

1984: The BJP is reduced to two seats in the Lok Sabha elections held in the bloody aftermath of the Indira Gandhi assassination. 1989: As L.K. Advani famously said, the BJP with 85 seats becomes the brake and accelerator in the V.P. Singh government. 1991: A rath-powered BJP improves its tally to 119, but Rajiv Gandhi's mid-election assassination brings the Congress back to power. 1996: The BJP emerges as the single largest party; Atal Bihari Vajpayee forms a 13-day government. The party prepares for next innings. 1998: With 179 seats, the BJP forms the government which falls due to a single vote 13 months later. 1999: Kargil and the Congress' toppling tactics work to the BJP's advantage. It notches up a tally of 182. 2004: The India Shining campaign plunges the BJP in darkness. With 138 seats it is seven short of becoming the single largest party. In October, Advani takes over.

When Advani speaks of politics becoming more a "commerce" than a "mission", he could be talking about the ideologically disengaged second-rung leaders, his own precious proteges who, unlike the Advani generation, are not steeped in ideological commitment. He must defend them because they are his creation. But he cannot control them. The lauh purush is at his most helpless when confronted by his own political progeny. This party can't be characterised as one presided over by the "Iron Man" and powered by ideological distinction. There is no iron in the soul or in the fist. The BJP's attempts to reconstruct its lost identity and reclaim its political space by placing Advani at the helm are yet to make any headway.

Rather, the return of the great organisation man coincided with the organisational crack-up. First, in true soap operatic style, the party's second-rung successfully targeted Hindutva's poster sanyasin and the emotionally volatile former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati and drove her to the Himalayas, literally. A couple of weeks later, newly inducted BJP National Executive member Smriti Irani went ballistic against another Hindutva pin-up, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. If the Bharati and Modi episodes have a common thread, it is that the two leaders are seen as a threat by their peers, potential rivals for the top job currently held by Advani. Although Advani says he will not step down even if the BJP performs poorly in the Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana assembly elections, he also says that he is unlikely to lead the party in the next Lok Sabha elections. So the race for the party president is on.

STATE OF DISCONTENT

KALYAN SINGH: After his return to the BJP, he was piqued at not being restored to supremo status. Detractors say he is too close to Uttar Pradesh CM Mulayam Singh. BABULAL GAUR: The Madhya Pradesh CM owes his job to predecessor Uma Bharati but has upset her by kowtowing to the state unit chief Kaptan Singh Solanki instead. ARJUN MUNDA: The Jharkhand CM isn't sure of a second term even if the BJP wins the assembly poll, with predecessor Babulal Marandi leading the charge against him. M.L. KHURANA: He returned to his first love, Delhi, in the hope of leading the party, to the dismay of the state unit. Is in charge of Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab now.

What makes Bharati and Modi both desirable and dangerous for the BJP, says political scientist Dipankar Gupta, is the fact that they are both Hindutva's standard-bearers and mass leaders. "They are movement people. The BJP has come full circle from the movement phase to the governance phase to the movement phase once again. When the BJP is professing a return to Hindutva, it is these faces that one would expect to see centrestage," he adds. During its movement phase, the party espoused "Ram and roti", combining an appeal to religious sentiment with a socio-economic agenda. But during its governance phase, it jettisoned "Ram", suffering an erosion of identity. It is now seeking to reconstruct that, says Gupta, but is handicapped by the fact that the management people who were its public face during its governance years control the party even now. Worse, Hindutva today is more a cry of desperation than a slogan of mobilisation.

So, just when Modi was playing his cards right-keeping a low profile and concentrating more on development than on Ram-Irani wanted to ambush him. Perhaps carried away by her screen persona in Kyunki... Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, "Tulsi" tore into Modi: "The 2002 Gujarat riots are still a blot on the BJP," she suddenly remembered. She threatened a dharna to end the Modi raj but backed down when party General Secretary Pramod Mahajan hinted at expulsion.

Bharati was suspended from the party for a similar, perhaps lesser, act of indiscipline. The plan for an early reinduction was scuttled by her detractors. Leaders like M. Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Mahajan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sushma Swaraj have reportedly indicated to Advani their displeasure over the sanyasin's return after a letter purportedly written by her and trashing her colleagues was leaked to the press. The epistolary eruption only showed up Advani's helplessness when faced with infighting among his proteges. However, the efforts of party ideologue and Bharati's long-suffering mentor, S. Gurumurthy, are expected to pay off.

Bharati may come in from the cold but she won't bring peace. Her return will certainly intensify the turf wars. Mahajan, Swaraj and Jaitley are all contenders. By portraying Bharati as being too temperamental and Modi as being too controversial, they hope to keep these two firebrands out of the running. Keeping a low profile for fear of attracting firepower are the enigmatic Rajnath Singh, once the RSS' right choice, and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

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