BJP now and again: Saffron in the eye

In June 2013, Narendra Modi was anointed the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate at the party’s national executive meet in Goa. That was just the formal word after getting all the naysayers and veterans out of his way and parcelled into a marg-darshak retirement. This position is something like the presidium chairman’s post, an honorary designation that sounds nice and important but without even 15 amp of power compared to the 440-volt line Modi lays claim to.

The persona that sits in 7 RCR today was made in 2007. Modi’s successful re-election that year as Gujarat CM came despite the many fingers pointed at him and the “maut ka saudagar” epithet flung at him by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi with reference to the post-Godhra riots of 2002. Modi did what he’s now proving a master at, he told the people of Gujarat that the Delhi sultanate was out to destroy the good work of Gujarat. The voter, in Modi’s thrall, did his bidding.

With some nip and tuck and social media thrown in, the chief minister turned himself into prime PM material. And the girth and the height gained with a third victory in 2012. Throw in the UPA-Congress headlessness after the Delhi gangrape of 2012 that brought the people out onto the streets, the more-anarchic Anna Hazare-led movement which mobilised the crowds in 2011 and the CAG’s indictment of the Manmohan Singh government’s who’s who in both the 2G and coal scams. The Indian palate is fond of sensitive yet strong spices blending with the staples into gastronomic symphony. If it doesn’t, there’s Eno for succour. But in May 2014, the whole of India swallowed the made-for-market broth, perfected and flavour-enhanced with development seasoning and rhetoric for salt. The spell of 2007 still holds strong and is magnified by the heady grasp on central power. Much as people talk of India as a federal unit, the country’s power structure is more unitary in nature, and in this state, albeit with seemingly federal powers, nothing beats a five-year stint at 7 RCR and a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. But there’s more to be done. There are more states to be ruled where the party needs to be established even if it has been a distant ally or a third-rung power. More states under the BJP will give it more say in the Rajya Sabha, which will then allow it to do as it wants by way of laws, diluting those that impede it and strengthening those that will take its core issues further.

It is in this light that polls to the Maharashtra and Haryana assemblies are to be seen. Lack of old allies and grassroots-level engagement didn’t bother the party. Perhaps the RSS stepped in where the party flailed at logistics. The austere men in their khaki sparseness are fashioning an India out of pre-WWII ideas of nationhood. They think they are engaged in a mission of civilisational proportions, and they may be right. The left and the centrist points of view have retreated underground, what remains are globalisation’s claw marks that are only beginning to show. Those nails have to be trimmed, and only civilisational issues can come to aid. Honour-besmirching jeans and mobiles are fair game. But that’s Haryana. We can get there in a bit. Let’s talk Maharashtra first.

In a state where it was the junior partner, the state party leadership turned to Modi and outshone its former ally, the Shiv Sena, champion of the Marathi manoos. This was a national figure versus the leader whose only claim to fame is a state-centered identity or just the surname of tigers long gone into sepia frames. Four parties that conventionally contested in two alliances were now knocking on the voter’s already harassed attention. The BJP got what it did: short of a majority, it can call a spade a spoon if it so wants since it has become the ally magnet now. The Sena is stuck; the NCP is willing, for it is addicted to power. The BJP, the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress fought each other with their own candidates, usually Hindu, split each other’s votes leading to the quaint situation of the MIM getting its first two seats outside its Hyderabad borough. This is like how the Congress won Karnataka: Yeddyurappa’s erstwhile party ate into the BJP and left it an open road.

There’s a lot of fear mongering going on after the MIM won in Byculla and Aurangabad Central about polarisation and what not. If one goes by this logic, Hindus can vote for the BJP or any other party that speaks for their interest, but Muslims can’t vote for an avowedly Muslim party even if the community hasn’t had a national-level presence post-Independence. The MIM can learn from this and expand, but what is its vision? Hyderabad Old City will keep sending numerous Owaisi generations to Parliament and the Assembly, but the party lacks chutzpah for a pan-India presence. If it has a vision, it should spell it out now. As many entrepreneurs will attest, the business sense is in getting maximum profit from the least turnover. For the MIM to benefit, it will need to grow in spurts and not dive into industrial-grade manufacturing only to end up with bleeding noses and forfeited deposits. A colleague of this writer imagines the MIM can put up a good show in Uttar Pradesh. Barring the pradesh of the erstwhile Andhra (Hyderabad is now in Telangana) and UP, the two states are like chalk and cheese. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. UP is such territory.

Then there’s this polarisation bogey. Why is it hard for people to believe that separate electorates are a thing of the pre-Independence era? And that it will never come back at the scale it was at when the erstwhile Muslim League was at its peak? We have dumped the divide-and-rule book, though successive parties play the same tune once in a while. This colleague of mine is willing to subsume his religious identity into the subaltern godhead represented by a till-now secular but Hindu leader, but he will not sense that politics in these times are mere constructs of one’s identity and their conversion into vote banks. He might as well buy Savarkar’s theory and call himself a Hindu.

That brings this writer to another young colleague (@ajayshukla2002u) whose view both on the day of the elections and when the results were trickling in was this – national parties (in this case, the BJP, since the Congress has been suffering PTSD since May 16) will end regional parties and their hankering for power by playing castes against each other. People want development, he said. I nodded. Aspirations are many, but delivery is what matters. I didn’t tell him that.

That the national can trounce the regional was proven in Maharashtra but only after the BJP had become an organic part of the state’s politics over time. Its test will come in Bihar. And it will never be tested in the south, barring Karnataka, though it may try its damndest. Organic political growth is necessary for this, and there is no reason for the bigger, and also regional, parties to cede it room. Naidu is a master at this game even though he is an NDA ally.

Haryana has got a dyed-in-the-wool RSS veteran as its CM. Modi can keep the RSS away from the Centre, but at the end of the day, its veterans will rule the states as the party increases its footprint. It’s a nice quid pro quo given the massive work put in by the RSS in Haryana. The BJP needn’t have spent any money on campaigning since leaders of three cults had pitched their tents on the greener grass of the BJP fence. Their following was predominantly Dalit and other backward castes. The Jats also contributed to the BJP cause due to their Arya Samaj affiliation.

Away from Modi’s gaze, many things can happen in the nooks and corners of the states and ancient Hindu wisdom will again rule with its edicts on gotras, castes, mobiles, jeans and women. Development can be institutionalised on posters along the dusty, winding  highways and bypasses with a beaming Modi and Manohar Lal Khattar. But when it comes down to the tacks, the colour saffron is thicker than blood.