24 March 2014, 06:18 PM IST
In 2009, BJP senior Jaswant Singh got chucked out of the party for his book containing sympathetic references to Muslim League founder M A Jinnah and for arguing that Sardar Patel went along with Jawaharlal Nehru on Partition.
At the time, the decision — and the manner of its execution — came across as excessive and lacking grace, a verdict shaped by strident voices demanding Singh's excommunication for the crime of heresy.
In 2014, Singh is on the verge of expulsion again, ending a brief reunion brought about by BJP veteran L K Advani intervening in his favour. This time, a parting of ways may well be permanent.
On the face of it, Jaswant Singh's case shows BJP in bad light. After all, he has been at the core of BJP's decision-making, close to Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and a leading light of the 1999-2004 NDA government.
If Jaswant Singh had got the Barmer ticket, he may even have won given a pro-BJP mood in the state. Denied his wish to contest his last election at home, he denounced the BJP leadership as duplicitous.
But the issue is not about a 76-year-old's desire to fight his last election at home, but Singh's refusal to recognise how his demands might be a complete imposition on the BJP.
For one, reports suggest that he had become rather unpopular in Darjeeling, the seat he holds and did not want to re-contest.
Then, chief minister Vasundhara Raje, who has emerged as the dominant voice in BJP's Rajasthan affairs, felt Jat leader Sona Ram, a recent import from Congress, is a better choice.
The BJP leadership went with Raje's calculations that a Jat candidate suits the party's political calculus. Sona Ram is also tough on rhetoric, an attribute seen as useful in the border area.
In rebelling, Jaswant Singh might have hurt son Manvendra's prospects too. Despite Singh's past differences with Raje, she had batted for Manvendra's MLA ticket at the cost of an RSS-backed claimant.
Everyone is entitled to holding a high opinion of himself. But if the gap between reality and self-image to too large, it leads to a tragic realization that one may not be indispensable after all.
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