By his public statement favouring a Congress-BJP coalition at the centre, Bhaurao Deoras, brother of the RSS chief, has clearly embarrassed the BJP leadership and indeed the RSS cadres and affiliated organisations. But wittingly or unwittingly, he has also given expression, even though indirectly, to the dilemma the RSS parivar (family) faces in respect of its programme of mass mobilization.
The RSS and its offshoots, such as the BJP and VHP, are regarded as Hindu communal organisations and compared with the Jamaat-e-lslami by large sections of the dominant Western-educated intellectual elite. The comparison is misleading if only because, unlike the Jamaat, they can by no stretch of the imagination be said to be revivalist organisations. Hindutva is not a Hindu counterpart of the Shariat seeking to determine what a ‘good’ Hindu can and should do, or cannot and should not do.
It will be equally wide off the mark to compare the BJP and the RSS with communist parties since, unlike the latter, the former do not possess a blueprint for the social, economic and political reconstruction of India. They hark back to Indian culture and civilization, as do British Conservatives and Christian Democrats in Europe and, like the latter, they too are guided primarily by their search for political power. In any event, democratic politics has its own compulsions. As a rule, it blunts ideological sharp edges.
Despite its Hinduist platform, the BJP has for all practical purposes been like other opposition parties. Like others, it too has modified its ‘ideological’ stance according to its perceptions of the exigencies of the situation. In its earlier incarnation as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, it agreed to merge with other opposition parties to form the Janata Party in 1977; on the disintegration of the Janata Party in 1979, it did not resume its old name in order to be able to lay claim to the legacy of the JP movement; and it struggled hard to give itself a new ‘ideology’ based on Gandhism and humanism. It was its abysmal performance in the 1984 elections that persuaded its leaders to return to their old platform.
More importantly, notwithstanding its ideology, however defined and regarded, the politics of the BJP has been shaped above all by its opposition to Nehru, his world view as reflected in his foreign-defence policies and his approach to India’s economic development, and the Congress party’s near-monopoly of power from 1947 onwards. Thus, it has been more than willing to make common cause with opposition parties which did not share its approach. It did so in 1967, 1971, 1977 and 1989.
In 1991, we have witnessed the end of anti-Congressism on several counts. No member of the Nehru-Gandhi family is in command of the Congress, though it continues to be named after Indira Gandhi. The Congress is not in power in any major state in north India. While the government has pursued the policy of liberalization of controls since 1980, it is only in 1991 that the Nehruvian approach has been fully jettisoned. Similarly, in the foreign-defence policy field, the collapse of the Soviet Union has finally led to the abandonment of the Nehruvian concept of non-alignment with its implicit anti-US bias and dependence on the Soviet Union for much of our military hardware.
So, it is not surprising that some RSS and BJP leaders should think in terms of sharing power with the Congress. Perhaps Bhaurao Deoras has given vent to this feeling. It is equally likely that he has been guided by his men of the national interest. Since India is beset with enormous problems and its unity is threatened as never before since 1947, he could well have concluded that the country needs a strong government in New Delhi which, in the existing circumstances, only a Congress-BJP coalition can provide.
The interests of the BJP and the RSS have not always converged. In 1983, when the Congress was trounced in its strongholds in Andhra and Karnataka, the RSS cadres are known to have come to its rescue in the elections in the Union Territory of Delhi and in Jammu and Kashmir because they did not want Indira Gandhi’s position to be further undermined.
In 1989, the RSS chief, Balasaheb Deoras, said that an alternative to the Congress was nowhere on the horizon, indicating that the RSS might once again be willing to throw its weight behind the ruling party if Rajiv Gandhi was to engage in a dialogue with it. Rajiv Gandhi was not interested. He was keen on an arrangement with the two communist parties which did not materialize. What was proposed in 1989 was a quiet understanding. What is proposed now is a coalition which no Congress leader can survive.
Despite the lack of a majority in the Lok Sabha, the Narasimha Rao government is in no danger of being voted out of office. No opposition party dare face a fresh poll for quite some time.
Secondly, he has nothing to gain and much to lose by drawing close to the BJP because that would provoke the National Front, especially the Janata Dal and the Left combine in it. As it is, the Left is distrustful of the government on account of its new economic policy and is waiting for a suitable opportunity to mount a campaign against it.
Thirdly, the Congress is well-placed to win back the Muslim vote in view of the continuing disarray in the Janata Dal. It would not wish to throw away this opportunity by making a deal with the BJP. If the Muslims are united on any issue, it is on resolute opposition to the BJP.
Fourthly, Narasimha Rao’s rivals in the Congress leadership are bound to seize the opportunity provided by an accommodation with the BJP to discredit him. Plainly, the anti-BJP sentiment in the Congress is too strong for the Prime Minister to ignore.
Finally, even if the Ramjanambhoomi – Babri Masjid issue is now on the backburner, it is nowhere near resolution. Until it is resolved, Narasimha Rao cannot wish to have anything to do with the BJP.
Sunday Mail, 8 December 1991