A.G. NOORANI
The party faces two distinct but related crises, organisational and existential.
“When the members drop off, the main body cannot be insensible of its approaching dissolution. Even the violence of their proceedings is a signal of despair. Like broken tenants, who have had warning to quit the premises, they curse their landlord, destroy the fixtures, throw everything into confusion, and care not what mischief they do to the estate.”
EVERY word of Junius’ censure on the abrupt resignation from the Cabinet of the Duke of Grafton, delivered on February 14, 1770, applies to the political pornography that is the public feuding in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Not one of the performers has cared a jot for the party while staging the obscene drama in public, least of all the erstwhile Prime Minister-in-waiting Lal Krishna Advani and his ambitious protege Arun Jaitley whom he has tried to anoint as his successor. Advani, the ace manipulator and survivor, stands stripped of moral authority. So are his opponents.
In this fight for power, the honours between them are evenly divided. None of the excuses either side cites for the electoral defeat make sense. Criticism of a shrill style and advocacy of moderation come strangely from the shrillest of the lot, Arun Jaitley, who rasps bitter comments with oracular pauses and was the staunchest supporter of Narendra Modi in 2002 and since.
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