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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 001278 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PINR PREL KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BJP IMPLOSION OR REINVENTION? 
 
REF: A. NEW DELHI 755 
     ¶B. NEW DELHI 559 
     ¶C. NEW DELHI 209 
     ¶D. NEW DELHI 129 
     ¶E. NEW DELHI 109 
     ¶F. 2004 NEW DELHI 7389 
 
¶1. (U) SUMMARY:  The Congress Party-led United Progressive 
Alliance (UPA) government's (UPA) unexpectedly decisive 
victory in India's general election has left the country's 
main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in disarray. 
The fallout of this drubbing has shattered the image of the 
BJP as a disciplined and unified party.  The election loss 
also strained the BJP's relationship with its grassroots 
partner and ideological rightwing Hindu fountainhead, the 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).  Top BJP leader L.K. 
Advani and party president Rajnath Singh took responsibility 
for loss and promptly announced they would step down.  Upon 
the urging of senior BJP officials, L.K. Advani walked back 
his retirement announcement within days to forestall a messy 
succession battle within the BJP.  Since then, factions and 
personalities within the BJP have been engaged in 
increasingly vitriolic public blame games which threaten to 
make the party the object of public ridicule.  Some analysts 
believe that this public and private bloodletting can be a 
healthy catharsis for the party and much preferred to pushing 
the defeat and its lessons under the carpet.  But, if it goes 
too far, it could also lead to a broken, split and fragmented 
party that is not a credible national force any longer.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
BJP on the Mat 
-------------- 
 
¶2. (U) The UPA won 274 seats against the BJP-led National 
Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition's paltry 157 seats in the 
543-seat Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) election.  The 
Congress-BJP margin was 206-112, far better for the Congress 
than the neck-to-neck battle that most pundits and both 
parties had expected.  The Congress gained at the expense of 
both the regional parties and the BJP, which lost about 25 
seats from its strength of 137 in 2004 election. 
 
Back-to-back Defeats:  Rude Awakening for the BJP 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶3.  (SBU) After two resounding back-to-back general election 
losses to the Congress Party in 2004 and 2009, pundits are 
beginning to question the ability of the party to remain a 
credible political force.  The party bounced back from its 
2004 elections debacle by attributing it to a misplaced India 
Shining campaign and proceeded to win a string of state 
assembly elections.  The 2009 defeat has been more 
demoralizing and has led to a frenzy of mudslinging and 
finger pointing with daily public attacks against the party 
leadership and its campaign strategy. 
 
Heads Rolling? Not Really 
------------------------- 
 
¶4.  (SBU) In the immediate aftermath of the election results, 
top BJP leader and prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani 
announced his retirement from active politics, taking full 
morale responsibility for the party's trouncing at the polls. 
 Panicked party lieutenants prevailed on Advani to walk back 
his decision to avoid a vacuum, which they feared would 
trigger a bloody succession battle within the BJP.  They 
persuaded Advani to remain in the Leader of the Opposition 
post in the Lok Sabha 'for the good of the party' and to name 
others of his choice to the leadership posts in the two 
houses.  After a few days of bitter internal feuding within 
the party, BJP President Rajnath Singh announced he would not 
run for another term at the conclusion of his tenure at the 
end of the year. 
 
Post-election Analysis or Civil War? 
 
NEW DELHI 00001278  002 OF 003 
 
 
------------------------------------ 
 
¶5.  (SBU) In the immediate wake of the elections, the BJP 
attempted to keep the lid on the internal discontent by 
persuading Advani to remain in place and announcing a series 
of introspection meetings in the coming weeks.  Advani's 
appointment of Arun Jaitley as Leader of the Opposition in 
the Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament) and Sushma Swaraj 
as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha blew 
the top off the internal wrangling.  Former Foreign Minister 
and former Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha 
Jaswant Singh, angry at not having been named deputy to 
Advani in the new Lok Sabha, attacked the appointments.  He 
complained that Arun Jaitley, who directed the BJP election 
campaign, did not deserve this promotion after his campaign 
mismanagement.  Then another former Foreign Minister, 
Yashwant Sinha, resigned from all posts in the party and 
released to the media a scathing letter attacking the party 
leadership, critiquing Jaitley's undeserved ascension, and 
calling for accountability for those who drove the BJP to 
defeat. 
 
¶6.  (U) Sudheendra Kulkarni, senior Advani aide and campaign 
strategist, wrote an introspective article dissecting the BJP 
campaign failures.  He accused the RSS and BJP leadership of 
undermining Advani's Prime Ministerial bid and making him 
"appear weak".  Former National Security Advisor and retired 
BJP hand Brajesh Mishra blamed the party's support of Varun 
Gandhi and condoning of his virulent anti-Muslim attacks 
(Ref. B).  He excoriated the BJP leadership for not 
distancing themselves from Gandhi's "repugnant" comments and 
not stripping Gandhi of his BJP ticket in Uttar Pradesh. 
Sushma Swaraj added fuel to the fire when she said that RSS 
participation at the introspection meetings or "chintan 
baithaks" was "not necessary."  Darling of the business 
community, fire-brand Gujarat Chief Minister Narender Modi 
ran for cover, retreated to his chief ministership and 
distanced himself from the looming party civil war. 
 
