As L.K. Advani turns 82 on November 8 in the fading twilight of his popularity, the ‘Janata jinx’ seems to be catching up with his BJP. By the ‘Janata jinx’, we mean a sort of self-destruct software programmed into the erstwhile Janata Party, formed on the eve of the 1977 general elections to oppose Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and displace her. In two years, owing to this inbuilt code, the Janata Party split and paved the way for Indira’s return. After the defeat in the 1980 general elections, the jinx went on to split the erstwhile Janata Party into several splinters—one of which is the BJP—before they all, sans the BJP, came together once again in 1989 as the Janata Dal to displace the Congress, led by Rajiv Gandhi this time. But the software played havoc again in 1991 to split the Janata Dal and return the Congress to power. Out of power, the split-up constituents splintered further. These splinters again enjoyed power in coalition at the Centre in 1996-98, under H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral. Today, you can discern the various regional rumps of the erstwhile Janata Party and Janata Dal under the leaderships of Nitish Kumar-Sharad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Om Prakash Chautala and others. Then there’s Subramanian Swami, leader—as well as sole known constituent—of the rump that has inherited the original name of Janata Party. Nearly all these splinters have been in and out of power in the past 32 years, either at the Centre or in their respective states.
Till the other day, of all splinters, the BJP seemed to have inoculated itself against this virus. The reason, it seemed, was this: among the four constituents that merged to form the Janata Party in 1977, three—the Lok Dal, the Socialists and the Congress (O)—had a history of splintering, but not the Jan Sangh, the pre-Janata Party incarnation of the BJP. But for the Jan Sangh, all other constituents had broken off from the Congress at some point in the past, and the Socialists and leaders like Charan Singh and Biju Patnaik had split, formed and re-formed several organisations before merging into the Janata Party. Not being a piece that broke off from the Congress, the Jan Sangh, and subsequently the BJP in its post-Janata phase, claimed the more steadfast and disciplined conservative heritage of the RSS, untainted by any notions of secular adventurism. Moreover, the parent RSS never relaxed beyond a point the restraining organisational leash it kept on its political offspring.
But it now seems the Janata Party’s lethal coding has slowly caught up with the BJP. During the euphoric surge in the early- and mid-1990s and the heady days of power in 1998-2004, it incubated quietly but started raising its head with post-defeat bickering. The days of power at the Centre and the gap between promise and performance that they exposed stole the claimed moral sheen of a hitherto untested rhetoric. The gap showed most starkly in none other than Advani, the hero and leader of the saffron surge. As a key mobiliser and organiser of the BJP’s march to power in the 1990s, Advani’s image- makers had assiduously built an aura of upfront and decisive leadership around him ever since he whirled off on his rioting chariot to thwart V.P. Singh’s Mandal card. But he was never seen to seize the initiative in the most testing moments of Vajpayee’s regime, be it Kargil, the Gujarat riots of 2002, Musharraf’s verbal barbs after the failure of the Agra summit, the attack on Parliament, or the Kandahar imbroglio.
The fact of the matter is, he was either perceived as politicking behind the scenes or shrugging off responsibility. This eroded his carefully built image and cost him and the party dear in the wake of the National Democratic Alliance’s defeat in 2004. Such was the erosion of stature that, after defeat, even Advani’s very own found it easy or useful to demolish the remnants of his image. Remember the TV moment when Uma Bharati defiantly walked out pointing her angry index at Advani? Or when the RSS, in 2005, forced him to relinquish presidentship of the party and all his second-rung lieutenants turned Brutus? Insofar as Advani failed to establish his credentials in decisive leadership before the country when he got the opportunity during the Vajpayee regime, he is also to blame for what happened subsequently. The problem with the BJP and the RSS is that they demolished Advani without readying another icon to project. Now they can only ask, fire-fighting in Rajasthan or Karnataka, how far has LK led the party towards liquidation?
