The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner

Atal Bihari Vajpayee got an NDA that ushered him into power. LK Advani’s NDA threatens to let him down, writes VIJAY SIMHA

OF ALL THE uncomfortable habits of truth, this is its most galling: it comes when least sought and tends to affect all that comes after. Lal Krishna Advani, the world’s senior-most centre-right politician, has been through a searing Partition, a dreadful Emergency, three stints in the Union government, nine terms in Parliament, and four terms as head of a political party. Yet, when he’s on the big quest, out it comes: he’s almost through but only halfway there.

At 81, Advani has one good shot left at the office of the Prime Minister. Till just a few months ago, he had friends, allies, voters, and an unmissable energy that his opponents in the Congress lacked. As Prime Ministerial nominee of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Advani had begun the task of sewing up formal alliances with partners who would get together to form the next government, should it come to that. Friends in Uttar Pradesh (the Rashtriya Lok Dal), Assam (the Asom Gana Parishad), Haryana (the Indian National Lok Dal) and Maharashtra (the Shiv Sena) had pledged support.

But in one disastrous evening in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa in the east, it started unravelling. The men who were to meet that evening were old friends. Naveen Patnaik has been Chief Minister of Orissa for 10 years, a man who could be courteous even if he had to throw someone off a cliff, and had stuck with the NDA for 11 years. Patnaik was the first to quit the then United Front in the winter of 1997, which triggered an exodus toward the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and had run his governments with the BJP’s help. He is usually quiet, though he has a mind of his own.

Meeting him was Chandan Mitra, a journalist who rose rapidly in the BJP to become a confidant of Advani. He also has a mind of his own and often speaks it. Mitra was going as a special emissary of Advani into what was to be a decisive discussion. He expected to have good tidings for Advani in a short while. His job: make a deal that could help the NDA gain the momentum it needed as it hit the campaign trail for the summer General Election.

At stake were 21 Lok Sabha seats and 147 assembly seats in Orissa. Patnaik and Mitra were to agree on how many seats each of their parties would contest. This is an excruciating task with an afterglow of success should it work, and a stigmata of failure were it to unhappen. A little while later, it was all over. Patnaik stunningly dumped the BJP and looked to the Left. He said his party’s alliance with the BJP was done with. It was eerily similar to Patnaik’s swift 1997 divorce with the United Front, with a similar range of aftereffects.

'There's an inherent anti-cohesion factor in the NDA. An aggressive BJP tends to alienate allies even more'

Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) Politburo member

The BJP was shocked, Advani lost traction, and the NDA looked like a bunch of losers. So, what happened? This is Mitra’s account of how it came apart. “We had several rounds of talks for three months between Orissa BJP leaders and their counterparts in the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), and individual rounds of discussions between Patnaik and I.

There was some suspicion that Patnaik may be planning something because he kept saying that the BJP must be more realistic and take winnability into account.

“Believe me, there were no other issues. Kandhamal was not mentioned even once. Patnaik dealt with me very well (that evening). We’ve been good friends for 20 years and he was polite and courteous. But we couldn’t agree on where our interests lie. He had earlier mentioned to me that he would give us five Lok Sabha seats and 35 assembly seats. At that time, I returned to Delhi and informed the BJP leadership. We thought the offer was not realistic.

“In this meeting, I told him that while the BJP was ready to reduce its assembly seats, we wanted one more Lok Sabha seat. He said he was not convinced that the BJP could win. He said he could appreciate that five and 35 may not be acceptable to the BJP. He said the gap was too wide to be bridged, and that very little could be done in such little time. We agreed to disagree,” Mitra says.

THINGS HAVE reached a state where a regional party, the BJD, was willing to dump the BJP but not give Advani’s emissary one extra Lok Sabha seat. The calculations were evidently based on two surveys that Patnaik had ordered. Apparently, they showed that the BJP could win in three Lok Sabha and 15 to 20 seats. Mitra returned to Delhi and reported to Advani. “His (Advani’s) political instincts are as sharp as ever. He said there were limits to what parties could give. He said we couldn’t grovel before allies. His responses are flexible, but he recognises that parties are on the rampage this time around,” Mitra says.

But something more serious than political bargaining may be happening here. Every little loss, of a party that was once an ally, a leader who has defected, or a drop in energy, is being noticed. But the greater danger of losing one’s self is passing off quietly. Every barb is hurting Advani and taking the NDA down. And, as he has done in the past, Advani is retreating when sad.

In Orissa, for instance, Advani virtually did nothing. He didn’t call Patnaik. He didn’t ask NDA Convenor Sharad Yadav for help. And he certainly didn’t look to BJP President Rajnath Singh or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. “They didn’t involve me. Rajnath Singh called me when it was all over,” Yadav says.

Advani’s well-honed instinct for reluctance is, therefore, probably back. Several BJP and RSS leaders have argued with Advani at various points in his career that he needs to be more aggressive. Some like Tarun Vijay, who heads an RSS thinktank, the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, have on occasion described Advani as a man who flees from the battleground. Oldtimers in the BJP say Advani normally carries a resignation letter with him so he can walk way from a situation he doesn’t like.

