Jugalbandi

Title: Jugalbandi – The BJP Before Modi

Author: Vinay Sitapati

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9780670091072

Pages: 409

 

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India is a member of the Sangh Parivar – one among the basket of organizations orbiting around the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Sangh insists on internal discipline and submission of the individual will to the collective will of the movement. Even then, the clout of the leader’s personality plays a large part in weaving together the destiny of the organization. This is more than evident in the larger than life charisma of the present prime minister Narendra Modi. Before him, it was the party’s first prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his disciple-cum-friend-cum-colleague Lal Krishna Advani who adorned that role. Vajpayee and Advani played a unique act in Indian politics notorious for its dog-eats-dog antics. These leaders worked selflessly, supported each other and let the other concentrate on the field where he had more proficiency than the other. Vajpayee was a good parliamentarian and a scintillating orator. But he had no experience in working grass roots with the masses, in which Advani excelled. He sensed the pulse of the people from the slightest ripple and accordingly guided the party. The chemistry between these two leaders is compared to a musical performance called ‘jugalbandi’ which literally means ‘entwined twins’. Jugalbandi is a performance in Indian classical music that features a duet of two solo musicians. This extends also to dance in which a competitive play develops between the dancer and the tabla player. The book describes the story of the birth of Hindu nationalism and how it came to power under the leadership of Vajpayee and ends with BJP’s electoral defeat in 2004. Vinay Sitapati is an associate professor of political science and legal studies at Ashoka University, Delhi. He has authored many books on Indian politics and his book on P. V. Narasimha Rao, titled ‘Half Lion’ was reviewed earlier here.

 

The partnership between Vajpayee and Advani lasted six eventful decades. Advani was born in Karachi in a rich family which had to abandon its wealth to flee to India after partition, while Vajpayee came from a rural background within straitened family circumstances. One was poor, the other was rich; one was provincial while the other was anglicized, but their union overlapped all shades of the political spectrum. They were born in a decade in which a new political identity covering these two contrasting characters under one single umbrella was taking birth – Hindu nationalism. The two met when Advani joined Vajpayee’s team as his secretary after Vajpayee was first elected to the Indian parliament as an MP. Advani was confined to Vajpayee’s shadow till the mid-1980s when the Ayodhya Movement gathered momentum. At that time, Vajpayee’s moderate line failed to find much takers and the mantle moved to Advani. This continued till 1995 when Advani publicly declared that Vajpayee would be the prime ministerial candidate in the next year’s elections. The book hints that Advani never recovered his stature in the party thereafter.

 

Sitapati deftly follows the trajectory of the relationship between Vajpayee and Advani which traced all shades from hierarchy to genuine friendship. The parliamentarian Vajpayee’s team in which Advani joined as his secretary transformed into his immediate family. Vajpayee groomed Advani to handle positions of responsibility in this period. One such opportunity presented itself in the 1973 Kanpur session of the Jan Sangh. Balraj Madhok, who was one of the founding members of the party, broke with Vajpayee who had assumed presidency of the party after the accidental death of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. Madhok openly criticized Vajpayee’s socialist leaning in the early 1970s. The session saw Advani being elevated as party president. These years converted their friendship into partnership. Vajpayee and Advani never let the presidency out of their hands from 1968 to 1998, with only a two-year gap in between. Advani’s raise from a cautious backroom operative to the head of the party was entirely due to Vajpayee and he never forgot the favour.

 

A good point of the book is its exposition of the rise of Hindu nationalism. It steadily grew from 1925 and poised for a big leap after India’s partition. Then came Gandhi’s assassination and its perceived links with Gandhi’s assassins denied them a place in the national mainstream until the Emergency (1975-77) when it came back to reclaim it. The author disputes this conventional narrative and argues that the mainstreaming of RSS took place during the China war of 1962. Indian army was unprepared for taking on the Chinese, and the ill-fed troops were easily outmaneuvered. The RSS fully supported the war effort and even offered its cadre to assist the troops. As recognition of this heroic effort, Jawaharlal Nehru permitted uniformed RSS cadre to march on Rajpath as part of the 1963 Republic Day parade. More than 2000 RSS volunteers in their organizational uniform – white shirt, khaki knickers, belt, black cap and full boots – took part. Congress leaders protested this in party meetings. Nehru countered that all citizens had been called upon to participate and so the RSS also did. A senior leader again asked why the Congress’ own Seva Dal was not invited. Nehru’s reply was that the Seva Dal had only 250 uniforms and knowing that the RSS strength would be much greater, he thought Seva Dal would make a poor show in contrast (p.52).

