BJP’s Near-Death Experience - Ideology
Continuing the analysis of BJP, this is the second part after Has BJP lost its purpose of existence? (part I). This is going to be about the party’s recent tryst with Death!
As we saw in part I, the party with a difference scores over all other political parties on three major accounts - Ideology, Discipline, and Integrity. We’ll see now, one by one, how the BJP has lost all three of these differences, famously called by Advani as BJP’s Congressization!
Ideology
We all know how BJP came into power - by whipping the religious fervour of Hindus, on a famous note of Hindutva. I don’t see anything wrong in this at all; especially when “secular” political parties can cater to the Muslims, what is wrong in a self-proclaimed Hindu party catering to the Hindus?
But as soon as the BJP formed the NDA govt. at the Centre, it forgot all of its promises to the Hindus. Their reason was that the govt. was a coalition and that they could not therefore ruffle their partners’ feathers. Quite reasonable, but it also sounds dangerously of shedding responsibilities to stick to the election manifestoes. The BJP thought that nobody could now find them wrong in not fulfilling their promises.
The BJP did not do anything for the Hindus. As far as I know, theirs was the only secular Govt. of India, and accolades to them for that! But even their secularism faltered at times verging over Muslim appeasement, like any other political party.
The Haj subsidy, which is a useless expenditure to the national Treasury, pays for Muslims to visit Mecca. Naturally, 80% of the monies towards this comes from the Hindus. Vajpayee’s Govt. made a famous blunder of increasing the Haj amounts by many more crores.
It was, however, when the next elections were declared that the BJP did an unforgivable mistake. When all political analysts gave them an easy victory in the elections, Vajpayee became a little over-enthusiastic and went about appeasing the Muslims and Christians for the vote.
There was no longer any Ideology in the BJP. After Advani singing hymns to Jinnah in Pakistan recently, all is lost!
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