Instead, it believes, like the communists, that the party and the Sangh parivar have some kind of a moral duty to perform, which it could not do either during the freedom movement or in the years after Independence. This duty is to convert India into a Hindu rashtra. Hence, its recourse to atavistic formulations, of which building the Ram temple is the main plank.

It was the loss of this issue, along with that of terrorism, which are responsible for the BJP's defeat. It had no emotional issue to propagate in this election. As a result, it had to depend on mundane matters, such as the black money stashed abroad or the Ouottrocchi affair or the “weakness” of the Prime Minister during its campaign. None of this worked because the electorate has become aware of these cynical electoral tricks of the party.

It is perhaps because the BJP became aware that it was losing ground that some of its candidates took up the party's old anti-minority plank. They included not only Varun Gandhi, but also Ashok Sahu in Kandhamal and B.L.Sharma in Delhi, who told his audience that Muslims would be allowed to remain in India only if they chanted Vande Mataram.

Whether they did this on their own, or were secretly instructed by the party is not known. But it must not be forgotten that they were regular candidates and not someone from the loony fringe in the VHP or the Bajrang Dal. Their virulent anti-Muslim and anti-Christian speeches suggested, therefore, that these represented the views of at least a section of the party.

It is this attitude which has ominous portents. For instance, when the BJP was reduced to two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984, Atal Behari Vajpayee told a party conclave in Calcutta, as it was known then, that it might have been a mistake to replace the Jan Sangh with the BJP with the vacuous Gandhian socialism as its philosophy. Only a year later, the VHP took up the Ramjanmabhoomi issue, which the BJP accepted as a plank in 1989. Thus began two decades of militant pro-Hindu politics.

The present defeats may also persuade the BJP to follow a similar aggressive line. As it is, the RSS believed that the BJP's 2004 defeat was the result of having desisted from advocating Hindutva with as much fervour as in the early nineties. It will probably say the same thing now. Even if it doesn't, there will not be a few in the BJP who will believe that the party has come to the crossroads, where it has to make up its mind whether to become more combative or further moderate its stance relating to the minorities.

The problem with the BJP is that it has no genuine moderates in its ranks after Atal Behari Vajpayee. Even L.K. Advani is a pseudo-moderate who adopted this stance merely to promote his prime ministerial ambitions. Being an instinctive hardliner, he is neither convinced about its essence and viability nor is he able to articulate it in a credible manner. After him, there is no one of stature who can make the party adopt this outlook.

The chances, therefore, are that it is the Varun Gandhi-types who will begin to gain the upper hand, perhaps with the RSS's blessings. Such a turn of events is also possible because the palpable weakening of the BJP will mean that some of its allies in the NDA will begin to drift away. Perhaps the JD (U) in Bihar will be the first. They will realize that just as the BJD in Orissa has done well after severing its links with the BJP, the others may also gain if they distance themselves from a party which only succeeds in alienating the minorities and the liberals.

The feebleness of the BJP was not only apparent from the way in which the JD (U) made it play the second fiddle in Bihar, but also from the way in which the Shiv Sena treated it in Maharashtra by refusing to support Bhairon Singh Shekhawat for the President's post and proposing Sharad Pawar's name for the prime ministership. After the latest defeats, the BJP will become more vulnerable to such rebuffs.

If the bad news is that the BJP's defeats will make it more combative, the good news is that its reverses may mark the end of a period of distortion in Indian politics when pseudo-religious attitudes and uninhibited minority-bashing almost became an acceptable part of social and political behaviour. The Babri masjid demolition, the Gujarat riots and the anti-Christian violence in Orissa were the resultant scars which tarnished the Indian scene. After the BJP's setbacks, there may be a return to more civilized times. (IPA)