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Metamorphosis & other stories
Since it lost political advantage, the BJP is in a state of denial. The Mumbai conclave was a story of a party groping with voluble incomprehension for the reasons of its defeat, bitterness and mutual accusation.
Since it lost political advantage, the BJP is in a state of denial. The Mumbai conclave was a story of a party groping with voluble incomprehension for the reasons of its defeat, bitterness and mutual accusation. In the throes of a leadership crisis, there was a visible divergence between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. Deprived of the loaves of office, the BJP has shown it doesn’t like life on the rough side.
It took only 30 days for the person once hailed as one of India’s greatest prime ministers and his party’s ‘tallest icon’ to morph into a diminutive pygmy. From Manali to Mumbai, the trademark vacillations of Vajpayee showed him for what he really was: a man with no convictions.
How much of hype there was in creating a larger-than-life image of the man was evident when a political non-entity like Venkaiah Naidu rebuffed him by talking of the “virus of individualism”. Yet, it was the same BJP that raised this leader on a mast and fought the election in his name.
Over the past few years, Vajpayee got used to having his way in the party, by sulking at the mildest of criticisms. Last year he had snubbed Naidu over the ‘Vikas purush-Loh purush’ remark and made him retract it within 24 hours. This time it was Vajpayee who retracted his statement of ‘enough is enough’ at the Mumbai conclave within 24 hours, announcing his retirement one day and then returning to politics on the next.
