04 March 2013, 04:20 PM IST
Why is the BJP national executive so coy about formally anointing Narendra Modi as the party's candidate for prime minister in the 2014 general elections? Why does the party offer so many leaders who are insecure about their own position this opportunity to make a cottage industry out of demanding Modi's immediate elevation as the party's PM nominee? Modi is, indeed, the BJP's most popular leader, its best orator, the most charismatic face of the Sangh Parivar. Why this hesitation to declare the party's plans for Modi? Wharton offers an insight, living up to its mandate to provide enlightenment.
The Wharton India Economic Forum has decided to scrap a planned address by Narendra Modi, following sharp objections by a section of professors, students and other stakeholders. To avoid controversy and confrontation, the organisers have decided to invite someone else to address the Forum.
This is precisely the problem with Modi's PM candidature. It would generate keen enthusiasm among his supporters, true. Equally, it would arouse intense anger and opposition from another section.
Right now, the RSS is not in favour of projecting Modi as the BJP's candidate for prime minister. After all, Modi had taken the BJP out of the RSS' control in Gujarat and the Sangh would not like to risk that happening at an all-India level. However, Modi is capable of making peace with the Sangh and winning its blessings.
But Modi's candidature could cost the BJP pre-poll allies. Nitish Kumar and the JD (U) are decidedly anti-Modi. It would be difficult for Nitish Kumar to stay on in the National Democratic Alliance, if the largest party of the NDA, the BJP, declares Modi as its man for PM. The BJP's staunchest ally, the Shiv Sena, has said it prefers Sushma Swaraj. The Akalis alone are okay with Modi. Other potential allies like Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh and the Biju Janata Dal in Orissa would also find it difficult to enter into a pre-poll alliance with the BJP, if it were to announce Modi as it prime ministerial choice.
The Congress, of course, hopes the BJP would officially rally under Modi. It could well persuade Muslims to choose the Congress once again in states like UP and Bihar as the only national level party that can resist Moditva. The BJP also knows this, only too well. Which is another reason for the party not to adopt Modi as its prime ministerial mascot before the elections.
The BJP's diffidence over Modi's candidature manifests the basic conflict between democracy in a plural, variegated nation like India and the kind of politics that the Sangh Parivar and Modi stand for. Modi is the favourite of the Hindutva hordes, who cheer for him with the same fervour with which they bay for demolition of the secular polity. The Hindutva vision is majoritarian, not democratic. The difference, of course, is that democracy identifies a few rights as being inalienable, above and beyond the test of approval or dislike of a temporary majority.
The right of a minority to life, dignity, security and equality of opportunity would be one such right, in a democratic dispensation. In the majoritarian view of the Sangh Parivar, the minority's well being is conditional on its good conduct that warrants sufferance, not on its citizenship. The RSS' most influential leader and mentor, Guru Golwalkar, had said this in so many words, that the minorities should accept their status as second class citizens in this land of the Hindus.
The forces of resistance to Modi being declared as the BJP's PM candidate thus stem from Indian democracy's conflict with the Sangh Parivar project of redefining Indian nationhood as Hindutva. The project's success in Gujarat under Modi makes his followers want him to lead the project in the rest of the country, but that very success threatens the very core of Indian democracy as a polity that lets both unity and diversity flourish at different levels in a manner that lets each nourish rather than undermine the other.
At least at this point in time, the Sangh Parivar project enjoys the support of only a tiny minority. The BJP also knows this. That is why it is reluctant to concede the demand to project Modi as its champion in 2014.
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