The evolution of the BJP

Book review of Bharatiya Janata Party: Past, present and future

This book is a calm, unhurried and adjective-free narration of how and why an ideological alternative to the Left, represented by the Congress since 1937, has evolved in India. That’s what’s good about it.
 
What’s bad is that Shantanu Gupta fails to explain when the flag bearer of that alternative, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), grown child of the Jana Sangh, turned left itself. Truth be told, today’s BJP is almost exactly like the Congress of the 1970s except in the matter of how to treat India’s 200 million Muslims.
 
Mr Gupta starts at the beginning but omits many details, perhaps because they are slight. But then, this is not intended to be a detailed history of the BJP but a sort of beginners’ guide. It performs that role admirably.
 
The 20 chapters are designed to answer the sort of questions that the English-speaking middle class occasionally asks. The answer may not satisfy it but the facts are laid out succinctly.
 
Thus, to cite just three examples, there’s a chapter called “Who Taught Muslim Appeasement to the Congress”. There is another called “How the RSS Came Into Being” and a third called “The Advent of Deen Dayal Upadhyay and the Jana Sangh under Him”.
 
Each chapter seeks to explain exactly what happened and what the context was for it. In that sense, the book seeks to set the record straight and, for that reason, is a valuable contribution. It shows how, politically at least, India’s greatness lay in allowing different ideologies to exist. Sadly, that is under serious threat now.
 
Mr Gupta has not seen it necessary to deal with this particular middle-class question about the threat to political pluralism. That weakens the book’s appeal.
 
Muslim appeasement:  So why did the Congress “appease” the Muslims? After a long and accurate narration of the events leading up to the Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the Congress and the Muslim League, Mr Gupta doesn’t offer what can be called a credible explanation.
 
But he is right in reminding us that the Congress gave Jinnah a disproportionate share of representation in the provincial legislatures. That gave Jinnah the first hint of Congress weakness, which he exploited when the Congress had to choose between political expediency and principle in 1946.
 
The odd thing is that in 1916 it chose to give in to Jinnah’s demands for greater than justified representation in order to present a united face to the British. In 1947 it chose to give in to him for a disunited India. Only Gandhiji resisted.
 
In that sense, it wasn’t really the Muslims who were a problem. It was the Congress. That’s why it is difficult to see why the BJP treats the two as being two sides of the same political problem.
 
After all, the greater damage has been done by Congress socialism than its assiduous wooing of the Muslims. Yet while the BJP has made the Muslims the “other” it has embraced Congress socialism. 
 
Mr Gupta might like to explain this in the second edition.
 
Narendra Modi and Amit Shah: It is widely conceded that the BJP after 2014 is not the same BJP before that year. The two men who transformed it so completely are Narendra Modi as prime minister and Amit Shah as party president.
 
Yet the chapter on the post-2014 years is the weakest. It restricts itself to a justifiable narration of achievements. It also lists all the problems that the BJP as a party and the government that it led had to tackle. There’s no question that after a decade of Sonia Gandhi rule these were difficult and several.
 
But what’s lacking is a proper discussion of the economy, which is in sharp contrast to the paragraphs on other topics such as foreign policy and internal security. There is only a passing mention of either demonetisation or the Goods and Services Tax, the twins that the critics accuse for the economy’s downfall. This is one more thing for the second edition to tackle and it should explain the BJP’s preference for a greater-than-warranted role for the state in economic activity.
 
Nor has Mr Gupta discussed the Modi-Shah duo’s general hammer-and-tongs approach to governance, not least of which is the undisguised demonisation of Muslims and Marxists. This makes no sense except as a way of winning national elections.
 
Despite these shortcomings, this is one of the better books on the BJP that, the author says, with its nearly 90 million members, is now even bigger than the Communist Party of China. That being so, it is time the party adopted acceptable political tools than the ones it is currently using.

Bharatiya Janata Party: Past, present and future

Author: Shantanu Gupta 

Publisher: Rupa

Price:  Rs 695

Pages:  608