Copy the Congress

Grandfathers can legitimately expect to spend their twilight years in peace and calm, instead of being called upon to sort out family squabbles.

L K Advani has not been so lucky. As the Bhishma Pitamah of the Sangh Parivar, he is being forced to preside over a family whose members, in the wake of electoral defeats, have turned fractious and rebellious.

Wounds that power had soothed are in the open. Ambitions that had been subdued vault unbridled. It is not a pretty sight.

There are three perspectives from which the BJP's current difficulties should be viewed. First, political defeat and the resulting wilderness yield a time for regeneration.

If what is happening in the BJP leads to a new and improved version, there is no cause for concern. Many people worry that the old communal nostrums will be revived. But given demographic realities and voter expectations (not to mention pressure from NDA allies), that will be a rocky road.

Second, defeat leads the party to ask why it lost. One of the questions always is "did we lose because we diluted our core message?" A new leadership succeeds only when it is able to convince the conservative and liberal elements both that it has something for each. This will be Mr Advani's main task for the next couple of years.

Third, sitting in the Opposition provides an opportunity to find a new supremo. It is not easy. In Britain, the Labour party took 18 years to find a new message and a new leader; in India, the Congress eventually went back to the Gandhi family.

Mr Advani will have to handle each of these aspects simultaneously, that is, find a new message that also sounds old, resist pressure from the hardliners, and anoint a new leader.

Ironically, he doesn't have to look very far. The Congress provides a good example of how to deal with each of these problems. If it went back to the Gandhi family, the BJP has gone back to Mr Advani.

Where the message is concerned, the Congress went back to the mantra of the 1970s, but ensured that those who were chanting it were modern reformers.

The BJP will probably end up doing the same thing with Hindutva. It needs a remix of the golden oldie, sung by a modern pop star. The melody remains the same but the beat changes and that makes all the difference.

The real problem is finding the pop star and, as the Congress has shown, there is only one way to handle the problem. Everyone unites under the undisputed supremo until the war is won. Victory turns the supremo into a Super Supremo and no one dares defy her.

She then anoints a leader and thus is peace made. Sonia Gandhi chose Manmohan Singh after the election was over. Like her, Mr Advani will have to lead the party to victory in its new garb and then, in deference to his age five years from now""and if the BJP manages to win""he will have to find an Advani surrogate. Nothing else will work.