BJP can never shed its stigma of Babri and Best Bakery

[Barking up the wrong tree Jyotirmaya Sharma HT May 19, 2009
The turbulence in the BJP and the RSS after the results of the Lok Sabha elections on May 16 have little to do with just a bad strategy and campaign having misfired, writes Jyotirmaya Sharma...
Lastly, it has to go beyond anachronistic elements like building a Ram Temple or targeting individuals in the name of moral policing. It must come clear in delineating its stand on the Muslim and Christian citizens of India. It can afford to remain a Hindu nationalist party, but it will have to drop its quest for a Hindu Rashtra, an idea that threatens not only the Muslims and the Christians, but also those who refuse to subscribe to the sangh parivar’s version of the Hindu Rashtra.
M.G. Vaidya, the senior RSS leader, had once famously said that “the BJP is not the life-breath of the Sangh”. The BJP must take this to heart and commit the much-needed patricide. If the lessons of 2004 and 2009 are to be deciphered for the BJP, they are reducible to just one very significant element: there is nothing called a Hindu vote. Extending the argument, there is no political or social outfit that can claim to represent all Hindus, much less hope to transform a mythical Hindu unity into votes.
Jyotirmaya Sharma is professor of politics at the University of Hyderabad and the author of Hindutva: Exploring the idea of Hindu nationlistion.]

[Nationalism means India first without getting embarrassed or apologetic for our Hinduness. The situation demands a better solidarity and not further divisions. It requires an intellectual commitment to India as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo. We must prove ourselves worthy of it. Who falls if India rises? - The Right View - Tarun Vijay ... (The author is director of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation)
Times of India <>1221 comments.]

[Wednesday, March 11, 2009 Advani should leave BJP
L.K. Advani, deservedly, should have been the prime ministerial candidate in 2004 itself, but Vajpayee scuttled it. His Jinnah remark was an easy pretext for others to stab him in the back. But he stood by it and is fighting to save the party that he painstakingly built.
But that is his undoing today. BJP, with its leash in the hands of the RSS, is incapable of stirring the imagination of the people of India in 2009. Advani has given BJP everything, but BJP cannot give him the prime ministerial chair that he seeks.
For that, Advani has to leave BJP. He need not go with the Left as Naveen Patnaik has done. There is a vast Nationalist space that he can tap if he extricates himself from the clutch of the RSS. He must show that he is the leader, and then the people will believe in his words.
2009 is the last chance for Advani to run for prime ministership, and he has the potential to keep Sonia, RSS, and the Left out of the next Government. He can easily take this risk and lose nothing. His move can preempt the machinations of Karat & Co. - TNM 10:05 AM 4:59 PM 5:56 PM]

"The BJP must...commit the much-needed patricide," advises Jyotirmaya Sharma, but that's no solution. The party can never shed its stigma of Babri and Best Bakery no matter how many masks it wears. It won't take too long for the fate of this sinking ship becoming explicit. [TNM]