Ground realities have induced sobering thoughts among top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders who decided, at their Mumbai Chintan Baithak, to give the party a new image in order to arrest a further decline in its fortunes. The Vajpayee-Advani rivalry, which was resurrected publicly by Party President Venkaiah Naidu with very clear motives in mind, has helped the Prime Minister to clarify that he will neither "tire nor retire" and that the Deputy Prime Minister will not be allowed to nip him at the post. After first testing the waters, the RSS sensed opposition growing to the candidature of the Loh Purush and came out with a clarification that the "soft" face of Hindutva and the "saffron hard-liner" will continue to work together and the second generation leadership will have to wait to change the party’s septuagenarian profile.

Though many brave words were said at the Baithak, with Vajpayee and Advani praising each other, the leadership is under no illusion as regards its inability to ride to victory again in next year’s general election. Even the most optimistic observers do not think the party will cross the 140 mark and feel it would be calamitous for it to cut short its tenure by a year in a show of bravado.

Venkaiah Naidu may have projected himself as a tactless practitioner of the art of politics, yet he managed to register Advani’s claim to succession in the face of stiff opposition from many hopefuls who, however, manoeuvred the situation in a manner as to scuttle Advani chances. What happens after the next general election is unpredictable and will depend, to a large extent, on the BJP’s ability to return to power and the state of Vajpayee’s health at that time. This was not the first attempt to project Advani: it was done earlier also after the Gujarat Assembly elections last year where hard-line Hindutva practised by the Advani-Narendra Modi duo, won the day. But the results of subsequent Assembly elections, in which the BJP was trounced, and pressure from the NDA allies tilted the scales against him. The idea was dropped on considerations of pragmatism and Vajpayee was the best bet for the next elections. The NDA partners, who have tied up with the BJP for the sake of power, feel more comfortable with an instinctive moderate, who adopts the hard-line when it suits him, than with a permanent hard-liner.

It has taken the line that, as a democratic party, the BJP was entitled to choose its leader and that Vajpayee and Advani are both swayamsevaks, equally close to the Sangh and committed to its ideology and programmes. Though in public it gives the right to the party to elect its leader but, in practice, exercises considerable influence over his selection. There is not a single BJP leader or senior worker who has not graduated through the RSS or has the courage to defy its directive. Discreet suggestions were made that Naidu should be removed from the party presidentship after several senior leaders stated publicly that the Vikas Purush-Loh Purush duo proposition was his own brainwave and at no level in the party was the matter discussed. But after he prostrated himself before the Prime Minister, the matter was dropped.

There is no doubt that the Prime Minister has been unhappy with the functioning of the BJP. He said so clearly at the Chintan Baithak and neither Naidu nor other leaders gave any explanation as to why this has happened. He feels that the government is not receiving the much-needed support from the party and the multi-loyalties of its members to the Parivar frontal outfits had caused all-round confusion. Look at the manner in which the VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders are heaping abuse on the Government leadership over the Ayodhya issue and charging it with "appeasing" the minorities, which Advani has been accusing the Congress of. This has led to the gradual loss of the BJP’s credibility.

Even if the party makes determined efforts to paper over the cracks, the spin-off of the controversy is bound to haunt it for a long time and the controversy itself is unlikely to vanish. The power struggle within the party is finding its reflection outside the country also, exemplified by extending prime ministerial protocol also to Advani during his Washington and London sojourn. Some of Advani’s anti-Pakistan and anti-Musharraf statements abroad were taken as a subtle attempt to scuttle the Prime Minister’s unconditional peace initiative. Advani’s hints at the need for "compromises" and also "territorial adjustments" during negotiations with Pakistan angered the hard-liners and Hindutva crusaders who have found in continued tension between India and Pakistan the only hope of the party’s survival during elections.