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THE NATION: BJP
Numbed By Disgrace
By Ashok Malik with Farzand Ahmed
Last week, the BJP
began the ad era of its existence, life After Dotcom. As the party's senior
leaders made their way to the Parliament annexe for the National Executive
meet, it was a humbling moment for many. The shock of seeing Bangaru Laxman,
till the middle of March the BJP's president, receiving money before a
hidden camera had shattered the party's self-image. Crusty MPs exchanged
stories of how they had reacted to the Tehelka tapes. Grown men had cried.
It was actually an MP from Bihar who had wept.
He had been overwhelmed, he said, by memories of "Atalji and my father
riding together in a rickshaw to spread the word", living frugally
but never cheating. Shivraj Singh Chauhan, MP from Vidisha and president
of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, frankly admitted he hadn't slept
on the night of March 13, the day the spycam scoop achieved notoriety.
It was finally Shanta Kumar, the Union minister for civil supplies, who
grasped the nettle and demanded action against Bangaru.
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OLD GUARD: The BJP expects calm
stodginess from Krishnamurthi
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Strong expletives were used to describe the man
who till the other day had been the BJP's first Dalit president. The mood,
particularly among younger MPs, was for expulsion. Older heads counselled
caution, unwilling to take action so drastic that it would enmesh the
party in further controversy.
They got the drift though. The message from
the party, particularly what was floating up from the grassroots, was
a mix of anger and betrayal. As journalist Cho Ramaswamy pointed out at
a seminar organised by Panchajanya, the RSS newspaper, in Delhi, "If
somebody sees me with a cigarette, he won't react. If he sees Advani with
one, he will."
Long years ago, well before the BJP even dreamt
of power, it had prided itself on its unflinching middle-class morality.
Whatever the angularities of electoral and coalition politics, to the
party faithful this sentiment was strong as ever. Suddenly it seemed over.
It didn't take long to show. On Sunday, March
25, the concluding day of the National Executive, Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee addressed an impressive rally at Delhi's Ram Lila rounds.
The city is, in theory, a BJP bastion despite the defeat in the 1998 assembly
election. In 1999, the party won all seven Lok Sabha seats here.
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JUST DO IT: To revitalise the BJP, Advani and Vajpayee may have
to effect a purge
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Yet for the post-National Executive rally the
BJP was hard put to present an impressive show. Workers and crowds had
to be borrowed from neighbouring Haryana, with Om Prakash Chautala's Indian
National Lok Dal coming to the rescue. The BJP's traditional Delhi voter
stayed home to watch India beat Australia at cricket. The signals were
clear and sharp.
At the public meeting, Vajpayee, the BJP's founder-president
and best-known face, declared that if the Opposition-in essence, the Congress-so
desired, he and his party were ready for a "political war".
It was rhetoric and bravado at best; and running away from the truth at
worst. In reality, the BJP neither felt brave nor was it in a position
to wage a war, psychological or otherwise.
After the initial search for conspiracy theories,
the BJP realised that it would simply not do to brazen it out. The Bangaru
incident had to be owned up to. In an interview to a television channel
Home Minister L.K. Advani admitted as much, saying "I feel bad about
the whole thing. And I should say that the transcript of the tapes affected
me more then the pictures." He also said the 48-hour delay in reacting
was, in retrospect, suicidal. It won the party no sympathy and, in fact,
confused the cadre.
As at least one senior cabinet minister exclaimed,
"Thank God Bangaru could do no more harm." With one man's one
misdemeanour, a whole party seemed to have lost its stomach for experiments.
No wonder it eagerly ratified the ascension to the presidency of K. Jana
Krishnamurthi, a man whose political career is the sort of morality play
the BJP would happily glorify, however unrealistic it may be in everyday
politics.
To call Krishnamurthi a good man is a double-edged
statement. The new BJP president's "goodness" is at once attribute
and handicap. At 74, the fourth generation lawyer-"My son is the
fifth generation"-from Madurai may have finally got a job some felt
should have been his in August 2000. Instead Bangaru was plucked out of
a minister of state's office to deprive Krishnamurthi of what seemed a
confirmed berth.
Then, like now, it was his experience as the
BJP's senior-most vice-president and his loyalty that were being rewarded.
"Nobody," as one BJP insider stresses, "is ever going to
accuse Janaji of accepting a bribe." The point is: is anybody likely
to look back at his term-he completes Bangaru's tenure, which is due to
end in 2003-as anything more than a cautious holding operation? After
an action-and contention-packed seven months, the party is looking for
stodginess and reassurance, no more. It is unlikely to be disappointed.
A self-described "hesitant politician",
Krishnamurthi joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1940, barely into
his teens. He was a pracharak (whole-timer) from 1945 to 1951, before
taking to law. He came into the Jana Sangh in 1965, returning his last
client's brief three years later when, after Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's mysterious
death, "Atalji gave a call to young men to give up their jobs and
serve the Jana Sangh".
As would be expected, Krishnamurthi lives an
uncomplicated life. While his family resides in Chennai, he shares a "chummery"-actually
the government bungalow at 9 Ashoka Road, Delhi, adjoining the BJP's national
headquarters and officially allotted to Law Minister Arun Jaitley-with
such veterans as J.P. Mathur and Kailashpati Mishra. It's a friendly commune,
given to a sense of humour, as one associate emphasises, and the luxury
of a single television. Whether this asceticism is equal to today's politics
is quite another matter.
Aside from providing an in-house balm, what
will Krishnamurthi's presidency entail? The Chennai declaration-at the
BJP's National Executive in that city in 1999, the party set aside its
distinctive identity for the greater good of the NDA-will reign supreme
as long as the Vajpayee-led government stays. The inevitable comparisons
with his predecessor will be made. Queried if he will persist with Bangaru's
now famous "invitation to minorities" at Nagpur, just after
he assumed office, Krishnamurthi brushes away the issue, "Bangaru
said nothing new. Minorities have always been welcome to the BJP. I will
continue the open door tradition."
All this is the sideshow. Perhaps the true difference
between the BJP's first and second chiefs from the south is that Bangaru
was a contemporary political animal who hoped to leverage his Dalit status
and multilingual skills to the best jobs available. As the Tehelka tapes
hint, perhaps he even dreamt of becoming prime minister. Krishnamurthi
has no such illusions. "Under him," a party leader from Bihar
says, "the BJP may not improve but it won't decline either."
That is the hope-and the apprehension.
For seemingly laid back people, Telugus who
head national parties inevitably evoke strong feelings. Ask P.V. Narasimha
Rao and the Congress. The near venom with which senior partymen reacted
to Bangaru's "crime" indicates a deeper anger. In the six months
and a bit he was party president, there were serious misgivings about
his "private practice" but few outside the loop got a whiff
of it. Now, in the aftermath of "Dollars? You can give dollars"
the murmurs are finally being heard, if still strictly off the record.
An entertaining if apocryphal story doing the
rounds of 11 Ashok Road, is that Bangaru wanted to take to the streets
to protest his innocence. He cited the precedent of Advani, who as party
president was implicated, unfairly as it turned out, in the hawala scandal.
Narendra Modi, BJP general secretary, advised Bangaru against it. There
were two methods of reacting, he is said to have told his disgraced colleague.
First, "the Clinton way", keeping quiet and adhering strictly
to "legal procedure and inquiry". Second, "the Advani way"
of putting personal credibility to public test. Modi counselled Laxman
to do as Clinton did during Monicagate. The message was not lost: don't
overreach yourself.
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