Bihar rolls back Hindutva

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

By registering a convincing victory in the Assembly elections in the Hindi heartland state of Bihar, a “mahagatbandhan” (grand alliance) led by Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar has shown that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva bandwagon is not unstoppable.

In the hard-fought elections, the alliance, which includes former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress party, bagged a total of 178 seats in the 243-member Assembly. The Bharatiya Janata Party ended up with only 53 seats, which was less than its pre-Modi tally.

As is his wont, Modi had personally led the BJP’s election campaigns, with his lieutenant and party president Amit Shah by his side. He made several trips to the state and addressed more than 30 rallies. Divisive and communally sensitive issues like cow slaughter and reservations, which Hindutva elements raked up, resonated in the state. Shah added grist to the communal mill by declaring crackers would go up in Pakistan if the BJP lost. 

The grand alliance was the result of the decision of the JD (U) and the RJD, traditional rivals in the state’s politics, to form a secular front to check the advancing Hindutva forces. The Congress joined it as a junior partner. 

The alliance partners readily accepted Nitish Kumar, who acquired a good image as an administrator over the past 10 years, as their chief ministerial candidate.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is a man of ambition, was in no position to offer himself as a candidate as he is currently disqualified from contesting elections, following his conviction in a corruption case.

The voting figures reveal there was a consolidation of secular forces behind the grand alliance. The Communist Party of India, the CPI (Marxist) and the Samajwadi Party, which formed a separate secular front, failed to make an impact.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Asaduddin Owaisi, a three-time Member of Parliament from Hyderabad, set up a few candidates in the Muslim strongholds in pursuance of its plan to extend its activities across the country. It came a cropper as the bulk of the Muslim voters rallied behind the secular parties.

Modi had come to power at the Centre last year in circumstances which created an impression that his Hindutva bandwagon was unstoppable. That feeling strengthened as he led his party to success in one state after another until Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party stopped the victorious march in the Delhi state elections. No firm conclusions could be drawn from the Delhi experience since it is a small, almost entirely urban state, unlike any other. 

The rolling back of Hindutva forces in one of the backward Hindi states is significant for more than one reason. It shows that Modi is not the invincible hero that his admirers imagine him to be. It shows that secular forces have the inherent strength to roll back the Hindutva forces he is riding.

The Hindutva forces had been kept at bay by the administration and the Congress party which led it during the communal riots of the Partition period. They made headway in the recent past primarily due to a weakening of the secular forces’ resolve to check them on account of mistaken electoral considerations.

A question that naturally now is whether Bihar can be repeated elsewhere. Ground conditions differ from state to state. Conditions in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where Assembly elections are due next year, offer a variegated scenario. It may, therefore, be necessary to evolve suitable alternative strategies.

The BJP had no significant presence in these states at the time of the last Assembly elections. However, it was able to bag seven of Assam’s 12 Lok Sabha seats, capitalising on the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

The political traditions of West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu had blocked the BJP’s efforts to build a Hindu vote bank until now. However, in the recent elections to local bodies, the party was able to make inroads at the cost of the Congress in several parts of Kerala, including the state capital.

The BJP secured a parliamentary majority on its own last year with its impressive victories in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together account for 120 Lok Sabha seats. Assembly elections are due in UP in 2017. Ground conditions there are comparable to those of Bihar. However, the Bihar experience can be repeated only if Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, leaders of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party respectively, sink their differences and work together as Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav did. --Gulf Todayy, Sharjah, November 10, 2015.

Opposition set to take on BJP

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

India’s Opposition parties are gradually recovering from the impact of their stunning defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in last year’s Lok Sabha poll and trying to put their act together.

The BJP won an absolute majority in the lower house of Parliament on its own in the elections, thanks to the vigorous campaign run by its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. In the later Assembly elections too he personally led the party’s campaign, chalking up a series of victories.

The party seized power for the first time in Haryana. Its spectacular performance in the Hindu-majority region of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir compelled the largest party, the People’s Democratic Party, to accommodate it in the coalition government, also for the first time.

Only in Delhi state did the Modi magic fail. An unprecedented consolidation of non-BJP votes in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party there broke the party’s run of successes.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which played a key role in the BJP’s election campaign, has since strengthened its hold by inducting some of its leaders into important position in the party and the government. Flush with power, some RSS-affiliated outfits have been making efforts to convert poor people belonging to the minority communities to Hinduism under a ghar wapasi (homecoming) programme, offering allurements.

Desecration of churches has been reported from several places, including Delhi. Government spokesmen have claimed that the attackers were thieves and that there was no religious motive. 

BJP members of Parliament have called upon Hindu women to produce more children. A leader of the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s partner in the Central as well as Maharashtra governments, recently called for sterilisation of members of the minority communities. Following criticism, he withdrew the statement.

While opposition parties have formally condemned such statements, there has been no organised resistance to Hindutva activists’ attempt to polarise society on communal lines. By and large the secular parties have been unwilling to confront the the BJP and its affiliates.

Last week, for the first time, the Opposition showed signs that it is ready to take them on.

