Chasing Hindu votes

With the Narendra Modi government and the BJP, as a party, going hell for leather on the issue of demonetisation, it is a surprise that the saffron party’s election manifesto for Uttar Pradesh, released in Lucknow on Saturday, makes no mention of this move. This may be seen as an indication that the ruling party at the Centre is no longer sure that working for a reduced cash society will fetch great electoral dividends, although it cannot be ruled out that prominent BJP campaigners loosely touch upon it in order to claim that they have brought measures to curb corruption. In the manifesto, “Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra”, which loosely translates as “Resolve for Public Welfare”, gone are references to “development” and “Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas” (together with all, development for all). These would have been hard to sustain anyway, considering that the Muslim community has been excluded from BJP candidates’ list. The development talk — although it was mostly hollow — has been replaced by BJP’s standard revert to building the Ram temple “within the framework of the Constitution” in Ayodhya and to the communal disturbances of 2013 in western Uttar Pradesh after which party leaders were shown to falsely claim that there had been an “exodus” of Hindus. Evidently, the BJP is still principally chasing the chimera of the so-called Hindu votebank as communal feelings can be aroused when politically needed, though this tactic does not always deliver the desired outcomes.