As a result, he has virtually single-handedly taken the wind out of the sails of his party’s anti-corruption campaign against the Congress. What is more, he has shown up the BJP as a helpless spectator of his shenanigans. The party with a difference, the party of Rambhakts, the party of cultural nationalism – one nation, one people, one culture – has been reduced to a cipher by a regional satrap, who was unknown outside his own state only a few years ago.

There are two reasons for the BJP’s predicament. First, it has no leader at the national level who commands respect across-the-board inside and outside the party. In any event, it really had only one – Atal Behari Vajpayee – but he is now become invisible because of ill-health. The other claimant to Vajpayee’s throne – L.K. Advani – never measured up to Vajpayee’s stature.

Since the BJP does not have any major leader at the centre at present, it cannot but be powerless where someone as defiant as Yeddyurappa is concerned. The party’s president, Nitin Gadkari, who was also unknown outside Maharashtra till he was thrust by the RSS on the party, is evidently as ineffectual as Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj since they all operate at a level below that of Vajpayee and Advani.

The second reason why the BJP is unable to discipline Yeddyurappa is that he is the party’s first chief minister in a southern state and it does not want him to be the last. The party apparently lives in the mortal fear that it may lose the next elections in Karnataka since the electorate is unlikely to forgive the party for giving the state one of its most corrupt governments. In view of this fear, the BJP wants to hold on at least to the Lingayat vote by standing with Yeddyurappa, but no one can say whether the chief minister’s community is as proud of him today as it was when he first assumed office.

The BJP’s downhill slide, memorably outlined by Gadkari’s comment that Yeddyurappa’s acts were immoral and not illegal, began when the party chose to ride to power in Karnataka in 2007 in the company of H.D. Kumaraswamy of the JD (S), who was earlier with the Congress. This political gamesmanship was exemplified by the BJP’s acceptance of Kumaraswamy’s proposal of holding the chief minister’s post in rotation. Although a similar ploy with Mayawati had failed in U.P., the BJP went along with it in the hope of securing a foothold in the south. But, not surprisingly, when the time came for Kumaraswamy to step down, he refused to do so, just like Mayawati before him.

What these duplicitous manoeuvres underlined was that the BJP was so desperate to achieve power in a southern state that it was prepared for any trick, no matter how demeaning. So, when it did emerge as the single largest party in 2008 - since the voters wanted to punish the JD (S) – the BJP stooped to wooing defectors to gain a majority in the House. That it codenamed the dubious exercise, Operation Lotus, was one of the party’s first immoral, if not illegal, acts.

As is known, its facilitators in the process of winning friends and influencing people were the infamous mining dons of Bellary – the brothers, Karunakara, Somashekara and Janardhana Reddy – who have since earned notoriety for the various charges against them. Since Yeddyurappa’s sons and son-in-law have also attracted adverse comments about their land deals, the nexus between politicians, their relatives and crony capitalists is apparently deep and wide in Karnataka.

But what is troubling for the BJP is that its inability or unwillingness to act against the suspects stands in contrast to the incarceration of Andimuthu Raja, Kanimozhi, Suresh Kalmadi and a number of corporate bigwigs who fell foul of the law at the centre. Even if the jail terms were the result of the Supreme Court’s indictment, the BJP would be hard put to deny the fact that the law did take its course in the case of the suspects among the Congress’s allies, and also in the cases of Congressmen like Kalmadi, Ashok Chavan, who resigned as the Maharashtra chief minister, and Shashi Tharoor, who resigned as the minister of state for external affairs.

The BJP’s demand, therefore, that the prime minister and the home minister should quit on the basis of Raja’s allegations will not carry much weight since it is not paying much attention to the Karnataka Lokayukta’s charges against Yeddyurappa. Like Agastya muni’s portentous journey south of the Vindhyas, the BJP’s southern enterprise may prove to be politically fatal.
(IPA Service)