It isn’t time yet. It’s still 2011 and there are many bridges to cross, before the BJP wheels out its official candidate for the Prime Minister’s post.

The time now is to consolidate and build. To not let even a single political opportunity go by, without delivering a decisive cut to the Congress.

This isn’t 1992. The Ram Janambhoomi issue isn’t centrestage.

Corruption and misgovernance are.

And so it’s time for another Rath Yatra.

The BJP has always had room for the Guru and his disciple. Fact is, it has thrived on such relationships, thanks to its RSS and Jana Sangh foundations.

Under The Shadow of Rajdharma

Through the 90s and the first few years of the 21st century, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-LK Advani combination steered the BJP to heights it had never before witnessed. Their political relationship provided stability, continuity, experience and authority to a party that was beginning even then, to severely lack a solid second-rung. As Advani himself acknowledged, rarely do two political leaders share such a bond, a working relationship that allows them both to thrive and grow without disturbing the fine balance of that bond.

Vajpayee, the poet-Prime Minister and Advani as his able and trusted lieutenant, brought depth and gravity to the BJP leadership. It still is, and will be in many ways, the gold standard to which the BJP will hold itself for many years to come.

Even at its lowest, in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots in 2002, it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who played the statesman. His admission that the BJP had failed in it’s rajdharma, was viewed by many as acceptance of moral responsibility for the 2002 riots carnage in Gujarat, and regret by the BJP’s highest leader. Little wonder then, that Atalji remains to this day, the BJP’s most widely accepted and respected political face.

Almost two decades on, the BJP finds itself in want of a clear political leadership. True, there are many second rung leaders in the BJP today. Many like Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu and their likes. But today, if the BJP has built up the second rung of leadership that it lacked under the Vajpayee-Advani combine, it is faced with the uncomfortable prospect of its two tallest leaders standing at the crossroads. Narendra Modi, who today, is the only leader who can draw in the masses and consolidate the traditional Hindutva vote back of the BJP.  And LK Advani,the old familiar workhorse of the party, who nurtured its organisational growth over the many decades, and still is, for all means and purposes, the heir apparent to the Vajpayee political legacy.

The last two decades however, have forced the BJP to acknowledge that they can’t win enough acceptance and support by playing the Hindutva card alone. True, with the help of the Saffron family, the Hindutva vote is still largely secure. But as the 2004 general elections proved, the Hindutva card alone isn’t enough to satisfy the growing Indian middle class. The same section of society that spilled out onto the streets in support of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.

Hence the BJP today, is choosing to consolidate and build.

It has as it’s Hindutva face, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. A man handpicked from the RSS ranks by his political guru (and the original Hindutva face of the BJP) LK Advani himself, to head the party’s reinvention in Gujarat, in 2001. Many of Modi’s detractors would say that it was he who made full political use of the substantial RSS laboratory that Gujarat had been turned into. Irrespective of the charges, Modi not only consolidated the BJP’s political fortunes in Gujarat, but also took it to never before seen heights, winning a landslide victory in the 2007 state elections.

Modi the Hindutva face had transformed into Modi the icon of Gujarati pride.

It was not surprising then to note how Narendra Modi chose to dwell on the long and rich history of the Guru-Disciple dharma in the BJP – best exemplified in his words by the Vajpayee-Advani political relationship – during his fast in Ahmedabad. After all, Modi wouldn’t have been in this position today, had his guru LK Advani not hand-picked him for the task at hand in Gujarat, in 2001. And while Modi has in many ways taught the RSS and VHP a lesson or two in Hindutva, he knows that without Advani, it will be difficult for him to secure enough national acceptability to achieve his ambitions.

Modi is an ace craftsman when it comes to politics and symbolism. By far the best at his trade in the country at the moment. But today’s India is very different from the India of 1992 or even of 2002. And no matter how strong the Hindutva sentiment, hard economic realities rule our politics.

Today, the BJP’s Rajdharma is to take up the cause of the common man against corruption. The party leadership doesn’t want to mix its political metaphors. So it is LK Advani who will ride the anti-graft Rath from Bihar on the 11th of October. It will be Jayprakash Narayan’s birth anniversary that will see the start of the Rath Yatra, from none other than his birthplace in Bihar. The same JP, during whose movement against the biggest act of corruption independent India has witnessed – Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the Emergency – LK Advani took his first big steps onto the stage of national politics.

And lest we forget, for Advani himself, it’s unfinished business. After all, it was in Bihar that his last Rath Yatra was abruptly cut short, in 1992.

At so many levels and in so many intricate ways, the BJP is taking the next logical step in its political evolution. Changing to adapt with the times, and striving to stay relevant.

Hence, let us not forget that when LK Advani bows before the leadership of the RSS, he is doing so in deference to the decades old tradition of the BJP.

Upholding the Guru-Disciple dharma.