Message from Manali

As prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's annual vacations were high-profile media events; one might have expected that things would have changed, now that he is an ex-prime minister.

As things have turned out, while his trip to Manali has been a little less elaborate than before, it has generated headlines anyway. Mr Vajpayee made a statement that was clearly intended to send a shock wave through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He said that he believed that the Gujarat communal riots of 2002 and the BJP's decision to persist with Narendra Modi as chief minister contributed to the recent election outcome. This view has been expressed by both BJP politicians (e g, Shahnawaz Hussain) and NDA allies (e g, Chandrababu Naidu).

Mr Vajpayee's endorsement, however, reveals the potential for this issue to drive a deep wedge into a party that, until now, had been relatively free of the "split" tendency that most Indian political parties have manifested.

Most people would agree that the election outcome itself was more of an anti-NDA mandate than a pro-anybody one. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) only emerged after the election results were known. What is important in the context of Mr Vajpayee's statement, however, is what actually brought the UPA together.

In a word, it was secularism. A coalition that has so far struggled to put forward a unified view on economic matters has shown no ambiguity in signalling its commitment to preventing what it sees as communal forces from returning to power.

It would be reasonable to assume, therefore, that as many divisions as there are within the coalition on economic issues, the willingness of the partners to compromise in order to survive will depend significantly on how they perceive the BJP's revival strategy.

After the election results were known, many observers felt that the weight of opinion within the BJP would direct it towards a more aggressive "Hindutva" platform.

RSS spokespersons also suggested that the election defeat was the price the party had to pay for abandoning its traditional principles and constituencies.

But in the current political game, given the UPA's raison d' etre, such a shift could well see the BJP playing into the hands of the ruling coalition. The more aggressive the BJP is on Hindutva, the stronger the compulsions of the UPA to do whatever it takes to retain power.

From the BJP's perspective, its best chance of splitting the coalition and returning to power in a mid-term election lies precisely in its ability to project itself as an essentially moderate party which, however belatedly, does the right thing as far as acts of communalism are concerned.

It is too early to say which way the BJP's ideological compass will swing. But two things have become clear from Mr Vajpayee's statement. First, he has no intention of surrendering his position in the party, as the custodian of its moderate face. Second, the fortunes of the UPA government may depend as much on the BJP's choices as on its own actions.