NOW WHEN the BJP has lost the polls in U.P. its time for them to stir their minds and restart the political journey once again with new issues and new ideologies:

 

i. The BJP should realize that its “Hindutva” ideology does not sell among Hindu voters at whom it is targeted. The Hindus of India are more secular in their outlook than the BJP and its ideological affiliates are willing to accept.

 

ii. Also, in the caste-conscious villages and small towns of India (which form the major chunk of the Indian electorate) one’s religious affinity is secondary, so the BJP would do well to shelve its “Hindutva” ideology.

 

iii. The BJP should do something about its perceived anti-minority image. The Muslims and Christians of this land are part of India, and their culture is part of our culture. Spitting venom against the minorities may get the party short-term gains as it happened in Gujarat, but is bound to prove counter-productive in the long run, as it is proving to be now.

 

iv. The BJP should do everything to distance itself from such contentious issues as Ram Janma Bhoomi, etc. It should never entertain the notion that what Advani achieved with his Rath Yatra towards the end of 80s is still a possibility. At that time, the electorate was disillusioned with Rajiv Gandhi (Bofors, Shah Bano, etc.) and V.P.Singh (Mandalisation, etc.) and so the Rath yatra caught the national imagination. But, the excesses of Gujarat have come as an eye-opener to the Indian people, and they are not going to support another communal movement.

 

v. Also, the BJP should take a leaf out of Congress’s (and other regional parties’) book and project a single leader as its public face. If you look at Congress and other leading regional parties such as BSP, SP, RJD, TDP, NCP, AIADMK, and DMK you can see the face of one undisputed leader looming large over the lesser mortals of the party.

 

BSP • Mayawati; SP • Mulayam Singh Yadav, RJD • Lalu Prasad Yadav;  TDP • Chandrababu Naidu, NCP • Sharad Pawar; AIADMK • J. Jayalalitha, DMK • M. Karunanidhi; and, of course, Congress • Sonia Gandhi.

 

May be, the Indian electorate has got so used to do this kind of one (wo)man show that they find it difficult to understand when a party projects so many prominent faces. If you take the BJP, there is Vajpayee, Advani, and second-rung leaders like Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, and Uma Bharti • each one assertive as well as ambitious. (Also, the BJP lets RSS Chief, and VHP bigmouths like Praveen Togadia to talk on its behalf and queer the pitch.) Even in the cadre and union based Communist parties there are not as many prominent leaders. So the BJP would do well to project L. K. Advani (as Vajpayee has become old) as its undisputed leader. The second rung leaders can be groomed for the future but they should be reined in when they try to put their interests before the party’s.

 

vi. Actually, if you compare the BJP-led NDA rule with the current Congress-led UPA regime, you’ll easily find out that the BJP-led NDA did a far better job than what the Congress-led UPA is doing now. Under the Congress, the Home Ministry is already dysfunctional; the left is proving to be a fly in the ointment; and, everyone knows that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is not on his own and is being remote-controlled. In contrast, the BJP did a good job at the centre, the only blot being the Gujarat carnage, which it chose to overlook.

 

vii. And, that precisely is the BJP’s problem. The Gujarat image (the handiwork of Modi), which symbolized the religious extremism and intolerance of BJP, is proving to be its albatross. And, to get rid of this problem, the BJP has to go for an image-makeover, for an image that projects it as a party that is interested in the welfare of the Indians, irrespective of their creed and religious beliefs, and not as one which is interested in dividing the society for its electoral gains.