The Bharatiya Janata Party has some explaining to do, just as the Election Commission does with regard to its handling of the Varun Gandhi affair. There can be little doubt that both have failed an unexpected test posed to them. The Commission was out of line in asking the BJP to not field Mr Gandhi as its Lok Sabha candidate from Pilibhit; it has no power to issue such a demarche, and it has no business giving advice to a political party. As a Constitutional body, it should stick to its mandate and not over-step any line. The Constitution is quite clear on who can stand for elections, and Mr Gandhi certainly qualifies as a candidate, even though he admittedly runs the risk of being disqualified should he stand and win, and is then proven to have violated the law while giving his now infamous speech. So even if the BJP’s responses on the issue are wrong in every other way, the party is entirely justified in telling the Commission to mind its business—though that does not mean that it is right in its insistence on retaining Mr Gandhi as its candidate.
While Varun Gandhi may be as misguided as his late father, though in an entirely different way, the more important issue relates to the BJP’s handling of the controversy. In the initial round of responses, only the two Muslim personalities in the party expressed abhorrence, as though only Muslims should protest if their hands are threatened to be cut off, or their names described as ones that evoke fear; all the key leaders of the BJP kept their own counsel, and said precisely nothing. It was clarified that the party did not associate itself with Mr Gandhi’s views, if they were correctly reported, but that is a long way short of condemning the reported comments, as they should have been—without delay and without qualification. This abject failure sits poorly with the BJP’s claim about being genuinely secular, as opposed to what it sees as the Congress’ pseudo-secular stance. In an important and very basic way, the BJP has just failed the secularism test. If people are not surprised, all it means is that no one took seriously the BJP’s claims to secularism.
In an arresting contrast, the Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray more or less endorsed Mr Gandhi’s reported comments, and so did other organisations who claim to speak on behalf of Hindus. Indeed, it might be argued that the Thackerays have said even worse on occasion, and that what has attracted so much attention to the Pilibhit speech is the Gandhi surname. So perhaps it is something to be grateful for that the BJP does not travel down this road. This may be a result of electoral compulsions: the party cannot attract partners into its National Democratic Alliance if it adopts a strong Hindutva line, nor can it hope to win enough seats on its own in order to form a government, but it is also clear that every time the party tries to break free from its traditional support base and acquire a broader political base, something happens that brings the party back to its traditional moorings. Born with a nationalist streak, the party seems incapable of shedding its communal world view in order to embrace a non-communal form of nationalism—though that is the direction in which the logic of electoral politics should propel it.
