BJP: At the crossroads
The Bharatiya Janata Party, as a national party, is at a critical point in its political existence. Its future depends on the course it chooses to take from here. One wrong step now and history will never forgive the BJP leadership.
OF LATE, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in the news for all the wrong reasons. The party, which even today claims to be 'the party with a difference', is proving to be no different from its counterparts at the national as well as regional level. The recent power struggle, internal bickering, backstabbing and gross indiscipline could as well mark the beginning of the end of the BJP as a party of significance at the national level.
The party, which was born in 1951 as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and rechristened itself as BJP in 1980, has come a long way since then. The BJP had just two seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha but emerged as the single largest party in 1996 with 161 seats, 21 more than its rival Congress’ tally of 140 seats. And in the 1998 general elections, the BJP managed to increase its tally to 180 seats and form the government in alliance with its electoral partners. In the 1999 elections, following the collapse of the first BJP-led government at the Centre, the party managed to marginally improve its tally by two more to 182 seats and once again formed a coalition government at the Centre, which lasted its full term.
In hindsight, the BJP’s role in the Non Democratic Alliance government that lasted from 1999 to 2004, could be its finest moment as a political entity. For in the two subsequent elections to the Lok Sabha, in 2004 and in 2009, the BJP not only failed to capture power at the Centre with its allies but also saw a steady erosion in the number of Lok Sabha seats it had won: in the 2004 elections, the BJP’s strength in the Lok Sabha fell from 182 to 138, which got further reduced to 116 in the 2009 elections.
While the BJP still remains the only alternative to the Congress at the national level in terms of reach and spread, it has clearly reached a dead end as a national party of significance. And if the BJP wants to emerge as a serious challenger to the Congress at the Centre, it has to take a long and serious look at some of its core ideologies. For one, the BJP cannot remain a Hindu nationalist party and yet hope to win all-round support. In other words, the party can no longer afford to remain a one trick pony, choosing to focus on a blatant communal agenda to the detriment of other more important and pressing issues that immediately impinge on the lives of common people. The BJP needs a strong leadership at the national level to keep the party together and steer it on a progressive path, shunning the temptation to indulge communal politics, which at best has limited use and at worst divisive value.
Also, as long as the BJP leaders remain beholden to the RSS and as long as the party is seen as nothing but a political facade of the RSS, the party can neither get trustworthy electoral allies nor manage to win a simple majority on its own. The BJP has electorally already milked its communal agenda for all its worth and cannot use it any further to gain any significant advantage. Hence the need for change in its core ideology as well as strategy.
The recent developments in the BJP point to the fact that the party is at the crossroads. What path it takes from here will decide how the party is going to be viewed by the electorate. One wrong step now and history will never forgive the BJP leadership.
In hindsight, the BJP’s role in the Non Democratic Alliance government that lasted from 1999 to 2004, could be its finest moment as a political entity. For in the two subsequent elections to the Lok Sabha, in 2004 and in 2009, the BJP not only failed to capture power at the Centre with its allies but also saw a steady erosion in the number of Lok Sabha seats it had won: in the 2004 elections, the BJP’s strength in the Lok Sabha fell from 182 to 138, which got further reduced to 116 in the 2009 elections.
While the BJP still remains the only alternative to the Congress at the national level in terms of reach and spread, it has clearly reached a dead end as a national party of significance. And if the BJP wants to emerge as a serious challenger to the Congress at the Centre, it has to take a long and serious look at some of its core ideologies. For one, the BJP cannot remain a Hindu nationalist party and yet hope to win all-round support. In other words, the party can no longer afford to remain a one trick pony, choosing to focus on a blatant communal agenda to the detriment of other more important and pressing issues that immediately impinge on the lives of common people. The BJP needs a strong leadership at the national level to keep the party together and steer it on a progressive path, shunning the temptation to indulge communal politics, which at best has limited use and at worst divisive value.
Also, as long as the BJP leaders remain beholden to the RSS and as long as the party is seen as nothing but a political facade of the RSS, the party can neither get trustworthy electoral allies nor manage to win a simple majority on its own. The BJP has electorally already milked its communal agenda for all its worth and cannot use it any further to gain any significant advantage. Hence the need for change in its core ideology as well as strategy.
The recent developments in the BJP point to the fact that the party is at the crossroads. What path it takes from here will decide how the party is going to be viewed by the electorate. One wrong step now and history will never forgive the BJP leadership.
Login
 Login through Social ID
|
