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TheIndian EXPRESS

THE OP-ED PAGE

l FRIDAY l JANUARY 25 l 2013

15

Rajnath Singh is a compromise for both BJP and RSS. Till the BJP finds its new age Vajpayee-Advani partnership, the tussle will continue
GIRISH KUBER

The party and the shadow

THE SANGH was so worried about the BJP-isation of its organisation that, at one point, it thought of severing all ties with the BJP. But in reality, it was almost impossible, because the RSS happens to be the holding company and HR supplier/manager of the BJP, contrary to the claims made by its seniors. The RSS has consistently failed to come to terms with the fact that a subsidiary outfit can outgrow the parent and a protege can outsmart the mentor. Here lies the genesis of the current crisis in the BJP.
In the current arrangement, the RSS lends key functionaries to the BJP, who are basically back office managers. Called sangathan mantris or organisation secretaries, they are a bridge between the RSS and its political outfit. Some (a famous example being Narendra Modi) developed a taste for electoral politics. Rather than being happy backseat drivers pushing the Sangh agenda, these sangathan mantris got into active politics. The Sangh may disagree but, after all, power has its own charm. The conversion of swayamsevaks into political workers/leaders has caused heartburn in the RSS. The Sangh was so worried about the BJP-isation of its organisation that, at one point, it thought of severing all ties with the BJP. But in reality, it was almost impossible, because the RSS happens to be the holding company and HR supplier/manager of the BJP, contrary to the claims made by its seniors. The RSS has consistently failed to come to terms with the fact that a subsidiary outfit can outgrow the parent and a protege can outsmart the mentor. Here lies the genesis of the current crisis in the BJP. The RSS refuses to accept this reality and also the fact that the BJP leadership, at times, may not be in sync with the Sangh. In denial, the Sangh was exposed to this truth when Advani, Yashwant Sinha and others stubbornly refused to toe the RSS line on continuing with Gadkari as party president till the 2014 elections. The RSS was keen on Gadkari not because it had faith in his strategic abilities, but because he was more than willing to work as the RSS proxy in the BJP. With no base of his own, Gadkari was happy being the RSS man, a good swayamsevak. Not as politically smart as Mahajan or Modi, there was very little danger of him outperforming or defying the parivar. The Sangh could have had a say in the matter, but certainly not in an election year. Having messed up in Karnataka, UP and Jharkhand, there was growing resentment against Gadkari in the BJP. Gadkari allowed Karnataka to slip away from the BJP by doing very little to avert the crisis. His decision to induct tainted leaders like Babu Singh Kushwaha ahead of the UP assembly elections raised questions about his leadership abilities. Gadkari also botched things up for the BJP in Jharkhand. All

THE BJP, for once, would like to thank the ruling UPA. The income tax departments action against Nitin Gadkaris firms ended up achieving, if inadvertently, what BJP veterans, including former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani,andsomefromtheRSS,hadfailedto. Gadkari was a power point-happy technocrat, comfortable in the company of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. After all, he was one himself. An upper-caste Brahmin from Nagpur, Gadkaris moment of fame came when as Maharashtras PWD minister during the Shiv Sena-BJP rule (1995-99), he did the unthinkable. Gadkari took on the likes of Pramod Mahajan and Bal Thackeray, who were in favour of handing over the project of the construction of Indias first autobahn, the Mumbai-Pune expressway, to a powerful industrial group. Gadkari, instead, devised a unique model that helped raise the states first super-fast highway at half the cost, besides building as many as 55 flyovers in Mumbai. During those four years incidentally, his only brush with power so far Gadkari was a man in a hurry. For, he knew this was the opportunity to showcase his abilities and create a space for

PRADEEP YADAV

himself, which otherwise, thanks to his caste, was not so easy. Gadkari was successful in this endeavour and created an image in the minds of upwardly mobile urban middle-class voters, especially Brahmins, who viewed him as their man. But it also created an arguably misleading impression about his leadership abilities. Gadkari was no mass leader, or a strategist. His only strength: a strong bond with the RSS. Then why did the Sangh Parivar choose him to lead their political outfit? Gadkari grew in stature only after the untimely exit of another Brahmin leader from the state who went on to attain national stature, Pramod Mahajan.

