Fall of BJP - Indiscipline or Un-democracy

Some outsiders may consider the famed discipline of BJP’s political
cadres as dictatorial and authoritative. For example, discipline
according to the BJP is blind and mute agreement with and devotion to
its leaders. There is no space for an alternative voice within.

Now, a major plus with the BJP is its multiple power centres. Until the
recent history with LK Advani, there were many powerful voices in the
BJP: Vajpayee, Murli Manohar Joshi, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Shourie, Uma
Bharati, Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj etc. This was ideal and
perhaps how a political party ought to be.

But over the last few months, Advani seems to have wrought a tough hand
silencing many voices. This, or other reasons, led to internal
incohesiveness. Uma Bharati was notoriously dumped after success at the Bihar elections. Many other intelligent dissenters were muted.

The way Uma Bharati was thrown out is indeed infamous. Just today the press talked about Rajnath Singh reinstating her - in my opinion this should be done ASAP, and with some high incentives such as an attractive party position which is not only Uma’s desire but also a well-deserved reward. But Pramod Mahajan jumped the gun with a statement denying her another chance. Talk, talk with your party people before shooting to the press!

Now, a party without any democratic principles within cannot stake a claim to rule over the largest democracy the world, can it?

And the way the heads are elected - weeks before the election of the
general body of the BJP, the entire country knew who Madhya Pradesh’s
next CM was going to be. Similar was the case with Rajnath Singh -
don’t all members of BJP get a say in choosing their leader?

Let’s take a brief look at Congress - there is quite clear devolution of power in the present Govt. But even so the senile slavish so-called leaders feed Sonia Gandhi with biased choices, and the politically naïve lady picks what appeals. Thankfully, in BJP everyone has a mind of her own.

In that sense, what BJP needs is collective leadership where everybody has the right to voice their opinions but the decision made is only one. Today, every BJP member decides what he wants and shouts it to the hungry Press. Wherever there are intellectuals, there will be differences of opinion. If different opinions cannot be accommodated, then we are talking about a dictatorship, or a slave-ship (like Congress).