It is tempting to describe Jaswant Singh’s unceremonious expulsion from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a glaring example of the culture of intolerance of independence of thought that runs through India’s political class. In reality, it is merely one political party’s inability to define itself.
During his news conference Singh repeatedly mentioned his 30-year-long association with the party. While Singh may have been with the party for all of those 30 years, it is hardly clear whether the party was with him in those decades. His rise in the party leadership as well as cabinet positions notwithstanding, Singh always came across as an outsider looking in and not an insider looking out. In a sense he managed this dichotomy much less successfully than his more illustrious mentor Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He may have been removed from the party only now but he was never really fully in it.
The fact that he had no allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological forebear of the BJP, always created wariness among the more doctrinaire members of the party. As long as Vajpayee was the decisive figure Singh’s detached moderation was tolerated by the others. With Vajpayee retired it was only a matter of time before the hardliners struck against Singh.
What made the expulsion an easy fait accompli for the BJP’s parliamentary board was the publication of the book “Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence”, in which Singh demonstrates the temerity to be an impartial historian and not a party demagogue. If there ever was a perfect excuse to remove someone from the BJP, it would be to fairly assess Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Lal Krishna Advani tempted fate by doing so once but escaped retribution because of his RSS roots. There was no way Singh could have survived in the aftermath of the book.
A flippant way to look at the expulsion is to call it a telephone breakup of the kind teenagers engage in these days thanks to mobile phones. On a more serious note it underscores a lack of evolution within the BJP leadership which is grappling with a serious identity crisis.
Singh is accurate in saying that if India does not watch out it would enter a “dark alley” by stifling dissent and discouraging honest intellectual reflection over its history’s most traumatic phases. One can legitimately describe the book as the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back but it is a serious illustration of how atrophy has gripped the BJP. It is not enough to coin sincere sounding terms such as “chintan baithak”. It is more important to actually seriously reflect and ruminate over how the party has lost its way. On top of the agenda should have been to ask why it felt compelled to expel Singh.
An impartial assessment of Jinnah is not going to reverse history, nor is it going to expose the BJP to any political jeopardy in a country where a large majority of its 550 million people below the age of 25 would not know if Jinnah danced in front of them. Some of the BJP leaders need to be brought out of their slumber and reintroduced to the India of 2009. Unless the party repositions itself to the dramatically different realities of now, no amount of “chintan baithaks” will help reclaim the lost ground. In that context Singh’s intellectual inquiries and assessments as an author are hardly an obstacle.
In many ways Singh must feel a sense of liberation now that he is no longer hamstrung by party discipline. India needs serious contrarians who can frequently challenge lazy certainties of established wisdoms. It is a great and powerful role that someone like Singh can fulfill even as he continues to remain in public life.
rounak