Right Angle: How the BJP lost the central plot (October 25, 2009)

• Right Angle:
  

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  • If a large and important state such as Maharashtra is willing to indulge a party after five years of non-performance, and even ineptitude, it suggests that the Congress creed is fast turning into common sense. The Congress has become something akin to a default preference for peoples and communities who are not driven by either overriding zeal or a fierce sense of distinctiveness.

    Yet, there is a flip side to this characteristically Hindu complacency. The Congress’ partial success in identifying itself as the party of the inoffensive middle ground has been accompanied by the corresponding decline of the BJP as the alternative pole of politics.