 

Sitapati pinpoints Vajpayee’s strengths and weaknesses to his sharp focus on parliamentarianism and representational democracy. He believed that the modern norm of ‘one person, one vote’ created Hindu nationalism. Contrary to Left-Islamist accounts, it was not the colonial power which midwifed its birth. The colonial regime’s doctrine of communal electorates pandered to the Islamic vested interests and ran counter to democratic principles. On the home front, it was never the hardliners who made Vajpayee insecure; in fact, he needed them to justify his own existence. It was the orators who could replace him in parliamentary debates who threatened him the most. Vajpayee’s foreign and economic policies were shaped primarily by the desire to be liked by parliamentarians. The author claims that when Vajpayee was seemed to be marginalized in his own party in the wake of the strident Ayodhya Movement, Rajiv Gandhi invited him to join Congress party. But Vajpayee, always mindful of discipline bordering on self-negation, just listened and laughed. His turn came after 1992 when the disputed structure at Ayodhya was pulled down and hardliners had to retreat for some time.

 

The founding and growth of BJP occupies a very informative part of the book. Incipient Hindu anxiety over conversions in Meenakshipuram and backlash of Muslim fundamentalism following the Shah Bano verdict catalyzed polarization among the majority community. Congress and its allies utilized caste reservation for OBCs in government jobs to keep the fault lines in Hinduism intact. The author lists a number of reasons that accelerated a consolidation of the Hindus as a vote bank for the first time in history. The factors include decline of the Congress system, reaction to backward caste reservations, polarization caused by the Ayodhya Movement, Hindu epics shown on television, the inevitability of a Hindu party winning in a Hindu-majority country and the economic liberalization and a growing middle class. Contrary to popular consensus, this book posits that it was the Congress which enjoyed the first fruits of the Hindu vote bank in the form of a sympathy wave in the 1984 elections held after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh bodyguards.

 

Obviously, the last chapter in the Vajpayee-Advani jugalbandi is the BJP’s rule from 1998 to 2004 with Vajpayee as prime minister. Advani never interfered with the prime minister’s work and was always content to play second fiddle. However, he put his foot firmly down when Vajpayee seemed to be playing for the media gallery. The Agra summit between Vajpayee and Pakistan President Musharraf fell apart when Advani refused to allow any leeway to Pakistan - however minuscule - in publicly arraigning it for terrorism it exported across the border. Another event occurred after the 2002 Gujarat riots when the liberal media accused then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of culpability in the brutal violence. Vajpayee wanted to remove Modi, but Advani stood solidly behind him. This helped to bring in a generational change in BJP after a decade. Anyhow, Sitapati does not pose to speculate on what would have happened if Vajpayee had had his way.

 

After reading this book in full and closing it for the last time, one can’t help wonder what Sitapati had done to Vajpayee’s legacy. There are of course some very good references that reiterate popular perceptions, but along with it, it creates an element of doubt with his unusually candid coverage of Vajpayee’s personal life and his uncategorical relationship with Rajkumari Kaul and her husband. This family stayed with Vajpayee till his death and he had adopted her daughter as his own. Vajpayee is claimed to have declared that though he was a bachelor, he was not celibate (p.55). Balraj Madhok once advised Vajpayee to marry after getting complaints from other RSS functionaries about the women in Vajpayee’s life. The book hints that Vajpayee was vengeful against his political rivals and masterminded Madhok’s exit from the party. At the same time, the author plays up the weak points in Advani’s character as a double whammy. Citing several examples, Sitapati accuses Advani for being indecisive on many occasions, denting his widely held image of a ‘Loh Purush’ (iron man). The book also presents some events that have not yet come into the public domain. It is claimed that the RSS wanted to remove Vajpayee from the post of prime minister in 2002 by elevating him as the President of India and make Advani step into his shoes. Eventually, it came to nothing and the noted space veteran A P J Abdul Kalam became the President.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star