Unlike Gadkari, Mahajan was quick to grasp the political dynamics. He grew fast enough to leave the RSS behind. Mahajan, many may recall, in his later days, was not exactly in the good books of the RSS. He seemed to underline all the ills generally associated with politics. But then, thats precisely the dilemma the RSS has been facing for quite some time. As the BJP grew and widened its base, it absorbed a large number of leaders who dont owe allegiance to the RSS. As a politicalparty,theBJPhasitsowncompulsions, which the RSS refuses to acknowledge. This results in constant friction in the BJP between RSS-backed leaders and those not from the RSS school of thought.

this only underlined his weak political instincts and the lack of leadership acumen. Incidentally, these may not be shortcomings from the RSS point of view, but they are serious disqualifications for a political party. At one point, the BJP had leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee who could reach out to the people over and above the shoulders of the party and the RSS. With the BJP having no one as able as the former prime minister, or anywhere close to him, the RSS thought it could have its say in who becomes the BJP president. But that was not to be. Political reality forced other BJP leaders to question the RSS. The situation could have gone out of control had Yashwant Sinha contested and garnered enough support. Hence, the RSS found a way out in Rajnath Singh. This comes as a face saver for the BJP and the RSS, more so for the latter.TheBJPhadnooptionbuttoaccept Singh also an RSS man who not so long ago was criticised for his lack of vision. The dilemma for the BJP will continue till it finds its new-age Vajpayee-Advani duo a mass leader and a strategist. It is hoping that Rajnath Singh, a Thakur, and Narendra Modi, an OBC, will emerge as the new combine. And for the RSS, it will have to own up or give up the BJP, the earlier the better, failing which the situation is unlikely to improve. After all, it is a tussle between a patriarchal organisation that has its sights set on a distant horizon and a political party which, understandably, cannot see beyond the next election. The writer is executive editor, Loksatta girish.kuber@expressindia.com

It may be too soon to identify an Obama cinema, but his second inauguration seems like a good time to try
A.O. SCOTT AND MANOHLA DARGIS
vies are obvious, but we wanted to go beyond the topical resonance of films like Zero Dark Thirty and enter into the realms of allegory and national mythology. Here is our highly preliminary, wildly speculative thematic guide to American cinema in the Obama Era. Our current bout of Lincolnmania may have begun that frigid day in 2007 when Obama announced that he was running for president. Since then Lincoln books have continued to pour in and he has become an unexpected boxoffice draw with Steven Spielbergs political procedural, Lincoln. That Daniel Day-Lewiss grave and wily interpretation of the mature president outperformed a younger, axe-wielding Abe in the gonzo Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter wasnt just a surprise, including at the box office, it was also one of the biggest film stories of 2012. Literal Lincolns have been few on the big screen, but variations on the Lincolnesque have emerged, from the leadership of Sheriff Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks, a distant relative of Abe) in Toy Story 3 to Jamie Foxxs avenger in Quentin Tarantinos Django Unchained.The Lincoln in Spielberg and Tony Kushners film represents the triumph of the moral good, achieved through rational discourse, the law and backroom wrangling. In Tarantinos Djansortment of oddballs and, despite the title, focusing less on vengeance than on interplanetary peacekeeping. A similar ethic informs X-Men: First Class, which takes place around the time of Obamas birth (at the height of the Cold War and the civil rights movement) and which shows how the idealistic pursuit of justice and tolerance can end up tragically divided between radical and conciliatory impulses. The ideal of community and the threats to its survival are powerful themes in these anxious times, when economic upheaval and environmental catastrophe are ever-present worries, and when the values of comity and neighbourliness can seem hard to sustain. Beasts of the Southern Wild and Promised Land, both released in 2012, imagine emblematic American landscapes as ecologically and socially fragile places, easily destroyed by hundredyear storms or million-dollar fracking payoffs. Another, The Descendants (set in Hawaii, the presidents birthplace), locates the struggle between the pursuit of profit and the desire to hold onto other values within the conscience of a lawyer played by George Clooney, the presidents contemporary and a quintessential Obama era movie star. The Great Recession officially ended in 2009, but that hasnt dramatiRevolution, nods at the Occupy movement and glances back at the gangster movies of the 1930s, in which struggles for power and money were accompanied by the rat-a-tat of Tommy guns. Of course, The Dark Knight Rises is also a war movie, and Obama has been (to cite his predecessors self-description) a wartime president. The Dark Knight Rises imagines a Hobbesian state of social chaos, a more complicated situation than pictured by its prequel, The Dark Knight, which is in some ways the central movie of the Bush years, with its sharply drawn lines of good and evil. Batmans fight with the Joker was as personal and apocalyptic as Harry Potters epochal struggle with Voldemort, which came to an onscreen conclusion in the same year that Osama bin Laden, the prime evildoer of the Bush era, met his violent end. The big movie about that event Kathryn Bigelows Zero Dark Thirty was pre-emptively attacked as a piece of election-year Obama-boosting, and then criticised, for seeming to imply that waterboarding and other brutal forms of interrogation produced some of the intelligence that led to Bin Laden. Obama appears on screen briefly, but the films action takes place far from the centres of political power, in Central Asian black sites and then in the cubicle warrens of CIA headquarters. Its mood is hardly triumphant, and its message is far more equivocal than some commentators have supposed. The world of Zero Dark Thirty is one of shadows, ethical compromises and constant danger, and though it ends with victory as most American war movies have it also ends in tears. Movie audiences tend to prefer symbolic, fantastical wars, with intergalactic robots, alien life forms and futuristic settings. But those films have nuances of their own. Both James Camerons Avatar and Rupert Wyatts Rise of the Planet of the Apes scramble the usual good guy/bad guy dichotomy, suggesting that the enemy is us. The year 2012 culminated with a sigh of relief for believers in supposed Maya end-of-the-world prophecies. But intimations of apocalypse have figured heavily in the popular imagination of the past four years. Real-world disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, wars) have been mirrored in movies about rampant zombies, planetary collisions, killer epidemics and other harbingers of human extinction. The future as depicted in The Hunger Games, The Book of Eli, Contagion and Cloud Atlas, among others looks very scary indeed. These outsize fears may be the flip side of the extravagant hope of 2008, or exaggerated versions of the real challenges that we will face over the next four years. The New York Times