In his autobiography, My Country My Life, Advani describes how reluctant he was to become BJP president. “I was a most reluctant party president. Around the beginning of 1972, Atalji [former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee] told me, “You become the party president now.” When I asked him why, he replied, “I have already completed four years in this office. It’s time for a new person to take over.”

I said, “Atalji, I cannot even speak at a public meeting. How can I head the party? In those days, I was apprehensive of speaking publicly, believing that I was a poor orator … I said, “No, I can’t be the party president. Please find another person,” Advani writes. He then describes the lengths to which he and Vajpayee went to find someone to head the BJP. When no one agreed, he was forced into the job, Advani says.

“First of all, I was touched by Atalji’s trust in me. Secondly, I was humbled by the fact that other leaders in the party who were senior to me in age and experience, readily agreed to my candidature,” Advani writes. He then says this: “Sadly, as I recall this, I am also troubled by the fact that this spirit of camaraderie and mutual trust, idealistic and goal-oriented approach to party work, is something that has got diluted over the years.”

'Advani said we couldn't grovel before allies. He recognises that parties are on the rampage this time around'

Chandan Mitra, BJP Rajya Sabha member

THE LACK of trust and idealism that Advani refers to has affected interpersonal relationships in the BJP. The dynamics of the equation between, say, Advani and Rajnath Singh, or Advani and the RSS, are not the stuff of milk and honey. About 10 days earlier, the BJP had scheduled a meeting of its election campaign committee in Delhi. Rajnath Singh was away in central India, stuck in a place without night landing facilities for aircraft. Singh sent word to Delhi that Advani be informed of his inability to make it to the meeting in time. Singh added that Advani could defer the meeting so he could attend.

Singh reached Delhi to find that the meeting had begun and Advani was in the chair. Perhaps it was the iron discipline. Perhaps it was the focus on winning the election. But it definitely wasn’t camaraderie. Thus uneasy, Advani is falling back on himself. He is running a big campaign on the Internet, and has filled important party panels with his men.

For instance, the BJP Policy Formulation Committee for the election has nine members: Arun Jaitley, Bal Apte, Balbir Punj, Tarun Vijay, Sudheendra Kulkarni, S Gurumurthy, Swapan Dasgupta and Deepak Chopra. Jaitley has never contested an election, Apte is an RSS appointee, Kulkarni and Gurumurthy are thinkers, Punj, Dasgupta and Vijay are journalists, and Chopra has been Advani’s private secretary for 20 years. None of them have experience of mass politics. All of them owe their positions to Advani.

Somehow, this doesn’t appear to be the stuff leadership is made of. Whoever becomes the next Prime Minister will have a host of problems to contend with. At the moment, Advani may not be looking too attractive even to the BJP. The party, for instance, has decided to send Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi into Orissa as a response to Patnaik. Modi, more than Advani, is the BJP’s choice in tough situations.

The NDA’s choices seem to be even more disparate. In Bihar, where the BJP hopes to announce a deal with the Janata Dal (United) soon, the attention is on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. BJP leaders from Bihar spent a fair amount of time in a recent party conclave in Nagpur, narrating how Kumar was becoming the people’s star. The Bihar BJP unit thinks Kumar’s open style of governance is winning him acceptance.

Translated into this election, it means the JD(U) could do a BJD. Privately, BJP leaders say they are looking at a nasty post-poll free-for-all. Right now, the NDA is trailing the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and even the nascent Third Front. “The NDA suffers from a fundamental contradiction, which is the Hindutva agenda. The BJP thinks they will garner support by being more aggressive on Hindutva. But the more aggressive they are, the more they alienate alliance partners. This is aggravated by the RSS statement that it will support a party that will build the Ram temple,” says Sitaram Yechury, CPM Politburo member.

“Added to all this is the fact that the BJP and the NDA haven’t come out with a cohesive alternative on the economic front. So, there is an inherent anti-cohesion factor in the NDA. These factors are operating at the ground levels, while at the superficial levels you see the disturbances. I see this leading to two things: the isolation of Hindutva, and a degree of assertion of non-Congress, non-BJP secular polity,” adds Yechury.

The BJP, however, is working on the assumption that lost friends will return. For instance, the party leadership is speaking in terms of working with Naveen Patnaik after the election. By then, they calculate, his ardour for the Third Front would have cooled. Some are still hopeful that the BJP will put in a better show than expected and rally the NDA around.

“As far as parties are concerned, we already have alliances. For instance, the Shiv Sena, Akali Dal, AGP, INLD and RLD. The impression that the NDA is unravelling is being created only because the BJD has walked out. It’s okay. People want a change, and that is visible. The NDA is as robust and strong as it was. It all depends on the performance of the BJP. The outcome will be based on that and we are working to improve that,” says Rajiv Pratap Rudy, a former BJP Union minister who is contesting from Bihar.

Whatever the point of view, there’s a moment when every individual realises that it’s time. Advani is fit for his age. He has the requisite moral fibre as well, but friends and partners think he won’t be pulling his weight this time. He has spent many moments in contemplation, and it is possible that we may not see him at his peak again. There are a few weeks to know but in the NDA, he’s already acquiring the air of a family elder. And the NDA is heading for a possible period of rest.