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| April 17, 2000 | ||
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| BJP The Big Issue Who is the BJP's soul keeper? The party journal takes sides-and brews up an unwanted storm By Farzand Ahmed
Just days before the party was to kick off a 10-day long programme to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its founding, the BJP found itself in a ferment over a clarification in the official journal BJP Today. The founder-president of the party, Vajpayee, explained the note, was supposed to have sent a message for inclusion in the special anniversary issue but "due to his preoccupation with President Clinton's visit, we missed the message from Atalji". And then, in what appeared to be an effort to show up Vajpayee's seeming indifference, the magazine in a manner reminiscent of the party's rivals, eulogised Advani, conferring on him titles like "mahatma" and "pramatma", even calling him "blessed with divinity". The implication of the editorial pronouncements was clear: Vajpayee had no time to jot down a message for the special issue. In other words that he, as the prime minister, had become indifferent to the party in its anniversary year. Taken by surprise, General Secretary M. Venkaiah Naidu exclaimed, "If we could not get a message from the prime minister, it's our failure, not his. It is not the government's job to contribute to a party organ." The PMO declined to comment on the controversy which was purely a party matter. H.K. Dua, the prime minister's press adviser, brushed off the matter: "I have nothing to say. It's a party matter. Better check with the editor as only he will be able to throw light on the issue." The editor, Prafull Goradia, a tea trader and former Rajya Sabha member, is emphatic he had sent a letter to Vajpayee requesting a message. "We had allotted two pages for him and even fished out a 1980 photograph of Atalji, the then party president." In the same breath, he carries on: "We thought that Atalji as the prime minister might not speak on the party's evolution and its ideology. So we banked upon Advaniji, who had taken the party to new heights. After all, during Vajpayee's tenure as the party president, the BJP had fared poorly in the elections." Such utterances, writings, praise and denunciation, open or veiled, that too by its own editor in its own official journal, has obviously drawn the ire of party elders. "This is a foolish act," declared a senior leader associated with the journal since 1991. "The poor editor does not understand what he is writing and saying." He also drew an interesting inference. The erstwhile Jan Sangh, he pointed out, held Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in high esteem even as it considered Jawaharlal Nehru lightly. By describing Advani as "Patel", he concluded, Goradia was trying to project Vajpayee as Nehru. This is not the first time that Goradia -- whose credentials to being a journalist before being foisted as the editor to replace veteran journalist Kanchan Gupta, now in the PMO, lay in his epistolary forays in various newspapers -- has found himself out of depth. In February, the BJP Today had run down President K.R. Narayanan and accused him of working on behalf of the Congress, embarrassing the party and the Government. There are clear indications that Goradia's writings and feelings have not gone down well with the party leadership, especially at a time when the party was celebrating its foundation anniversary, and "corrective measures" are being contemplated. Clearly, it was time for the former MP to learn that editing the magazine of the ruling party calls for more restraint than was practised by the BJP so far. |
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It
was the curious case of the message that never arrived. An omission that
resulted in a terse note and renewed speculation that the tussle between
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Home Minister L.K. Advani for the
soul of the BJP isn't entirely over.