Obamas America, on screen

Lance Armstrongs rise and fall speak of a society obsessed with success, no matter how its achieved
nd conflates the reel and real image of movie stars, so that the promise of justice, opportunity and success they deliver on-screen stands in for worldly aspirations even off-screen. Still, unlike other countries, Indias dominant discourse on success has often been at odds with worldly indulgences and acquisitions. The Indian mind has measured success in otherworldly terms, by way of worldly renouncement. That is why Anna Hazares personalsacrificeandBabaRamdevsausteritystON the surface, Lance Armstrongs doping, ill have currency, whereas most other social, cheating and lying seems a matter of individ- entrepreneurial and political leaders are ual corruption, an Aristotelian tragic flaw in viewed with suspicion and cynicism as spoilt, character. He broke not only the rules of pro- pampered, corrupt and hypocritical. fessional road race cycling, but also a code The new Indian generation, children of of personal ethics. Yet, upon deeper analysis, economic liberalisation, seek to subvert the his deceit also raises questions about how narrativeofabdication.Ashamedofold,inefmodern societies define success and choose fectivewaysandeagertojoininwiththeethos itsicons.PerhapsArmstrongliedandcheated ofthedevelopedworld,theyseekrolemodels not only for the personal glory, power and not only in the rich, powerful, slim, youthful money that come from being a celebrity, but and beautiful but also in those who have the also because he wanted to give a custom-ma- street smarts to be practical, and play the de hero to a world that increasingly cares on- game. Yet, therein lies the problem: the dely about success and not how it is achieved. sire to win all the time and at all costs overEveryone loves it when the underdog emphasises the end while obscuring the emerges a champion. So Armstrong was wor- means to that end. It creates a culture that shipped not only because he won the Tour defines success in limited, outwardly terms de France cycling champiwhile ignoring deeper quesonship seven consecutive tions of truth, virtue and justimes but also because he THE NEW Indian tice. Then, its not enough beat cancer to achieve this generation, children of to survive cancer, or to partamazing feat. His success economic liberalisation, icipate in the race, or to pargave hope to everyone, not ticipate in the race after suronly sportspeople, because seek to subvert the viving cancer. In this hyperit made us believe that the narrative of abdication. competitive world, our migcombined force of human Ashamed of old, ht is not right if the race is willandhardworkcanovernot won, if our rivals do not ineffective ways, they come even the vagaries of taste defeat at our hands, if destiny. But in a world whe- seek role models not our peers are not coaxed, or re public perception (doxa) only in the rich, bribed into supporting us. trumps real knowledge powerful, slim, youthful It is counterintuitive to (episteme), success is easy and beautiful but also in overcome one set of injustito corrupt. Perhaps that is ces by committing others. why no one stopped to ask, those who have the Yet societies overwhelmed how is it possible? No one street smarts. by the fear of failure forget wants to hear bad news. that rights come with respoUnsurprisingly, evidence of Armstrongs nsibilities, that there is a difference between feet of clay came as a huge shock and disapp- achieving success the right and wrong way, or ointment. The world lost a hero and the dre- that adverse circumstances, including poveam that despite the harshness of circumstan- rty, do not justify opportunism, misdemeaoces, human beings can achieve the urs or crime. After all, corruption is not simpextraordinary. In hindsight, various sources ly a matter of inferior, mismanaged public insist that Armstrongs dishonesty was there institutions and systems. Corruption is a brefor all to see but most chose to ignore their su- akdownineveryindividualssenseofcommuspicions. Armstrong had not only hypnotised nity, respect and trust towards one another. the world into believing he was invincible on This is not to say that the lesson for India a bike but also cast himself as a pillar of the fromArmstrongscaseisthatwemuststopdrcommunity through his Livestrong founda- eaming and go back to our grieving, fatalistic tion for cancer support. He was too powerful ways. Our hopes and aspirations must propel to tear down. Because to tear him down us to spectacular success. But success and wouldmeannotonlytoteardowntheindivid- how success is achieved must be defined in ual, but also societys collective desire to rise self-enlightened terms, so that our society from the ashes and have it all. become just, inclusive and empathetic, not Movie stars do for India what Armstrong selfish, ruthless and alienated. did for the rest of the world. In the absence of Patel is a Mumbai-based writer everyday life heroes, the ordinary Indian mi-

