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Swapan Dasgupta

DAY DREAMS
Don't Try to Fit the Bill

The BJP's search for respectability -- a phenomenon I had alluded to in an earlier column -- is reaching strange and bizarre proportions. Speaking at the Foreign Correspondent's Club in Delhi last Friday, party president Bangaru Laxman said that it was inaccurate to dub the party "right wing" or "Hindu nationalist". If a prefix was imperative, it would be better to call the BJP a "nationalist party".

Judged by the yardstick of political correctness, Laxman has a point. The term right wing is inevitably accompanied by a sneer, as if being right wing is a lesser state of being than left wing or socialist. Equally, the term Hindu nationalist has been used in a pejorative sense and not as the Indian counterpart of Christian democracy. To that extent, Laxman is right in trying to get away from seemingly uncharitable labels.

The problem Laxman doesn't appear to recognise is that you can't change age-old habits. The reason the BJP is set apart from the Congress -- which doesn't carry any prefix or suffix -- is because the people the foreign correspondents meet regularly are neither sympathetic to the party nor know anything about it. The diplomatic circuit in Chanakyapuri is reasonably clueless about the BJP, the RSS and other frontal organisations. Consequently, there is a search for convenient labels.

Now, that's a problem of the foreign correspondents, not the BJP, although it would have helped matters if either the party or the many press advisers in the Prime Minister's Office had reached out. By acknowledging it is the BJP's problem, Laxman may have created more problems for himself.

For a start, it won't make any difference to the BJP's present army of
detractors if the party sheds its Hindu nationalist label. For them, the BJP is and will remain an organisation of outlanders -- not the party "people like us" associate with. The party may continue to get middle class support but to the cosmopolitan, non-voting classes, it will remain the party of halwais and lalas. The deep social prejudice against the party is rooted in the foreign correspondent's vision of the "real" India. The BJP, unfortunately, doesn't fit that bill.

Secondly, by trying to shed its existing identity, the BJP may end up
confusing its own supporters. The exponential growth of the party after 1989 stemmed from a combination of factors. But most important of these was the feeling that someone should be speaking of up proudly and assertively in defence of Hindu interests. This is not the same as burning Christian missionaries or targeting Muslims in riots. It's a simple sentiment that says we shouldn't be squeamish about our Hinduness. The BJP cannot be a Congress that means all things to all people. It has an identity that is very clear to its own support base. By trying to be what it is not, the party could end up falling between two stools.

The most important thing Laxman must realise is that you can't co-opt an old establishment. For the BJP to go places, it must establish its own establishment. And then proceed to do what it was elected to do -- destroy the ancient regime brick by brick.

(Swapan Dasgupta is Deputy Editor, INDIA TODAY. He has edited Nirad Chaudhuri, The First Hundred Years. Write to Swapan Dasgupta)

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