Advani leaves in disgrace

The last straw that broke Mr Advani's always pathetic fight with the RSS came when Mr A.B. Vajpayee, the BJP's "liberal," "soft" face, tilted towards the sangh and asked Mr Advani to speak to Mr Sudarshan, and his lieutenant, Mohan Bhagwat, sent to Delhi to read him the riot act.

After this, Mr Advani couldn't face the Chennai national executive, and postponed it. The sangh reportedly wants him out before it's held.

Mr Advani's exit won't be "graceful" or "honourable." It'll be the RSS's victory through and through. The RSS has ordered the BJP to address its views on "ideology, organisation [and the] emergence of [a] new [leadership]."

The parivar's head brooks no deviation. The sangh remains the BJP's political boss, ideological mentor, and organisational gatekeeper.

This brings to a sorry end the four months-long RSS-BJP power tussle, which began when Mr Sudarshan demanded that Mr Advani step down as BJP president. When Mr Advani resisted, the RSS attacked him through VHP and BJP surrogates.

Mr Advani recruited Mr Sudheendra Kulkarni to fight the sangh. But he eventually played into the RSS's hands by visiting Jinnah's mausoleum and likening him to a secularist.

As this column has argued, Jinnah wasn't secular in embracing the Two-Nation-Theory. Nor did Mr Advani's interpretation of Jinnah break with Hindutva. It's perfectly compatible with a social order based on Hindu/Muslim primacy, in which the majority's culture is dominant, and politics is established through appeal to communal identities. That's the very model Mr Advani and the BJP follow.

Politically, Mr Advani tactlessly chose the Jinnah plank against the RSS. It earned him ridicule. He was so isolated in the BJP that Mr George Fernandes had to plead his case with Mr Sudarshan.

The RSS's suspicion of Mr Advani goes back a long time and recently got strengthened. During the BJP's six years in power, Mr Advani did little, unlike, say, Mr Murli Manohar Joshi, to promote Hindutva's core-agenda in goverment.

Mr Advani has long championed coalition politics. In 1980, he told sangh organ Panchajanya: "In India, a party based on ideology can at the most come to power in a small area. It cannot win the confidence of the entire country. The Jana Sangh's appeal increased to the extent the ideology got diluted. Wherever the ideology was strong, its appeal diminished."

In 1999 too, Mr Advani stressed ideological change: "Ideology needs to be dynamic." In 2002, the RSS -- then disillusioned with Mr Vajpayee -- got Mr Advani made Deputy PM in the hope he'd promote Hindutva's core-agenda. Instead, he played down the Ayodhya issue!

The RSS has done its utmost to bring the BJP to heel. Mr Advani offered the last wall of resistance. Now, that has crumbled.

The quality of the collapse is best understood in the light of the sangh's ethos. Within this, individuals are very important; the more senior, even more so. Mr Vajpayee (83) and Mr Advani (79) are more experienced as swayamsevaks than Mr Sudarshan (68), or Mr Bhagwat (53). In meetings, the younger leaders usually touch the feet of the older men.

So the sangh must have truly abhorred them to pull the rug from under their feet.

One era of Hindutva politics, which catapulted the BJP to power, is over. Mr Vajpayee too will fade out. But what happens to the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance?

The BJP will find it hard to regain ideological and political coherence and overcome its leadership crisis. Its agenda is purely negative and confrontationist. After the Ayodhya terrorist attack, it blamed the government for non-existent "security lapses." Mr Advani even termed the attack our "immense good fortune." This was crass.

No matter who succeeds Mr Advani, inner-party bloodletting is guaranteed. There are many contenders -- the pompous Murli Manohar Joshi, Messrs Rajnath Singh, Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitly, and Pramod Mahajan, and Ms Uma Bharati and Sushma Swaraj, each with their mix of deviousness and communalism.

Whoever succeeds will face the others' hostility. The BJP will sink deeper into fractiousness.

The BJP now resembles the Congress of the 1990s, in its worst phase of decline. But there is a difference. Then, the Congress captured half of all Indian states before nationally challenging the NDA. There are no potential victories around the corner for the BJP.

The BJP's condition will worsen as the RSS pushes it towards virulent nationalism and right-wing opposition to neo-liberalism. The party's own instinct is to support neo-liberal globalisation and US hegemonism.

The NDA is today a pale shadow of itself. The recent Shiv Sena split could further damage it. The NDA could begin disintegrating with the coming Bihar and West Bengal elections.

The Telugu Desam has already distanced itself from the BJP. The Asom Gana Parishad, National Conference and Indian National Lok Dal have quit the NDA. The Janata Dal (U), Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal would be reluctant to stay within the NDA if the BJP moves close to the RSS.

There is, however, one source of BJP-RSS support. This is the influence of national chauvinism and anti-Islamic prejudice among sections of the middle class. This was revealed in the way the media treated the Ayodhya and London terrorist attacks by demonising Islam.

This view of terrorism blindly reduces it to a sub-state phenomenon, whitewashing more culpable state terrorism. But the London bombings cannot be separated from Britain's involvement in Iraq's invasion/occupation. The BJP's ideology fits in with such knee-jerk reactions. But its political revival may be far away.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.