As the country heads for the final round of the elections, the possibility that every opinion poll had ruled out is now very real: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could emerge as the single-largest party. If that happens, and the BJP is able to negotiate terms with state parties that are not part of the National Democratic Alliance (like the All-India Anna DMK, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Telugu Desam and the Biju Janata Dal), then the country will have a BJP-led government and LK Advani will be prime minister. This is not a certainty, of course, because most observers see this as a closely fought election. But it is an eventuality that the country, and the BJP, will have to consider.
The party’s negotiations with the TDP and the BJD will focus almost certainly on the point that the BJP uses as its distinguishing characteristic, its espousal of Hindutva, and what form that will take. Naveen Patnaik of the BJD has said quite explicitly that he decided to break with the BJP after the attacks on Christians in Kandhamal. Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP has to deal with a large Muslim vote. Even Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United), which is a part of the NDA, has made it clear that the BJP will have to put issues like the Ram Janmabhoomi and a Uniform Civil Code on the backburner. Some of these potential allies will be conscious of the fact that, even with Mr Vajpayee at the helm, the Gujarat pogrom and its even more scandalous aftermath (the failure to punish the guilty) could not be prevented. So much so that the Supreme Court has had to step in to appoint its own investigating team, and has now ordered speedy trials in special courts.
It is worth noting in this context that the BJP, during the election campaign, has given little thought to smoothening the path to deal-making with potential allies, and has played essentially to its home base. There is the open support given to Varun Gandhi when he made his outrageous statements, the bruiting of the highly divisive Narendra Modi as a future prime minister, the promise of consulting Hindu religious leaders periodically when in power, and so on. While every party has the right to promote its agenda, based on its worldview, it is questionable whether a party that hopes to form the government should be adopting positions that back speech and actions which violate the law. Else, what price governance?
BJP spokesmen skirt this issue with the specious argument that if the media and the opposition had not made such an issue of Varun Gandhi’s remarks, the BJP might have played it differently. But the media was doing its job, and to ask it not to highlight an abhorrent speech is to ask for complicity. Similarly, the argument is that it is the opposition’s harping on Mr Modi’s role in the Gujarat pogrom that is cementing his support base in Gujarat. So what should the country do — forget that the pogrom happened, and that the guilty have not been brought to justice? Nor does the argument hold water that neither Mr Gandhi nor Mr Modi has been found guilty of any wrongdoing. For what crime have Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar been found guilty of? And how does one assert that Mr Quattrocchi getting away scot free is a scandal of the first order, for he too has not been found guilty by any court? To argue that Mr Tytler should not be an MP but Mr Modi can be prime minister is to obliterate all sense of right and wrong. Is it too much to ask that a party which might form the government should recognise and acknowledge what is unacceptable political conduct?
