The Bharatiya Janata Party is 25 years old and doddering, but it is defying biology to celebrate. Celebrate what? Well it is still alive, but the mind is in deep freeze. It has a galaxy of leaders, but most of them shine only in camera lights. And the natural party of counterpoints has ceased to be a proactive force-or even an argumentative one. On April 6, when the BJP congratulated itself on its silver jubilee, there was no despondency; it was as if they were all so happy in the make-believe. So happy that the birthday bash would go on for eight months. And if there was creativity on display, it was in panegyric documentaries, CDs and travelling photo exhibitions. There was even a brand new logo for the occasion that showed the party symbol of the lotus against a backdrop of a rising sun.

PICTURE SPEAK

POLE OF HOPE: The BJP still believes it can retain its lost glory

If the saffron revellers care to look back, they are certain to realise their own contribution to one of the compelling stories of mandate squandered in Indian politics. The BJP has come a long way-and how. It was a two-seat party in the Lok Sabha in 1980. In 1998, it became the largest with 182 seats. Today it is a stagnant party without a target, without a slogan, and confused about its own identity. The party with ideological distinction has become the party with ideological extinction. The party with a difference has evolved into a party with diffidence.

It is an evolutionary tale punctuated by high hope and sudden fall, great comebacks and suicidal instincts, misplaced slogans and hazy concepts. Ayodhya is no longer the destination but a mere stopover during election campaigns. True, they still talk of the unfinished agenda of building the Ram Temple. But this is accompanied with a lot of hand-wringing at the altar of coalition compulsions. This tightrope act lost the party 44 Lok Sabha seats in the 2004 general elections. For the first time since its inception, the BJP's numbers have gone down. No matter. The spinmeisters are never short of reasons to celebrate. Even the boss himself is upbeat. "Pole of Hope", that is how BJP President L.K. Advani sees his party now. Says Advani: "The unexpected setback in the Lok Sabha elections does not in the least negate this." This is no vision statement. After all, in the strange world of the BJP, even defeat comes with a silver lining. And with blinkers. "This party, as the Jana Sangh or the BJP, is a party of ideological movements. That is why its identity remains," Advani goes on. It remains unexplained, unfelt. Once upon a time, it was Gandhian socialism. In the mid-1980s, it was Hindutva. Advani was its active, evangelical face-from Somnath temple to Ayodhya, it was a long rath yatra across the nationalist mind. It was an awakening moment in the life of the BJP.

THE SAFFRON SAGA

1951 THE BEGINNING: The Jana Sangh is formed. It merges with the Janata Party in 1977 after the Emergency. 1980 BIRTH OF THE BJP: The Janata Party splits on the issue of dual membership of the RSS and the BJP is born. 1989 RISE OF HINDUTVA: The BJP resorts to hardline Hindutva and boosts its Lok Sabha seats to 86 from two. 1996 POWER PLAY: Vajpayee becomes PM, first for 13 days, then for a year and finally, gets a five-year stint. 2004 NOT SO GOOD: The BJP loses power at the Centre. To stem the rot, Advani is made the party chief.

But the party failed to sustain the momentum. It was a historic turn-and a right one-in Indian politics when the party was elected to power in 1998, with 25.6 per cent of the popular vote. In retrospect, the winners were not worthy of the mandate; they didn't realise how momentous was that point in the life of the BJP and India. When it was time to deliver on its manifesto promises, the party decided to go in for an image makeover. Under pressure from its allies, Hindutva was repackaged as the more palatable cultural nationalism-and no leader could bring it to the people as something politically intimate. The idea was not marketable-or there were no smart marketers. Within a year, the party lost 1 per cent of the popular vote though it still retained the same number of seats in the 1999 general election. Then began the slide.

Advani's coronation as party chief last year was supposed to stem the rot. Six months later, not much has changed. Two of the BJP's five chief ministers are functioning in the shadow of a coup. Uma Bharati is still trying to dethrone Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Babulal Gaur, her successor, while Narendra Modi's detractors in Gujarat are baying for his blood. "The BJP's worst enemy is the BJP," says party General Secretary Pramod Mahajan. At the central level, Advani still has to induct a general secretary and a vice-president. He is still wary of hurting egos, and the BJP has so many. At the beginning of the silver jubilee celebrations, Advani harked back to 1951 and recalled the Jana Sangh days. He said he had initially planned to thank all those who shaped the party, but admitted that "the list is so long that I cannot name everyone." But when it came to the present day BJP he had no such problem. He thanked former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee alone. The man deserved it-he is still the party's pop star plus patriarch. Vajpayee, who arrived 10 minutes late for his address, however, delivered one of his trademark, enigmatic statements. "I am really sad. I can work only upto a point and not more." Therein lies the agony of the man. The 80-year-old would like to retire. Unfortunately, the party has no one to take his place.

PICTURE SPEAK

NO SILVER LINING: BJP leaders at the silver jubilee celebrations

When it comes to leadership, the party still can't think beyond the twin towers. In its 25 years, Advani has been the party president for 10 years and Vajpayee six. The residual nine years have been divided between M.M. Joshi, Bangaru Lakshman, Jana Krishnamurthy, the late Kushabhau Thakre and M. Venkaiah Naidu, with Advani taking over for his fifth term in October 2004. While Joshi's hardline views have been sidelined in an era of coalition politics, Lakshman and Krishnamurthy have no role to play. Naidu, however, continues to function as an extraconstitutional factotum with no moral authority-but he has the party president's nod.

Where have the mass leaders gone? Of the six general secretaries, only one is from the Lok Sabha. By Advani's own calculations, half the current National Executive has joined the party after 1980. Do Feroze Varun Gandhi, Najma Heptullah and Shatrughan Sinha know about the struggle during the Emergency and the passion of Ayodhya? Attending a televised RSS shakha in Nagpur is not enough. Celebrity MPs and party officials who address press conferences rather than constituencies and deliver spin instead of ideology are also not enough. The periphery is withering away.

Advani's dream team in 2005 is very different from the organisation he built up in the late '80s. At that time he was grooming the younger leadership, most of whom were steeped in the Sangh ideology and untarnished by power. Currently, he is flanked by the likes of Naidu and Jaswant Singh, both of whom are Rajya Sabha members with little mass appeal. The party's political resolution is written by Sudeendra Kulkarni, a headquarters fixture who has never fought an election. Arun Jaitley, a leader of the airwaves, is usually drafted in to fine-tune party documents and brief the media.

At the National Executive, however, the political resolution came in for flak from some of the members. Sushma Swaraj found the attack on the Congress' dynastic rule was "crudely" put. Advani's return as party chief has also seen a subtle shift in the dual power structure of the party divided between Vajpayee and Advani. Vajpayee was always the conscience keeper of the party but his voice is now reduced to an infrequent whisper while apparatchiks like Naidu continue to throw their weight around. Clearly, a lot has changed in 25 years-a lot more in just one year.

What remains the same is the five-star culture, a recent acquisition for a party that has risen from the spartan Sangh Parivar. When Mahajan flashed his first cell phone, the party took him to task for his ostentatious lifestyle. After a six-year flirtation with power, it is the norm: press meetings in five-star hotels rather than mass rallies. "We must change with the times. Should we forever be eating channa and riding bicycles?" asks Shivraj Chauhan, the BJP general secretary. After all he belongs to an era when Bollywood singer and recent BJP recruit Kumar Sanu breaks the monotony of the celebrations with pop numbers between speeches. Still a party with a difference. But it makes no difference.

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