External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj is something of an exception in this government. She has steered clear of either rabble-rousing on polarising agendas or following the rabble brigades on the social media. She is the only member of the Narendra Modi Cabinet to have served in the first 13-day Cabinet of the late Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose wider national concerns and sensibilities she had shared, unlike the BJP’s top guns today. In those days, the BJP was not on a temple-building trip. It was also not sworn to the idea of smashing opponents.
On the whole, Ms Swaraj has been constructive and moderate and anything but vicious in her politics, unlike the shining stars of the government and the BJP today. Small wonder she became a fading star in the government and the BJP long before her kidney transplant in 2016, which appeared to visibly slow her down.
From the start of the Modi Sarkar in the summer of 2014 it was sad to see her thoroughly sidelined, and probably it is just as well that she has decided to call it a day in electoral politics. Prior to that, she had been Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and was a debater and speaker of the highest grade. But her capabilities were not utilised by the government and her party even before her surgery.
In Indore on Tuesday, the external affairs minister made it plain she did not desire to fight the next Lok Sabha election. She cited health reasons. Those will be valid grounds indeed. But since she has been a respected political figure of the first rank, it is difficult to avoid political readings altogether.
The first question that comes to mind is whether she feared that she might be overlooked in securing a party nomination for 2019. Even if that is not the case, there may be concerns that in the event of the BJP winning again she might be sidelined altogether. The next question is whether any others would follow Ms Swaraj’s example.
A few months ago, the minister came under attack by the RSS-BJP’s vicious and anonymous social media troll army for helping out a Muslim couple from UP in getting passports. No one in the ruling party or the government rose to her defence. Not long after, the Prime Minister went on to praise social media activists for expressing themselves freely, though this wasn’t in the context of the minister being trolled. But the two events were proximate and many drew political inferences.
Ms Swaraj rose to the top through her abilities, and not by trying to pander to communal agendas. That underlines her uniqueness in today’s BJP, not just among its women leaders. If the moment is right, fortunes could turn again, of course.
