NEW DELHI: A cabinet reshuffle and a revamp of India’s dominant political party are signalling a major shift towards Hindu fundamentalism in the world’s largest democracy — at a time when elections loom.
Heading this shift is Hindu nationalist Lal Krishna Advani, who was appointed deputy prime minister on June 29 in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition. Advani is a senior leader of the coalition’s dominant party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was revamped in tandem with his handpicked hardened young leaders.
These efforts advance Hindu fundamentalism — called “Hindutva” in the BJP’s political perception and strategy.
The political moves also mark a greater dominance of the BJP in India’s central government — it now has 61 out of 78 ministers — and weakening of the relatively liberal Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s already tenuous hold on national affairs.
These drastic and bold measures became inevitable because of increasing nervousness in the BJP over its prospects in assembly elections to 10 states to be held next year. The electoral record during the past four years of Vajpayee’s rule has been dismal — the BJP has been kicked out of power in seven states.
BJP hardliners attribute the declining electoral appeal to what they see as the abandonment of its Hindu moorings.
Of the 10 states facing the ballot box next year, five belong to the Hindi-speaking region in the north — the BJP’s powerhouse. The sixth state is Gujarat, the Hindutva laboratory that witnessed a horrendous anti-Muslim pogrom early this year, leaving 2,000 people dead.
Together, these six states gave the BJP 75 members out of its total of 182 in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.
That BJP stakes are high in the upcoming state assembly elections can also be gauged from the fact that the six states have a maximum of 102 seats in the 545-seat Lok Sabha.
The realization that the results of the state assembly elections will have a powerful impact on the 2004 parliamentary elections prompted the hardliners led by Advani press for a hawkish Hindutva line at the BJP’s national executive session in April in Goa.
Now many politicians see the changes in the BJP as evidence that Vajpayee is losing his clout within the coalition.
Sitaram Yechuri, a leading light of the Communist Party of India-Marxist — an implacable foe of the BJP — sums up the changes thus: while Vajpayee will continue to remain head of the government, real power will be wielded by Advani — “the advocate of Hindutva”.
Congress party spokesman S Jaipal Reddy contends the changes imply erosion of Vajpayee’s authority, the eclipse of the NDA and the total dominance of BJP in the central government.
It is increasingly clear that BJP hardliners are dictating the political strategy ahead of the state assembly elections and the 2004 general election.
The new strategy is threefold: to rekindle the Hindutva flame; to make a generational change in the organization’s setup; and to make Advani, who used religion to polarize politics along communal lines in the 1990s, the party’s subliminal mascot.
The party now has a young team: Venkaiah Naidu, 53, has replaced 72-year-old Jana Krishnamurthi as president. He has four young general secretaries, including Arun Jaitley who resigned from the government, and Rajnath Singh, former chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. Naidu promises injection of more new blood into the organization.
The hardliners are envisaging the elections in Gujarat, set for October, as a pilot to test the efficacy of this new strategy. They believe electoral successes in the highly polarized state, with a frightened Muslim minority, would establish their supremacy in the party.
But they face resistance. The Election Commission, the custodian of free and fair elections, the National Human Rights Commission and vigilant opposition parties seem determined to prevent the BJP from cashing in on this communal polarization.
Advani has tried to soften the impact of the momentous changes in the NDA government and the BJP by asserting that Vajpayee will continue to remain the master of ceremonies in government because of fear of alienating a mass of people who support NDA only because of his secular and liberal image.
Advani states his new assignment only formalizes the role and responsibilities he was already handling. “The main purpose is to dispel baseless canards about differences between the PM and me,” he said.
As if to rebut criticism from the opposition that India’s 77- year-old prime minister was being “demolished”, the 74-year-old Advani said his appointment “should not be seen as paving the way for a successor to Vajpayee as both of us are of the same age group.”
Is the Vajpayee-era in Indian politics coming to an end? And will Advani be able to win the hearts and minds of those who disagree with his Hindutva agenda?
The answer to these crucial questions will depend on the BJP’s electoral performance in the coming state assembly and Lok Sabha elections.—Dawn/Gemini News Service.