HOPE VERSUS FEAR
BJP needs to resolve religious polarisation to retain power while Congress wants to duck it
INDIA’S democracy moves from elections to elections in some of its 29 states each year. Yet, the Gujarat assembly elections this month seemed a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 41-month rule.
He has won, but questions and doubts abound. Uniquely, the victor isn’t victorious enough and the loser isn’t despondent.
Gujarat is the political backyard of Modi and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah. They have retained it, while snatching Himachal Pradesh, yet another state from Congress, the main opposition.
Whether these victories point to a “mega surge” for BJP that ensures Modi’s re-election in the 2019 parliamentary polls — as much of mainstream media is predicting — remains doubtful.
For one, it failed the Shahwowed 150 seats target in house of 182. Its majority win stopped short of a hundred, down 16 that it had won in 2012. The Congress won 16 more, at 79 giving its best in two decades.
The BJP bagged 43 of 55 urban seats, but only 56 of 127 in the countryside where poverty and inequality persist. Modi’s penchant for bullet trains and startups has not reached there.
The much-touted “Gujarat model” of development that he prescribes for the whole country has taken a hit.
Two, although he won despite absence of a favourable wave, even fighting anti-incumbency sentiment that the Congress whipped up, he is vulnerable to uncertainties of a sliding national economy.
Business classes conveyed their anger at his demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) measures. BJP was saved by the “Gujarati pride” in having Modi at the helm in New Delhi.
Three, the Congress has risen, belatedly though, to provide democratic opposition the country needs. Amid a string of defeats, it could stem BJP’s plans of making India “Congress-free.”
Rahul Gandhi surprised everyone by shedding reticence in Gujarat.
He surged as a spunky, persuasive campaigner, matching Modi’s argument for argument. He played the decent underdog by deflecting Modi’s jibes and insults.
“I will criticise him, but not insult the country’s prime minister”, was his constant refrain.
Despite defeat, Gujarat is his morale-booster. Elevated to lead the 132-year-old party this month, he has begun with twin defeats, and more may be in store. But Gujarat has sent a positive signal to cadres that he must organise better. He is no match to Modi in oratory and experience.
Leading a mass-based party, Rahul needs to learn from the cadre-based BJP’s sixth consecutive Gujarat victory. Ultimately, a party’s organisational machinery and ability to bring voters to the polling stations count.
Nobody seriously thought Modi could lose Gujarat, given his resources and well-oiled party machinery. Modi’s tireless campaign seemed favourably onesided at the outset. But following Rahul’s campaign, he was forced to project his achievements as the Gujarat chief minister (20012014), ridicule Rahul and string together communal canards targeting the Muslims.
Taking cue from last year’s
American presidential elections when allegations of Russian interference flew thick and fast, Modi wove a web of conspiracy theories. One innuendo was that former Pakistani military officials were unduly promoting Ahmed Patel, just-retired Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary, a Muslim, as Gujarat next chief minister.
He alleged at a polls rally that a “conspiracy” was hatched at a dinner Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar hosted for his friend, former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri.
Modi had in 2002 polls gamely alleged interference by “Miyan Musharraf ”, a veiled reference to then Pakistan president, implicitly threatening Indian Muslims.
This time, his predecessor Manmohan Singh, a guest at the Aiyar/Kasuri dinner, along with a former vice president Hamid Ansari and an ex-Indian Army chief, issued a strong rebuttal.
As India’s PM, Modi could have avoided this fracas. Gujarat’s Muslims form 15 per cent of the 40 million. For the first time, they were eliminated from any electoral equation. Both the principal parties disowned them.
BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate. The Congress gave six Muslims tickets. But the symbolism of Rahul’s visiting 27 Hindu temples, but not any Muslim shrine, was not lost.
The Congress sought to counter the BJP’s Hindutva card (political use of the Hindu faith, whatever its other philosophical, social and ideological interpretations) by playing what its critics call “soft Hindutva”. To shed the party’s perceived “pro-Muslim” image, Rahul declared that he worshipped Lord Shiva and donned the sacred thread.
He was emulating grandmother and former premier Indira Gandhi, but not his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, the first premier who had avowedly opposed mixing religion and politics and had sought to protect the religious minorities.
Unsurprisingly, the word “secular” that is part of the Indian Constitution, which BJP would want to eliminate, did not figure in the Gujarat discourse.
Prospects of any commitment, by the government and/or any political party to protect the religious minorities from majoritarian onslaught, amidst frequent violence by rightwing vigilantes, appear bleak.
The Gujarat campaign showed the politics of hope has been replaced entirely by politics of fear, of showmanship, projections by a complicit media and social media troll and by shenanigans — personal, political, diplomatic, religious, caste — you name them.
Having reported some elections and monitored many more in Gujarat and elsewhere, I am among those who sadly feel assailed by the toxic nature of the political debate.
One clutches at a silver thread. BJP’s “moderate” victory in Gujarat may strengthen Modi as the PM, facilitating his development agenda and hold back the one that Hindutva hotheads have been trying push.
There is a long way to go till the 2019 elections. If BJP has resolved that crude religious polarisation is the only way it can retain power, and the Congress wants to duck it by playing the same game, India is in for a really trying time.
The Gujarat campaign showed the politics of hope has been replaced entirely by politics of fear, of showmanship, projections by a complicit media and social media troll and by shenanigans...