SEASIDE TILT FROM T-SHIRT TO TRIDENT FROM RADHIKA RAMASESHAN http://www.telegraphindia.com/ [The Telegraph, Kolkata]
Panaji, April 13: Goa has proved to be a landmark in more ways than one for the BJP and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In 1995, when the BJP held its first national executive here with its Hindutva tag intact, Vajpayee did something that stunned hardliners: he attended a dinner on the Kalangut beach in jeans and a T-shirt. The sartorial departure, it later emerged, was “politically” significant. At that time, the BJP was finding it difficult to wipe off the taint of the Babri masjid demolition. So Vajpayee wanted to convey the message that his party had its share of “easy-going liberals” who did not necessarily subscribe to the “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan” slogan symbolised by the dhoti-kurta regimen. The 1995 executive was also important for its policy decisions. The BJP decided to strike strategic alliances wherever it could, keep its ideology flexible to woo “secular” allies, and consider projecting Vajpayee rather than L.K. Advani as its prime ministerial candidate. In 1999, when the BJP executive met here again, Vajpayee addressed a public rally mostly in English as a goodwill gesture to the Goans. The 2002 session will go down as an event where the Prime Minister wore only dhoti-kurta and addressed a public meeting in Sanskritised Hindi. But, most important, he spoke like a pracharak unmindful of the fact that 30 per cent of Goa’s population was Christian and was keenly following and reacting to the Gujarat violence as a silent protest march through Panaji today testified. BJP sources explained why Vajpayee had discarded his “secular” mask. The objective, they said, was as much to soften up criticism within the executive on the poll reverses as to tell the Sangh parivar that he was still one of them. The implicit message: the parivar should not ditch his party as it allegedly did in the recent elections. A discussion on the elections was to have been the main agenda of the executive. Sources said state-level leaders, as well as a section of Central bigwigs, had sharpened their knives to attack the government. “But the emphasis would have been on Hindutva and how giving it up has cost the BJP its votes,” said a senior member. “If the Prime Minister continued to take the plea that he was bound by the National Democratic Alliance agenda, there were people ready to ask him why he went overboard on secularism from time to time with his Kumarakom musings and the tears he shed in the Ahmedabad relief camps. It was high time the Prime Minister told the party what his own stand on secularism was.” The sources said the members were even prepared to suggest that if the NDA government had to be given up for the cause of “Hindutva”, so should it be. The drama over the resignation offer of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Vajpayee’s anti-Muslim remarks at yesterday’s public rally were meant to pre-empt such arguments. “The message from his speech is that the BJP is still a party with a difference,” said Shivraj Chauhan, BJP youth wing chief and MP from Madhya Pradesh. “Our core ideology is cultural nationalism. It has manifested itself in different ways — Ayodhya, swadeshi, and now Gujarat. If an attempt was made to equate Godhra with what followed thereafter, it would have amounted to a betrayal of cultural nationalism.” BJP vice-president Gopinath Munde said Vajpayee’s pro-Hindutva speech was a reaction to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s “shrill rhetoric on secularism” in Guwahati. “Goa and Guwahati have to be seen in tandem. We have to keep Sonia in focus for our own political survival and also to keep our allies together and tell them that they cannot fight the Congress separately,” the former Maharashtra chief minister said. His logic: the more high-pitched Sonia’s tone on secularism is, the more difficult it would be for the NDA’s “secular” allies to match it. (ENDS) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ To unsubscribe from Goanews Send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: 'unsubscribe goanews'
