The masks are off

Time came when the tallest BJP leader after Vajpayee wanted to wear the same mask, in order to acquire the same acceptability to allies. Lal Krishna Advani had the opposite of a liberal image, built up through the Babri Masjd agitation and buttressed by his own tough talk on terrorism and his toadies’ conferment on him of the title of Iron Man. His attempts at an image makeover met an ignominious end, after his tributes on Pakistani soil to Muhammad Ali Jinnah put him on trial in the party.Time has come now for even many of his long-time admirers to wonder whether he had not been wearing a mask all these years. Was their leader ever the Lauha Purush (Iron Man), as distinct from the Vikas Purush (Development Man) that the less daring Vajpayee was supposed to be?

 Every day since the start of their party’s “brainstorming session” (chintan baithak) has brought fresh evidence that the BJP’s strongman is made of far from stern stuff.

When Jaswant Singh was expelled from the party for an admiring biography of Jinnah, Advani did not just stay quiet (as first reports suggested) but joined the witch-hunting jury. Jaswant hit back by exposing Advani’s repeatedly disowned role in the hostages-for-terrorists deal struck during his stewardship of the Home Ministry. As former Minister Yashwant Sinha and even former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra spilled more beans about the entire episode, the few defenders of Advani could only dismiss it all as undue fuss over “a minor factoid” or “footnote”. They could do so only without convincing a country asked by the BJP months ago to vote for a “mazboot neta and nirnayak sarkar” (“strong leader and decisive government”).

The special pleading has undergone a significant change. The pathetically plaintive argument now is that Advani cannot be answerable for the “toughness” that was thrust upon him. It was the party and the Parivar, the Far Right “family”, that made him wear the mask, one which did dot really match his wonderfully sensitive soul. With his heart of gold, they seem to suggest, he could never actually be an Iron Man.

The party itself has been trying on masks, if you have followed the protracted debate on its rise and decline. A section in the BJP, representing “Shining India” (the slogan that swept the party out of power in 2004) has been spinning a theory about its transformation. According to this section, at home with the English-speaking elite as well as the “saffron” audience, “Hindutva” has largely served as a mask for the BJP, to which really belongs the space of the liberal Right in India. Proponents of this view used to compare the party until the other day to the Tories in the UK and to the Christian Democrats in Germany.

It is tragic-comic to see the traumatising effect of the Jaswant episode on the same purveyors of jejune punditry. It is excruciatingly entertaining to hear them talk on television shows after the virtual takeover of the BJP by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), now busy drawing up a “roadmap” for the party’s recovery and return to its roots. They are making the belated discovery that the rest of the BJP’s platform is the real mask, designed to hide its “Hindutva” core.

 Masks lie at the base of the make-believe world of the Far Right. Take BJP-RSS relations, for example. Until about a fortnight ago, the party used to claim the status of an independent political entity, which no mentor could “micro-manage”. The patriarch of the Parivar, on the other hand, has always claimed it to be a “cultural organisation”. Both the masks are off, at least for the moment.