BOMBAY, 23 June 2004 — The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said yesterday overconfidence and complacency may have led to their shock defeat in last month’s national election, as the party took stock before key state elections over the next year. The national executive meeting of the BJP began a post-mortem of the poll amid speculation the party would become more pro-Hindu after its bid for the political center failed.
Hard-liners have already vetoed debate over the fate of Gujarat state Chief Minister Narendra Modi, condemned by the country’s top court over the religious bloodshed there in 2002. Last month BJP parliamentary leader L.K. Advani said the party’s campaign mottos of “India shining” and “feel-good factor” may have backfired among poorer voters, who felt excluded from the economic opportunities enjoyed by the middle class.
But party chief Venkaiah Naidu said the BJP’s election defeat was not due to any neglect of the rural masses and the urban poor, but rather to overconfidence among party workers.
“We were perhaps overconfident in our assesment of the situation,” he said in his speech to the elite decision-making group of the party. “Overconfidence might have led to complacency in certain places. A lot of damage was done by this complacency.”
After the BJP failed to retain power on a moderate platform of economic prosperity and peace with Pakistan, hard-liners in the party argued it should return to the Hindu themes that brought it to power in the late 1990s. That includes a divisive campaign to build a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque razed by Hindu mobs in 1992, which triggered India’s worst religious bloodshed since independence in 1947.
“The question of going back to Hindutva does not arise because we have never left it, nor will we ever leave it,” Naidu said, reiterating the party’s pre-election line.
Hindutva is the ideology of an umbrella of Hindu organizations, including the BJP, which stresses greater primacy or prominence to Hindu religion, history, morals, culture and philosophy in India’s political, social and public life.
But in its bid for moderate voters, the BJP has recently redefined Hindutva as “a way of life” common to all Indians, no matter what religion.
This stance, analysts say, gives the BJP room to selectively raise the pitch of its hard-line Hindutva agenda while continuing to appeal to a wider, secular constituency.
Analysts say the BJP’s handling of the Modi issue was a sign of a shift to the right and a rebuff to party moderates like Vajpayee.
Vajpayee last week said that Modi — labeled a “modern day Nero” by the Supreme Court — was a major reason for the party’s loss at a time of a booming economy.
His call to discuss Modi’s removal at the national executive, and his personal view that Modi should go, has been rejected.
Officially, more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were burned and hacked to death after 59 Hindu pilgrims, including women and children, were burned alive aboard a train in Gujarat in 2002. Rights groups say more than 2,000 died.
Modi’s government in Gujarat was accused of not doing enough to stop the rioting and turning a blind eye to the killings of Muslims.
“There is a war now between the hard-liners and the moderates,” Maharashtra Times Editor Bharat Kumar Raut said.
By dropping the Modi issue, the BJP has given a clear signal of where it is headed, he added. Muslims in Gujarat said Modi’s removal did not matter to the community any more.
“Modi’s removal does not make any difference...that stage is over. It certainly would have, if he was removed two years ago,” said J.S. Bandukwala, a Gujarat-based social activist. “He is a contempt figure for Muslims now.”
