Virendra Parekh
"Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he so chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction” – Aurobindo, “Bhawani Mandir”
“One who may die but will not perish has life everlasting” – Lao Tse
Following the stunning defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the secularist commentariat lost no time in advising the BJP to eradicate once and for all the remaining traces of Hindutva from its thinking and programmes and move to a centrist position.
BJP will be courting certain death if it were to heed the secularists’ advice. For the advice is not objective and well-meaning but interested and partisan, motivated by a burning desire for total disarmament of Hindu society ideologically, morally and politically.
The real challenge before the BJP, however, is not to find a successor to Mr. Advani but to rediscover its own original self, to compare what it aspired to be in its original incarnation with what it has made of itself through decades, and chart out a course of self-renewal which would restore its credibility and relevance.
There is a historical parallel between the plight of BJP now and Congress in the pre-independence era. Everything that Congress is saying now about BJP is what Jinnah used to say about Congress in the 1940s
The first thing for BJP to do, therefore, is to resolve its ‘existential dilemma’ in favour of returning to its roots. It must develop the courage and vision to think and act like a party centred on Hindu India. If parties speaking for Dalits, Muslims, Yadavs and other small groups claim legitimacy, a party whose vision encompasses 82 percent of the population cannot be denied it. Secondly, a Hindu-centric party or polity need not be anti-Muslim in intent or action. Only it will not run after votes of Muslims as Muslims.
Earlier, BJP relied exclusively on ideology. Of late, it is relying exclusively on development. Naturally, it faltered. At a time when the community felt besieged nation-wide by jihad and Christian evangelism, BJP disappointed its supporters by consciously avoiding these issues. BJP lost because Hindus who gathered to hear Narendra Modi did not get to hear what their hearts wanted to hear.
Third, BJP must have a 24x7 TV channel of its own. It must also have a chain of newspapers both in English and in regional languages, which would have excellent secular content (be it economy, society or sports) but whose editorial policy would be driven by a nationalist vision.