The party that has suffered the most damage as a result of the BJP’s rise under Modi is the Congress, which had led the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre for 10 years. It did not win enough seats in the new Lok Sabha for its leader to be recognised as the Leader of the Opposition.

In the Assembly elections that followed, the Congress lost power in Haryana, in Maharashtra, where it headed a coalition with the National Congress Party, and in Jammu and Kashmir, where it was a partner in the government headed by the J and K National Conference.

For long the country’s largest party, the Congress has now been pushed to the second position. Modi makes no secret of his dream of a Congress-free India.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi had made her son Rahul the party’s Vice-President in 2013 amid speculation that she would soon hand over the reins to him. As the party’s main campaigner, he earned the most criticism for the electoral reverses from inside as well as outside. With the party in a state of paralysis, the expected transition did not take place.

Last week Rahul Gandhi returned home after an eight-week sabbatical abroad. On Sunday he appeared with his mother at a farmers’ rally in Delhi to protest against the Modi government’s plan to turn over agricultural land to industries. This may well be the issue on which the Modi government faces the biggest challenge.

Also on Sunday the Communist Party of India-Marxist picked Sitaram Yechury as its General Secretary in place of Prakash Karat whose tenure saw a sharp decline in its fortunes. Yechury vowed to mobilise resistance to the BJP’s neoliberal policies and communal agenda.

Earlier this month six breakaway factions of the Janata Party, which was put together by eminent freedom-fighter Jayaprakash Narayan to challenge Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, announced their decision to reunite to take on the BJP. They include the Samajwadi Party, the ruling party of Uttar Pradesh, the Janata Dal (United), the ruling party of Bihar, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Indian National Lok Dal and the Janata Dal (Secular), former ruling parties of Bihar, Haryana and Karnataka respectively.

In the Lok Sabha poll the BJP had established supremacy over these parties in their strongholds. They have come together to protect their turf.

The BJP recently conducted a membership campaign and claims it is now the world’s largest political party. The strength of a party cannot be measured only in terms of number of members. The opposition parties need to improve their working from the grassroots level upwards to pose an effective challenge to the resurgent BJP. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 21, 2015.

Daunting poll challenge

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is preparing to challenge the Congress party in the 2014 parliamentary elections, has a daunting task ahead.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was in power from 1999 to 2004. In Atal Behari Vajpayee it had a popular prime minister and the economy did well. Yet it could not win a second five-year term on the “India Shining” slogan. The electorate rebuffed it again in 2009.

Now it has cause for optimism. As many as 39 per cent of those who participated in a recent opinion poll said they would vote for the NDA if elections were held now. Only 22 per cent said they would vote for the UPA.

The poll also showed that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, frontrunner in the party’s prime ministerial stakes, has a 36 per cent rating. Rahul Gandhi, whom the Congress party recently made its vice-president and is seen as its prime ministerial candidate, is way behind with only 22 per cent.

But the BJP has cause to worry too. The collapse of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s bid to secure for Nitin Gadkari a second three-year term as BJP president indicates the emergence of new dynamics in Parivar politics. This is the first time that the RSS failed to have its way in the choice of the party president.

Gadkari, a former Maharashtra minister, was little known outside the state when the RSS picked him for the top post in 2009. He became a source of acute embarrassment to the party when the media brought to light his connections with some dubious business concerns late last year, leading to an official probe. Yet the RSS pushed for his re-election. Stiff resistance by party leaders like Lal Kishen Advani and Ram Jethmalani forced it to abandon him and agree to the election of former president Rajnath Singh.

The Gadkari fiasco has come on the heels of grave corruption charges against BJP leaders in Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. In last year’s assembly elections, the Congress wrested power from the BJP in Himachal Pradesh. Chhattisgarh and Karnataka go to the polls this year.

The BJP is in serious trouble in Karnataka, the only southern state where it is in power. Last year it eased out Chief Minister BS Yeddiyurappa, who had led it to victory in the state five years ago, following allegations of corruption. He has now floated a regional party, styled as Karnataka Janata Party, and is posing it a grave challenge.

The party faces dissension also in Rajasthan, another state where elections are due this year. A section of the central leadership wants to bring former chief minister Vijayaraje Scindia to the fore once again but there is strong opposition to her from within the state party.

Modi enjoys wide support among Hindutva elements, but his projection as prime ministerial candidate is sure to meet with strong opposition from sections within the BJP and the NDA in view of his alleged association with the anti-Muslim riots of 2002. The Janata Dal (United), the second largest NDA constituent, has repeatedly said that he is not acceptable.

The opinion poll also offers the BJP cause for despair. While it forecasts a rise in the NDA’s Lok Sabha strength from 159 to 203 and fall in the UPA’s from 259 to 157, the combined strength of other parties will go up from 125 to 183. It is they who will decide who should form the government.

The others are an odd assortment of small national parties with scattered pockets of influence and regional parties which are powerful in their respective areas. The leaders of some of these parties are known to have prime ministerial ambitions but the post-election scenario is likely to reduce their choice to one of going with either the Congress or the BJP. The moot question is who will be the beneficiary of their pragmatic approach. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 29, 2013.