Besides, it is not even certain that he is as popular in the party as he was a decade ago. There is a belief that Generation Next is waiting impatiently for Advani to make way for them.

Yet, the younger set is also seemingly caught in a bind. They must be regretting that they did not accept Advani's offer to step down from the opposition leader's post in the Lok Sabha after the party's defeat. The party hesitated to relieve him of his responsibilities at the time lest an unseemly scramble broke out among the aspiring successors. But now it is too late with Advani deciding to stay on for another five years.

The lack of unity in the party's second rung, fuelled by ambition and animosity, is a problem which the BJP may not be able to overcome in the near future. It is Advani's awareness that there will not be any unanimity about his successor which presumably made him announce his resolve to stay on till 2014.

However, whether he likes it or not, there will be few in the party who will applaud his rather strange decision which simply ignores the fact that he will be 87 when the next general election is held. They may not say so openly, but they cannot be unaware that if anything makes the BJP look like grandfather's party, it is Advani's intention to continue to lead it in parliament.

The RSS has denied the media speculation that its leader, Mohan Bhagwat, asked Advani to step down during a recent meeting. As Bhagwat has said, Advani was “a swayamsevak before I was born”. So, Bhagwat does not think himself “qualified” to advise him.

The comment may have been made out of politeness, but it is no secret that Bhagwat's predecessor, K.S. Sudarshan, had called upon both Advani and Vajpayee to retire. Advani also lost his position as the BJP president after his praise of Jinnah in 2005 because the RSS was furious. Given this background, it is obvious that neither the RSS nor the BJP can be too happy with their senior leader.

Thus, there is this curious situation where a leader has virtually imposed himself on the party for the foreseeable future. But it isn't only Advani's age which is a worrisome factor for the BJP. The party's ideology, too, has become virtually defunct. Hindutva or cultural nationalism (“one nation, one people, one culture') was, of course, not its first choice as a doctrine. That honour goes to the admittedly vacuous concept of Gandhian socialism which purportedly guided the BJP in the years immediately after its formation in 1980.

Hindutva came later when the party's reduction to two seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984 made it realize that it needed a pseudo-religious boost to revive its fortunes. Hence, the Palanpur resolution of 1989 calling for the “liberation” of Ramjanmabhoomi, which, in turn, propelled the Hindutva movement.

But, two decades later, none of that is of much help to the party. Instead, one of its leaders, Jaswant Singh, has even called for a reconsideration of the very idea of Hindutva while some of the party's Muslim leaders have wanted to know whether Varun Gandhi's anti-Muslim diatribes constitute the basis of cultural nationalism.

Clearly, there is no greater crisis for a party as when it faces misgivings about its own ideology. Yet, it is unlikely that the BJP will spend any time to consider this issue at its chintan baithak in Shimla. That it wants to avoid any controversy was evident from the exclusion of Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie from the meeting evidently because of their sharp criticism of the party's response to the electoral setback.

If the BJP wants to run away from either finding a replacement for Advani or clarifying its position on Hindutva, the reason is that the party lacks leaders of stature and intellectual calibre who can provide a sense of direction in the matter of organizational composition and ideological stance.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that so far as its doctrine is concerned, the BJP is wholly dependent on the RSS's Hindu-centric world-view, which alienates the minorities and the liberals. What is more, this outlook often becomes the basis for factionalism since siding with, or opposing, the RSS can make or mar one's career in a party whose leaders routinely pay an annual gurudakshina or homage to the teacher to the RSS.

Since Rajnath Singh was the RSS's choice for replacing Advani in 2005 as the BJP chief, he is generally regarded as a favourite of the Nagpur bosses. It is a perception which is strengthened by his espousal of a hardline Hindutva position as opposed to Advani's more moderate stance.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Singh called upon Vasundhara Raje to resign as the opposition leader in the Rajasthan assembly owning responsibility for the party's electoral reverses in the state. Singh's task must have been made easier by the fact that Raje is not a favourite of the RSS. When a party is not in full control of itself, its future cannot but be bleak. (IPA Service)