How icons crumble

NANDITA PATEL

FOUR years ago, on the historic occasion of Barack Obamas first inauguration, we took a look at the good, bad and outrageous movie characters who helped make his election possible. The road to the White House, we wrote, hadnt just been paved by Obamas speeches, innovative campaign strategies and the hopefulness of a majority of voters, but also by decades of AfricanAmerican men in movies. From the class striving of Sidney Poitiers everyman in the classic film A Raisin in the Sun to Will Smiths messianic loners in recent titles like I Am Legend, the movies have ennobled, consecrated, glorified, immortalised and, most important, normalised the figure of the black man. Now, the images are more complex, and in some ways blurrier. Politically and personally this president functions as a screen onto which different Americans project their fears and fantasies. From the right, the picture is often of a monster whose policies are steps on a scary road to socialism or some other exotic form of tyranny. Many liberals, by contrast, have expressed disappointment at his willingness to compromise with Republicans and his reluctance to fight. At different times and from various angles Obama is a fiery orator, an aloof intellectual, a policy nerd and a shrewd strategist. He is notoriously resistant to sketch-comedy impersonation and also, perhaps, to simple pop-cultural appropriation. Last year in The New York Review of Books, the critic J. Hoberman wondered when we would see an Obamainflected Hollywood cinema. It may be too soon to identify an Obama Cinema, but the presidents second inauguration seems like an appropriate time to try. His first term wasnt easy for Hollywood, representationally; the most visible evidence for this seeming paralysis was the whiteout that descended over the 2011 Oscars, where African-Americans were conspicuous only by their absence. Subsequent Oscar nominations for The Help partly rectified the colour imbalance. This year race is firmly back on the table with movies like Lincoln and Django Unchained. Yet much like Obama, who has rarely made race a topic of conversation, the current nominees for best picture speak to other issues, including war, the economy and just about everything else. Some of the connections between politics and mo-

THE AVENGERS may be the exemplary Obama era superhero movie, replacing the figure of the solitary, shadowy paladin with a motley assortment of oddballs and, despite the title, focusing less on vengeance than on interplanetary peacekeeping.
go, by contrast, the salt-and-pepper team played by Christoph Waltz and Foxx embodies a blood-drenched fantasy of justice achieved through the rule of the gun. Its a fantasy that has deep roots in American history, on screen and off. What these period pictures have in common is a sense that righting our wrongs is a shared burden. Or, as Nick Fury, in describing another battle between good and evil, puts it: There came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earths mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat. Marvels The Avengers might have been called Team of Rivals the title of the book, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, that was one of the sources for Lincoln. And Joss Whedons Marvel costume party is, like Spielbergs historical costume drama, largely about an urgent response to a political crisis. It is also about community organising, as Fury mobilises a fractious group of individuals whom he must persuade to pursue a set of common interests. As such, The Avengers may be the exemplary Obama era superhero movie, replacing the figure of the solitary, shadowy paladin with a motley ascally thinned unemployment lines or buoyed the global economy. Historically American movies often take on class in little micropolitical movies like The Postman Always Rings Twice, to borrow an observation from the German filmmaker Christian Petzold. Newer fiction tales like Warrior (about brothers battling in the lower middle class) and Arbitrage (about a nose-diving venture capitalist) as well as documentaries like Inside Job, have taken on the economy and its fallout but largely attract more critical love than paying customers. One of the few classconscious titles recently to hit the top of the box office was Steven Soderberghs independently produced Magic Mike, about a stripper whose offstage dreams seem thwarted when hes turned down for a bank loan. The big studios still shy away from openly taking on class, unless the issue comes swaddled in period rags and a comfortable historical distance, as in Les Miserables, and even the last Robin Hood was more about the rights of the rich than the privations of the poor. That said, glimpses of class conflict emerged amid the shadows of The Dark Knight Rises, which riffs on the French