Wooing the South: BJP’s gambit set to fail

Does the ruling BJP at the Centre really understand the South? This is a question which begs for attention in the wake of the party deciding to nominate Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan as its pick for the vice-presidential polls.

Or is this just another ploy by the saffronists to create momentum in this part of the peninsula, where it has hardly been able to make any impact of its own - except for Karnataka? There is no doubting the fact that Radhakrishnan is an eminent politician and maybe the best person the BJP could find among its South Indian leaders.

But then, when a party like the BJP does something like this, picking a Tamilian for the prestigious post when it could have chosen from an array of leaders in the North, it leaves one pondering over the ‘political gamble’ in volved. The South’s population has always scoffed at the BJP’s painstaking efforts to make inroads and the re sults are there to see.

In Kerala, the only leaders who have been elected as MLA or MP are O Rajagopal and Suresh Gopi, while in Tamil Nadu, the party has been piggy-riding on its allies like AIADMK to get its nominees elected to the Assembly or Lok Sabha. Even Radhakrishnan won his Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat when the BJP and AIADMK were in an alliance.

The BJP drawing a blank in the South could be because unlike the North, the South has witnesses several social revolutions which took on the evils of casteism and religion-based prejudices.

Whether it was the communist movement in Kerala or the Periyar-led movement against upper caste dominance and superstition in Tamil Nadu, they went a long way in creating a deep imprint on generation after generation that being secular, democratic and bigotry-free was the way to go.

And so, despite making sure that Kerala and Tamil Nadu had their representatives in the central ministry - even if they had to be elected from BJP-ruled states the party has reached nowhere in its ‘Mission South India.’ Karnataka is an exception because of some hard working leaders the party had like the late Jagannath Rao Joshi, Ananth Kumar and BY Yediyurappa.

While the first two leaders are no more, Yediyurappa is past his prime, handing over the mantle to son Vijayendra. With no front-ranking leaders to take on the likes of Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar, the party’s fortunes have hit a new low with no revival in sight.

Is Radhakrishnan’s election as vice-president, which looks likely considering the NDA’s numbers vis-a-vis that of the INDIA bloc of Opposition parties, likely to cre ate a change of heart among Tamilians? This is most unlikely; as an analyst once said, the BJP is still regard ed as a North-centric party which in recent times has been trying hard to impose its dominance through Hindi, which Tamilians have stoutly opposed.

Tamilians and Malayalis are also not known to take kindly to moves to use religion as a tool to gain political advantage- something the BJP excels in. To sum up, while most Tamilians would be happy that one among them may soon hold a high constitutional post, to expect a sea change in Tamil Nadu politics, as the BJP would be hoping for, would be a far fetched dream to say the least.