Why BJP should oblige Nitish and announce its PM nominee

Sometimes, it makes sense to keep your leadership ambiguous. But sometimes events may force you to reveal what you do not want to. One such development is the reported effort of Janata Dal (United) to get the BJP, its ally in Bihar and in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), to announce its Prime Ministerial candidate in advance. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose antipathy to Narendra Modi is now well-known, seems keen to want this decided early, so that he can take a  call on continuing the alliance. Kumar apparently wants only a “secular” leader for the NDA. He thinks that Modi is anathema to his Muslim vote, despite the fact that he has been in bed with Modi’s Hindutva party for 15 years now. The BJP may not oblige him, in the belief that the longer the ambiguity holds, the better it is for the party to keep its existing allies together even while scouting for new ones. This argument needs to be stood on its head for several reasons. First, assuming Nitish Kumar is going to break off relations if Modi is announced as the PM candidate, how does it make sense to allow him to do so at the n’th hour at a time of his choosing? A break engineered now will allow the BJP to at least get its Bihar act right and rebuild the party’s base independent of Kumar.  In a year’s time, it can distance itself from any anti-incumbency that attaches to the JD(U) in Bihar. A Modi candidature announced now will allow the party to build some strength before 2014, even if it gets fewer seats. Of course, if the party decides someone other than Modi should be its PM candidate, the question does not arise. But the whole issue is coming up because Modi is the expected candidate. [caption id=“attachment_695315” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Nitish Kumar is seen in this file photo. PTI[/caption] Second, the Indian political reality is that coalitions are the result of post-poll arithmetic. The BJP’s natural all-weather partners are only the Akalis and the Shiv Sena (and possibly its sibling MNS). The rest will come or go depending on who gets how many seats after the elections. If Kumar leaves now, and if the BJP emerges as the biggest party after the polls, Kumar can still be roped in as an outside partner – like Vajpayee had done with Chandrababu Naidu. Breaking off at the last minute will ensure that there are no bridges left to rebuild. Third, the BJP needs to realise that there is no practical difference between making Modi a de facto PM candidate and actually announcing him as the official nominee. If the ambiguity remains, it leaves space for more internal intrigues within the party. This is what the Congress will be hoping for. If the confusion is removed, the party can start preparing for 2014 in a coherent fashion. Fourth, no one will respect a coalition partner which allows its allies to decide who should be its leader. While Vajpayee’s easygoing attitude made him an obvious choice, in future the choices may not be so easy. If the issue on which the next election will be fought is governance and growth, then the obvious choice is Modi. If, on the other hand, the next election is going to be about secularism, then there may be a question-mark over Modi. But this is just conventional wisdom: is the electorate all that foolish that it will buy the Congress rhetoric so easily? And if Muslims are seen to consolidate against Modi, will there not be other shifts in majority perceptions before the poll to neutralise this? It is naïve to believe that consolidation happens in only one direction.  A good reason to decide on Modi – if that is what the BJP wants to do – would be to give voters a chance to see him in action well before the polls and decide if he is really the “maut ka saudagar” or “yamraj” that he is painted out to be. Fifth, if the BJP takes a long-term view of its growth, it has to sort out the communal versus secular angle internally. It has to take a call on whether it wants to be like the mildly sectarian, but still inclusive, Republican party in the US, or something more rabidly communal that is perpetually confined to the fringes.  There is space for a nominally Hindu party that welcomes all denominations as allies – as Manohar Parikkar has shown in Goa – and the BJP can do it nationally too. While the Congress may think it is god’s gift to secularism,  neutral observers like NR Narayana Murthy don’t think either Congress or BJP is truly secular. The argument that Modi is a polarising figure is a media-created perception, but it is the polarising figure who often makes a difference. Ronald Reagan was a polarising figure. So was Margaret Thatcher. Wasn’t it George Bernard Shaw who said this? “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” There is some element of truth in Shaw’s tongue-in-cheek observation.