BJP unable to cope with poll debacle !!!

Former BJP vice president Yashwant Sinha and senior leader Jaswant Singh have written letters asking why there is no accountability for defeat by the BJP leadership. Why is no one taking the blame and why are leaders who were in charge of the failed campaign being given top jobs? Clearly this time, it targets Arun Jaitley.

The question that was being asked on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: War within the BJP: Is the party unable to come to terms with its defeat?

To try and answer the question on the panel of experts were: BJP National Media Convenor, Nalin Kohli; Political Scientist and author of The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Christophe Jaffrelot; Professor Political Science at Brown University, Ashutosh Varshney; and Political Editor of the Hindustan Times, Vinod Sharma.

At the beginning of the show, 82 per cent people said yes, the party was simply unable to come to terms with defeat, while 18 per cent disagreed.

In 2004, there was a psychological breakdown within the BJP after their poll debacle. Their Shining India campaign had been defeated. After that came the expulsion of Uma Bharati and the Jinnah controversy with L K Advani at the center of it. This time there has been another withering defeat.

Christophe Jaffrelot kickstarted the debate by saying, "A new Pandora's box is being opened here. The party has always been in a dilemma - should it stick to its identity and be the party for Hindus or should it open up and make allies in order to be in power. The party has always oscillated between these two poles. What is new is senior RSS ideologue M G Vaidya writing in the local Marathi daily Tarun Bharat that the BJP should forget about the Hindutva plank and try to become acceptable to allies again. This can be seen in two different perspectives - either the RSS is really trying to make a true move and enable the BJP to become a ruling party again or it can be also interpreted as the fact that the RSS does not want to be affected by this mess and wants to refocus on non-political issues, which is really its cup of tea."

"But the main question is," he continued, "is it possible for the BJP to sever its links with the RSS and I really doubt that that is a possibility."