Even four months after the electoral rout, the Bharatiya Janata Party is still to find its way back to the centre-stage. But there are indications for the first time that it is starting to play the role of a serious opposition party that will take up the issues of day-to-day governance that bedevil the life of ordinary Indians. The announcement that price rise will be its “issue number one” will not only hearten its cadre, but will also enable the party to try going beyond the issues that focus overly on its core ideology and less on the questions of governance.

Much of the responsibility for the new-found stridency on Hindutva must fall on the shoulders of the new leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani. Aware of the lukewarm attitude of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh full-timers, who make up the backbone of the party, he and several younger leaders associated with him kept up the chant of renewing the party’s ideological moorings. The attitude was that it was the emphasis on issues of policy and governance rather than the message of Hindutva that led to a loss of nerve in the ranks. It also diluted the distinctive appeal of the party that sets it apart in the race for power.

The problem with this line of thought is two-fold. For one, it overstates the extent to which the party actually became akin to other fronts or formations. There is, for instance, little doubt that where it matters the most, on issues of culture and education, the tint of saffron ran deep. Murli Manohar Joshi — ever the guardian of the faith and of a view of history that would have sat well back in the Thirties when schooling were the wellsprings of ideological indoctrination — left few stones unturned in his search for cultural correctness.

Further, it ignores the central plank on which the party rode to victory in 1999, the only occasion it has knit together a coalition that has secured a clear electoral majority. The answer, of course, was the acceptance of the national agenda of governance, a document that enabled diverse regional and even caste-based outfits to join forces and poll votes with the BJP. In a word, it was only by de-emphasizing ideology that the party found the magic word to enthuse the electorate.

It is also no coincidence that the only leader the party has ever had with an enduring mass appeal is one who is perceived as being more accommodative than the rest. Atal Bihari Vajpayee cuts a sorry figure now, having had to retract his criticisms of the Gujarat chief minister at the Mumbai conclave. He attracts few hangers-on, and the encomiums heaped on him have the force of habit, rather than a ring of conviction. The party has moved on.

But as events are showing, it cannot afford to discard his legacy even if it rallies behind another leader. The former deputy prime minister is hardly a new face. He has, with Vajpayee, formed the duumvirate that has run the party for the better part of the last 30 years. He was the architect of the hard Hindutva message that swelled the votes and catapulted the party from an also-ran to the second largest political force in the country.

It fell short due to the inability of hard-nosed ideology to connect with the vast majority of voters, many of them religiously inclined but not at all taken in by “cultural nationalism”. Khaki elections too do not work very well in India: as Uttar Pradesh showed in 2002.

Advani is no greenhorn in politics. In 1980, in an interview to Panchajanya, he admitted the constraints of an ideologically aligned force trying to widen its mass base at election time. The questioner hinted that the ideological appeal of the old Jan Sangh was a plus. Advani demurred. His reaction serves to be quoted in full, “The appeal increased to the extent the ideology got diluted”, he said, “Wherever the ideology was strong, the appeal got diluted.”

Such talk seems strange when associated with the man who set out on the rath yatra to Ayodhya in October 1990. But politicians are adept at reinventing themselves. In fact, on every anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, he used terms that would perhaps amaze some of his late-coming fellow travellers. The entire incident is described as “ unfortunate” and even “tragic”. Note that he never crossed the line and accepted responsibility for getting the kar sevaks to the disputed spot in the first place. Nor does he ever reflect on how only a highly disciplined crowd can tear down a medieval as opposed to recent construction.

But Advani was coming to terms with an iron rule of Indian politics. This is a society too diverse and heterogeneous to be mobilized for any length of time on an extremist platform. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, the cat was nice as long as it caught the mice. Once the times change, so does the man.

The problem had, and still has, a second dimension, namely the Gujarat legacy. Do what he might, Narendra Modi will remain for long a champion of unrepentant Hindutva. Unlike his senior leaders, he was not an opposition leader during a series of slow-motion massacres. He must have put away in his archive a quote from the home minister who assured the parliament that the riots in the state were the best handled since independence. In the process, Modi acquired the kind of halo among the rank and file that even Kalyan Singh did not have in the Nineties. In a sense, he has taken over the part of the spectrum that was represented by the rath yatri of yesteryear.

The party has an opportunity. The present coalition will find it difficult to satisfy the hopes it has raised. Already, inflation hovers over the 7 per cent mark and the promise of jobs looks tougher to fulfil than it did from the opposition benches. The BJP’s dilemma is that its new leadership is yet to be broken in and the old is as yet unwilling to bow out. The tired old rhetoric about tainted ministers wears thin, especially when the accuser is not exactly an innocent in the arena.

Maybe the BJP will take a leaf out of Sonia Gandhi’s book. In the entire six-year term of Vajpayee in South Block, she was the first to get to troubled spots, be it a terrorist attack or natural calamity. It was this mass contact that laid the foundations of the party’s return to power. The BJP has looked unprepared for its turn out of power. It has to grit its teeth and get ready for an uphill climb.