RSS Distances Itself 
-------------------- 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Senior RSS leadership has gone on the record to 
downplay their association with the defeated BJP.  RSS 
spokesman Ram Madhav told Poloff that it was up to the BJP to 
resurrect itself and the RSS would play no part in the 
effort.  He said that RSS cadre had worked hard for the party 
in the elections but the BJP was responsible for its own 
defeat because it was still stuck in 1999.  In his view, the 
BJP had failed to convince the electorate that it had any 
fresh ideas to offer ten years on, in contrast to the 
Rahul-brigade's image of a young and future oriented Congress 
Party.  Others in the RSS saw the 2009 BJP campaign as an 
abandonment of RSS ideology.  Former RSS spokesperson and 
senior ideologue M.G. Vaidya accused Advani of "not enthusing 
the Hindus" and of losing credibility with the RSS base. 
Writing in the pro-RSS Marathi daily Tarun Bharat, Vaidya 
states "the BJP must reflect Hindu nationalism or else it is 
free to remain as any other party not associated with us." 
 
 
Congress-Lite: BJP's Own "Aam Aadmi" Campaign 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (SBU) According to analysts, the BJP struggled with focus 
and definition during the 2009 election.  Political observers 
note that the party moved from issue to issue during the 
campaign - accusations of weak and indecisive Congress 
leadership, illegal Indian money overseas, faltering economy, 
uncertain security - with none finding traction.  The BJP's 
new 'common man' approach failed at the polls because the 
electorate saw it as disingenuous and a weak clone of the 
Congress Party platform.  Advani tried to project himself as 
a pragmatic Iron-man, attempting to paint Manmohan Singh as a 
weak and indecisive, an attack that backfired miserably.  The 
party suffered a damaging backlash from Hindus and Muslims 
 
NEW DELHI 00001278  003 OF 003 
 
 
alike when it did not distance itself from Varun Gandhi's 
sharp communal remarks (Ref. B).  Gandhi won his own seat but 
may have cost the BJP many more because the broader Indian 
electorate had no stomach for his extreme communal rhetoric. 
In the end, no one factor can be identified as the seminal 
reason for the BJP's defeat.  It was the confluence of these 
factors that led to the party's sound and, apparently, 
debilitating loss this May. 
 
 
Going Right?  Going Left?  Going in Circles? 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶9.  (U) Some Hindutva hardliners have advised a return to the 
BJP's pro-Hindutva roots.  They argue that the party gained 
in Karnataka where there was some communal strife and moral 
policing by fringe Hindutva groups.  The ascension of leaders 
like M.M. Joshi or Narender Modi in the upcoming months would 
signal a swing to the right.  Even if the BJP were to turn 
right and turn in a stellar performance in the Hindi Belt 
where Hindutva has had some appeal in the past (Rajasthan, 
U.P., Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana), it 
could cost the party more in the non-Hindi Belt. In any 
event, the Hindi Belt cannot by itself yield a majority in 
parliament and support from non-Hindutva states in the south 
and east is necessary to form a stable government. 
 
¶10.  (U) In that case, re-branding the BJP as a stable, 
unbashedly right-of-center national party in the mode of the 
Christian Democrats in Germany, divorced from the RSS and its 
sharp religious rhetoric, might be the way to go.  The 
challenge of being a national party without retaining its RSS 
cadre base is substantial.  Still other political pundits are 
advising the BJP to stand together as a consortium of 
regional interests, with strong Chief Ministers representing 
good governance at the center of the party.  Each of these 
potential new BJP avatars will require some serious 
party-restructuring. 
 
 
COMMENT: Bewildered BJP 
----------------------- 
 
¶11.  (SBU) COMMENT: The BJP's crushing election loss has 
helped reveal some of its fundamental weaknesses -- a paucity 
of fresh ideas, no clear policy distinctions with its rival, 
an aging leadership with no second tier ready to step up, and 
limits of the Hindutva card.  The struggle within the BJP as 
it tries to come to terms with its devastating loss will take 
time and it is impossible to say what will emerge - broken, 
split, fragmented remnants of the party or a reinvented, 
revitalized party that has gone through a cathartic 
experience and emerged with new ideas and leadership.  If the 
party confronts its failings squarely and implements a 
credible strategy to address them, the party could remerge 
stronger and ready to repeat its performance of the 1990s 
when it expanded steadily before wresting power in 1998.  If 
it merely sweeps its shortcomings under the rug while its 
leaders continue to undercut each other as they vie for 
parliamentary and party posts and the privileges that go with 
them, it is possible that the BJP could be permanently 
damaged as a viable national party.  Its regional leaders 
would then be tempted to go their own way as the party 
fragments into pieces of different shapes and political hues 
depending on the state and region.  L.K. Advani's temporary 
return as opposition leader skirts the inevitable succession 
battle for the moment but it will be something the party will 
have to deal with in the coming weeks and months and it will 
likely further aggravate the party's internal turmoil.  END 
COMMENT. 
BURLEIGH