JULY 2019 l PARlIAMENTARIAN 41Gandhi) Government.”
Chagla proved to be right in 1998
when Vajapyee led Government was
formed at the Centre. But this success
was nothing to do with the idea of
Gandhian Socialism which was actually
put in side after debacle in general
elections of 1984. After merely securing
two seats in the 84 elections, the party
had very rigorously and aggressively
pushed a hardline Hindutva agenda
which ultimately brought it in power in
1998.
However the idea of Gandhian
Socialism helped Vajpayee to attain a
greater acceptability with a liberal face
.Vajpayee always accepted the
contribution of Gandhian Socialism in
shaping his political image and always
pushed it in his political musings. In
September 2004, when the book “The
Quest, The Hurdles: A Socialist
Testament” written by former PM
Chandra Sekhar, was being launched
Vajpayee took up the issue and
questioned why the nation had stopped
talking about socialism. “It is in the
preamble of our Constitution and is a
guiding goal for all parties. For the
Bharitya Janata Party, Gandhian
socialism is what we want to achieve
and make society free of exploitation
and full of opportunities. So, we need
to start this debate again,” he said.
Despite Vajpayee’s penchant and
insistence to continue with Gandhian
Socialism BJP got rid of it and resorted
to its hard-line Hindu ideology to
secure power and succeeded. The
towering personality and popularity of
Vajpayee helped the party In forming a
grand alliance of 13 political parties
which proved instrumental for the
victory in Lok Sabha elections, 1999.
The victory ramped up political
acceptability of the BJP among all
parties in general and amongst alliance
constituents in particular.
The old BJP always tried to
camouflage or sugar-coat its Hindutva
agenda and ambition of power under
the idea like Gandhian Socialism or
integral humanism for its non-
supporters. The new BJP is not at all
apologetic about its Hindu ideology and
RSS ideology. Whenever and wherever
it requires, the party expresses
emphatically and that also without any
sort of shame. The new BJP is not keen
to have any mask.
While Vajpayee era BJP was RSS
driven but its new avtar is a self-propelled organization. Defining roles
regarding the three dimensions- the
party, the government & the pariwar is
totally demarcated in the new BJP. The
new BJP proclaims its root of Hindu
Nationalism with proud. In new BJP
there is an exclusive room for Hindutva
and the rest has been immersed in
nationalism now. So the BJP now wants
to convert and rebrand itself as a
Nationalist party rather than a right
wing Hindu party. And the party is
doing it in a manner that its all the
votaries are happy and think that its
their own show.
The RSS is happy that NRC is being
implemented and minority
appeasement has gone. The RSS long
cherished idea of a casteless broad based
Hindu society is taking shape, Article
370 and 35A will go. Hardliners within
the Sangh Pariwar are happy that the
Ram Mandir will be build, triple talaq
is being banned, two child norms and
common civil code for the
country is in offing. In fact every
constituency and constituents are
happy as this new BJP is addressing
them all. Mastering such an art with
perfection is new BJP’s forte. It has
mastered the art of feel good which has
never been witnessed before.
Vajpayee came to power bashing the
Congress, the Communists and the
third front. BJP 2.0 came to power on
its own steam and has nothing to do
with the downfall of others. Under
leadership of Atal–Advani the BJP for
years tried hard for political
acceptability by adopting a liberal maskThe Bjp was disTincT in ThoughT from iTs
predecessor and propounded a new concepT
of gandhian socialism and a Tag line of
“parTy wiTh a difference”, despiTe using The
same Basic paradigm