Going by what BJP president Nitin Gadkari told the party’s national executive in Indore on Wednesday, it is clear that his is an attempt to revamp the party thoroughly. He said that the difficulties being faced by the party were not due to ordinary workers but because of senior leaders whom the party had given much. ‘‘The problems in the party are not because of small workers but those whom it has given much. They will have to think whether their political career is important or political ideology and spread of the party,’’ he said. While it is true that the BJP’s problems stem mainly from the nature of functioning of its senior leaders, and that the ordinary workers are not in any way responsible for the party’s steep decline, what Gadkari cannot afford to gloss over is its struggle with both ideology and ideas of governance and administration in the 21st-century India. For one, the party cannot cut its umbilical cord with the fountainhead of its ideology, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that is instrumental in shaping the saffron party’s cadre at the grassroots level. For another, it knows it cannot remain a party of the past and thus of irrelevance to the youth whose idea of India is different from what they would have even a decade ago when the BJP had begun to rise as the country’s right-of-centre force to eventually emerge as an apparently viable alternative to the Congress doctrine of governance and administration. The BJP’s predicament is that while it must pretend that it is independent of the RSS in the matter of policy formulation and decision-making, with the Sangh too pretending that politics is not its business, the party only flounders as to whether a new ideology of development politics detached from anything religious should be evolved or whether the RSS-inspired discourse should continue.
The opportunity for Gadkari to effect a new political engineering in his party is not lost. There is still scope for him to salvage the party from the quagmire of redundant ideology and ideas and failures that have become only too routine by the day. But he must first define the BJP road map unambiguously, especially whether the party would reinvent itself towards consolidating the youth constituency or whether by something new it would mean a new touch of religious politics. No one is telling the BJP to wear a pseudo-secular look. But it cannot — and must not be allowed to — use Hinduism to further its own political interest. The BJP has all the right to be proud of such an all-encompassing way of life and philosophy as Hinduism that has attracted some of the finest brains from the West, but it cannot be a political agenda merely to grab power. Let the BJP, in the circumstance, tell us what alternative model of governance and administration it has or can develop that will be better than the Congress’ in at least one way. Would Gadkari inform us?